variable in his tastes, sometimes, after going to sleep on one in exactly the same spot for weeks, leaving it for no reason that we could see, and choosing some other. And just where he made up his mind to go to rest, there he would go, or he was restless and unhappy. My sister and I always took a nap in the afternoon, and Fritz formed the same habit, generally betaking himself to his calla or geranium soon after we lay down, and often, in the short winter afternoons, refusing to wake up again until the next morning, though sometimes when we rose and dressed he would come out and fly around again. I often wondered how he could remain with out food or drink from early in the afternoon of one day till the next morning. He did not like to have us lie down, because he was lonely, and would hop on our faces and try to pick our eyes open. He had one habit, when going to roost, which showed to a remarkable extent the strength of instinct. Before selecting his favorite spot in the calla or geranium, he would make a careful examination of the whole plant, going over it, and looking everywhere to see that there were no enemies lurking about. It was pretty to see him peering up over the broad calla-leaves, searching for burglars before he could finally settle down for the night. When once he had done this he resented being disturbed, and if a finger were pointed at him, his outstretched wings and wide-opened bill made him look like a little embodiment of fury, while he would snap in what he meant for a very savage manner. I always put him into the cage when I went to my room at night, and was often amused at the sleepy gravity with which he would climb slowly up into the ring from my hand, and then settle down again to his broken slumbers. An exception to the usual rule with regard to pets, Fritz came to no untimely end. He was neither caught by a cat, nor crushed in a door, nor forgotten and left to starve slowly to death. I know nothing of him that was not beautiful and happy. And when the soft days of the last of May came, and his bright little golden brothers and sisters came flitting about his cage, and calling to him; when, in spite of his education, nature stirred so strongly within him that he struggled and beat against the bars and longed to be out with them, I could not find in my heart to keep him a captive longer. I bade him good-bye one bright morning, and he flew from my finger out into the bloom and beauty of the opening summer. I hoped he would remember me, and sometimes come back and visit me, but though I kept his cage out, and watched and called for him, he never returned, and I never saw him after. New-found liberty was too sweet to be risked again. AFTER life's long watch and ward FARRAGUT. Day and night who stood a guard, Slumber, free from watch or ward, Only sleeps upon his sword; LORD BEACONSFIELD. THE story of Lord Beaconsfield's career has been related with abundance of Oriental tropes, and at bottom it is no story at all. It is a record of deeds wrought where all might see them, and stated where all might read them. Of the man who wrought them, of the methods he used to attain his ends, of his hopes, loves, and inmost thoughts, it virtually tells us nothing. It has a fascination for the ambitious, the timid, the poor in spirit. "Tell us," they cried, "how we, too, may become great. Point out to us the road that led you to fame." And the Sphinx replied: "I was a Jew, and became Prime Minister of England. I enlisted with the party of stupidity and stagnation, and taught it to pluck success from defeat. My acquire ments were those of a fashionable novelist, and I bent to my will the most learned men in Europe. My fortune was small and I controlled the markets of the world. I had no strong convictions, few warm affections, and I gathered together a devoted band of followers. There is the secret of my success." trated labor, they are here. If the gospel of work is anywhere preached in literature, it is in the romances of Lord Beaconsfield. "Fear not, faint not, falter not," says the Angel of Arabia to Tancred. That was the author's rule of life. Forti nihil difficile was his motto. The magic of patience which he at one time prescribed for Ireland he began by prescribing for himself. In the outset of his career his temper was by no means equable. His attack on Mr. Austin involved him in a libel suit; his onslaught on O'Connell covered him with ridicule; his defiance of the "Pope's Brass Band" brought his first speech in Parliament to an impotent conclusion. He set himself to acquire the "talent of silence." He submitted to a discipline so severe that, in after years, he never failed to exhibit the most intrepid spirit under the stress of evil fortune. determined to play at politics as coolly as though he were playing whist or chess, and to see in them nothing else than a game. He cared little on which side of the table he He He went over to the Tories because he believed that they held the best cards. Having been hailed by them as the savior of society, he was content to receive their plaudits and made no effort to justify his allegiance. Although he was never tired of declaring that the Tories were the historic party of Great Britain, he knew that among them he had no inheritance, and that literature, as he said, was his only scutchHe left to others the task of making his excuses, and of proclaiming that he had been led to the antique splendors of the party by his artistic sensibility and the warmth of his imagination. eon. Is it, then, worth studying-this life which Lord Beaconsfield so studiously veiled from public gaze? He professed himself indifferent to popular opinion. He was