Church history than Mosheim. A scholarly and intelligent clergyman said lately, in our hearing, that he had not been able to buy a new theological book in twelve years. How useful a munificence would that be which should supply to each clergyman of this poorest class a live book once in every three months. We trust that this discussion of some of the principles by which we should be guided in our charities, may not seem superfluous or intrusive. Should any one who is able to do things magnificent read this article, he will scarce suspect us of any desire to relieve the many of their duty, by casting the burden of the work on the few.

But if we are not favored by any such readers of exceptional wealth, still, the same principles apply within the more limited sphere of our smaller churches. We have need to impress upon people the excellence of individual benefactions; of occasional gifts, large in proportion to the ability of the giver. It is absolutely mortifying where a set of altar linen, or some such thing, is needed, to see a subscription-paper handed about for the smallest sums, while the collector would not hesitate a moment to spend much more than the cost upon anything needed for the comfort or adornment of his family. Often this is the result of sheer thoughtlessness. It does not occur to the person to do the whole himself. While men will resent dictation, or be offended by unreasonable importunity, they will sometimes, at least, receive not unkindly the suggestion that it is a high privilege to place by the side of our collective offerings, some individual gift, some visible token of our gratitude to God, some lasting memorial of personal blessings.

We need not envy the rich their special opportunities of doing good. Each one may, in a sense, give munificently of that which is entrusted to him. As we walk through a world of suffering, sorrowing men, none need say within himself, "Alas! I have nothing that I may bestow." Pity and sympathy, thoughtful counsel and the word of good cheer, the prayer in secret and the strong grasp of brotherly kindness,—these are gifts as real and substantial, as much needed, in their turn, as food and fire, and clothes and coin. The generous heart need never turn away from any poor man,-"Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee." I can, at least, utter over thy woes the Master's name, and He will grant, as seemeth to Him best, relief or resignation.

Vivian Grey, 1826-7; Coningsby, 1844; Sibyl, 1846; Tancred, 1847; Lothair, 1870. Novels by the Rt. Hon. B. Disraeli.

ALMOST half a century ago a young man who had barely

novels.

reached his majority startled England by the first of these

It had little intrinsic power, though it was certainly not wanting in literary merit. It was not conspicuous for artistic construction, for plot it could hardly be said to have. It was startling, not because of its matchless audacity, which, even in that age of saucy precocity, was noteworthy. But it took up and sported with nearly all the social celebrities of the time in a way which no other writer has rivalled. At least two keys were published to unlock to a curious public the secrets hidden under the artfully devised titles, or hinted at in the bizarre sketches of the rapidly shifting groups. The interest it excited was much the same in kind (if less in degree) with that which attended the famous letters of "Junius." There was the same air of provoking possession of secrets, of utterances which were felt to be not the half-caught whispers noted down by a listener from without, but the oracular hints of one of the privileged within.

The novel of "Vivian Grey" ended abruptly with a half promise,

never kept, of a sequel. It is now read, we fancy, chiefly for the sake of that masterly sketch of a policy of political advancement, which then seemed a boy's brilliant folly, but which has since been more than realized in the deliberate achievement of one who, without wealth or rank, by the mere force of ability, made himself Prime Minister of England. Twenty years later, after various literary successes, which need not be mentioned here, there appeared the trilogy of the "Young England" series,-" Coningsby," "Sibyl," and "Tancred." After another twenty years appeared "Lothair."

We have selected these novels, not because they are absolutely the best that have been written, or because they are especially true as pictures, or yet because novels are the only guides to the understanding of social changes, but because these form a series in which the impressions of one mind—and that exceptionally placed in a position for right judgment—are given.

There have been other writers who were better observers, and more correct artists, but none who have written from the same stand-point. The authors of England have been professed littéra teurs, whose object has been to make salable and readable volumes. Mr. Disraeli alone wrote his later stories for political effects. Others have studied individual characters and local verisimilitudes, but with no eye to the tendencies of the time. They give admirable portraits of men and women, but the nation does not appear in their pages. Somewhere, too, their class sympathies or antipathies come in. They are never so utterly artists as to forget their order in a society where the subtle influence of caste has reigned more absolutely than in any other in the modern world.

Mr. Disraeli has moved through all his life amid this, but not of it. This is the secret of his success. It has been said that he has no convictions. Of this we cannot speak certainly, though we think that he has, but he certainly is free from that which, in nine out of ten, does duty for conviction,-class prejudice.

