st weary those
who know nothing about it, and by enthusiastic appeals to the younger
aristocracy to rouse itself and take in hand the condition of the
people. In 1870, Mr. Disraeli had little hope of realising his earlier
visions, and he did not write _Lothair_ to preach a political creed.
The tale is that he avowed three motives, the first to occupy his mind
on his fall from power, the second to make a large sum which he much
needed, and the third to paint the manners of the highest order of rank
and wealth, of which he alone amongst novelists had intimate knowledge.
That is exactly what we see in _Lothair_. It is airy, fantastic, pure,
graceful, and extravagant. The whole thing goes to bright music, like
a comic opera of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is life and movement; but
it is a scenic and burlesque life. There is wit, criticism, and
caricature;, but it does not cut deep, and it is neither hot nor
fierce. There is some pleasant tom-foolery; but at a comic opera we
enjoy this graceful nonsense. We see in every page the trace of a
powerful mind; but it is a mind laughing at its own creatures, at
itself, at us. _Lothair_ would be a work of art, if it were explicitly
presented as a burlesque, such as was _The Infernal Marriage_, or if we
did not know that it was written to pass the time by one who had ruled
this great empire for years, and who within a few years more was
destined to rule it again. It was a fanciful and almost sympathetic
satire on the selfish fatuity of the noble, wealthy, and governing
orders of British society. But then the author of this burlesque was
himself about to ask these orders to admit him to their select ranks,
and to enthrone him as their acknowledged chief.

As the rancour of party feeling that has gathered round the personality
of Beaconsfield subsides, and as time brings new proofs of the sagacity
of the judgments with which Benjamin Disraeli analysed the political
traditions of British society, we may look for a fresh growth of the
popularity of the trilogy and _Lothair_. England will one day be as
just, as America has always been, to one of our wittiest writers. He
will one day be formally admitted into the ranks of the Men of Letters.
He has hitherto been kept outside, in a sense, partly by his being a
prominent statesman and party chief, partly by his incurable tone of
mind with its Semitic and non-English ways, partly by his strange
incapacity to acquire the _nuances_ o