The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-20 00:00:00

THE NEW POLITICAL WORK.

The Derby. Ministry t A Series qf Cabinet Pie-
lutes. By Mark Rochester. Routiedge and Co.
Few Cabinets afford a better series of " studies"
for the painter, or one more qualified to attract
the inquiring gaze of the people at large than the
Cabinet of Lord Derby. Opinions may differ re-
specting them politically, but as subjects of per-
sonal interest the Ministry certainly comprises in
its number some among the most popular men of
the .generation. The Stanleys, father and son,
are individually objects of very general interest,
and to a certain extent of very cordial admiration.
The authors of " Pelham" and " Vivian Grey" have
each in his time attracted no small share of the
popular attention, and now, to the surprise of the
matter-of-fact cavillers at the business capabilities
of literary men, side by side at the same council
board they have in no small degree enhanced the
brilliancy of their former reputation. Such
men, as we have said, regarded individually,
are happy subjects for the artist's hand,
and a felicitous delineator they have met with in
the person of Mark Rochester, one gifted with the
hand and eye of the true artist, one who can detect
in a glance and portray in a sentence the peculiarities
of a character or the tendency of a career. It is,
moreover, no mere outline portraiture that he pre-
sents us with—the men themselves pass in review
before us, each distinct and lifelike, an individual
and an individuality. For example, how vivid and
actual is the following description of the Premier
in the House of Lords.
" LORD DERBY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
" Nothing is more strikingly characteristic at once of the
whole genius, and 'temperament of Lord Derby, than his
manner in the House of Peers upon the night of some great
discussion—upon the occasion, let us Aay, of one of his
important Ministerial statements. Every one is in expec-
tation. The. building is comparatively crowded—the Lords
in unusual attendance the Commons clustered below the
bar, strangers grouped upon the steps of the throne, or to
the right and left upon the floor of the house behind the
woolsack. Although the Premier is seated, in the midst
of his colleagues, upon the front Treasury bench, he among
them all is at once readily distinguishable. You recognise
him at once by the watchful glance—that frequent look of
vivid and vigilant observation. If you mark him keenly
before he rises, moreover, you fail not to note the nervous
anxiety betrayed in his every lineament, in the compression
of the firm lip and the knitting of the broad forehead.
IV hen at length, amid the breathless silence of the assem-
bly, he has gained his feet, how, through the clear and
unstudied exordium, he rapidly, yet by imperceptible gra-
dations, wins upon the sympathy of his audience by his
evidentsincerity and earnestness. Later on, when he has
passed the outskirts •of his argument, and has fairly
warmed to his theme, all the more genial qualities of his
mind become apparent, shining out winninsly, delightfully,
playfully, with an air of exhilaration. It is a vivacity with
him ' ever young'i in its easy animation. Yet, suddenly
in the midst of this, if he is desirous at any moment of re-
verting to a more serious tone, of recalling himself and his
hearers to a mood of gravity befitting some impressive and
emphatic declaration—his look, his voice, his bearing are
instantaneously invested with the dignity of the senator
and the statesman. The management of his harmonious
voice, above all, is throughout marked in every turn and
inflection by an almost perfect art, and a nearly matchless
dexterity ; more especially, as we have heard it inimitably
described, when—upon occasion—it is so managed that 'the
cadence falls like the running bullet in a loaded bludgeon.'
And, peculiarly noticeable in all these orations of the Pre-
mier, from the first syllable uttered to the ringing close of
the peroration, the language is always so pure and
idiomatic, so wonderfully terse and translucent I"
The sketch of the Prime Minister has of course
the place of honour in the volume, and is one of the
best of the series. But the two literary biographies
—those of Disraeli and Bulwer—are unque3tionably
the most interesting—the most elaborate in details,
the most graphic in description. The various
masterpieces of the two novelist statesmen are se-
parately analysed and with much critical discrimi-
nation. We doubt, in fact, if any single work of
the slightest importance, written by either, is not
here set down and commented upon. The admirers
of " Vivian Grey" and " Venetia," of " Pel-
ham " and " Devereux," will have their me-
mories refreshed by a perusal of these
pagei ; while the later and the yet more
valuable achievements of their authors—
" Coningsby" and " The Caxtons," receive their due
meed of unstinted admiration. The following anec-
dote is new to ourselves, and we doubt Rot to the
majority, of our readers. It is a hippy specimen
of Mark Rochester's style, and an evidence that his
materials are not second-hand
FIRST NIGHT OF "THE LADY OF LYONS."

