Chapter IV: ECAUDATA (22).--Frogs and toads. Four limbs and no tail. Radius (7)

Bazaine, therefore, in the main justified his reputation for ability. He was now to justify his reputation for intriguing and underhand diplomacy. If in Mexico he aspired to the role of mayor of the palace, it was far more so in Metz, where, as commander of the only organized army of France, he conceived himself to be the ruler of the country's destiny. Accordingly he engaged in a series of diplomatic intrigues, some of which to this day have never been properly cleared up. Negotiations passed between the outer world and the besieged commander, the purport of which remains still to some extent obscure, but it is beyond question that he proposed with the permission of the Germans to employ his army in "saving France from herself." The scheme, however, collapsed, and the army of the Rhine became prisoners of war to the number of 140,000. At the moment of the surrender a week's further resistance would have enabled the levies of the National Defence government to crush the weak forces of the Germans on the Loire and to relieve Paris. But the army of Prince Frederick Charles, set free by the surrender, hurried up in time to check and to defeat the great effort at Orleans (q.v.). The responsibility for this crushing blow was naturally enough, and justly enough, placed on Bazaine's shoulders, and although, when he returned from captivity, the marshal enjoyed a brief immunity, he was in 1873 brought to trial before a military court. He was found guilty of negotiating with and capitulating to the enemy before doing all that was prescribed by duty and honour, and sentenced to degradation and death, but very strongly recommended to mercy. His sentence was commuted to twenty years' seclusion, and the humiliating ceremonies attending degradation were dispensed with. He was incarcerated in the Ile Sainte-Marguerite and treated rather as an exile than as a convict; thence he escaped in 1874 to Italy. He finally took up his abode in Madrid, where he was treated with marked respect by the government of Alfonso XII. He died there on the 23rd of September 1888. He published _Episodes de la guerre de 1870_ (Madrid, 1883). He also wrote _L'Armee du Rhin_ (Paris, 1872).

See the bibliography appended to the article FRANCO-GERMAN WAR; also
memoir by C. Pelletan in _La Grande Encyclopedie_; for Bazaine's
conduct see _Bazaine et l'armee du Rhin_ (1873); J. Valfrey, _Le
Marechal et l'armee du Rhin_ (1873); Count A. de la Guerroniere,
_L'Homme de Metz_ (1871); Rossel, _Les Derniers Jours de Metz_ (1871).
See also the article BOURBAKI for the curious Regnier episode
connected with the surrender of Metz.

BAZALGETTE, SIR JOSEPH WILLIAM (1819-1891), English engineer, was born at Enfield on the 28th of March 1819. At the age of seventeen he was articled to an engineer, and a few years later he began to practise successfully on his own account. His name is best known for the engineering works he carried out in London, especially for the construction of the main drainage system and the Thames embankment. In 1848 the control of London drainage, which had hitherto been divided among eight distinct municipal bodies, was consolidated under twelve commissioners, who were in 1849 superseded by a second commission. Under the latter Bazalgette accepted an appointment which he continued to hold under the three successive commissions which in the course of a year or two followed the second one, and when finally in 1855 these bodies were replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works, he was at once appointed its chief engineer. His plans were ready, but the work was delayed by official obstruction and formality until 1858. Once begun, however, it was vigorously pushed on, and in 1865 the system was formally opened. It consisted of 83 m. of large intercepting sewers, draining more than 100 sq. m. of buildings, and calculated to deal with 420 million gallons a day. The cost was L4,600,000. Almost simultaneously Bazalgette was engaged on the plans for the Thames embankment. The section between Westminster and Vauxhall on the Surrey side was built between 1860 and 1869, and the length between Westminster and Blackfriars was declared open by the prince of Wales in 1870. The Chelsea embankment followed in 1871-1874, and in 1876 Northumberland Avenue was formed. The total outlay on the scheme exceeded L2,000,000. Bazalgette was also responsible for various other engineering works in the metropolitan area, designing, for example, new bridges at Putney and Battersea, and the steam ferry between north and south Woolwich. He also prepared plans for a bridge over the river near the Tower and for a tunnel under it at Blackwall, but did not live to see either of these projects carried out. He died on the 15th of March 1891 at Wimbledon.

BAZARD, AMAND (1791-1832), French socialist, the founder of a secret society in France corresponding to the Carbonari of Italy, was born at Paris. He took part in the defence of Paris in 1815, and afterwards occupied a subordinate situation in the prefecture of the Seine. About 1820 he united some patriotic friends into a society, called _Amis de la verite_. From this was developed a complete system of Carbonarism, the peculiar principles of which were introduced from Italy by two of Bazard's friends. Bazard himself was at the head of the central body, and, while taking a general lead, contributed extensively to the Carbonarist journal, _L'Aristarque_. An unsuccessful outbreak at Belfort ruined the society, and the leaders were compelled to conceal themselves. Bazard, after remaining for some time in obscurity in Paris, came to the conclusion that the ends of those who wished well to the people would be most easily attained, not through political agitation, but by effecting a radical change in their social condition. This train of thinking naturally drew him towards the socialist philosophers of the school of Saint-Simon, whom he joined. He contributed to their journal, _Le Producteur_; and in 1828 began to give public lectures on the principles of the school (see SAINT-SIMON). His opposition to the emancipation of women brought about a quarrel with Enfantin (q.v.) in 1831, and Bazard found himself almost deserted by the members of the society. He attacked Enfantin violently, and in a warm discussion between them he was struck down by apoplexy. After lingering for a few months he died on the 29th of July 1832.

