OLIMPIA.

He could not have described her to save his life. He had no idea whether her wondrous eyes were brown or black, or whether it was to them or to the perfect mouth beneath that her smile owned the magic of its sweetness. He had not the faintest suspicion that her hair was of the same hue and texture as the world-famed locks of Lucrezia Borgia; he only saw that it was turned back from her brow like a cloud of burnt gold, crisp and wavy, and gathered into a coronet that a queen might have envied. He knew not how scornfully her lip could curl and her delicate nostrils quiver; but he could not help seeing how there was something haughty in the very undulations of her tall and slender form, and something imperial in the character of her beauty A really graceful, handsome, highly-bred woman was a phenomenon in Saxon's eyes; and he looked upon her with much the same kind of delightful awe that one experiences on first beholding the sea or the southern stars. Indeed, had Mademoiselle Colonna been only a fine portrait by Titian, or a marble divinity by Phidias, he could hardly have admired her with a more dispassionate and simple wonder (pp. 135-6).

THEODORA.

It was the face of a matron apparently of not many summers, for her shapely figure was still slender, though her mien was stately. But it was the countenance that had commanded the attention of Lothair: pale, but perfectly Attic in outline, with the short upper lip and round chin, and a profusion of dark chestnut hair, bound by a Grecian fillet, and on her brow a star. (p. 69). Lothair thought he had never seen any one or anything so serene; the serenity however, not of humbleness, nor of merely conscious innocence; it was not devoid of a degree of majesty ; what one pictures of Olympian repose, and the countenance was Olympian; a Phidian face with large grey eyes and dark lashes; wonderful hair abounding without art, and gathered together by Grecian fillets (p. 203). As an astronomer surveys the starry heavens until his searching eyes reach the desired planet, so Lothair's scrutinising vision wandered till his eyes at length lighted on the wished-for orb. . . . He had read of such countenances in Grecian dreams, in Corinthian temples, in fanes of Ephesus, in the radiant shadow of divine groves (p. 216).

Here are precisely the same salient points to describe, the peculiar tint and abundance of auburn hair, the "Phidian” face, the slender, dignified form, the serenity as of stars, the majestic repose, the irresistible fascination of manner. Theodora and Olimpia are at least twins. About Theodora also there is an "Olympian repose," and she has got an "Olympian countenance." We should find it difficult to understand why the adjective Olympian is used twice over in a way so perplexing, were it not that Miss Edwards spells the word Olimpia with an "i" instead of with a "y," as Mr. Disraeli spells it. He has as good reasons for doing so, doubtless, as he gives for spelling "epick" with a "k." Why so much fuss about Phidias and Olympus? Are there so many busts by Phidias in existence that one can tell what is a Phidian face? If Mr. Disraeli does not refer to Olimpia, but Olympus, when he fabricates the adjective Olympian, he might just

