lives of the very rich and
the hopelessly poor, and an attempt to show the superior condition of
the latter when the Catholic Church was all-powerful in England and the
king an absolute monarch.

'Tancred' was composed when Disraeli was under "the illusion of a
possibly regenerated aristocracy." He sends Tancred, the hero, the heir
of a ducal house, to Palestine to find the inspiration to a true
religious belief, and details his adventures with a power of sarcasm
that is seldom equaled. In certain scenes in this novel the author rises
from a mere mocker to a genuine satirist. Tancred's interview with the
bishop, in which he takes that dignitary's religious tenets seriously;
that with Lady Constance, when she explains the "Mystery of Chaos" and
shows how "the stars are formed out of the cream of the Milky Way, a
sort of celestial cheese churned into light" the vision of the angels on
Mt. Sinai, and the celestial Sidonia who talks about the "Sublime and
Solacing Doctrine of Theocratic Equality,"--all these are passages where
we wonder whether the author sneered or blushed when he wrote. Certainly
what has since been known as the Disraelian irony stings as we turn
each page.

Meanwhile Disraeli had become a power in Parliament, and the bitter
opponent of Peel, under whom Catholic emancipation, parliamentary
reform, and the abrogation of the commercial system, had been carried
without conditions and almost without mitigations.

Disraeli's assaults on his leader delighted the Liberals; the country
members felt indignant satisfaction at the deserved chastisement of
their betrayer. With malicious skill, Disraeli touched one after another
the weak points in a character that was superficially vulnerable.
Finally the point before the House became Peel's general conduct. He was
beaten by an overwhelming majority, and to the hand that dethroned him
descended the task of building up the ruins of the Conservative party.
Disraeli's best friends felt this a welcome necessity. There is no
example of a rise so sudden under such conditions. His politics were as
much distrusted as his serious literary passages. But Disraeli was the
single person equal to the task. For the next twenty-five years he led
the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons, varied by short
intervals of power. He was three times Chancellor of the Exchequer,
1853, 1858, and 1859; and on Lord Derby's retirement in 1868 he became
Prime Minister.

In 1870, ha