BAZAS, a town of south-western France, in the department of Gironde, 38-1/2 m. S.S.E. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 2505; commune, 4684. The town, which was the seat of a bishop from at least the beginning of the 6th century till 1790, has a Gothic church (formerly the cathedral) dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. There are remains of ramparts (15th and 16th centuries) and several old houses of the 16th century. The vineyards of the vicinity produce white wine. The town is capital of an arrondissement, and carries on tanning, &c., and trade in the well-known Bazadais cattle.

Bazas (_Cossio_) was capital of the ancient tribe of the _Vasates_, and under the Romans one of the twelve cities of Novempopuluna. In later times it was capital of the district of Bazadais. It was the scene of much bloodshed during the religious wars of the 16th century.

BAZIGARS, a nomad gipsy-folk of India, found throughout the peninsula, and variously known as Bazigars, Panchpiri, Nats, Bediyas, &c. They live a life apart from the surrounding Hindu population, and still preserve a certain ethnical identity, scarcely justified by any indications given by their physique. They make a living as jugglers, dancers, basket-weavers and fortune-tellers; and in true European gipsy fashion each clan has its king.

BAZIN, RENE (1853- ), French novelist and man of letters, was born at Angers on the 26th of December 1853. He studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became professor of law in the Catholic university there. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, but he made his reputation by _Une Tache d'encre_ (1888), which received a prize from the Academy. Other novels of great charm and delicacy followed: _La Sarcelle bleue_ (1892); _Madame Corentine_ (1893); _Humble Amour_ (1894); _De toute son ame_ (1897); _La Terre qui meurt_ (1899); _Les Oberle_ (1901), an Alsatian story which was dramatized and acted in the following year; _L'Ame alsacienne_ (1903); _Donatienne_ (1903); _L'Isolee_ (1905); _Le Ble qui leve_ (1907); _Memoires d'une vieille fille_ (1908). _La Terre qui meurt_, a picture of the decay of peasant farming and a story of La Vendee, is an indirect plea for the development of provincial France. A volume of _Questions litteraires et sociales_ appeared in 1906. Rene Bazin was admitted to the Academy on the 28th of April 1904.

BAZIRE, CLAUDE (1764-1794), French revolutionist, was deputy for the Cote d'Or in the Legislative Assembly, and made himself prominent by denouncing the court and the "Austrian committee" of the Tuileries. On the 20th of June 1792 he spoke in favour of the deposition of the king. In the Convention he sat with the Mountain, opposed adjourning the trial of Louis XVI., and voted for his death. He joined in the attack upon the Girondists, but, as member of the committee of general security, he condemned the system of the Terror. He was implicated by Francois Chabot in the falsification of a decree relative to the East India Company, and though his share seems to have been simply that he did not reveal the plot, of which he knew but part, he was accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal at the same time as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, and was executed on the 5th of April 1794.

BDELLIUM ([Greek: bdellion], used by Pliny and Dioscorides as the name of a plant which exuded a fragrant gum), a name applied to several gums or gum-resins that simulate and are sometimes found as adulterants of true myrrh (q.v.).

BEACH, a word of unknown origin; probably an old dialect word meaning shingle, hence, by transference, the place covered by shingle. Beach sometimes denotes the material thrown up by the waves, sometimes the long resulting ridge, but more frequently the area between high and low water, or even the area between land and sea covered with material thrown up by exceptional storms.

The actual character of beach material depends upon the nature and structure of the rocks inshore, the strength and direction of currents, and the force of the waves. The southern shore of the Isle of Wight furnishes a good example. The island ends westward in the well-known "Needles," consisting of chalk with flints. The disintegration of this rock by wave action separates the finer chalk, which is carried seawards in suspension, from the hard flint, which is piled in rough shingle upon the shore. The currents sweep constantly eastward up channel, and the rough flint shingle is rolled along by wave action toward the Ventnor rampart, and ground finer and finer until it arrives as a very fine flinty gravel at Ventnor pier. The sweep of Sandown Bay follows, where the cliffs are composed for the most part of greensand, and here the beach at low water is sandy and smooth. The eastern end of the island is again composed of chalk with flints, and here the beach material as at the western end consists of very coarse flint shingle. In this, as in similar cases, the material has been dragged seawards from the land by constant action of the undertow that accompanies each retreating tide and each returning wave. The resulting accumulated ridge is battered by every storm, and thrown above ordinary high-water mark in a ridge such as the Chesil Bank or the long grass-grown mound that has blocked the old channel of the Yar and diverted its waters into Yaverland Bay. Sandown furnishes an instructive example of the power of the eastward currents carrying high-storm waves. The groins built to preserve the foreshore are piled to the top with coarse shingle on the western side, while there is a drop of over 8 ft. on to the sands east of the wall, many thousands of tons of shingle having been moved bodily by the waves and deposited against each groin. The force of the waves has been measured on the west coast of Scotland and found to be as much as 3 tons per square foot. Against these forces the preservation of the shore from the advance of the sea becomes an extremely difficult and often a hopeless undertaking, since blocks of rock over 100 tons in weight have been moved by the waves. The beach is therefore unstable in its position. It advances in front of the encroaching sea, burying former beaches under the sand and mud of the now deeper water, or it retreats when the sea is withdrawn from the land or the land rises locally, leaving the old shingle stranded in a "raised beach," but its formation is in all cases due to the form and structure of the shore, the sapping action of the waves, the backward drag of the undertow plastering the shore with material, which is in turn bombarded by waves and swept by currents that cover the finer debris of the undertow with a layer of coarse fragments that are re-sorted by the daily action of currents and tides.