But we are concerned with Mr. Disraeli's political and literary history only so far as that shows why his views of English life are guiding views. They are true to the movement of events. Colored in detail they may be, out of drawing doubtless often; but they are like those quaint old pictures on mediæval tapestry, which never fail to show the thing they mean to show.

We take, then, the period we have thus marked out as one from which, according to these landmarks, the course of English life can be traced. "Vivian Grey" was written by a youth who had lived during that grand breaking up of the old order of things which came

in with the present century. It was a time when a great deal was passing away. Literature, especially in the form of periodicals, was beginning to be a power. An hundred years before, in the reign of Anne, brilliant writers were plentiful, but the profession of letters was both precarious and despised. Here and there the few gained grand prizes, but at the price of both dirt and danger. Politics and the stage were the two avenues to success,—the patron kept the key of the one, and the manager of the other.

The Hanoverian era had been still worse. That was fruitful in all that was ungraceful, coarse, pedantic, and artificial. One fancies that he can trace to this century the growth of that bluff, beefy look which has become the traditional type of John Bull.

It was into this dreary period that the nineteenth century broke to the stormy music of the French Revolution, and the tramp of the wars of Napoleon. It was at first with a reactionary protest against the liberalism which had begun to affect all classes, but it was not a conservative reaction. We shall speak of this presently; suffice it to say now that literature, depressed during two reigns, had found at last its true patron in the people.

Letters as a profession, the press as the fourth estate, then began its career. Commerce, too, was expanding into new life. The Continental wars threw the carrying trade of Europe into British hands. The merchant class was rising, and, at the same time, the great manufacturing districts of England were entering on their new activities. The closing of the Continent had compelled the English mind to find vent for its powers at home just at the season when a change was inevitable. It was fed with great events. The fire and spirit of the nation had been called forth by the spur of battle, without suffering that exhaustion which fell on every European nation south of the Baltic. England alone had not witnessed the inroad of a foreign force, or had her fields blasted by the lightning of battle. Everything, then, combined to make the first quarter of the century an exuberant springtime of hope and life. With Waterloo passed away the cloud which overshadowed Europe, the fear of Napoleon; and England held the key which shut him in her securest cell. The new world was young, and, compared with the old, was decent. Debauchery was associated with atheism, and atheism with the Reign of Terror,—the awful excesses of which, real and reputed, had been to England a moral tonic. There was, indeed, plenty of free living, and a by no means straight-laced social code. Drinking, gaming, the turf, the prize-ring, were still habits of the time, nor was duelling under the ban; but there was no longer that brutal and blasphemous

riot which marked the days of Wilkes and Sandwich, and the confrères of Medmenham.

The Church, too, had begun to rise in public esteem. Religion was on the side of property. The French zealots, who had confiscated the estates of nobles, had also adored the goddess of reason, and to question the Creeds was to bring suspicion upon one's solvency and honesty.

The reaction took a curious course. The spirit of change, barred from the onward path, went backward to the past. It protested, with all the fervor of youth, against the worn-out classicalities of the Hanoverian era, but it did so by looking back to the times of the Plantagenets, or the Stuarts. Sir Walter Scott was a Tory of the tories, yet he gave himself far more fervently to the great literary revolution than Lord Byron, his Whig rival. The latter clung to his satires of Horace, and his couplets of Pope, though forced by his own genius, and the popular admiration, into romantic verse. It is noteworthy how the taste of the nation was enlarged on every side. Its old idols were upset from their Chinese pedestals, and every man began to worship as was right in his own eyes. The popular imagination fixed upon whatever was free, wild, and strange. Its heroes were the pirate and the outlaw (not, as in later years, because they were criminal, but because they were picturesque), with the mountain crag on the lone sea-beach for back-ground.

Edinburgh, where "sixty years ago " the highland garb had been looked upon much as the American frontiersman looks upon the Indian war-paint and feathers, suddenly burst forth into kilt and tartan. German literature, once the ridicule of London wits and the anathema of London pulpits, began to be admired, translated, and imitated. It was the era of experiment.

In political life the old system remained, but the wine of the new generation was already straining the old bottles. While the great questions of government were mainly of foreign policy, or shaped thereby, the two great parties observed their traditional attitude. The doors of the House of Commons, which was fast monopolizing all the power of the state, were still accessible, less through constituencies than through influence. The noble families returned their own men, and expected the administration to provide for their younger sons. Political life was almost as much a trade as any other form of business. The end of Government was to exalt the glory of England abroad, and keep matters quiet at home.

In the Church, the Evangelicals largely monopolized the earnestness, missionary zeal, and religious fervor. Bishops were made