ere silent on its
character. It is purely metaphysical, and metaphysics, at this season, may
be "like pork in the dog-days;" but there are certain portions which
strike out ideas so forcibly, and illustrate the _communia_ of life with
such vigour, as to tempt any lounging reader. Contarini is stated to be Mr.
D'Israeli, the younger--Vivian Grey and the Young Duke,--with much more of
the crust and wing of age and experience than was found in either of the
fashionable novels. The real charm of Contarini is in its abstractedness,
and consists in being pleased and puzzled at the same moment. The
embellishment which the playful genius of the writer has gracefully, not
tawdrily, thrown over his pages will attract, but the main purpose and
merit of the work lies in its undercurrents, or, rather it would consist
in this feature if the judgment of the writer were still more matured.
Perhaps Mr. D'Israeli, who began the world of letters as a writer of
fashionable novels, may leave us a work on metaphysics.

In the opening chapter of Contarini Fleming, Mr. D'Israeli explains his
object as follows:--]

I am desirous of writing a book which shall be all truth, a work of which
the passion, the thought, the action, and even the style, should spring
from my own experience of feeling, from the meditations of my own
intellect, from my own observation of incident, from my own study of the
genius of expression.

[We can only admit a passage which appears to us to contain much
world-knowledge and wholesome experience--what half the coroneted heads in
Europe lack most lamentably. It is the advice tendered to Contarini by his
father, previous to the youth of promise repairing to the University:]

I wish you to mix as much as is convenient with society. I apprehend that
you have, perhaps, hitherto indulged a little too much in lonely habits.
Young men are apt to get a little abstracted, and occasionally to think
that there is something singular in their nature, when the fact is, if
they were better acquainted with their fellow creatures, they would find
they were mistaken. This is a common error, indeed the commonest. I am not
at all surprised that you have fallen into it. All have. The most
practical business-like men that exist have many of them, when children,
conceived themselves totally disqualified to struggle in the world. You
may rest assured of this. I could mention many remarkable instances. All
persons, when young, are fond of so