" It so happened that upon the night rendered memor-
able in dramatic history by the first appearance of The
Lady of Lyons' (anonymously), Buiwer was detained in
the House of Commons by a discussion upon the ballot, a
debate in which he himself took part that evening, by the
delivery of one of the most effective speeches through which
he had, as yet, won the applause of Parliament.
" Hurrying from the house, while there are yet ringing
in his ears the cordial cheers which greeted the peroration
of that successful harangue, he encounters in the doorway.
of St. Stephen's—sauntering in, fresh from the playhouse,
whither Buiwer himself is wending his way, in search of
tidings as to the fate of the new play—another member,
also a brother dramatist. question and answer exchanged
-(the latter eminently satigfactmy as to the prospective
triumph of the piece, upon the last scene of which the cur-
tain had not yet fallen)—quoth the informant, the friendly
M.P., who was also a playwright, addressing himself to
the unsuspected and unrevealing author of ' The Lady of
Lyons,' and speaking of the new drama with a
constitutionally flushed visage and a genial air of super-
cilious patronage—" Hm I Yes ; it's very well indeed
—for that'sort of thing." On to the theatre goes
the orator-dramatist' arriving immediately before the com-
pletion of his second triumph that evening, precisely at the
same moment when Claude makes his appearance upon the
stage as one of the heroic colonels in the army of Napo-
leon. The fifth act terminates triumphantly, and the cur-
tain descends amidst a general storm of acclamation. The
author is called for vociferously ; but no author presents
himself to the eager audience to receive the ovation and
bow his acknowledgments. "Hm 1" says Buiwer, pro-
bably shrugging his shoulders at the moment, with a plea-
sant recollection enough of his house of Commons acquaint-
ance, "Yes : it's very well indeed—for that sort of thing 1"
Saith the Countess of Blessington—from whose box he has
just hurried, in the hope of being (as the divisionlist
showed him to have been the next morning) in time for the
division—" It is the first time I have ever seen him
jealous."
"A fortnight later, and the authorship of "The Lady of
Lyons" was formally acknowledged upon the playbills."
But the biographer does not forget that his sub-
jects are politicians as well as literary men, and
their labours in the political world are duly chro-
nicled. The success of The Crisis, with its frarteen
editions in a fortnight,is as conspicuous in Sir Edward
LyttOn's career as the triumph of " The Lady of
Lyons ;" while in the record of Mr Disraeli, his
speeches in the House of Commons, the memo-
rable witticisms that adorned them, and the cruel
sarcasm thatenvenomed them, arc the theme of per-
haps the happiest pages in the volume. With
what admirable discrimination are those witticisms
selected, and with what a cunning dexterity are
they strung together by the friendly hand of the
skilful biographer.

