em unawares.

The Young England party believed in themselves as the leaders of a
movement which should save England through its youth. They were,
however, known in Parliament in their early days as "young gentlemen
who wore white waistcoats and wrote spoony poetry."

'Young England' wished for a return of the feudal relations between
the nobility and their vassals; the nobles and the Church, as in olden
days, were to stretch out a helping hand to the poor, to feed the
hungry, and succour the distressed. National customs were to be
revived, commerce and art were to be fostered by wealthy patrons.
The Crown was once more to be in touch with the people. "If Royalty
did but condescend to lower itself to a familiarity with the people,
it is curious that they will raise, exalt, and adore it, sometimes
even invest it with divine and mysterious attributes. If, on the
contrary, it shuts itself up in an august seclusion, it will be mocked
and caricatured . . . if the great only knew what stress the poor
lay by the few forms that remain, to join them they would make many
sacrifices for their maintenance and preservation."[6]

[Footnote 6: George Smythe, Viscount Strangford, _Historic
Fancies_.]

It was to lay the views of his party and himself before the public
that Disraeli published the three novels, _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, and
_Tancred_. _Coningsby_ deals with the political parties of that time,
and is full of thinly-disguised portraits of people then living;
_Sybil_, from which a quotation is given elsewhere, is a study of
life among the working-classes; _Tancred_ discusses what part the
Church should take in the government of the people.

Though the life of the 'Young England' party was short, it succeeded
by means of agitation in and out of Parliament in calling public
attention to the harshness of the New Poor Law and the need for social
reform.

Carlyle was again the writer who influenced the young Disraeli, for
the latter saw that to accomplish anything of real value he must form
his own party and break loose from the worn-out beliefs and
prejudices of both political parties. Though in later days he will
be remembered as a statesman rather than as a novelist, it is
necessary to study those three books in order to understand what
England and the English were in Victoria's early years.

Each of these Reform parties had rendered signal service in their
own fashion: Church, Government, and People were no longer disunit