From The Nineteenth Century. THE QUEEN AND LORD BEACONSFIELD. rounded by the ashes of the "Venetian party," but among the villagers of a ON the wall of Hughenden Church Buckinghamshire hamlet, under a memay be seen a memorial tablet, record-morial raised to him by the occupant ing the gratitude and affection of Queen of the throne, was a fit climax to the Victoria for the services and for the creed he professed in youth, and carmemory of a man who without ques-ried with him to almost supreme power, tiou was the most interesting and and to the grave. If he began political striking figure of her reign. The in- life amid the contemptuous jeers of a scription which it bears was written by Tory House of Commons, he lived to the queen herself. "To the dear and receive the profound adulation and honored "" memory, so it runs, "of enjoy the absolute confidence of the Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, this Conservative party. If the first thirty memorial is placed by his grateful and years of his political existence were affectionate Sovereign and friend, Vic- passed in the cold shadow of royal toria R.I. Kings love him that speak-disapprobation and dislike, he lived to eth right.' Prov. xvi. 13." This become the darling of the court and to inscription is in many ways note- earn the inscription which adorns his worthy. To find a memorial erected tomb. These variatious of sentiment by a sovereign to a subject is in itself were in no way due to changes in sufficiently remarkable, but so rare an Disraeli himself, but rather to the slow act of condescension is unique coupled appreciation by others of his rare perwith public expressions of gratitude sonality. His character never underand friendship. went any marked development, while the ideas which well-nigh choked his youth found expression in maturity and old age. In his political enthusiasms and hatreds he was alike consistent and persevering. No one ever suspected him of a weakness for the Whigs whom he hated, nor doubted his sympathy for the people whom he trusted, and his regard for the throne which he upheld. As a Tory Democrat he appeared an abnormal growth to the "sublime mediocrity" of Peel and of his party, yet he lived to establish household suffrage and to convert the diadem of the English kings into an imperial crown. These qualities are not common in kings accustomed to accept devotion or service as their due, and even from Queen Victoria such strong words read strangely when it is remembered that they are from the hand of a queen of England towards one whom her ancestors would have scorned as the son of a hated and despised race, whom to this day some of her relatives and regal cousins hound and persecute with all the unenlightened fervor of the Middle Ages. It was meet, however, that in a Christian church such a memorial, raised by the supreme head of that Church, to a Jew by blood and by every fibre of his nature, should be rounded off by a quotation from the proverbial philosophy of the most famous ruler of his race, and fitter still that there should be found affixed to it a signature, the novelty of which to English eyes recalls the fact that Lord Beaconsfield aspired to rank with Bismark and Cavour as the consolidator of imperial rule. If in politics an opportunist, in character no man could have exhibited greater consistency throughout a long life; and that Lord Beaconsfield should lie, not in Westminster Abbey sur In youth Disraeli brooded over problems of statecraft, and these very problems he lived largely to solve as a minister. To those who read his political tracts, cast by him into the original form of the political novel, and who were familiar with his foppish appearance and his florid style of speech, it appeared impossible that he should figure in any other character than that of the political charlatan and social buffoon. Yet over these prejudices, permanent in some minds, completely overcome in others, Disraeli triumphed by sheer force of talent and energy. With the dawn of a new era | reluctance that the Conservative party, in English politics, in 1832, his strenu- under severe pressure from its chief. ous public life began; and when, half yielded to his leadership, and even as a century later, he had had his fill of late as 1867 powerful Tory peers, like life and honor, men began to appre- Lord Lonsdale, were known to doubt ciate how full the intervening years whether Disraeli would ever be loyally had been of indomitable strife, devoted accepted by the party in succession to to the gradual conquest of the ear of Lord Derby as their head. That the the House of Commons, of the confi- English people were far from placing dence of the Conservative party, of the trust in him was clear from the migood-will of the sovereign, and of the nority in which for twenty-two years support of the nation. All these were they left his following in Parliament; finally won, and this extraordinary and it was well known that in his office child of Israel, whose ancestors were of chancellor of the exchequer he had unhappy refugees hunted from Spain been unwillingly approved by the to Venice, whose immediate forbears queen, so violent was her prejudice were poor immigrants into a London against him, mainly on the ground that suburb, sat himself down in the seat the holder of that office was not of the chief of the house of Stanley, brought into personal contact with the dictated his will to the proudest aris- sovereign. By 1874 the English people tocracy on earth, posed as the representative of the English race among the assembled powers of Europe, took Great Britain into the hollow of his hand, clothed a nation boutiquière with imperial purple, left behind him a cause identified with his name, and a party strong enough to defend it, and his adroit leadership. finally sank into a grave smothered then stepped from the ranks of clever with flowers by the hands of the peo-politicians, and took his place among ple, and surmounted by a memorial European statesmen. It was at this inscribed by the hand of the queen. time that the last barrier between the The Napoleonic