of England might yet become a considerable political power, and could be converted, by a revival of Mediaeval traditions, into a potent instrument of the New Tory Democracy.  Whatever we may think about the strengthening of the Established Church from the point of view of intellectual solidity or influence with the nation, it can hardly be doubted that in the fifty years that have passed since the date of the “trilogy,” the Church as a body has rallied to one party in the State, and has proved a potent ally of militant Imperialism and Tory Democracy.  Lord Beaconsfield lived to witness that great transformation in the Church of the High and Dry Pluralists and the Simeonite parsons, which he had himself so powerfully organised in Parliament, in society, and on the platform.  His successor to-day can count on no ally so sure and loyal as the Church.  But it was a wonderful inspiration for a young man fifty years ago to perceive that this could be done—­and to see the way in which it might be done.

Coningsby and Sybil at any rate were active forces in the formation of a definite political programme.  And this was a programme which in Parliament and in the country their author himself had created, organised, and led to victory.  It cannot be denied that they largely contributed to this result.  And thus these books have this very remarkable and almost unique character.  It would be very difficult to mention anything like a romance in any age or country which had ever effected a direct political result or created a new party. Don Quixote is said to have annihilated chivalry; Tartuffe dealt a blow at the pretensions of the Church; and the Marriage of Figaro at those of the old noblesse.  It is possible that Bleak House gave some impulse to law reform, and Vanity Fair has relieved us of a good deal of snobbery.  But no novel before or since ever created a political party and provided them with a new programme. Coningsby and Sybil really did this; and it may be doubted if it could have been done in any other way.  “Imagination, in the government of nations” (we are told in the preface to Lothair) “is a quality not less important than reason.”  Its author trusts much “to a popular sentiment which rested on a heroic tradition and which was sustained by the high spirit of a free aristocracy.”

Now this is a kind of party programme which it was almost impossible to propound on the platform or in Parliament.  These imaginative and somewhat Utopian schemes of “changing back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a real throne,” of “infusing life and vigour into the Church as the trainer of the nation,” of recalling the popular sympathies “to the principles of loyalty and religious reverence”—­these were exactly the kind of new ideas which it would be difficult to expound in the House of Commons or in a towns-meeting.  In the preface to Coningsby the author tells us that, after reflection, the form of fiction seemed to be the best method of influencing opinion.  These books then present us with the unique example of an ambitious statesman resorting to romance as his means of reorganising a political party.