re has been
some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their
names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who
can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the
reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every
monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection
because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that
I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of
good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn
their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall
recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the
sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.'
But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William
Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect,
but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not
in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more.
Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd
monkey'--meaning Mr. Disraeli--'to dance upon his stomach?' The
question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book
to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to
offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in
Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation;
but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an
application for it.

A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's
stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original.
He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite
plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner--a
recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been
half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright,
on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country
gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was
intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to
the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded--the
gross fellow--that he and his world were better in every respect than
the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's _bon
mots_ and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory
about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as