The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Mr. Disraeli's Novels. Cheap Edition.
The handiest edition ever yet published of this
brilliant series of fictions, is the one just now be-
gining to be issued from the press by the Messrs.
Frederick Warne and Company, of Covent
Garden. And not only is it the handiest edition, but
it is the cheapest also, and the prettiest—printed,
as it is, upon really beautiful paper, in the clearest
and handsomest type. It signalises in a remarkable
manner the conspicuous, or rather, let us say, the ex-
ceptional, manner in which the author of these popu-
lar works stands forth among his contemporaries in
the enjoyment of two distinct reputations—his repu-
tation in politics and his reputation in literature. Asa
Novelist he floated into popularity, one might say,
upon the surface of the creme de la creme. As a
Statesman he has won his way (in the teeth of a very
formidable opposition) twice to power, and perma-
manently, so long at least as he shall remain in the
House of Commons, to his present lofty position
as the Leader of the Country Party, as the Leader
of the country gentlemen of England, or, as Mr.
Gladstone remarked the other day, with such an
ineffable sneer (a sneer of both look and
voice so intense in its acrimony as almost to
have the aspect of malignity)—as " Leader of
the Tory Party, forsooth !" Mr. Disraeli's twofold
reputation—here as Novelist, there as Statesman—
being perfectly distinct the one from the other :
though brought into harmony somehow (when
he was just; in midLcareer, as one may say) by
the drift and purport of the two best and ablest
among all his novels, namely his literary master-
piece " Coningsby," and the next best among
his fictions, " Sybil, or the Two Nations."
Only that his otherwise widely contrasting re-
pute as a Novelist and Politician are in this
manner linked together by the inner significance of
" Sybil" and " Coningsby"—his career in Parlia-
ment, and his career out of it, stand entirely apart
the one from the other. Turn to the first volume
of this new and popular edition of the well-known
fictions written years and years ago by the now
leader of her Majesty's Opposition—turn to this
newly issued cheap edition of " The Young Duke "
and open it anywhere you please, with a view to
illustrate the accuracy or the inaccuracy of the re-
maiks we have just now jotted down, namely as to
the perfectly distinct footing upon which his repute
rests, here as Novelist there as Politician—meaning,
in his instance, in the latter capacity, as both Orator
and Statesman. Opening " The Young Duke" say
at p. 215—it happens to be at the Fifth Chapter of
the Fourth Book—we read, after a casual remark
to the effect that " there are some things which
your miserable moderate incomes cannot command,
and which one might like to have—for instance,
a baud!"—we read this exquisite piece of almost im-
pertinence, we might call it, in the way of a refined
aspiration —" A complete, a consummate band in uni-
forms of uncut white velvet, with a highly wrought
gold button just tipped with a single pink topaz,
seems to me the TO KaMv. When we die, Band'
will be found impressed upon our heart, like
Frigate' on the core of Nelson ['s]. The negroes
should have their noses bored as well as their
ears, and hung with rings of rubies. The kettle-
drums should be of silver." And so on ! Fancy
this—[though certainly it was in his hot youth
when George the Fourth was king]—from the for-
midable and authoritative Leader nowadays of
Her Majesty's Opposition, or, again to quote Mr.
Gladstone's incomprehensible sneer, the Leader
"of the Tory party, forsooth!" In other
words, from one who is now about the weightiest
speaker in the House of Commons, and who
has during this present session been virtually
so far the Leader of the House, that he has, time
and again been the regulator or arbiter in regard
to its proceedings, in the way of extracting those
proceedings from the jumble into which they
have been brought by the petulance or perversity
of—at the very least it must be said by the
glaring want of tact and of discretion manifested
by—the nominal or official Leader of the House,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The author of
The Young Duke, of Henrietta Temple, of Vivian
Grey, of Contarini Fleming, seems to us a totally
different man, somehow, from the weighty, authori-
tative, deliberate leader of the Conservatives, the
formidable analyst of the policy of the Govern-
ment-that-is, the probable leader in the House of
Commons for a third time, before very much longer,
of the Government-that-is-to-be—and that not so
very remotely There is the same difference in
the character of the two men (as they actually
seem to be)—one is almost induced to believe--
as between that charmingly pencilled head by
Chalon, comely, poetic, ringletted, and the thought-
ful, inscrutible countenance of the same man, as he
sits there nightly in the House of Commons at the
centre of the front bench of the Opposition.

Stacke's Story of the American War, 1861-1865.
One Vol., pp. 328. 'Warne and Co.

