lations through millions of households. A Nero and a Caligula could not do half the mischief of a William and a Nicholas. What is this country of which we speak-this kingdom of boasted light-this land of universal education? A camp of manoeuvrers, an arsenal of weapons, a barrack of troops. All are trained to military service. Upon this martial regulation is founded the system of instruction. It supplies, of course, immense facilities for it. A thousand subalterns are ready to conduct it. Pedagogues are the orderlies and sentries. The drum and the drill are the notions and exercises. An elementary education, very complete as far as it goes, is confessedly afforded. But what is the national character which it can shape? It severs the proper sympathies of parent and child. It extinguishes the proud consciousness of free agency and personal accountability. It raises mind to one level-it as often sinks it to the same. A dull monotony succeeds. To this is a noble people made slave and victim. What high deeds can such discipline provoke? Where are the excellences which this culture can inspire? They who anticipate the reign of mind and religion, can see in all of this mechanism, no preparatory process, no encouraging earnest, no prophetic hope!'-pp. 242, 243.

We have been more free than usual in our extracts from this volume, partly that our criticisms on the style and manner of the author may not go forth without suitable and sufficient illustration; and partly in the hope that our readers will be disposed by these specimens to make themselves acquainted with the entire work. In a volume embracing so great a variety of topics, and topics on which there is so much room for diversity of judgment, we shall not be thought to concur in everything we meet with. The colouring is sometimes partial; and positions of some peril are occasionally taken, as we think, with more resoluteness than discretion. But, as a whole, the publication is admirable. We conclude by recommending it, not merely to the perusal, but to the meditative thought of our readers. It is a work characterized by sound information, large views, and close reasoning; and in the eloquence which pervades it, bespeaks equally the philanthropy, the patriotism, and the piety of its author. But the friends of a self-sustained popular education must remember, that their work is not done because eloquent things have been written about it. Nonconformists, especially, will do well to bear in mind, that their reponsibilities in relation to this subject are the most weighty that Providence has ever laid upon them. Their social position in the time to come will depend greatly on the manner in which they acquit themselves with regard to this duty.

Sybil, or the Two Nations. By B. D'Israeli, M.P. London, H. Colburn, 1845.

We are no admirers of coteries or cliques-social, literary, or parliamentary. They are always exclusive, almost always narrowminded, conceited, and intolerant-preposterous self-praisers, and virulent abusers of all who would presume to differ from them in doctrine or opinion. Whether we look to the Cockneys or the Lakers, the Owenites or the Spenceans, the Della Cruscans, or to the small phalanx led by old George Bankes, formerly member for the ancient borough of Corfe Castle-the result is still the same. It is the same exhibition of intolerant conceit, based on limited views and extravagant self-worship. The pleasant feeling of self-importance which induced the three tailors of Tooley-street to call themselves the people of England, ferments through the veins of every true disciple of Young England, from Benjamin D'Israeli down to the histrionic member for Evesham-gentlemen who may be regarded as the beginning and the ending of this notable though not numerous clique.

But this clique includes Lord John Manners, and Mr. George Frederick Augustus Percy Sydney Smythe, M.P. for Canterbury. Lord John Manners is a young nobleman of twenty-seven years of age-hopeful, generous, benevolent, and well disposed. This is something to say in favour of a scion of nobility, and what some men would account a positive recommendation as said in favour of the descendant of a territorial duke. Mr. George Frederick Augustus Percy Sydney Smythe is the son of Viscount Strangford, and also a young man of the same age as Lord John; and in addition to much literary cultivation, he is said to possess as many extraordinary virtues as he possesses Christian names. He is a pleasing writer of prose and poetry, a facile and fluent, if not a powerful speaker, and very capable of taking fresh broad and general views. His discourse delivered in Manchester, in the month of October, on the occasion of the Athenian soirée, is in the remembrance of some of our readers, while his more recent speech in the Maynooth debate, whatever we may think of the soundness of some of his opinions, or the wisdom of some of his views, was distinguished by a rare order of talent, and a choice, copious, and brilliant felicity of diction. He is evidently a man of various reading, and varied accomplishments-of an ardent temperament, with a deep tinge of sentiment and enthusiasm, and no mean share of what is called genius.

Something of romance, gleams of sentiment, and fond illusion

may be pardoned to young men of his age and stamp, but when a veteran author, like Mr. Benjamin D'Israeli the younger, who, by the way, is no longer young, for his age must range somewhere between forty-five and forty-seven (having been born according to one account in 1798, and according to another in 1800)—when, we say, a man in mature middle age, wears, with settled and wrinkled brow, the guise of an eager and too believing boyhood, it is fitting that facts and dates should be laid before the public, and that a system of spurious enthusiasm and counterfeit juvenility should be reprehended and exposed. To borrow the language of the French Theatre, Mr. Benjamin D'Israeli is now far too faded and fané, too hackneyed in the ways of the world, to play the parts of the jeunes amoureux; indeed, he is sufficiently senile to be promoted to the pères nobles;* and airs and gestures, and modes of thought and feeling, which may be pardoned in his younger friends, are in him misplaced, not to say ridiculous. Nearly, if not fully, twenty busy years have passed since Vivian Grey at once startled and amazed the town; and though the fancies that now flit across Mr. D'Israeli's brain might have been pardoned him then, yet they cannot be so easily overlooked in a person, who, commencing his political career at an age beyond thirty, has now been thirteen years more or less prominently before the public, either as an Ultra-Radical, seeking to be a joint of O'Connell's tail-as a Liberal, seeking to be elected for an English constituency, under the auspices of Sir E. L. Bulwer,-or as an Ultra-Tory, or ToryRadical, seeking to represent, if we remember rightly, Aylesbury or Buckingham, and actually representing Shrewsbury.