BEACHY HEAD, a promontory on the coast of Sussex, England, S.W. of Eastbourne, about 3 m. from the centre of the town. It consists of a perpendicular chalk cliff 532 ft. high, and forms the eastern termination of the hill-range known as the South Downs. The old Bell Tout lighthouse, 285 ft. above high-water mark, erected in 1831 on the second cliff to the westward, in 0 deg. 10' 18" E., 50 deg. 43' 30" N., has been superseded by a new lighthouse built in the sea at the foot of the head itself.

_Battle of Beachy Head._--This naval battle, known to the French as Bevisier (a corruption of Pevensey), was fought on the 30th of June 1690. An allied force of 37 British sail of the line, under command of the earl of Torrington (Arthur Herbert), and of 22 Dutch under C. Evertsen, was at anchor under the headland, while a French fleet of over 70 sail, commanded by the comte de Tourville, was anchored some miles off to the south-west. The French fleet had orders to co-operate with an expected Jacobite rising in England. Torrington, to whom the general direction of the allied fleet belonged, was much disturbed by the enemy's superiority in number, and on the 26th had written to the Council of Regency suggesting that he ought to retire to the Gunfleet at the mouth of the Thames, and observe the enemy from a distance till he could be reinforced. The council, which had the support of Admiral Russell, afterwards earl of Orford, considered that a retreat to the Gunfleet would have fatal consequences, by which they no doubt meant that it would leave the French free to land troops for the support of the Jacobites. They therefore ordered Herbert not to lose sight of the enemy, but rather to fight if he could secure an advantage of position. The admiral, who was on very bad terms with the council, elected to treat this as a peremptory order to fight. At daybreak on the 30th he got under way and bore down on the enemy. The wind was at north-east and gave him the weather-gage. As his fleet was only 57 sail in all he was not able to engage the enemy from end to end, but as the French were arranged in a line from east to west he could have fallen on the end nearest him, and could have guarded himself by telling off a part of his ships to watch the remainder. Torrington preferred to bring his fleet down in such a way that his van, consisting of the Dutch ships, should be opposite the enemy's van, his centre opposite their centre, and his rear should engage their rear. The inferiority of the allies in numbers made it therefore inevitable that there should be gaps between the different divisions. As the fleets actually did come to action, the Dutch with a few English ships pressed on the French van, their leading ship being abreast of the ninth or tenth Frenchman. Torrington took his station opposite the rear of the French centre, leaving a great gap between himself and the ships in the van. Being apprehensive that the French centre would tack and pass this gap so as to put him between two fires, he kept a long way off so as to be free to manoeuvre against them if they made the attempt. The English rear division, consisting of the English blue squadron under Sir Ralph Delaval, fought a close action with the French opposite to them. In the meantime the French ships, ahead of the leading Dutchman, succeeded in turning to windward and putting part of Evertsen's squadron between two fires. The Dutch ships suffered heavily, and one of them which was dismasted drifted among the French and was taken. More severe loss would have followed if the better average seamanship of the English and Dutch had not stood them in good stead. The tide turned from flood to ebb during the action, and the surface current which in the Channel sets to the west with the ebb began to carry the fleets with it. The Dutch and English dropped anchor. The French, who were not equally alert, did not and were carried westward. When the tide turned the allies retreated to the Thames, abandoning several of the most damaged ships in Pevensey Bay. The pursuit of the French was ineffective, for Tourville persisted in keeping his ships in line of battle, which forced them to regulate their speed by the slowest among them. Torrington was tried for his conduct but acquitted.

A full account of the battle of Beachy Head, written with ample
quotation of documents, and for the purpose of vindicating Herbert,
will be found in Admiral Colomb's _Naval Warfare_ (London, 1899).
(D. H.)

BEACON (from the O. Eng. _beacn_, a sign, cf. "beckon," another form of the same word), a signal, especially a fire lit on a high hill, structure or building for the purpose of sending a message of alarm or of important news over long distances. Such was the courier-fire ([Greek: aggaros pur]) that brought the news of the fall of Troy to Argos (Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_), or the chain of signals that told of the approach of the Spanish Armada, or which circled the British Isles in the jubilee years of 1887 and 1897. The word occurs in many names for lofty and conspicuous hills, such as Dunkery Beacon in Somerset, the highest point on Exmoor. On many such hills the remains of old beacon towers and cressets are still found. The word is used generally of a lighthouse, but technically it means either a small unattended light, a superstructure on a floating buoy, such as a staff and cage, or staff and globe, or an unlighted structure, forming a conspicuous object at sea, used in each case to guide or warn sailors. (See LIGHTHOUSE and BUOY.)