as well speak of a Ben Lomond brow or a Magillicuddy chin. He flings about his scraps of Greek like one of Mr. Cook's tourists prodigal of half a dozen precious morsels of table d'hôte French. But this is not all. When Captain Bruges, in "Lothair," speaks to Mirandola of the influence of Theodora over the secret societies, he says: "The name of Mary Anne is a name of magic; though never mentioned, it is never forgotten, and the slightest allusion to it will open every heart. There are more secret societies in France at this moment than at any period since 1785, though you hear nothing of them; and they believe in Mary Anne and in nothing else." Mirandola himself is thus addressed and described by Captain Bruges: "My dear Mirandola, there is no living man who appreciates your genius and your worth more than myself; perhaps I might say there is no living man who has had equal opportunities of estimating them. You formed the mind of our country; you kindled and kept alive the sacred flame when all was gloom, and all were without heart. Such prodigious devotion, so much resource and patience and pertinacity, such unbroken spirit were never before exhibited by man; and whatever may be said by your enemies, I know that at the greatest hour of action you proved equal to it." In Miss Edwards's story, the character to which Mr. Disraeli has given the name of Mirandola, is Giulio Colonna, the father of Olimpia, and this is the way in which father and daughter are described to Saxon Trefalden by his kinsman the London lawyer. "Giulio Colonna has been an enthusiast all his life. In his youth he married for love; and for the last twenty or thirty years he has devoted himself heart and soul to Italian politics. He has written more pamphlets and ripened more plots than any man in Europe. He is at the bottom of every Italian conspiracy. He is at the head of every secret society that has Italian unity for its object. He is, in short, a born agitator; and his daughter is as fanatical as himself. As you saw them just now, so they are always : he with his head full of plots, she exercising all her woman's wit and energy to enlist or utilize an ally. . She is beautiful and brilliant and very fascinating; and she knows how to employ her power, too. Those eyes of Olimpia Colonna's have raised more volunteers for Italy than all her father's plots." In fact, the function of Giulio Colonna is the function of Mirandola, and the function of Theodora is the function of Olimpia. But, moreover, it is all wrought out in precisely the same way. As Theodora, on a visit to Muriel Towers, is suddenly summoned by Captain Bruges to start the revolutionary movement which ended at Mentana, and

fascinates Lothair until he involves himself in it, and flings down his purse and picks up a sword at her bidding,—so Olimpia, on a visit at Castle Towers, receives a message from Baldiserroti, announcing Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily, induces Saxon Trefalden to give her a blank cheque to buy muskets and munitions, and sends him to the seat of war, where he turns up just in time for the battle of Melazzo. Both Theodora and Olimpia join the campaign, and both wear men's clothes in camp. Here it may surely be said are coincidences curious enough. But a still more striking illustration of the inextricable intermixture of Mr. Disraeli's memory and imagination remains. As in one page of Lothair he misprints, we believe, by design, the name of Capel for Catesby, so in another, he, by an astounding blunder, proves how he got all the revolutionary half of his plot by appropriating the very name of Colonna.

66

"The Mary Anne Societies," says a despatch, which Theodora reads, are not strong enough for the situation-too local; he listens to them, but he has given no pledge. We must go deeper. 'Tis an affair of MADRE Natura. Thou must see Colonna."

"Colonna is at Rome," said the General, "and cannot be spared. He is Acting President of the National Committee, and has enough upon his hands."

"I must see him," said Theodora.

And she sees him and sends him to Paris, having first given him a broad hint that he ought to assassinate the Emperor. Miss Edwards's Colonna "is at the bottom of every Italian conspiracy. He is at the head of every secret society that has Italian unity for its object." Mr. Disraeli's Colonna is "Acting President of the National Committee," and "chief of the oldest, the most powerful, and the most occult of the secret societies of Italy." What the chances are that would admit of the same character, with the same name and the same attributes, appearing by mere fortuitous coincidence in two novels between the dates of whose publication there was an interval of four years, is one of those problems which would exhaust the resources of logarithms and baffle Babbage's calculating machine.

We abandon to some expert in the art of literary vivisection the comparison in detail of "Half a Million of Money with "Lothair." The question as to which is the better novel, according to all accepted standards, bears but slight discussion. Originality of conception is one such standard. That need hardly be mentioned. Delineation of character is another. Miss Edwards has produced her characters by effort