era of marvels fur-prime minister and the queen fell to nishes no example more romantic of the ground. Dislike, dating from a the triumph of individual capacity over time when Disraeli's bitter invective hostile conditions. Although much has been made by political adversaries of the flattery by which Lord Beaconsfield is supposed to have influenced the queen, there is not a scrap of evidence to show that in his relations to the sovereign he employed arts or adopted methods foreign to those used by Lord Aberdeen or by Sir Robert Peel. The secret of his success lay not in subservience to the will of the monarch, but in masculine appreciation of her sex. It is noteworthy that among all his personal triumphs that over the queen was the longest deferred. In 1852, when he took office as chancellor of the exchequer, his position as leader of the House of Commous was assured. Yet it was with had been won over, and Mr. Disraeli was at last, after a prolonged and patient novitiate, entrusted with a large majority in the House of Commons. Thenceforth his task was easy, and the entire confidence of his party was his reward for the triumph they owed to Mr. Disraeli was goading to fury Sir Robert Peel's friends, and among them the sovereign, had long since given way; but only half-confidence had supervened, bred of mistrust in the alien and too nimble politician. Now this in turn was swept aside, and Lord Beaconsfield filled the place so long left vacant, aud became the "friend" of the queen as well as first minister of the crown. Antipathies, to a far greater extent than is generally supposed, have a physical basis, and although Disraeli in youth possessed a certain weird beauty, it was of a kind unlikely to attract favorably either men or women of a northern race. When he first rose to address the House of Commons on the 7th of December, 1837, he was very showily attired, being dressed in a in Parliament, which had provoked bottle-green frock coat and a waistcoat of alike uproarious mirth from au undiswhite, of the Dick Swiveller pattern, the criminating assembly, and the wellfront of which exhibited a network of glit-remembered threat from its victim that tering chains, large fancy-pattern panta- a day would come when they would be loons, and a black tie, above which no forced to give him a hearing. shirt collar was visible, completed the outCertainly, when Bishop Wilberforce ward man. A countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes and a wrote, the time had long passed when broad but not very high forehead overhung Disraeli had need to crave a hearing by clustered ringlets of coal-black hair, from the House of Commons. In 1852 which, combed away from the right tem- his "pre-eminence in opposition had -ple, fell in bunches of well-oiled small ring-given him an indisputable title" to lets over his left cheek. Then, again, his manner of speaking was not that to which the House of Commons was accustomed. He is thus described by an eye-witness: His gestures were abundant; he often appeared as if trying with what celerity he could move his body from one side to another, and throw his hands out and draw them in again. At other times he flourished one hand before his face, and then the other. His voice, too, is of a very unusual kind: it is powerful, and had every justice done to it in the way of exercise; but there is something peculiar in it which I am at a loss to characterize. His utterance is rapid, and he never seemed at a loss for words. On the whole, and notwithstanding the result of his first attempt, I am convinced he is a man who possesses many of the requisites of a good debater. That he is a man of great literary talent few will dispute. "Disraeli has no the leadership of that assembly; but, To eyes by long usage inclined to gauge a man by the symmetry of his top-boots and the stains on his huntingcoat, or, as in the case of Castlereagh or Althorp, to trust an orator in inverse ratio to his intelligibility, Disraeli seemed untrustworthy and dangerous. Sober men, too, looked askance at this foreign-looking person who could fash- In the early years of her reign the ion an epigram as readily as they could queen can have heard but little of knock over a cock pheasant. Even so Disraeli. Although the chief of the cosmopolitan a bishop as Wilberforce, Young England party, and the author though he was fascinated, could not of novels that had a certain vogue, he recognize in him a countrymau. "I and his following were not at that time enjoyed meeting Disraeli," he wrote a serious factor in politics. To Disas late as 1867. "He is a marvellous raeli, however, to his romantic fondman. Not a bit a Briton, but all over ness for women, and to his reverence an Eastern Jew; but very interesting for the stately aspect of the throne, the to talk to." Yet this was thirty years queen's personality already strongly later than that famous first appearance appealed. Had he not felt strongly the charm before which Lord Melbourne | absence of emotion, THE QUEEN anand Peel succumbed, the celebrated nounces her accession to the throne of her passage in "Sybil" could not have been written. ancestors, and her humble hope that divine Providence will guard over the fulfilment of her lofty trust. The prelates and captains and chief men of her realm then advance to the throne, and, kneeling before her, pledge their troth, and take the sacred oaths of allegiance and Hark! it tolls! All is over. The great bell of the metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the last son of George the Third who probably will ever reign in England. He was a good man with feel-supremacy. ings and sympathies; deficient in culture rather than ability; with a sense of duty; and with something of the conception of what should be the character of an English monarch. Peace to his manes ! We are summoned to a different scene. In a palace in a garden, not in a haughty keep, proud with the fame but dark with the violence of ages; not in a regal pile, bright with the splendor, but soiled with the intrigues of courts and factions; in a palace in a garden, meet scene for youth, and