BEACONSFIELD, BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF (1804-1881), British statesman, second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli (q.v.) and Maria Basevi, who were married in 1802, was born at No. 6 John Street, Bedford Row, on the 21st of December 1804. Of Isaac D'Israeli's other children, Sarah was born in 1802, Naphtali in 1807, Ralph (Raphael) in 1809, and James (Jacob) in 1813. None of the family was akin to Benjamin for genius and character, except Sarah, to whom he was deeply indebted for a wise, unswerving and sympathetic devotion, when, in his earlier days, he needed it most. All Isaac D'Israeli's children were born into the Jewish communion, in which, however, they were not to grow up. It is a reasonable inference from Isaac's character that he was never at ease in the ritual of Judaism. His father died in the winter of 1816, and soon afterwards Isaac formally withdrew with all his household from the Jewish church. His son Benjamin, who had been admitted to it with the usual rites eight days after his birth, was baptized at St Andrew's church in Holborn on the 31st of July 1817. One of Isaac D'Israeli's reasons for quitting the tents of his people was that rabbinical Judaism, with its unyielding laws and fettering ceremonies, "cuts off the Jews from the great family of mankind." Little did he know, when therefore he cut off the D'Israeli family from Judaism, what great things he was doing for one small member of it. The future prime minister was then short of thirteen years old, and there was yet time to provide the utmost freedom which his birth allowed for the faculties and ambitions he was born with. Taking the worldly view alone, of course, most fortunate for his aspirations in youth was his withdrawal from Judaism in childhood. That it was fully sanctioned by his intellect at maturity is evident; but the vindication of unbiased choice would not have been readily accepted had Disraeli abandoned Judaism of his own will at the pushing _Vivian Grey_ period or after. And though a mind like Disraeli's might work to satisfaction with Christianity as "completed Judaism," it could but dwell on a breach of continuity which means so much to Jews and which he was never allowed to forget amongst Christians. With all, he was proud of his race as truly, if not as vehemently, as his paternal grandmother detested it. Family pride contributed to the feeling in his case; for in his more speculative moods he could look back upon an ancestry which was of those, perhaps, who colonized the shores of the Mediterranean from before the time of the Captivity. More definite is the history of descent from an ennobled Spanish family which escaped from the Torquemada persecutions to Venice, there found a new home, took a new name, and prospered for six generations. The Benjamin D'Israeli, Lord Beaconsfield's grandfather, who came to England in 1748, was a younger son sent at eighteen to try his fortune in London. "A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could disturb" (so Lord Beaconsfield described him), he soon made the beginnings of a handsome fortune and turned country gentleman. That his grandson exaggerated his prosperity is highly probable; but that he became a man of wealth and consideration is certain. He married twice. His second wife was Sarah Siprout de Gabay, "a beautiful woman of strong intellect" and importunate ambitions, who hated the race she belonged to because it was despised by others. She felt so keenly the social disabilities it brought upon her, and her husband's indifference to them, that "she never pardoned him his name." Her literary son Isaac suffered equally or even more; for though he had ambitions he had none that she could recognize as such. She could ridicule him for the aspirations which he had not and for those which he had; on the other hand, he never heard from her a tender word "though she lived to be eighty." Nor did any other member of her family, according to her grandson.

"The Representative."

Isaac D'Israeli was devoted to the reading and writing of books in domestic quiet; and his son Benjamin suffered appreciably from his father's gentle preoccupations. As a child--unruly and disturbing no doubt--he was sent to a school of small account at Blackheath, and was there "for years" before he was recalled at the age of twelve on the death of his grandfather. Isaac D'Israeli was his father's sole heritor, but change of fortune seems to have awakened in him no ambitions for the most hopeful of his sons. At fifteen, not before, Benjamin was sent to a Unitarian school at Walthamstow--a well-known school, populous enough to be a little world of emulation and conflict but otherwise unfit. Not there, nor in any similar institution at that illiberal time, perhaps, was a Jewish boy likely to make a fortunate entry into "the great family of mankind." His name, the foreign look of him, and some pronounced incompatibilities not all chargeable to young Disraeli (as afterwards the name came to be spelt), soon raised a crop of troubles. His stay at Walthamstow was brief, his departure abrupt, and he went to school no more. With the run of his father's library, and the benefits of that born bookman's guidance, he now set out to educate himself. This he did with an industry stiffened by matchless self-confidence and by ambitions fully mature before he was eighteen. Yet he yielded to an attempt to make a man of business of him. He was barely seventeen when (in November 1821) he was taken into the office of Messrs Swain, Stevens and Co., solicitors, in Frederick's Place, Old Jewry. Here he remained for three years--"most assiduous in his attention to business," said one of the partners, "and showing great ability in the transaction of it." It was then determined that he should go to the bar; and accordingly he was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1824. But Disraeli had found other studies and an alien use for his pen. Though "assiduous in his attention to business" in Frederick's Place, he found time to write for the printer. Dr Smiles, in his _Memoirs of John Murray_, tells of certain pamphlets on the brightening prospects of the Spanish South American colonies, then in the first enjoyment of emancipation--pamphlets seemingly written for a Mr Powles, head of a great financial firm, whose acquaintance Disraeli had made. In the same year, apparently, he wrote a novel--his first, and never published. _Aylmer Papillon_ was the title of it, Dr Smiles informs us; and he prints a letter from Disraeli to the John Murray of that day, which indicates its character pretty clearly. The last chapter, its author says, is taken up with "Mr Papillon's banishment under the Alien Act, from a ministerial misconception of a metaphysical sonnet." About the same time he edited a _History of Paul Jones_, originally published in America, the preface of the English edition being Disraeli's first appearance as an author. Murray could not publish _Aylmer Papillon_, but he had great hopes of its boyish writer (Isaac D'Israeli was an old friend of his), "took him into his confidence, and related to him his experiences of men and affairs." Disraeli had not completed his twenty-first year when (in 1825) Murray was possessed by the idea of bringing out a great daily newspaper; and if his young friend did not inspire that idea he keenly urged its execution, and was entrusted by Murray with the negotiation of all manner of preliminaries, including the attempt to bring Lockhart in as editor. The title of the paper, _The Representative_, was Disraeli's suggestion. He chose reporters, looked to the setting-up of a printing-office, busied himself in all ways to Murray's great satisfaction, and, as fully appears from Dr Smiles's account of the matter, with extraordinary address. But when these arrangements were brought to the point of completion, Disraeli dropped out of the scheme and had nothing more to do with it. He was to have had a fourth share of the proprietorship, bringing in a corresponding amount of capital. His friend Mr Powles, whom he had enlisted for the enterprise, was to have had a similar share on the same conditions. Neither seems to have paid up, and that, perhaps, had to do with the quarrel which parted Benjamin Disraeli and John Murray before a sheet of the luckless _Representative_ was printed. Many years afterwards (1853) Disraeli took an active interest in _The Press_, a weekly journal of considerable merit but meagre fortunes.

