Roman tailor's wife to personate an apparition of the Blessed Virgin; or by persuading him, against the evidence of his own senses, that he had fought with the Pontifical troops instead of the Garibaldians at Mentana; or that the mere act of holding a candle in his hand at a particular procession had changed him into a Roman Catholic. M. Eugène Sue would, we think, have managed all this much more consistently, and quite as wickedly at the same time. The audience of Parisian flaneurs and artizans whom M. Sue addressed were as ready to believe anything he wished about the Jesuits in particular, as the less civilized of the English middle classes are to believe anything whatsoever about Popery in general. But the reader of Paris feuilletons is a much more critical reader than the subscriber to Mr. Mudie; and if Père d'Aigrigny, and Rodin, and Madame de Saint Dizier had been coloured so favourably as Mr. Disraeli colours his Catholic characters at times, and yet had plotted so stupidly at the end as Mr. Disraeli makes his people plot, the keen flaneur would have decided offhand that M. Sue was either tending to become dévot, or was getting ramollissement du cerveau. But, after all, are we quite justified in treating "Lothair" absolutely as a mere novel, like the "Wandering Jew," or "Half a Million of Money," with a moral which is antipathic to our way of thinking? Perhaps it has been too hastily supposed that Mr. Disraeli only wishes to rescue the young aristocracy from the antagonistic spells of Rome and the Revolution. Certainly, if the golden youth of England were such as it is depicted in "Lothair; if it were composed only of Saint Aldegondes, and Hugo Bohuns, and Bertrams, and Carisbrookes, and Montairys, or at best of Brecons and Lothairs, there would not seem to be so much will and manhood to spare among them that either side should gain very considerably by their adhesion. As a sketch of the minds and manners of the young heirs of "our old nobility," some future historian, (not necessarily a New Zealander,) perhaps a professor in the University of Andaman, or the Gibbon of Patagonia, may contrast certain passages from "Lothair" with select excerpts from the "Satires " of Juvenal, not without an edifying effect on the morals of the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth century; and he will naturally argue that, whereas Juvenal's evidence is to be regarded with grave suspicion, in consequence of his well-known animosity to the whole Court of the excellent and beneficent (through the researches of a late learned scholar, happily rehabilitated) Emperor Nero, no such doubt can at all attach to the testimony of Sir Benjamin, who is proved by the curious and invaluable contemporary "Brown Memoirs," to have possessed the entire confidence of his sovereign, and to have been the chosen leader and even educator of the English aristocracy at the time that he thus drew them to the life. The book itself, he may continue to argue, was obviously intended as an educational work, perhaps one of a series. Nôsse omnia hæc salus est adolescentulis. What are "all these things" which it is good for the young to know? Not merely to resist the influence of that ephemeral movement, called "the Revolution," in the absurdly hallucinated century which preceded the great Council of the Vatican. So profound a thinker would as soon have thought of advising the English nobility not to take to baby-farming or to enter the ranks of " the Peculiar People." The true view to take of "Lothair" it will be argued, is, rather to regard it as a choice collection of apothegms and aphorisms, conveyed in the ancient Oriental vehicle of dramatic dialogue. So the young British aristocrat (if of very high rank, generally spoken of in those days as Swell) is told at one time by the lips of Mr. Phoebus: "To render his body strong and supple is the first duty of man. He should develope and completely master the whole muscular system. What I admire in the order to which you belong is that they live in the air, that they excel in athletic sports, that they can only speak one language, and that they never read. This is not a complete education, but it is the highest education since the Greek." And again, he is instructed by Hugo Bohun: "The high mode for a real swell is to have a theatre. You ought to have a theatre; and if there is not one to have, you should build one." What a real swell should eat in the month of November, we are told by St. Aldegonde: "What I want in November is a slice of cod and a beef-steak, and, by Jove, I never could get them in the North; I was obliged to come to town. It is no joke to have to travel three hundred miles for a slice of cod and a beefsteak." Lord Montairy, we think it is, who says: "To throw over a host is the most heinous of social crimes. It ought never to be pardoned." Mr. Pinto's impartial criticism on the dialect prevalent in high society towards the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century deserves to be commemorated:" English is an expressive language, but not difficult to master. Its range is limited. It consists, as far as I can observe, of four words: 'nice,' 'jolly,' 'charming,' and 'bore,' and some grammarians add fond."" Lothair himself lets us into a strange secret of high life. He says once, in a very serious mood, "When all the daughters are married, nobody eats luncheon." These homely touches are about the most valuable material of history. When our Andamanian or Patagonian professor analyses the character of an aristocracy who never read, who keep theatres, who travel hundreds of miles through fog to eat cod and beef-steak, who use only five words of their own language, and who abandon their principal meal for such an utterly trivial reason, no doubt his commentary will be ample and energetic. The chief cause of the Decline and Fall of the British Empire will at once have been made manifest. What throwing over a host really means, and why it should be regarded with such unrelenting animosity, are questions which belong to the exact class of topics on which true scholars have in all ages loved to write libraries. The method of dealing with disappointed affections practised among persons of quality in our day, will, no doubt, seem very empirical seven or eight hundred years hence; but it may, perhaps, tend to revive the study of mineral waters. We refer, of course, to the melodious and memorable passage in which it is said that "the blighted hopes