ographers.
This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural.
But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes
is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of
the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book
Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its
fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that
there are "perhaps too many temples."

There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of _Lothair_, but
they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When
the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the
door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio
of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and
alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of
portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder
since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is
characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all
his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should
consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time
should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He
knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in
the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical
disdain and irony.

What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality
is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In _Lothair_ he
is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels
of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of
an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we
may take courage to say that it is far better than reality--more rich,
more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly
written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and
when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a
mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is
seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of _Lothair_, and have become
part of our habitual speech--the phrase about eating "a little fruit on
a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the
gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that
Di