"Vivan Grey."

At the death of the elder Benjamin (1817), his son Isaac had moved from the King's Road, Gray's Inn (now Theobald's Road), to No. 6 Bloomsbury Square. Here he entertained the many distinguished friends, literary and political, who had been drawn to him by his "Curiosities" and other ingenious works, and here his son Benjamin also had their acquaintance and conversation. In Bloomsbury Square lived the Austens, and to their house, a great resort of similar persons, Mrs Austen cordially welcomed him. Murray's friendship and associations helped him in like manner, no doubt; and thus was opened to Disraeli the younger a world in which he was to make a considerable stir. The very much smaller society of that day was, of course, more comprehensible to sight and hearing, when once you were within its borders, than the society of this. Reverberations of the gossip of St James's and Mayfair extended to Bloomsbury in those days. Yet Disraeli's range of observation must have been not only brief but limited when he sat down at twenty or twenty-one to write _Vivian Grey_. It is therefore a probable conjecture that Mrs Austen, a clever woman of the world, helped him from her knowledge. His own strongly perceptive imagination (the gift in which he was to excel every other politician of his time) and the bent of political reading and aspiration from boyhood completed his equipment; and so the wonder that so young a man in Disraeli's social position should write a book like _Vivian Grey_ is accounted for. It was published in 1826. The success of this insolently clever novel, the immediate introduction of its author to the great world, and the daring eccentricities of dress, demeanour, and opinion by which he fixed attention on himself there, have always been among the most favourite morsels of Disraeli's history. With them it began, and successive generations of inquirers into a strange career and a character still shrouded and baffling refer to them as settled starting-points of investigation. What was the man who, in such a society and with political aspirations to serve, could thrive by such vagaries as these, or in spite of them? If unaffected, what is to be thought of them as keys to character? If affected, what then? Inquiry still takes this shape, and when any part of Disraeli's career is studied, the laces and essences, the rings over gloves, the jewelled satin shirt-fronts, the guitareries and chibouqueries of his early days are never remote from memory. The report of them can hardly be doubted; and as the last relation was made (to the writer of this article) not with intent to ridicule Mr Disraeli's taste but to illustrate his conquering abilities, the story is repeated here. One of Disraeli's first friends in the world of fashion and genius was Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer. "And," said Sir Henry Bulwer ("Pelham's" brother), "we heard so much at the time of Edward's amazingly brilliant new friend that we were the less inclined to make his acquaintance." At length, however, Sir Edward got up a little dinner-party to convince the doubters. It was to meet at the early hour of those days at one of the Piccadilly hotels. "There was my brother, Alexander Cockburn, myself and (I think) Milnes; but for a considerable time no Mr Disraeli. Waiting for Mr Disraeli did not enhance the pleasure of meeting him, nor when he did arrive did his appearance predispose us in his favour. He wore green velvet trousers, a canary-coloured waistcoat, low shoes, silver buckles, lace at his wrists, and his hair in ringlets." The description of the coat is forgotten. "We sat down. Not one of us was more than five-and-twenty years old. We were all--if you will allow me to include myself--on the road to distinction, all clever, all ambitious, and all with a perfect conceit of ourselves. Yet if on leaving the table we had been severally taken aside and asked which was the cleverest of the party, we should have been obliged to say 'the man in the green velvet trousers.'" This story is a little lamp that throws much light. Here we see at their sharpest the social prejudices that Disraeli had to fight against, provocation of them carried to its utmost in every way open to him, and complete conquest in a company of young men less likely to admit superiority in a wit of their own years, probably, than any other that could have been brought together at that time.