have gone to Cowes, and the broken hearts to Baden "a line which so naturally flows into the air of "the Boyne Water" that we should not be surprised if a setting of it to that tune by Mr. Disraeli's secretary were found among the already cited "Brown Papers" on the occasion of the sack of Balmoral by the allied troops of the Siberians and Ashantees. Some of what appear to be Mr. Disraeli's own more immediate opinions, nevertheless, now and then transpire. "To be a renegade," he says once, "without the consolation of conscience" (the historic conscience, we assume), "this is agony mixed with self-contempt." Again, an opinion on the nature of originality in art which is attributed to Mr. Phoebus is evidently the conviction of a more distinguished person. "A fascinating subject," said old Cecrops to Mr. Phoebus, "but not a very original one." "The originality of a subject is in its treatment," was the reply. Sometimes, hardly even in its treatment, we may remind the discriminating reader. This is not improbably Mr. Disraeli's own candid opinion of Irish politics, though it is ascribed to Captain Bruges :-"I am not fond of Irish affairs; whatever may be said, and however plausible things may look, in an Irish business there is always a priest at the bottom of it. I hate priests. An Irish business is a thing to be turned over several times." Here also, probably, is his own matured estimate of the grand cosmopolitan revolutionary agencies, though it is attributed to Mirandola : "Garibaldi and Mary Anne,' said Captain Bruges. Polchinello and a Bayadere,' exclaimed Mirandola." . 'A A gentleman who has been, and who not impossibly may again be Prime Minister of England, is, we take it, one of the natural trustees of the Queen's English. What does Mr. Disraeli mean then by charging his dukes and duchesses with using such words as "heart friend" and "brother friend?" The most egregious Americanism extant is at all events better rooted in the language than such wretched weeds of words as these. There is an Americanism, or, to be more exact, a Mormonism introduced in a very famous passage of the work, a passage which the critics with one voice proclaimed idyllic," the scene in Lady Corisande's garden at the end of the last volume. It may be hypercritical, but the introduction of the word "seal," in that scene, seems to us to deprive it of its daintiness. It is only at Great Salt Lake City that the act of betrothal is described by the word "seal.” To introduce it in the detail of an engagement between two persons of the very highest quality is an act of lese-noblesse. Much do we regret to see that Mr. Disraeli has fallen into the barbarous practice of translating the French "de," when used as a prefix of nobility, by the English word "of." He dedicates "Lothair" "with respect and affection" to "the Duke of Aumale "—a delicate compliment to a Catholic Prince. "Of" is not the equivalent of "de" in this particular use of the French particle. Its general use as such would lead to grotesque incongruities. For example, the Duc de Magenta is Marechal de MacMahon. Should the latter name be translated Marshal of MacMahon? It is possible to translate Duc de Broglie into Duke of Broglie, or Duc de Persigny into Duke of Persigny, as it is to translate Duc d'Aumale. But the French have a habit of dropping the distinctive title in speaking of people of rank, and may say, for example, "M. de Broglie" or " M. de Persigny " without impropriety. Are we to translate these too, and say Mr. of Broglie and Mr. of Persigny? And if not, why not? The "de" has precisely the same significance whether duc, comte, baron, or merely monsieur stands before it; and, if there be a rule in the matter, it ought to rule all through. To etymological experimentalists, eager to extend the authority of our prepositions, we would suggest that they should at all events commence with such English names and titles as contain the prefix. When we have become accustomed to speak of the Earl of Grey and Ripon, and the Earl of La Warr, of Lord of Mauley, Lord of Moleyns, Lord of Ros, and Lady of La Zouche, or, to be very correct, Lady of the Zouche-when our tongues have got used to say Sir John of Oyly, and Sir Henry of the Voeux, and Sir William of Bathe, and Mr. of the Cane, and, in fine, Lady Clara Vere of Vere, then it will be time enough to serve foreign names. after the same scurvy fashion. In regard to titles, it would be gratifying to all polite persons to know where Mr. Disraeli discovered that it is correct to address a Cardinal by the form "Sir." He assumed, we suppose, because it is the usage so to address an English Prince of the Blood, that the same rule holds regarding a Prince of the Church. But the rule is not merely not a rule of the Roman Court, it is the rule at no Court in Europe except that of St. James. Mr. Disraeli has the reputation of being a purist in punctilio. He may have hesitated to ask information from any of the earls who followed their countesses to Rome to such good advantage; but he might have consulted Shakespeare as to the way in which Henry the Eighth spoke to Wolsey. There is a slight but graceful feat of phrase in a passage describing one of those noble ladies. Lady St. Jerome, it is said, "was the daughter of a Protestant house; but during a residence at Rome, after her marriage, she had reverted to the ancient faith." We thank Mr. Disraeli for teaching us that word. But the ancient faith has always had a spell for Mr. Disraeli; and its unity, its ubiquity, its perpetuity, its majestic patience, its manifold and unfathomable power, have, from early days, moved his imagination to wonder, and almost his heart to worship. In those old epic hours, when standing on the dusty plain which has swallowed the many-gated palace of Priam, he revolved the destinies of an age in which the instinct of ambition and the inspiration of power told him he was called to play a part that would belong to history if not to poetry-the vision of the sublime sovereignty which was founded on Calvary, whose annals connect the grand dead past of Asia with the living genius and energy of Europe, and whose sway still spreads day by day, like the glow of light, like the flow of tides, over lands and seas unknown to Socrates and Solomon,-in those rapt hours of his youth he thought of the Papacy, and he thought in numbers— Lo! as the universal Pontiff waves His hand divine, and with celestial love Sally bright birds, or from a gloomier night |