possessed the true key, and fully understood, for example, that Charles
I. was the 'holocaust of direct taxation.' But frankly to expound this
theory would be to destroy its charm, and to cast pearls before
political economists. And, therefore, its existence is dimly adumbrated
rather than its meaning revealed; and we have hints that there are
wheels within wheels, and that in the lowest deep of mystery there is a
yet deeper mystery. Coningsby and his associates, the brilliant
Buckhurst and the rich Catholic country gentleman, Eustace Lyle, are but
unripe neophytes, feeling after the true doctrine, but not yet fully
initiated. The superlative Sidonia, the man who by thirty has exhausted
all the sources of human knowledge, become master of the learning of
every nation, of all tongues, dead or living, and of every literature,
western and oriental; who has pursued all the speculations of science to
their last term; who has lived in all orders of society, and observed
man in every phase of civilisation; who has a penetrative intellect
which enables him to follow as by intuition the most profound of all
questions, and a power of communicating with precision the most abstruse
ideas; whose wealth would make Monte Cristo seem a pauper; who is so far
above his race that woman seems to him a toy, and man a machine,--this
thrice miraculous Sidonia, who can yet stoop from his elevation to win a
steeplechase from the Gentiles, or return their hospitality by an
exquisite dinner, is the fitting depository of the precious secret. No
one can ever accuse Disraeli of a want of audacity. He does not, like
weaker men, shrink from introducing men of genius because he is afraid
that he will not be able to make them talk in character; and when, in
'Venetia,' he introduces Byron and Shelley, he is kind enough to write
poetry for them, which produces as great an effect as the original.

And now having a true prophet, having surrounded him with a band of
disciples, so that the transmitted rays of wisdom may be bearable to our
mortal eyes, we expect some result worthy of this startling machinery.
Let the closed casket open, and the magic light stream forth to dazzle
the gazing world. We know, alas! too well that our expectation cannot be
satisfied. There is not any secret doctrine in politics. Bolingbroke may
have been a very clever man, but he could not see through a stone wall.
The whole hypothesis is too extravagant to admit of any downright
pro