of the poor in this story. When Gerard,
the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his
daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell
you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant
answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You
are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town."
This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations
among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no
chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the
depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to
produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories,
which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier
simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given
fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of
Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not
blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures
of human suffering in _Sybil_.

Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported,
continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary
offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties
which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he
became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began
to despair of discovering any cure for it. In _Tancred_ he laid aside in
great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book
is steeped in the colours of poetry--of poetry, that is to say, as the
florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens--as all his books love to
open--with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is
commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type
of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a
flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative.
Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely
picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream.

The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in
_Coningsby_, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central
theme of the story in _Tancred_. This novel is inspired by an outspoken
and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its
future. In the presen