Travel.

Soon after the publication of _Vivian Grey_, Disraeli, who is said by Froude to have been "overtaken by a singular disorder," marked by fits of giddiness ("once he fell into a trance, and did not recover for a week"), went with the Austens on a long summer tour in France, Switzerland and Italy. Returning to a quiet life at Bradenham--an old manor-house near High Wycombe, which his father had taken--Disraeli put law in abeyance and resumed novel-writing. His weakest book, and two or three other productions, brief, but in every literary sense the finest of his works, were written in the next two or three years. But for _Ixion in Heaven_, _The Infernal Marriage_, and _Popanilla_, Disraeli could not be placed among the greater writers of his kind; yet none of his imaginative books have been so little read as these. The mysterious malady continued, and Disraeli set out with William Meredith, who was to have married Sarah Disraeli, for a tour in southern Europe and the nearer East. He saw Cadiz, Seville, Granada, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Thebes; played the corsair with James Clay on a yacht voyage from Malta to Corfu; visited the terrible Reschid, then with a Turkish army in the Albanian capital; landed in Cyprus, and left it with an expectation in his singularly prescient mind that the island would one day be English. These travels must have profited him greatly, and we have our share of the advantage; not so much, however, in _The Wondrous Tale of Alroy_ or _Tancred_, or the "Revolutionary Epic" which he was inspired to write on "the windy plains of Troy," but in the letters he sent home to his sister. These letters, written with the utmost freedom and fullness to the one whose affection and intellect he trusted more than any, are of the greatest value for interpreting the writer. Together with other letters also published some time after Disraeli's death, they tell more of him than anything that can be found in print elsewhere. They show, for example, that his extraordinary exuberances were unforced, leaping by natural impulse from an overcharged source. They also show that his Oriental fopperies were not so much "purposed affectation" as Froude and others have surmised. That they were so in great part is confessed again and again in these letters, but confessed in such a way as to reveal that they were permitted for his own enjoyment of them as much as planned. The "purposed affectation" sprang from an unaffected delight in gauds of attire, gauds of fancy and expression. It was not only to startle and impress the world that he paraded his eccentricities of splendour. His family also had to be impressed by them. It was to his sober father that he wrote, at the age of twenty-six: "I like a sailor's life much, though it spoils the toilette." It is in a letter from Gibraltar to the same hand that we read of his two canes--"a morning and an evening cane"--changed as the gun fires. And the same correspondent must be told that "Ralph's handkerchief which he brought me from Paris is the most successful thing I ever wore."

Literary production.

When Disraeli returned to England in 1831, all thought of the law was abandoned. The pen of romance was again taken up--the poet's also and the politician's. In the next five years he wrote _Contarini Fleming_, the _Revolutionary Epick, Alroy, Henrietta Temple, What is He?_ (a pamphlet expository of his opinions), the _Runnymede Letters_, a _Vindication of the British Constitution_, and other matter of less note. The epic, begun in great hope and confidence, was ended in less, though its author was to the last unwilling that it should be forgotten. The novels revived the success he had with _Vivian Grey_, and restored him to his place among the brilliancies and powers of the time. The political writing, too, much of it in a garish, extravagant style, exercised his deeper ambitions, and stands as witness to the working of original thought and foresight. Both qualities are conspicuous in _What is He?_ and the _Vindication_, of which it has been truly said that in these pages he "struck the keynote to the explanations he afterwards consistently offered of all his apparent inconsistencies." Here an interpretation of Tory principles as capable of running with the democratic idea, and as called upon to do so, is ingeniously attempted. The aristocratic principle of government having been destroyed by the Reform Bill, and the House of Lords being practically "abrogated" by that measure, it became necessary that Toryism should start from the democratic basis, from which it had never been alien. The filched liberties of the crown and the people should be restored, and the nation redeemed from the oligarchies which had stolen from both. When at the beginning of all this writing Disraeli entered the political arena as candidate for High Wycombe (1832), he was nominated by a Tory and seconded by a Radical--in vain; and vain were two subsequent attempts in the autumn of 1832 and in 1834. In the first he was recommended to the electors by Daniel O'Connell and the Radical Hume. In his last candidature at Wycombe he stood on more independent ground, commending himself by a series of speeches which fully displayed his quality, though the prescience which gemmed them with more than one prophetic passage was veiled from his contemporaries. Among Disraeli's great acquaintances were many--Lyndhurst at their head--whose expectations of his future were confirmed by the Wycombe speeches. He was "thought of" for various boroughs, Marylebone among the number, but his democratic Toryism seems to have stood in his way in some places and his inborn dislike of Radicalism in others. It was an impracticable situation--no getting on from it; and so, at Lyndhurst's persuasion, as he afterwards acknowledged, he determined to side with the Tories. Accordingly, when in the spring of 1835 a vacancy occurred at Taunton, Disraeli contested the seat in the Tory interest with Carlton Club support. Here again he failed, but with enhanced reputation as a fighting politician and with other consequences good for notoriety. It was at Taunton that Disraeli fell upon O'Connell, rather ungratefully; whereupon the Liberator was roused to retort on his assailant vehemently as "a liar," and humorously as a probable descendant of the impenitent thief. And then followed the challenge which, when O'Connell declined it, was fastened on his son Morgan, and the interruption of the duel by seizure of Mr Disraeli in his bed, and his famous appearance in the Marylebone police court. He declared himself very well satisfied with this episode, but nothing in it can really have pleased him, not even the noise it made.

