t of wealth, magnificence, and rhetoric is thrown
upon all their doings, that we are cheated into sympathy. Who can be
hard upon a young man whose behaviour to his creditors may be
questionable, but who is swept away in such a torrent of gorgeous hues?
The first sight of Miss Temple is enough to reveal her dazzling
complexion, her violet-tinted eyes, her lofty and pellucid brow, her
dark and lustrous locks. Love for such a being is the 'transcendent and
surpassing offspring of sheer and unpolluted sympathy.' It is a rapture
and a madness; it is to the feelings of the ordinary mortal what
sunlight is to moonlight, or wine to water. What wonder that Armine,
'pale and trembling, withdrew a few paces from the overwhelming
spectacle, and leant against a tree in a chaos of emotion? A delicious
and maddening impulse thrilled his frame; a storm raged in his soul; a
big drop quivered on his brow; and a slight foam played upon his lip.'
But 'the tumult of his mind gradually subsided; the fleeting memories,
the saddening thoughts, that for a moment had coursed about in such wild
order, vanished and melted away, and a feeling of bright serenity
succeeded--a sense of beauty and joy, and of hovering and circumambient
happiness.' In short, he asked the lady in to lunch. That is the love
which can only be produced in palaces. Your Burns may display some
warmth of feeling about a peasant-girl, and Wordsworth cherish the
domestic affections in a cottage; but for the dazzling, brilliant forms
of passion we must enter the world of magic, where diamonds are as
plentiful as blackberries, and all surrounding objects are turned to
gold by the alchemy of an excited imagination. The only difference is
that, while other men assume that the commonest things will take a
splendid colour as seen through a lover's eyes, Disraeli takes care that
whatever his lovers see shall have a splendid colouring.

Once more, if we consent for the time to take our author's view--and
that is the necessary condition for enjoying most literature--we must
admit the vivacity and, at times, the real eloquence of Disraeli's
rhetoric. In 'Contarini Fleming' he takes a still more ambitious flight,
and with considerable success. Fleming, the embodiment of the poetic
character, is, we might almost say, to other poets what Armine is to
other lovers. He has the same love of brilliant effects, and the same
absence of genuine tenderness. But one other qualification must be made.