at no pains to correct, even if he saw, the "penpictures" of gossiping journalists and curious travelers. He suffered his flowered waistcoat and patent-leather pumps to pass into history, and to this day there are ingenious Germans who evolve his career out of "Tancred" and "Coningsby," and who believe he conducted his diplomatic negotiations on the principles set forth in "Alarcos: a Tragedy." Many people have been persuaded that he sat down at twenty-five to write out the programme of his life, as a It may be doubted whether Lord Beadiner would write out his bill of fare, and consfield had any artistic sensibility, any that everything was forthwith served to him warmth of imagination. There is no evias he ordered it. Mr. Wyndham Lewis dence of either in his recorded speeches. died, and he married the rich widow; Sir Events that thrilled the world neither stirred Robert Peel died, and his reputation for him to eloquence nor suffused the glow of statecraft was vindicated; Lord Derby re- feeling over his rhetoric. The sympathy signed, and he succeeded to office. Those which he is reported to have given to the who believe this fable should look at Lord American Union in the Civil War found no Beaconsfield's face. There are no signs of adequate expression in his oratory. "Far a life easily spent or a fortune lightly won be it from me, here or elsewhere," he said, in the awful hollows of his cheeks, the deep" to use any phrase which could be offensive wrinkles of his forehead, and the ghastly to either of the parties in that country who yellow of his skin. If there can be physical are embarked in that fearful and unpreceevidences of close thought and concen- dented struggle which is now going on. But whatever happens there, it may be said that they have certainly increased our confidence in the energy of human nature, and that is a great exploit to have performed." Could a more vapid comment have been made? Hear what follows: "I think," he continued, "that we must all feel that their history has taught us that for a powerful and enduring community something else is wanted than confidence in human nature. I think that Englishmen cannot but remember at this moment that while those who have preceded us have achieved as great results as ever were accomplished in America, our predecessors did establish this state and this society upon sounder and truer principles. Happy the land where freedom and reverence go hand in hand, and proud may Englishmen be at this moment when experience has proved in so transcendent a manner that we have solved the most difficult problem in politics, and have combined not only freedom with order, but progress with tradition. This has been the source of our strength, and though it does not become us to proclaim it in a violent manner to Americans, yet while we treat them with all respect in this fearful struggle, let us, as Englishmen, be proud of that strong society of which we are members, and the strength of which can only be attributed to the wisdom of the principle on which it is established." The complacency of this statement, which, in the presence of the Irish land-war, might be exactly reversed to-day, would seem to have sprung, not from excess of patriotism, but from lack of imagination. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the generous sympathy of Emilio Castelar inspired one of the most magnificent orations of the century. Benjamin Disraeli could find nothing better to say than this: "When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and consequences of such deeds. Assassination has never changed the history of the world"; with references to the "costly sacrifice of a Cæsar," and glib quotations about Henri IV. and the Prince of Orange, and other flowers from the hot-house of newspaper leader-writers. Nor is it the imaginative quality that shines in his novels. They are master-works of the Turkey-carpet school of writing. Like all writers who lack creative power, their author tries to hide the defect beneath a splendor of embellishment. The result is that, apart from their wit and knowledge of the world, they differ in no material respect from the romances of Ouida. Lothair, with his retinue of princes, cardinals, and pashas, comes from the same work-shop as "Puck" and "Tricotrin." Endymion Ferrars is as gorgeous a figment as "Strathmore." The hero who offers his lady "the very pearls worn by the Queen of Cyprus"; the diplomatists who "sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee"; the huntsmen who are "brave even to brutality"; the dukes who train their own horses and win the Derby; the opera-singers whose relatives are "Princes of Samos and descendents of the Greek emperors"; the marquesses who die and are entombed in alabaster ;-might all owe their existence to the authoress of "Under Two Flags." The personalities which Lord Beaconsfield so thinly veiled have been handled just as well by Mr. Mallock and other writers of university squibs. But his wit was distinctly his own. It was the only high literary quality that he possessed, and he made the most of it. He put down cavil with a joke. He answered criticism with a mot, an epigram, a shaft of irony. His allegiance to the Tories was due neither to his imagination nor to his wit. He never scrupled to laugh at an aristocracy which was "acred up to its chin and consolled up to its eyebrows." He did not share its prejudices or concern himself with its hopes. He saw that it stood in urgent need of organization, and he set himself to a task which no man but he could have undertaken. The patience which he devoted to it, the skill with which he used all changes of public opinion, the