Enters Parliament.

Here the first period of Disraeli's public life came to an end, a period of preliminaries and flourishes, and of what he himself called sowing his political wild oats. It was a more mature Disraeli who in the general election of 1837 was returned for Maidstone as the colleague of his providential friend Mr Wyndham Lewis. Though the fortunes of the Tory party were fast reviving under Peel's guidance, the victory was denied him on this occasion; but, for once, the return of the Whigs to power was no great disappointment for the junior member for Maidstone. To gain a footing in the House of Commons was all that his confident spirit ever asked, and Froude vouches for it that he succeeded only just in time to avert financial ruin. His electioneering ventures, the friendly backing of bills, and his own expense in keeping up appearances, had loaded him with debt. Yet (mark his worldly wisdom) "he had never entangled his friends in his financial dealings. He had gone frankly to the professional money-lenders, who made advances to him in a speculation on his success": they were to get their money back with large interest or lose it altogether. Such conditions were themselves incitement enough to a prompt redemption of the promise of parliamentary distinction, even without the restless spurring of ambition. And Disraeli had another promise to redeem: that which he uttered when he told O'Connell that they would meet again at Philippi. Therefore when, three weeks after the session began, a debate on Irish election petitions gave him opportunity, Disraeli attempted that first House of Commons speech which imagination still dwells upon as something wondrous strange. That he should not have known better, even by hearsay, than to address the House of Commons in fantastic phrase from the mouth of a fantastic figure is indeed remarkable, but not that he retained self-confidence enough to tell the unwitting crew who laughed him down that a time would come when they would hear him. It was one of the least memorable of his prophecies. The speech was a humiliating but not an oppressive failure. In about a week afterwards he spoke again, which shows how little damage he felt, while the good sense, brevity, and blameless manner of the speech (on a copyright bill) announced that he could learn. And for some time thereafter he affected no importance in the House, though not as withdrawing from attention.

Mental characteristics.

Meanwhile, consciously and unconsciously, as is the way with men of genius, his mind was working upon problems of government, the magnitude, the relations and the natural developments of which he was more sensible of than any known politician of his time. "Sensible of," we say, to mark the difference between one sort of understanding and another which comes of labour and pains alone. Disraeli studied too, no doubt, reading and inquiring and applying set thought, but such means were insufficient to put into his mind all that he found there. It seems that opinions may be formed of inquiry and study alone, which are then constructive; but where intuitive perception or the perceptive imagination is a robust possession, the fruits of research become assimilative--the food of a divining faculty which needs more or less of it according to the power of divination. The better judgment in all affairs derives from this quality, which has some very covetable advantages for its possessor. His judgments may be held with greater confidence, which is an intellectual advantage; and, standing in his mind not so much an edifice as a natural growth, they cannot be so readily abandoned at the call of ease or self-interest. They may be denied assertion or even outraged for a purpose, but they cannot be got rid of,--which is a moral advantage. Disraeli's mind and its judgments were of this character. Its greatest gift was not the romantic imagination which he possessed abundantly and employed overmuch, but the perceptive, interpretative, judicial or divining imagination, without which there can be no great man of affairs. Breadth of view, insight, foresight, are more familiar but less adequate descriptions of a faculty which Disraeli had in such force that it took command of him from first to last. Although he knew and acted on the principle that "a statesman is a practical character," whose business is to "serve the country according to its present necessities," he was unable to confine his vision to the nearer consequences of whatever policy, or course of action, or group of conditions it rested on. Without effort, and even without intention probably, it looked beyond first consequences to the farther or the final outcome; and to complete the operation, the faculty which detected the remoter consequences did not allow them to remain in obscurity, but brought them out as actualities no less than the first and perhaps far more important than the first. Moreover, it did not allow him to keep silence where the remoter consequences were of that character, and ought to be provided for betimes. Of course silence was always possible. These renderings to foresight might be denied assertion either for the sake of present ease (and Disraeli's prescience of much of his country's later troubles only made him laughed at) or in deference to hopes of personal advancement. But the same divining imagination which showed him these things also showed him the near time when it would be too late to speak of them, and when not to have spoken would leave him irredeemably in the common herd of hand-to-mouth politicians. Therefore he spoke.

"Coningsby," "Sybil."

