pretty, and not nearly so mawkish as that of “Henrietta Temple” and “Venetia.”  There is plenty of wit, epigram, squib, and bon mot.  There is almost none of that rhodomontade which pervades the other romances, except as to “Sidonia” and the supremacy of the Hebrew race—­a topic on which Benjamin himself was hardly sane. Coningsby, as a novel, is sacrificed to its being a party manifesto and a political programme first and foremost.  But as a novel it is good.  It is the only book of Disraeli’s in which we hardly ever suspect that he is merely trying to fool us.  It is not so gay and fantastic as Lothair.  But, being far more real and serious, it is perhaps the best of Disraeli’s novels.

As a political manifesto, Coningsby has been an astonishing success.  The grand idea of Disraeli’s life was to struggle against what he called the “Venetian Constitution,” imposed and maintained by the “Whig Oligarchy.”  As Radical, as Tory, as novelist, as statesman, his ruling idea was “to dish the Whigs,” in Lord Derby’s historic phrase.  And he did “dish the Whigs.”  The old Whigs have disappeared from English politics.  They have either amalgamated with the Tories, become Unionist Conservatives, henchmen of Lord Salisbury, or else have become Gladstonians and Radicals.  The so-called Whigs of 1895, if any politicians so call themselves, are far more Tory than the Whigs of 1844, and the Tories of 1895 are far more democratic than the Whigs of 1844.  This complete transformation is very largely due to Disraeli himself.

Strictly speaking, Disraeli has eliminated from our political arena both “Whig” and “Tory,” as understood in the old language of our party history.  And the first sketch of the new policy was flung upon an astonished public in Coningsby, just fifty years ago.  No doubt, the arduous task of educating the Conservative Party into the new faith of Tory Democracy was not effected by Coningsby alone.  But it may be doubted if Mr. Disraeli would have accomplished it by his speeches without his writings.  As a sketch of the inner life of the parliamentary system of fifty years ago, Coningsby is perfect and has never been approached.  Both Thackeray and Trollope have painted Parliament and public life so far as it could be seen from a London club.  But Disraeli has painted it as it was known to a man who threw his whole life into it, and who was himself a consummate parliamentary leader.

Sybil; or, the Two Nations, the second of the trilogy (1845), was devoted, he tells us, “to the condition of the people,” that dismal result of the “Venetian Constitution” and of the “Whig Oligarchy” which he had denounced in Coningsby. Sybil was perhaps the most genuinely serious of all Disraeli’s romances; and in many ways it was the most powerful.  Disraeli himself was a man of sympathetic and imaginative nature who really felt for the suffering and oppressed.