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

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 say, 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.
NV 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
evident sincerity 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 winningly, 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 Disraeliand Bulwer—are unquestionably
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,f, will have their me-
mories refreshed by a perusal •of these
pages •, 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 not to the
majority of our readers. It is a happy 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 satisfactory 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 ! 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. • " Hra I" 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 I!'
Saiththe 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 Win
jealous."
A fortnight later, and Ihe 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 arc duly chro:
nicicd. The success of The Crisis, with its fourteen
editions in a fort night,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 memb-
rable witticisms that adorned them, and the cruel
sarcasm that envenomed them, are the theme of iier4.
haps the happiest pages in the volume., With
what admirable di2criminntien are thoze witticisme
ueleeted, and with what a ;cunning dexterity urn
they strung together by tly; friendly band of the
I skilful biographer,
} MR. DISRAELI AND SIR ROBERT PEEL.

"During the course of the year in which Coningsby'
made its brilliant appearance, the author of Cokkingsby' I
began those audacious attacks upon Sir Robert Peel,
which may be certainly said to have prepared the way
for his ultimate downfall front 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
diseussiOn 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, nm,st
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 —hero the stab of a
sneer,--here the 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
exclaiined bitterly, in the parliameuttny 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 Gillrav or by Rowlandson. The right hon. gentleman
h;td caught the Whigs bathing, and had rum 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
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 to stick to quotation ; because,' said the
arch foe, ' he (the Premier) never quoted any passage that
had not previously received the mead of Parliamentary
approbation. Another time the house was entreated to
dethrope a dynasty of deception, by putting an end to this-
intolerlble 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, lull ,of predictions falsified,
pledges broken, calculktions that had gone wrong, and
budgets that had blown up ; and all this not relieved by a
single original thought, a single generous impulse, a single
happy expreision.'
" 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 INo marvel that the great
Minister winced under this deadly ridicule, and at last suc-
cumbed. No wonder the house learnt at leng,th tei 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, in which every sentence had the point of
gra an epim, Disraeli has magnanimously compensated
since the death of his great antagonist, by a generous tri-
bute to his genius, expressed in the language of admiration.
Yet, as Wilmot says in the comedy,—
"Crul, if I were a statesman,' I'd rather, instead,
Have the epitaph living—the epigram dead.'
How beit, those passages in, the Political Biography of Lord
George Bentinck (hereafter to be mentioned), those passages
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 peculiarity,
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. Witness
his, not merely his panegyric on Sir Robert Peel, here
especially referred to, but his noble euloo'ium 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."
Atter giving these passages, it is hardly necessary
to comment upon the merits of Mark Rochester's
style. Its graphic powers have been abundantly
evidenced in the above quotations, yet we might
add to the list with no unsparing hand. Here, forty
example, is a specimen of the humour that not-
unfrequently enlivens a description, and an evi•
dente, moreover, of the shrewd sense that cha-
racterises Mr. Rochester's political predilectione3:--

THIS 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 FebruarYt
when the hero of the hour, in place of Camille Desmoulins
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 *l' 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 ; se
noisy and yet so dull, and, to a stranger who knew
nothing at all about its inner meaninv, 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 them 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 wreatbs of immortelles, were lit up, as evening closed
in, with a plentiful sprinkling des tampions, 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, here in England ; it i*
the old British oak-tree, the growth, not of a night, but of
centuries—nourished with the dews of perpetual Reforrai,
flourishing in the free air and light of -Liberalism, rooted,
wide and deep, in the stubborn and primeval soil of Con-
t As Sir Walter Scott sings of the Highlaea
pine, through the lips of the boatmen of Roderick Phu ;--"'
'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.'
His the stalwart produce of ages, growing with the growth,
and strengthening with the strength of generation after
generation ;;scarred here and there, it is true, by the storms
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 succesoive
catastrophe, through every variety of vicissitude. mod,
under the blessing of Heaven, for the one reason alrese7
particularized—because, while bkthed all this while in the
light and air of Liberty, it has been rooted continually
f
among the iron and diedal granite of that stubborn soil 0,
Conservatisni. Striking fresh roots abroad now au'
then, as occasion seemed to require, asunderrots the
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, Fe l:
ticipating in the guidance of the destinies of the Bntist,
empire, a CeciVa Walpole, and a Peel—respresentatives
the races of the, three great Sir Roberts who, each in turn'
at different epochs in our history, were pre-eminent araonfc
the chiefs, either of the Opposition or of the Government,
under three illustrious female sovereigns. A brother oft
late (-and great) Sir Robert Peel--a collateral relative dal°
famous Sir Robert Walpole-:the seventh in direct succes'
sion from the celebrated Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of
Salisbury,himself a younger con of the yet more celebrated
Sir William Cecil, better known in our annals as Lord-
Bufghley the Lord High Treasurer—carry us back, bl
the mere force of association, , from the days of our own
gracious sovereign, through the, later years of Anne, to the
chivalrous age of our great Eliiabeth.
But we must refer our readers for further infor'
mation to -the book itself., They will there find 9-11
amazing store of inksmation, illustrated with 101
abundance of anecdotes, and interspersed with
Many a judicious comment. We are glad to fina
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 o°-
ternment, when he details to us his comprehensW
and. liberal measures of Reform
_for the coming
session. Time will prove, Among "the conjecture'
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 A
contributor to Blackwood's Magazine.
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