Remembrance of these characteristics--remembrance, too, that his mind, which was neither English nor European, worked in absolute detachment--should accompany the traveller through all the turns and incidents of Disraeli's long career. They are sometimes puzzling, often speculative; yet nearly all that is obscure in them becomes clear, much apparent contradiction disappears, when read by these persistent unvarying lights. The command which his idiosyncrasies had upon him is shown, for example, by reproachful speeches on the treatment of Ireland, and by a startling harangue on behalf of the Chartists, at a time when such irregularities could but damage him, a new man, where he hoped for influence and office. At about the same time his political genius directed him to open a resolute critical campaign against the Conservatism of the party he proposed to thrive in, and he could but obey. This he did in writing _Coningsby_, a novel of the day and for the day, but commended to us of a later generation not only by the undimmed truth of its character-portraits, but by qualities of insight and foresight which we who have seen the proof of them can measure as his contemporaries could not. _Sybil_, which was written in the following year (1845), is still more remarkable for the faculties celebrated in the preceding paragraph. When _Sybil_ was written a long historic day was ending in England, a new era beginning; and no eyes saw so clearly as Disraeli's the death of the old day, the birth of the new, or what and how great their differences would be. In _Coningsby_ the political conditions of the country were illustrated and discussed from the constitutional point of view, and by light of the theory that for generations before the passing of the Reform Bill the authority of the crown and the liberties of the people had been absorbed and extinguished in an oligarchic system of government, itself become fossilized and soulless. In _Sybil_ were exhibited the social relations of rich and poor (the "two nations") under this regime, and under changes in which, while the peasantry were neglected by a shoddy aristocracy ignorant of its duties, factory life and a purblind gospel of political economy imbruted the rest of the population. These views were enforced by a startling yet strictly accurate representation of the state of things in the factory districts at that time. Taken from the life by Disraeli himself, accompanied by one or two members of the Young England party of which he was the head, it was the first of its kind; and the facts as there displayed, and Disraeli's interpretation of them--a marvel of perceptive and prophetic criticism--opened eyes, roused consciences, and led direct to many reforms.

These two books, the _Vindication_, published in 1835, and his speeches up to this time and a little beyond, are quite enough to show what Disraeli's Tory democracy meant, how truly national was its aim, and how exclusive of partisanship for the "landed interest"; though he did believe the stability and prosperity of the agricultural class a national interest of the first order, not on economic grounds alone or even chiefly. And if Disraeli, possessed by these views, became aggressively insubordinate some time before Peel's proclaimed conversion to Free Trade, we can account for it on reasonable and even creditable grounds. Spite, resentment at being passed over when Peel formed the 1841 government, is one explanation of these outbreaks, and a letter to Peel, lately published, is proof to many minds that Disraeli's denial to Peel's face in 1846 that he had ever solicited office was daringly mendacious. The letter certainly reads like solicitation in the customary half-veiled form. All that can be said in doubt is that since the '41 government came into existence on the 6th of September, and the letter was written on the 5th, its interpretation as complaint of being publicly neglected, as a craving for _some_ mark of recognition, is possible. More than possible it is if Disraeli knew on the 5th (as he very well might from his friend Lyndhurst, Peel's lord chancellor) that the appointments were then complete. The pecuniary need of office, if that comes into the question, had been lightened, if not extinguished, two years before by his marriage with Mrs Wyndham Lewis. Mrs Lewis--a lady fifteen years his senior--brought him a considerable fortune which, however, was but for her life. She lived to a great age, and would gladly have lived longer, in any of the afflictions that time brings on, to continue her mere money-worth to her "Dizzy." Her devotion to him, and his devotion to her, is the whole known story of their private life; and we may believe that nothing ever gratified him more than offering her a coronet from Mr Disraeli.

Politics. 1841-67.

Disraeli made Peel's acquaintance early in his career and showed that he was proud of it. In his _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ he writes of Peel fairly and even generously. But they were essentially antipathetic persons; and it is clear that the great minister and complete Briton took no pains to understand the dazzling young Jew of whom Lyndhurst thought so much, and wished to have little to do with him. Such men make such feelings evident; and there is no reason for thinking that when, after 1841, Disraeli charged at Peel in obedience to his principles, he gave himself pain. It was not long after it had settled in office that Peel's government, the creature of an anxious Conservative reaction, began to be suspected of drifting toward Manchester. That it was forced in that direction we should say rather, looking back, for it was a time of dire distress, especially in the manufacturing districts of the north; so that in his second session Peel had to provide some relief by revising the corn laws and reducing import dues generally. His measures were supported by Disraeli, who understood that Protection must bend to the menacing poverty of the time, though unprepared for total abolition of the corn tax and strongly of opinion that it was not for Peel to abolish it. In the next session (1843) he and his Young England party took up a definitely independent role, which became more sharply critical to the end. Disraeli's first strong vote of hostility was on a coercion bill for perishing and rebellious Ireland. It was repeated with greater emphasis in the session of 1844, also in a condition-of-Ireland debate; and from that time forth, as if foreseeing Peel's course and its effect on the country party, Disraeli kept up the attack. Meanwhile bad harvests deepened the country's distress, Ireland was approached by famine, the Anti-Corn-Law League became menacingly powerful, and Peel showed signs of yielding to free trade. Disraeli's opportunity was soon to come now; and in 1845, seeing it on the way, he launched the brilliantly destructive series of speeches which, though they could not prevent the abolition of the corn-laws, abolished the minister who ended them. These speeches appeal more to admiration than to sympathy, even where the limitations of Disraeli's protectionist beliefs are understood and where his perception of the later consequences of free trade is most cordially acknowledged. That he remained satisfied with them himself is doubtful, unless for their foresight, their tremendous effect as instruments of punishment, and as they swept him to so much distinction. Within three years, on the death of Lord George Bentinck, there was none to dispute with him the leadership of the Conservative party in the House of Commons.