ving laid aside novel-writing for twenty years, he published
'Lothair.' It is a politico-religious romance aimed at the Jesuits, the
Fenians, and the Communists. It had an instantaneous success, for its
author was the most conspicuous figure in Europe, but its popularity is
also due to its own merits. We are all of us snobs after a fashion and
love high society. The glory of entering the splendid portals of the
real English dukes and duchesses seems to be ours when Disraeli throws
open the magic door and ushers the reader in. The decorations do not
seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other than real. We move with pleasurable
excitement with Lothair from palace to castle, and thence to
battle-field and scenes of dark intrigue. The hint of the love affair
with the Olympian Theodora appeals to our romance; the circumventing of
the wily Cardinal and his accomplices is agreeable to the Anglo-Saxon
Protestant mind; their discomfiture, and the crowning of virtue in the
shape of a rescued Lothair married to the English Duke's daughter with
the fixed Church of England views, is what the reader expects and prays
for, and is the last privilege of the real story-teller. That the author
has thrown aside his proclivities for Romanism as he showed them in
'Sibyl,' no more disturbs us than the eccentricities of his politics. We
do not quite give him our faith when he is most in earnest, talking
Semitic Arianism on Mt. Sinai.

A peerage was offered to him in 1868. He refused it for himself, but
asked Queen Victoria to grant the honor to his wife, who became the
Countess of Beaconsfield. But in 1876 he accepted the rank and title of
Earl of Beaconsfield. The author of 'Vivian Grey' received the title
that Burke had refused.

His last novel, 'Endymion,' was written for the L10,000 its publishers
paid for it. It adds nothing to his fame, but is an agreeable picture of
fashionable London life and the struggles of a youth to gain power
and place.

Lord Beaconsfield put more dukes, earls, lords and ladies, more gold and
jewels, more splendor and wealth into his books than any one else ever
tried to do. But beside his Oriental delight in the display of luxury,
it is interesting to see the effect of that Orientalism when he
describes the people from whom he sprang. His rare tenderness and
genuine respect are for those of the race "that is the aristocracy of
nature, the purest race, the chosen people." He sends all his heroes to
Palestine for inspira