of imagination, and they are all finely individualized and coherent. Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand, has sketched half his characters from life, after the manner of a pictorial caricaturist, and acquired the others by petty larceny, or say piracy, which seems to be, in literary transgressions, the more accepted phrase. Miss Edwards's plot is her own; Mr. Disraeli has, so to speak, laid a plot for his plot. It is the result of "treason, stratagem, and spoil," not of fancy, reverie, and study. Mr. Disraeli's style certainly has more point and finish, more precision and sparkle. There is great grace, of a somewhat Cuyp-like character, in some of his descriptions of quiet scenery. But his upholstery, on the other hand, and he has a passion for upholstery, is as gaudy as that of Mr. Robins, the auctioneer. We seem to pace in his pages up and down a sort of "earthly paradise of ormolu.” There are "bits" here and there of boyish buoyancy, quips of humour and fancy, which it is quite wonderful to think of as flashing out of a brain so rusé and so blasé, but on which, in some respects, the difference between the "teens" and the "tys" seems to have hardly told. There is not much to choose, in our opinion, between the way in which Miss Edwards describes high life, obviously evolving it from her interior consciousness to a considerable degree, and the way in which Mr. Disraeli, who has had more opportunities than the oldest peer, does so. But, strictly considered, his very high folk, especially his dukes and duchesses, have an air of the stage about them, and are made to talk "rank" as people some degrees lower in the social scale are said to talk shop." Miss Edwards has suggested to that retentive imagination and that brilliant memory more, we suspect, even than the characters of Theodora and Colonna. The figure and manner of Lady Castletowers will, perhaps, requite a study more ingenious than ours. The way in which a young millionnaire leans on his attorney, as he makes his first blunders, must, we presume, be incapable of much diversity, for what Mr. Putney Giles is to Lothair that Mr. William Trefalden is to Saxon, until he takes to plundering him. Even the diversion of race, which gives a sort of subtle relief to "Lothair," has been anticipated by Miss Edwards. Here is a sentence every one will recognize as quite in the style of Mr. Disraeli's Aryan and Semitic passages:-"Only the historian and the archæologist care to remember how there lie embedded in that tongue the lost fragments of a forgotten language; and how, in the veins of the simple mountaineers who speak it, there yet linger some drops of the blood of a lost, a mighty, and a mysterious people.' We can hardly persuade ourselves that this

sentence was not uttered by Mr. Phoebus, but unquestionably it was in "Half a Million of Money" we found it. It is strange that among the many novelists who write about the byways of London life, Mr. Ďisraeli and Miss Edwards should have such a peculiarly acute sense of the sound of the muffin-bell on a foggy evening. It would not count if there were not so very many other curious coincidences; but we willingly register the exquisite variation in "Lothair." When Mr. Disraeli contrasts the note of the nightingale with the tinkle of the muffin-bell, we feel that this is just what Hafiz would have said if Hafiz had happened to have been born a Cockney.

But, notwithstanding his memory and his imagination, Mr. Disraeli is a man of genius, and the homage which that supreme intellectual culmination owes to truth is like the relation of beauty of physical form to grace of movement. Where the figure is symmetrical, its attitudes and action are unconsciously easy and harmonious. It needs some perverse effort, or the action of some evil passion, to make them awkward and ungainly. And so it is in some degree with the workings of the higher form of intellect. Genius naturally tends to reverence and reflect even the very truth of truths, which it cannot fathom and will not worship, but may not ignore. It would be as impossible for Mr. Disraeli to hold in his mind for an hour, without some degree of injury to its faculty or capacity, the same view of the Catholic Church which Mr. Newdegate no doubt sincerely holds, and so far without apparent damage to his certainly very commonplace mental qualities, as it would be for him (we compare little things with great), suddenly to assume the same view of the French Empire as commends itself most naturally to the rather limited comprehension of M. Gustave Flourens or M. Ulric de Fonvielle. Hence it happens that there is a certain law of his mind, which obliges him, in describing such characters as Cardinal Grandison and the St. Jeromes, and Clare Arundel, and Monsignor Catesby, or Monsignor Berwick, to make them live, and move, and speak, so that they shall be, in some degree, true to the ideal of dignity and humility, of gentleness and zeal, of purity, and charity, and courage, which, as he very well knows (his earlier books testify it) habitually informs the Catholic character in every high expression of it. But, on the other hand, this book has its purpose, and the purpose is so bad that it at once lands Mr. Disraeli into utterly false art. It is absurd to suppose that the men

and women whom he describes as of so elevated and refined a cast of character would attempt to compass such an end as the conversion of a young countryman by getting a