mn. DISRAELI AND SIR ROBERT PEEL

"During the course of the year in which 'Coningsby'
made its brilliant appearance, the author of Coningsby'
began those audacious attacks upon Sir Robert Peel,
which may be certainly said to have prepared the way
for his ultimate downfall from the command of what
was, nevertheless, in truth, at first, one of the most
powerful and, without doubt, at last, one of the most
popular of all our modern administrations. The daring
onslaught thus made by Disraeli upon that authoritative
leader of the house,—that chief of a strong, apparently
impregnable Government, then the most practised among
living debaters, one whose perfect mastery of all the arts of
discussion was such, that his assailant has since written of
him emphatically, he played upon the House of Commons.
like an old fiddle'—the defiant, single-handed, unflinching
onslaught 'thus adventured upon by Disraeli, in 1844, must
ever remain upon record as one of the most surprising in-
cidents in the 'annals of the British Parliament. The
missiles hurled by the assailant, with an aim that seldom,
if ever, missed, were each as slight apparently, but as potent
as a pebble of the Terebinthine valley. A deadly irony, a
barbed sarcasm, a withering ridicule,—here the stab of a
sneer,—here tho thrust of a taunt,—here the blow of an-
imputation. In a single sentence Disraeli sometimes struck
to the right and to the left, at the domineering leader of the.
Commons, 'Sir Robert Peel, and at the despotic leader of
the Lords' the Duke of Wellington. Another place,' he
exclaimed bitterly, in the parliameutark phrase signifying
the House of. Peers—' another place may be drilled into a
guard-room, and the House-of Commons may be degraded
into a vestry: The principal, almost the exclusive object
upon which, with a view to its • demolition, he plied
all the keen and polished weapons of his satirical
armoury, session after session, was the overshadowing
reputation of the one dominant statesman on the
Treasury bench in the popular assembly, one until
then unassailed, and by many deemed unassailable.
Several of the gibes then directed against Sir Robert are as
famous, as ridiculous, as laughter-moving as a caricature
by Gillray or'by Rowlandson. ' The right hon. gentleman
had caught the Whigs bathing, and had run away with
their clothes.' The great Minister's solemn array of argu-
ments he coolly degraded into so many fallacies based upon
teakettle precedents. Peel himself was flagrantly dubbed
a great Parliamentary middleman.' It was impossible
even for his devoted partisans and personal adherents to
listen and preserve a grave countenance. One while Sir
Robert was earnestly recommended, by the implacable and
relentless wit, to stick to quotation; because,' said the
arch foe, he (the Premier) never quoted any passage that
had not previously received the meed of Parliamentary
approbation.' Another time, the house was entreated to
dethrone a dynasty of deception, by putting an end to this
intolerable yoke of official despotism and Parliamentary
imposture.' The speeches of Sir Robert Peel, as reported
in Hansard,' were summarily characterised as Dreary
pages of interminable talk, full of predictions falsified,
pledges broken, calculations that had gone wrong, and
budgets that had blown up i and all this not relieved by a
single original thought, a single generous impulse, a single
happy expression.'
" The political tactics of his Government were epitomised
wth a subtle and exquisite wit, as A system so matter-
of-fact, yet so fallacious—taking in everybody, though every-
body knew he was deceived ; a system so mechanical yet so
Machiavelian, that he could hardly say what it was except
a sort of humdrumhocuspocus,:in which the order of the day
was moved to take in a nation !' No marvel that the great
Minister winced under this deadly ridicule, and at last suc-
cumbed. No wonder the house learnt at length to recog-
nise in the ex-member for Maidstone the most brilliant
satirist and one of the most gifted and daring debaters
within the walls of the legislature. For the acerbity of

these attacks, hi every sentence had the point of
an epigram, Disraeli has magnanimously compensated
since the death of his great antagonist, by a generous tri-
bute to his 0-nil" expressed in the language of admiration.
Yet; as Wilmot says iti tho comedy,—

"Gad, if t Were a `statesman,' I'd rather, instead,
Have the epitaph living—the epigram dead.'
Howbeit, those passages. in the Political Biography of Lord
George Bentinck (hereafter to be mentioned), those passaged
in which the character of Sir Robert Peel is discriminated,
are scarcely less admirable in truth than the Portions of the
same work relating to the gallant-hearted and chivalrous
leader of the Protectionists. If there be one peculiaritYt
however, more conspicuous than another in the tempera'
ment of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is that
of his possessing a generous capacity for the magnanimous
appreciation of his Parliamentary antagonists. Witnes4
taus, not merely his panegyric on Sir Robert Peel, here
especially referred to, but his noble eulogium on Lord Pal-
merston in one of the . chapters of Tancred,' and his
graceful but earnest encomium on Mr. Hume in the earlier
pages of his latest composition."