innocence, and beauty, came a voice that told the maiden that she must ascend her throne ! The council of England is summoned for the first time within her bowers. There are assembled the prelates and captains and chief men of her realm; the priests of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the sword that has conquered, the votaries of the craft that has decided the fate of em Allegiance to one who rules over the land that the great Macedonian could not conquer; and over a continent of which even Columbus never dreamed; to the queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone. It is not of these that I would speak; but of a nation nearer her footstool, and which at the moment looks to her with anxiety, with affection, perhaps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and beauty of the Saxon. Will it be her proud destiny at length to bear relief to suffering millions, and, with that soft hand which might inspire troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the chain of a Saxon thraldom? It was in 1845 that "Sybil " was published, a year fertile with events which for the first time brought Mr. Disraeli prominently to the notice of the queen and of the prince consort, and to which may be traced a hostile prejudice lasting in the case of the prince till his death, and in the mind of the queen for the space of a generation. pires; men grey with thought, and fame, and age; who are the stewards of divine mysteries, who have toiled in secret cabinets, who have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe, who have struggled in the less merciful strife of aspiring senates; His attacks on Sir Robert Peel, virumen, too, some of them, lords of a thou-lent and unrelenting, were looked upon sand vassals and chief proprietors of prov- by the sovereign, not as the legitimate inces, yet not one of them whose heart assault by one political opponent upon another, but as the stroke of an assassin does not at this moment tremble as he awaits the first presence of the maiden who must now ascend her throne. A hum of half-suppressed conversation, which would attempt to conceal the excitement which some of the greatest of them have since acknowledged, fills that brilliant assemblage; the sea of plumes, and glittering stars, and gorgeous dresses. Hush! the portals open; she comes; the silence is as deep as that of a noontide forest. Attended for a moment by her royal mother and the ladies of her court, who bow and then retire, VICTORIA ascends her throne; a girl, alone, and for the first time, amid an assemblage of men. In a sweet thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of august duty than an the at the heart of a friend. The whole I 7 2 later, she was obliged to receive Mr. | monument to Lord Beaconsfield. These Had the prince consort lived, regard friend and the sneer for the world " on his side must have followed the with which he enforced his rule. That inevitable intimacy into which the two he, like his colleague George Smythe, men were thrown. To Mr. Disraeli the could prove a splendid failure he was prince's qualities were apparent from determined should not be; and the the first. Although in 1854, when jealobstacles which hitherto had yielded to ousy of the prince's position near the his untiring courage he was resolved queen culminated in an attack upon should be surmounted to the last. him in Parliament, Disraeli remained "The only power," said Coningsby, silent; he had written only a few days "that has no class sympathy is the before a strong expression of favorable sovereign;" and this thesis he was opinion. "The opportunity," he says, bent on proving, in spite of the sover"which office has afforded me of beeign herself. It was a question of per-coming acquainted with the prince severance, high daring, and time. To filled me with a sentiment towards him him, a son of patriarchs whose span of life was counted by centuries, the flight of time appeared a small factor. He was never hurried. It seemed as if he, too, one of the chosen people, might expect to live beyond the ordinary term of man's life. After twenty years of strife for the lead of the House of Commons, he, an alien, was at length the first man in that proud assembly. He could well wait, if necessary, twenty more for the confidence of the English people and that of their sov-princes and conceal their own, in order ereign. which I may describe, without exaggeration, as one of affection." That the feeling was far from reciprocal is well known. The prince's was not a nature to be taken by storm. That he would have yielded, as the queen yielded ultimately, to the firm pressure of a powerful character no one can reasonably doubt. Partisanship has invested Lord Beaconsfield in later days with the attributes of those artful men who, as it has been said, study the passions of to acquire and retain influence. If With marvellous endurance and pa- Lord Beaconsfield, in his dealings with tient tenacity those heroic qualities the sovereign, stooped to the employof his race - he waited; and he had ment of arts, they were of the simplest his reward. "The most wonderful kind. He once described his method thing," wrote Bishop Wilberforce, not to a friend. "I never contradict," he a friendly witness, "is the rise of Dis- said; "I never deny ; but I sometimes raeli. It is not the mere assertion of forget." To the bore or the Pharisee talent, as you hear so many say. It such maxims may seem degrading; seems to me quite beside that. He but there is many a man, under the has been able to teach the House of pressure of ministerial or domestic Commons almost to ignore Gladstone, sufferings, who will envy the serene and at present lords it over him." philosophy of Lord Beaconsfield. It was to certain great qualities of Chance is often the determining faccharacter, as extraordinary as his in-tor in our likes and dislikes; and it so tellectual powers, that Mr. Gladstone happened that the year 1874, which himself bore witness in asking the gave Mr. Disraeli his majority, estabHouse of Commons to vote a public lishing him a second time prime min |