Of the member for Evesham, the less that is spoken at any time the better. But of Mr. D'Israeli it was absolutely necessary that we should speak personally as a man, as a legislator, and as the leader of a politico-literary party, consisting of three, four, or five individuals; inasmuch as he puts himself ostentatiously forward as an actor and a politician-as at once an historian, a painter of manners, a witness, and a propounder of new theories, -social, political, economical, and religious. For all this, we do not in the least find fault with him, nor are we disposed, like others, too nicely to scan or question his motives. Mankind are almost in every case guided and governed by mixed motives; and though pique and disappointment may have had the effect of whetting the unappeasable desire of Mr. D'Israeli to be distinguished-though his ambition may have become somewhat more vaulting since he has encountered the neglect of the person

*In the French Theatre, old and young parts are thus technically distinguished.

estimated as the most mediocre statesman that ever guided the destinies of England, yet what have the public to do with that private passage in Mr. D'Israeli's history, further than to congratulate themselves that this disrelish of Sir Robert Peel has furnished them with two novels, Coningsby and Sybil, blending together politics, personality, and fiction, and possibly preserved them from an indifferent official man, having neither the tact of Tadpole, nor the tenacity of Taper, nor the routine of Rigby, nor the decorous dulness, called discretion, possessed in so eminent a degree by the Sandons, and Clerks, and Rosses, and such small deer,' of the conservative majority. We are not of the number of those who think that there is an absolute incompatibility between a man of genius and a man of business; but the finer edge of the mind is not always well set against the every-day business of human life. Swift tells us a blunt knife cuts paper better than the keenest edged razor; and, from the days of Addison down to the times of Canning and Macaulay, we have seen that the initiation into state craft of literary men and men of genius, has in no degree contributed to their personal happiness, and not always either to their character, or renown. That Mr. D'Israeli is excluded from the favour of the sublime of mediocrity' is with us rather a matter to his honour. If he were good enough to march through Coventry with the right honourable Premier, the member for Tamworth or ready to act on the volti subito principle of that prop and pillar of our estate ecclesiastical, the author of that misty incomprehensible work, called The Church in its Relations to the State'-he would be good in our minds for nothing else, and we should leave him to his lot with a slavish majority;-but with all his conceit, mannerism, and saucy affectations, there is much serviceable stuff in him, and his tales, his theories, and his portraits of classes and individuals, may be turned to excellent popular account. From whatever cause, or motive, he has done much to break the spell that hung around the name of Peel, and has painted that politician to the life in unfading colours. Cold, cautious, incommunicative -utterly without fixed principles or opinions-every accurate observer knew Sir R. Peel to be; but little did the world think the voice which was once raised in his praise, would so soon discover that the sublimity of his state-craft was to be found in an ever-ready recurrence to Hansard, and the profundity of his wisdom to be disclosed in an argumentum ad hominem reference to the Mirror of Parliament. Though backed by a great party, every well-informed person knew the minister to be without personal friends, destitute as he is of qualities to attach and

fascinate the minds of men; but no one expected the admirable kit-cat sketches of his servile flatterers, with which we are presented in the striking likenesses of Tadpole, Taper, and Rigby, would follow so speedily. The silly stuff in Coningsby, about the pure Caucasian breed-the Venetian origin of the British constitution,' and the purity and perfection of the Hebrew race, would be an insufferable impertinence if it were not for these personal sketches, shadowing forth the politician Peel, with his paltry instruments. The dissertations—the strange and whimsical fancies-nay, even the puppyism and offensive priggishness of the ideas and opinions, may be pardoned for those sparkling sketches, so true, characteristic, and evidently the result of minute personal observation. It is said, there is a spice of malice and malignity ill disguised in the well drawn characters of Rigby, Tadpole, and Monmouth. Perhaps there may be, but Mr. D'Israeli is not the first among English novelists who has, by means of personal satire, given a zest and currency to wholesome truths. De Foe, Swift, Fielding, Smollet, and Henry Brooke, have all preceded him in this walk; and though his manner of handling his subject, and enforcing his views, has been gravely objected to, we see no reason to concur in this hypercriticism.

The volumes at present before us begin with a most preposterous dedication, conceived in the worst taste, and expressed in the most affected manner. They are inscribed to the most severe of critics, but a perfect wife'-qualities which we had heretofore considered wholly incompatible; but on this point we suppose we must yield to the happy or unhappy experience of Mr. D'Israeli.

The volumes, we are told, aim to illustrate the condition of the people; and there is not a trait in them for which the "author has not the authority of his own observation, or evidence given before parliamentary commissioners.' The object is undoubtedly praiseworthy; and the volumes bear internal evidence that the author has been at no inconsiderable pains to accomplish his purpose. Mr. D'Israeli is evidently a great observer of external manners, dress, air, and modes of expression; and we are disposed generally to recognise the truthful ness of his characteristics. His sketches, more especially the characters drawn from the mill and the mine, are real beings of flesh and blood; and merit, so far as we are capable of judging, the praise of perfect fidelity of outline. Nor is our artist less faithful in the colouring and filling up. The dialogues are, we doubt not, either the undefiled transcript of notes made on the spot, or the result of careful and accurate observation. This