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Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, who proved the most devoted of wives, and who died as Viscountess Beaconsfield in 1872. Disraeli, in spite of increasing political distractions, continued to write novels-Coningsby, 1844; Sybil, 1845; and Tancred, 1847-until he became leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and could spare no more leisure for this kind of work. He was silent as an imaginative writer for nearly a quarter of a century, climbing one by one to the pinnacle of political celebrity. In 1868 he became Prime Minister for a short time. In an interval of repose Disraeli turned to literature again, and published in 1870 the novel of Lothair, the most famous book of its year. He became Prime Minister for the second time in 1874, and enjoyed a lengthy period of power, in the course of which, in 1876, he was raised to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield. The Tories fell in 1880, and Lord Beaconsfield withdrew to his estate at Hughenden, where he took up an unfinished novel, Endymion, and immediately finished it. He now lived as a country gentleman, devoted to "his peacocks, his swans, his lake, and his chalk stream," though without definitely retiring from politics. He was disappointed, however, and his energy was failing. A severe chill, acting upon gout, was fatal to him, and he died on the 19th of April 1881. He was offered a public funeral, but he had left instructions that he was to be buried beside his wife at Hughenden. Disraeli was a man of extraordinary physique, "lividly pale," with snaky clusters of jet-black hair, "eyes as black as Erebus, and the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable." In wit, in clairvoyance, and in a sort of inspired impertinence, he was without an equal in his own generation.

FROM "TANCRED."

The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The all-pervading stillness is broken by a breeze that seems to have travelled over the plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the tombs, and sighs among the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as it passes, as if it were a spirit of woe. Is it the breeze that has travelled over the plain of Sharon from the sea?

Or is it the haunting voice of prophets mourning over the city they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending fate Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but believe that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension, the great departed of Israel assemble to gaze upon the battlements of their mystic city? There might be counted heroes and sages, who need shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other lands; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are still obeyed; the monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand years, but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the teacher, whose doctrines have modelled civilised Europe; the greatest of legislators, the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of reformers; what race, extinct or living, can produce three such men as these!

The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid ; all becomes as dark as the waters of Kedron and the valley of Jehoshaphat. The tower of David merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque of Omar; Bethesda's angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street of sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the church of the Holy Sepulchre is a beacon light.

And why is the church of the Holy Sepulchre a beacon light? Why, when it is already past the neon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose, except the howl of the wild dog crying to the wilder wind: why

Peacock

is the cupola of the sanctuary illumined, though the hour has long since been numbered, when pilgrims there kneel and monks pray?

An armed Turkish guard are bivouacked in the court of the church; within the church itself, two brethren of the convent of Terra Santa keep holy watch and ward; while, at the tomb beneath, there kneels a solitary youth, who prostrated himself at sunset, and who will there pass unmoved the whole of the sacred night.

A very peculiar talent-in its fantastic nature, perhaps, more delicate and original than any of these-was that of THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK, the

learned friend and correspondent of Shelley. This interesting satirist displayed a survival of the eighteenthcentury temper in nineteenth-century forms, and thought of Voltaire when the rest of the world was thinking of Scott, whom Peacock considered "amusing only because he misrepresented everything." The new was singularly odious to him; it was only in the old, the classical, the Attic, that he could take any pleasure. The poetry of Peacock, both serious and ludicrous, has a charm of extreme elegance; but the qualities of his distinguished mind are best observed in his curious satirical or grotesque romances, seven in number, of which Headlong Hall was the first, and Nightmare Abbey doubtless the most entertaining. His latest novel, Gryll Grange, appeared so late as 1860, and Peacock outlived all his contemporaries, He dying at a great age in 1866. totally disregarded English traditions of romance-writing, and followed the eighteenth-century type of French conte. In his eccentric, discursive way, he is the most ingenious English writer of the age, and after almost passing into oblivion, he is once more becoming a prominent favoriute with readers of fastidious taste.

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Thomas Love Peacock

From a Photograph

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was the only child of Samuel Peacock, a London merchant, and his wife, Sarah Love. He was born at Weymouth on the 18th of October 1785. His father dying in 1788, the child was brought up at Chertsey by his grandfather and his mother. He was educated for a little while at a private school at Englefield, but attended no public school or university. With the consent of his mother, he educated himself, becoming one of the first classical scholars of his time. In 1808 he was appointed secretary to Sir Home Popham, and in 1812 his friendship with Shelley began. He had already published several volumes of no importance; his real talent was now revealed to him, and he issued Headlong

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This was, without any exception, the most beasty.
beautiful sight. " I ever witnessed! but I saw it with
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Hall in 1816; this was followed by Melincourt in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey in 1818. In 1819 Peacock secured a place in the East India House, and in 1823 settled at Lower Halliford, which was his home for the remainder of his long life. He published the remarkable poem called Rhododaphne in 1818, and other novels, Maid Marian, 1822; The Misfortunes of Elphin, 1829; Crochet Castle, 1831; and after thirty years' retirement, Gryll Grange in 1861. All the works here mentioned appeared in the first instance anonymously. Peacock died on the 23rd of January 1866.

FROM "MAID MARIAN."

"The abbot, in his alb arrayed," stood at the altar in the abbey-chapel of Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek, rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed, to solemnize the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert Fitz-Ooth, Earl of Locksley and Huntingdon. The abbey of Rubygill stood in a picturesque valley, at a little distance from the western boundary of Sherwood Forest, in a spot which seemed adapted by nature to the retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with excellent game. The bride, with her father and attendant maidens, entered the chapel, but the earl had not arrived. The baron was amazed, and the bridemaidens were disconcerted. Matilda feared that some evil had befallen her lover, but felt no diminution of her confidence in his honour and love. Through the open gates of the chapel she looked down the narrow road that wound along the side of the hill; and her ear was the first that heard the distant trampling of horses, and her eye was the first that caught the glitter of snowy plumes, and the light of polished spears. "It is strange," thought the baron, "that the earl should come in this martial array to his wedding"; but he had not long to meditate on the phenomenon, for the foaming steeds swept up to the gate like a whirlwind, and the earl, breathless with speed, and followed by a few of his yeomen, advanced to his smiling bride. It was then no time to ask questions, for the organ was in full peal, and the choristers were in full voice.

The fourth decade of this century was, on the whole, a period of rest and exhaustion in the literature of this country. In poetry it was marked by the disappearance into silence of those who had done most to make the age what it was, a time of progress and revolt. The younger poets were dead, their elder brethren were beginning to pass away, and those who survived the longest, in particular Wordsworth and Landor, continued to add to the bulk, but not signally to the value of their works. Yet Tennyson, little observed or praised, was now producing the most exquisite and the most brilliantly varied of his lyrics. Discouraged at his reception, he had published, when this chapter closes, nothing since 1833. The solitary young poet who deserved to be mentioned in the same breath, Elizabeth Barrett, was famous before 1840, but not for those pieces of which her riper taste chiefly approved, or those for which posterity is still admiring her after sixty years. In this lull of the poetic world the voice of Robert Browning was yet unheard, though it had spoken out in Paracelsus and Strafford. But the sportive fancy of THOMAS HOOD, already nearing the close of his brief life, was highly appreciated, and PRAED, though still uncollected, had left a splendid memory to his friends.

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