Illustrated by a map of the battle-fields and by a
double frontispiece, containing within it companion
portraits of the two great Commanders-in-Chief---
the one of the North or Federals, the other of the
South or Confederates, to wit, General Grant and
General Lee—this admirably succinct and (so far
as can, in reason, be expected from any one) dis-
passionate epitome of the leading events of one of
the bloodiest wars upon record, will be found, upon
the whole, to be so perfectly reliable in regard to
its facts, and so admirably clear in regard to its de-
scriptions, that it not only takes its place at once
upon our bookshelves as an authority upon the sub-
ject of which it treats, but appears to us to be tole-
rably secure of being often and often consulted, as
such, as occasion may require. The author begins
with the beginning and ends with end. He does
not content himself and bewilder his readers by a
succession of disjointed recollections. The narra-
tive is, from first to last, sequential and con-
secutive. He takes us with him from event to
event, from incident to incident, chronologically.
lie lays all the best historians of the great Civil
War of which he treats under contribution. And
he does this avowedly and indiscriminately. Be-
ginning with what he speaks of as monstrum horren-
dam et ingens—adding, however, when he so speaks
of it " indispensable to any historian of the war"
---"Putnam's Rebellion Record." Literally furnish-
ing (that Record) the raw materials of history—in the
particulars tf that hideous carnage, there stored up
in eight ponderous volumes, numbering, each of
them, seven hundred pages octavo. Better than
Putnam's Record, however, though hardly more
valuable as a repertory of facts, there have been at
Mr. Stacke's command also for consultation—
the Diary of Dr. Russell, the famous Times'
correspondent " Captain Pen," as we well
remember to have dubbed him in The Sun
during the Crimean war, when he was winning his
spurs as a newspaper correspondent before Sebas-
topol—Pollard's " First and Third Year of the
War"—Dabney's " Life of Stonewall Jackson"—
Chesney's " Campaigns of Maryland and Virginia"
—Freemantle's " Gettysburg Campaign"—and so
forth, through all that last voluminous addition to
the annals of modern warfare. As giving us the
epitome of all the more memorable events of the
Great FourYears' Civil War in the United States so-
called, when those States were riven in twain—into
North and South, into Federals and Confederates—
the history of those terrible four years of that dreadful
civil war, as it has here been penned by Henry
Stacke, is as compact as Mignet's Annals of the
great French Revolution, and in its wAy almost
as enthralling. Beginning with the judicial mur-
der, shall we call it, of Old John Brown, it ends at
a period almost immediately after the cruel assassi-
nation of Abraham Lincoln, that gaunt Rail-
splitter-turned President, who—as Nero fiddled while
Rome was burning—was wont to crack his jokes
imperturbably all through those ghastly four years
of slaughter, of a slaughter so portentous in its
magnitude, that it is hardly an exaggeration to
speak of it as unparalleled.

WARNE'S BIJOU BOOKS have recently had added
to them, as a comprehensive series of miniature
guides—hither and thither, to this accomplishment,
to that, and to the other, and even to passing amuse-
ments—," The A B C of Swimming," " The A B C

of Billiards," and " London in Miniature—the
latter, however, we cannot but regard as—of the
whole series—the least satisfactory, because, we
presume, necessarily, the most superficial.
Talk of the " Iliad" in a Nutshell !
Fancy London, with its stupendous labyrinth
of streets, covering ever so many square miles, and
peopled by more than three millions of inhabitants)
having its ins and outs, its highways and byewaYsf
and all the rest of it, packed together in any waY
otherwise than superficially within the compass of
less than one hundred pages, to be precise, in exactly
96 pages, and those too the pages of a volume so
small in its dimensions that it could be easily hidden
away in one's waistcoat pocket ! The folding maP
is the best part of it.

anal

HER MAJESTY.

CLIVED EN, June
_l.

The Queen, accompanied by Princess Helena,
went out yesterday morning, and also in the after-
noon.
Princess Louise drove out in the afternoon.
Prince Leopold went out driving.

~ -

THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO SCOTLAND.—OIIiCiaI in"
formation has been received at Balmoral that the Queen i 5
to be there for a short visit on the 14th of next month.--
Edinburgh Evening Courant.
THE PRINCESS MARY OF CAMBRIDGE.—Her Ma-
jesty the Queen will attend the nuptials of her Royal
Highness Princess Mary of Cambridge and Prince Teck•
The ceremony, as already announced in The Sun, will take
place in Kow Church, on Tuesday, 12th inst., and the ofn"
cials of the Lord Chamberlain's department have received
instructions to prepare the sacred building for the mar"
riage.
DRATII OF THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.---Wre
announce with much regret the death of the Earl of
Chesterfield, which occurred shortly after 10 o'clock las
night. He was the only son of Philip, fifth earl, by his
second marriage with Lady Henrietta Thyune, a daughter
of the first Marquis of Bath, He was born on the 23d
May, 1805, and consequently was in his 62d year. Ile
married in Nov., 1830, the Hon. Anne Elizabeth Forester'
eldest daughter of Cecil Weld, first Lord Forester, by
whom he leaves a son and daughter—Lord Stanhope,
M.P. for South Nottinghamshire, formerly in the Hors°
Guards; and Lady Evelyn, married to the Earl of Cer-
WI.

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