- 7
A.ner giving these passages, it is hardly necessary
to comment upon the merits of Mark Rochester '•
style. Its graphic powers have been abundantly
evidenced in the above quotations, yet we might
add to the list with no unsparing hand. Here, for
example, is a specimen of the humour that not
unfrequently enlivens a description, and an evi-
dence, moreover, of the shrewd sense that cha-
racterises Mr. Rochester's political predilections:--

THE TREE OF LIBERTY.
" Any one who will call to mind, vividly, the earlier in-
cidents of the French revolution—the revolution, we mean,
not of 1789, nor yet of 1830, but that of 1848—the tumults
of neither October, nor of July, but those of February,
when the hero of the hour, in place of Camille Desmouliu
the crack-brained, or of Armand Carrel the transcendental,
was another and a far more glorious and chivalric dreamer
of dreams, Alphonse de Lamartine—may remember a cer-
tain queer, little, fantastic ceremonial that was then for
some time a matter of rather frequent recurrence. This
was nothing more than the planting of a small shrub,
generally a sapling of the most hopeless delicacy of consti-
tution, somewhere in the middle of a place, or on one of
the quays of the Seine, or at the crossing of two of the
great boulevards. Had our dear old friend Mr. Evelyn
been among the number of our own contemporaries, in-
stead of living as he did in the days of the dismal Puritans
and the Merry Monarch, he must infallibly, if only as the
author of Sylva.' have very carefully (after the fashion
of Captain Cuttle) made a note of it in his diary, whenever
he came across one of those extraordinary exhibitions of
popular zeal in the cultivation of the science of horticulture.
It was so mystical a proceeding from first to last ; so
noisy and yet so . dull, and, to a stranger who knew
nothing at all about its inner, meaning, so utterly incom-
prehensible. ,
" A multitude of citizens took part in each performance,
either actively or as spectators, all of them in a high state
of excitement, most of theta joining in the choral refrain of
the Marseillaise. There were dances about the tree when
it was planted ; civic processions marched four abreast
round it as though it had been some triumphal monument ;
its branches fluttered with tri-coloured streamers, were hung
with wreaths of immortelles, were lit up, as evening closed
in; with a plentiful sprinkling des lampions; the little oil
globules familiar to the frequenters of Vauxhall. Yet the
next morning, and for many days afterwards, there stood
the poor little sapling in the midst of an universal solitude
an object of momentary curiosity, perhaps, every now and
then, to some vagrant dog; an occasional standing-point
for the cocoa-seller, where he pitched his little tin-temple
and clattered his little tin bell to allure the more thirsty Of
the foot passengers. There it stood, the miserable shadow
of its recent splendour, shivering and withering, draggled
and woe-begone, looking for all the world like something
as nearly as possible midway between the spectral shade of
a Christmas tree and the ghost of a Maypole.
"It was the Tree of Liberty. More than that, it was
a standing evidence that trees of liberty are not to be
transplanted.
" One we ourselves have also, hese in, England ; it is
the old British oak-tree, the growth, not of a night, but of
centuries—nourished with the dews of perpetual Reform,
flourishing in the free air and light of Liberalism,rootedt
wide and deep, in the stubborn and primeval soil of Con-
servatism. As Sir Walter Scott sings of. the. Highland
pine, through the lips of the boatmen of Roderick Dhu
'Mooed in the rifted rock,
Proof to the tempest's shock.
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow :
Heaven send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gaily to burgeon and broadly to grow.'
It is the stalwart produce of ages, growing with the growthand strengthening with the strength of generation after
generation; scarred here and there, it is true, by the stows.
that have passed over it, shaken by the thunder, seared bY,
the lightning, but loftier and grander, and more vigorous
through all the lapse of time, through each successive
catastrophe, through every variety of vicissitude. And,
under the blessing of Heaven. for the one reason already
particularized—because, while bathed all this while in the
light and air of Liberty, it has been rooted continuallY
among the iron and da3dal granite of that stubborn soil Of
Conservatism. Striking fresh roots abroad every now and
then as ocoasionseemed to require, roots riving asunderthe
rocky obstructions they penetrated, and taking a yet firmer
grip than ever of their ample and solid foundations."
Here again is another out of the multitude of
curious facts, that startle the reader into surprised
attention :

