A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame; The only blemish of this little gem is one of grammar, which of course the reader winced under a few seconds since. But, as we remarked before, it is not difficult to assign to Bulwer Lytton his proper place amongst novelists. He is not equal to Thackeray and Dickens (two such writers of fiction no previous age produced), but he is high above most of the others of his art. It is true that in 1835 he was made a baronet, nominally in consideration of his literary merits, and the authors of "Vanity Fair," and "Pickwick," have not been rendered illustrious by any such mark of royal favour; but the literary service which won for Bulwer Lytton this questionable dignity, was his political pamphlet entitled "The Crisis." His baronetcy was simply an acknowledgment of his political services to Sir Robert Peel, and since he had set his heart on it, it would have been conferred on him, if he had never penned a line, as a mere member of the house, and the owner of a considerable landed estate. The red hand is not in truth one of his literary honours; it is merely the ensign of his enviable position in respect of wealth, just as the Prince Consort's Field Marshal's baton is not an emblem of his military capacity and prowess but of his exalted social rank. CHAPTER XII. RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI. THOUGH men may differ much as to the merits of Mr. Disraeli, no one will question that he is one of the most prominent men of our time. Those who grudge him the honourable title of "celebrated" will allow that he is "notorious." At least, to use Johnson's happy expression, he has made himself "public." There are few persons who are more talked about. He is a stock topic with idle men at clubs, and with ladies during morning calls. If the daily journals are dull and the town generally void of excitement, Mr. Disraeli is brought upon the carpet, and old stories about him are told with new variations. And very amiable, good-natured stories some of them are, and doubtless without exception, quite as truthful as the anecdotes about distinguished living individuals are on examination usually found to be. From the long-legged stool in the Attorney's office to his seat as leader of the House of Commons, all his many positions in his brave and triumphant struggle are touched upon. By the many he is represented as an unprincipled charlatan, by the few as a singularly disinterested, profound, and far-seeing statesman; and in these estimates the many and the few are both equally far from a correct judgment. His career, like any one of his best novels, is a collection of startling paradoxes, fascinating inconsistencies, brilliant contradictions. The acts of his life are such that they may be so arranged as fully to justify the common charge that he is the embodiment of intellect without morality; and it is equally easy to draw from them strong evidence of his sincerity and lofty sense of duty. A Jew, glorying in his descent, he devotes all his energies to the service of those whose ancestors have ever abhorred his race, and who themselves never omit an opportunity to do insult and injury to his people. A plebeian, educated to a plebeian vocation, he is the associate and darling of patricians. By turns indebted to each of the great sections of society, he has laboured enthusiastically to make them all alike the objects of distrust and contempt. For years he directed his cruel satire against those noble houses which he so felicitously nicknamed "the Venetian Aristocracy," and yet it was by the Venetian interest that he was mainly raised to his present elevation. He is the leader of the country party, the mouthpiece of the county aristocracy, and yet no writer, so successfully as he, has striven to lower the members of that party in popular esteem. The mushroom date of their rank, their questionable origin, the absurdity of their heraldic pretensions, the ignoble nature of the greatest achievements of their families, have been by him exposed to general ridicule. Sprung himself from a family who had from time immemorial been traders, he has in nothing been so consistent as in hostility to the trading classes of the community. He proclaimed (and still proclaims himself) the veritable benefactor and well-wisher of the very poor; at a period when the Chartists were the objects of almost universal condemnation he was their champion; and yet when all statesmen of character had at length agreed that the corn laws must be abrogated without delay, he stood forth the defender of the bread-tax which he knew was reducing the multitudes by famine, and would goad the survivors to rebellion. His hand has been against every one. If there is any exception to the universality of the warfare he has carried on, it is to be found in those very few houses of the aristocracy which have better claims to the éclat of ancient descent than the amusing fabrications of the Herald's College, and which were founded by those old barons who at periods of pecuniary difficulty were in the habit of getting possession of a wealthy Jew, and robbing him first of his teeth and then of his money. Of the many countrarieties in the career and character of Mr. Disraeli, we think the explanation is to be found in the antagonisms which the very different difficulties he has had to contend with, and the unjust social prejudices he has had to suffer under, have aroused within him. As this sketch proceeds, occasion will be taken to enforce this view. The family of Disraeli was one of those many Hebrew households who were expelled from the Spanish Peninsula by the Inquisition at the end of the fifteenth century, and who fled for ignominious shelter to the Venetian republic. At and long before the time of this migration the Disraelis bore a Gothic surname, but on settling in Venice, they discarded their old appellation and assumed that of Disraeli. The reason of this singular and somewhat sinister proceeding, which at least we should imagine calculated to baffle a genealogist desirous of tracing the Disraeli pedigree to its source, is not apparent. The Conservative statesman himself has attributed to his ancestor two motives for thus changing his name, which though just reconcilable, savour slightly of inconsis tency,-devout gratitude to the Lord of Hosts, and a lust for worldly distinction. Speaking of his grandfather, Mr. Disraeli says, "His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the terra-firma, and grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials, and guarded them through unheard of perils, they assumed the name of Disraeli, a name never borne before, or since, by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognised." Proud of his nation Mr. Disraeli takes pleasure in reflecting that he belongs to a portion of it, which it appears was, and perhaps is, regarded by those who are members of it, as being more respectable than any other section, namely, Sephardim. But it would seem that the distinction is a wide one, embracing alike the powerful and the lowly of vast numbers of the Jewish outcasts. 66 Sephardim," says Mr. Disraeli, "that is to say, children of Israel, who had never quitted the shores of the mid-land ocean, until Torquemada had driven them from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Arragon, Andalusia, and Portugal, to seek greater blessings, even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amid the marshes of Holland, and fogs of Britain. Most of these families held themselves aloof from the Hebrews of Northern Europe." It excites something of amusement and more of sadness to learn that these rejected and despised ones despised each other. Still we are sorry that Sephardim means nothing more-for the word has a pleasant sound to a musical ear. After dwelling and trading in Venice for several generations, the Disraelis sent one of their family to this country. The name of this individual was Benjamin; he became an English denizen in 1748, married a beautiful woman, and devoted himself to trade with such success, that he left his only son Isaac a comfortable, but by no means large fortune. His grandson says of him--“" he made his fortune in the mid-way of life." He did not die till he had entered on his ninetieth year, but up to the extreme of his old age he enjoyed existence. The only important source of unhappiness his life contained was the embittered temper of his wife, whose anguish at the contumely heaped by society upon every member of the Hebrew nation so affected her mind, that she became the victim of a morbid hatred towards her unfortunate race. With Isaac Disraeli, the old merchant's son, the public |