singlemindedness of his purpose and the thoroughness of its achievement, are the true moral of Lord Beaconsfield's life. He strove to form a new party under an old name, combining the progress of the Whigs with the prestige of the Tories. He had to be cautious at first, lest his faction should be frightened by his boldness. He knew that the Reform Bill of 1859 would overthrow him, but was not, at that time, in a position to amend it. position to amend it. He realized the absurdity of its "fancy franchises," whereby the privilege of voting was dependent on such qualifications as the possession of money in the funds or in a Government savings-bank, or the receipt of a pension for military, naval, or civil services, or a university degree, or the fact of being a minister of religion, a member of a learned profession, or a school-master. Although he pretended that, under these circumstances, the representation would be a mirror of the mind of the country,-its agriculture, its manufacturing industry, its commerce, and its professional ability,-he knew at heart that it was a merely visionary scheme. He went out of office without regret, and with consummate wisdom and self-restraint remained silent for four years, feeling convinced that his party had now seen the folly of even appearing to distrust the people, and that they had thus learned the first lesson which he came to teach them. When the battle was renewed on a more popular basis in 1867, his followers were so thoroughly drilled that the most harassing attacks of the enemy failed to break their line, and the Whigs were triumphantly beaten with their own weapons. Many efforts have been made to account for his success in disciplining a body with which he could have had so little sympathy. There is a popular tendency to regard it as a kind of witchcraft. It was the witchcraft of steadfast adherence to a deliberate purpose. He held the party in thrall by his wit, his audacity, his resoluteness. They dared not incur his wrath or brave his ridicule. The electors of Buckinghamshire regarded him as a kind of fetish. His electoral addresses were received with awe by the county. For thirty years, as Parliament succeeded Parliament, and Mr. Gladstone went in search of votes from borough to borough, Buckinghamshire never swerved in its fidelity to Benjamin Disraeli. It applauded all his actions before they were committed, and approved all his purposes before they were known. His electors took a personal pride in his career; his party found in it the reaction they sought from the fussiness and pretension of Peel. In both the Parliaments which he led, he was in this way enabled to withdraw himself from the little worries with which other statesmen were beset, and devote his whole attention to matters of high policy. What that policy was he revealed in somewhat commonplace language on the day of his entry into the Upper House. "ThroughThroughout my public life," he said, "I have aimed at two results. Not insensible to the principle of progress, I have endeavored to reconcile change with that respect for tradition which is one of the main elements of our social strength; and in external affairs I have endeavored to develop and strengthen our empire, believing that a combination of achievement and responsibility elevates the character and condition of a people." There is no reason to think that Lord Beaconsfield was insincere in this faith. It was long the fashion to accuse him of charlatanry and to assert that he constructed his imperial policy out of the utopian novels of his youth. Doubtless he knew that conservatism was not the creed of the future; that his effort to wed it with advancement must always place him in a somewhat ridiculous light; and that his best justification would be, not a mere party success, but a brilliant exploit accomplished before the world. That-in the opinion at least of a large part of his fellow-countrymen-he attained this end without injury to the public interests, is his highest title to fame. His negotiations in the Eastern question mark the zenith of modern diplomacy; his return from Berlin is the most memorable incident in his career. When the Bulgarian clamor had turned England against the Turks, and the aggressions of Russia were for the moment forgotten, he deftly steered his course between two noisy factions, neither coercing the Porte to please the one, nor relaxing his watch on the Czar to gratify the other. When Russia had crossed the Balkans and advanced on Adrianople, he stood calm amid the storm of passionate invective that raged around him. When the San Stefano treaty was published, and the least untoward event would have precipitated England into war, he at length made his masterly move. By summoning the native troops from India, he revealed an unsuspected source of British strength, gave reality to the imperial title which he had conferred on the queen, and restored Great Britain to the rank which she had suffered to be questioned. His fall detracted nothing from his fame. His destiny was accomplished. He had reached an age when popularity meant nothing and the favors of the mob were lightly esteemed. He carried with him to the grave the secret of his strange career, and men can only guess at the means by which he arrived at the pinnacle of power. If he was ambitious, he did not build his fortune upon the ruin of others. If he involved his country in useless wars, he re-asserted principles which were the foundation of her prosperity. Readers of many countries will be disposed to say of him what Lord Bolingbroke, his exemplar, said of the Duke of Marlborough: "He was a great man and I have forgotten all his faults." |