' THE THREE SIR ROBERTS.
" Colleagues of a self-made statesman like Mr. Disraeli,
there are seated together in this distinguished Cabinet, par-
ticipating in the guidance of the destinies of the British:
empire, a Cecil, a Walpole, and a Peel—respresentatives of
the races of the three great Sir Roberts who, each in turn,
at different epochs in our history, were pre-eminent among
the chiefs, either of the Opposition or of the Government,
under three illustrious female sovereigns. A brother ofthe
late (and great) Sir Robert Peel—a collateral relative of the
famous Sir Robert Walpole—the seventh in direct succes-
sion from the celebrated Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of
Salisbury, himself a younger son of the yet more celebrated
Sir William Cecil, better known in our annals as Lord
Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer—carry us back, by
the mere force of association, from the days of our own
gradious sovereign, through the later years of Anne, to the
chivalrous age of our great Elizabeth.'
But.we must refer our readers for further infor-
mation to the book itself. They will there find an
amazing store of infcrination, illustrated with an
abundance of anecdotes, and interspersed with
many, a judicious comment. We are glad to find
Mark Rochester, with all his interest in the Mini-
stry, is a true Reformer. Gladly would we be-
lieve he is speaking as the mouthpiece of the Go-
vernment, when he details to us his comprehensive
and liberal measures of Reform for the coming
session. Time will prove. Among the conjectures
as to the real authorship of this well-timed pub-
lication—for Mark Rochester is evidently a pseudo-
nym—the Morning Herald fixes it upon an hon•
and learned member of the Legislature, famous as
contributor to Blackwood'e Magazine.

point of
iponsate.tl
emus.mirat ion.

y of Lod
passages,
iminated,
crtis of the
hivalrens
cuharity,
tempera-
it is that
lanitnouti
Witness
'eel, here
.ord Pal-
and his
he earlier

ccessar7
.-hester
tndantly
might
Pere, for
hat not
an ell-

Lat cha-
tions:—

arlier
in-
we mean,
e tumults
February,
:s,smoulins
endental,
c dreamer
ber a cer-

then for
ce. This
ll shrub,
of consti-
n one of
0 of the
Evelyn
Ivies, in-
Puritans
ly as the
) fashion
whenever
bitions of
rticulturo.
last ; so
7ho knew
Ly

formance,
high state
refrain of
tree when
u abreast
onument ;
were hung
ing closed
3 little oil

Yet the
sere stood
solitude
now and
ling point
tin temple
thirsty of
le shadow
dragglei
something
a shade of

at, it Was
❑ot to be

and ; it is
'ht, but of
Reform/
m, rooted/
1 of con-
Highland
Dhu

be grewthf
6tion after
the storms•
seared by
) vigorous
successive
de. And/
on already
bile in the
ontinuallY
orn soil of
y now and
sunder the
yet firmer
)ns."

titude of
mrprised

Disraeli,
binet, par-
he British
ntatives of
311 in turn,
ent among
vernment,
)they of the
ttive of the
2ct sueces-
;t Earl of
celebrated
as Lord
; back, by

our ewe
me, to the

ler infor-
e find an
with an
;ed with
Ld to find
he Mini-
d we be-
' the Go-
•ehensive

) coming
njectures
ied pub-
L pseudo-
L an hon.