United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Disraeli's ear was always open to me during the struggles for the Intercolonial Railway as a means, and the Confederation of the British Provinces in America as the great end, of our efforts.
Disraeli's great ladies and lords won't do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All's well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for those fools.
Mill took a prominent part in the discussions on the Metropolitan Poor Bill; and he spoke on various other topics, his introduction of the Women's Electoral Disabilities Removal Bill being in some respects the most notable: but his chief action was with reference to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, several clauses of which he criticised and helped to alter in committee.
Lansbury had worked himself up into a state of frenzy and, facing the Prime Minister, he shouted, 'You are beneath my contempt! Call yourself a gentleman! You ought to be driven from public life." I cannot remember any scene like this in Disraeli's novels. The House of Commons used to be called the best club in Europe. But that, says the Conservative critic, was before the members were paid.
Reid the manuscript, he said, "It will please neither Disraeli's friends nor his foes. But it is at least an honest book." He heard, with more amusement than satisfaction, that it had pleased Gladstone. For the political estimate of a modern and Parliamentary statesman Froude lacked some indispensable qualifications.
When, in 1866, the Conservatives came into office, Disraeli's position as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House necessarily brought him into a closer relation with the Sovereign. Two years later Lord Derby resigned, and Victoria, with intense delight and peculiar graciousness, welcomed Disraeli as her First Minister. But only for nine agitated months did he remain in power.
He prosed along, however, until the House adjourned for dinner, and Disraeli's opportunity was for the meantime lost. He left the House at the hour of adjournment and did not return until about one o'clock in the morning. When at last he rose, he entered upon a long tale which at first seemed to have no bearing whatever upon any business the House could possibly have in contemplation.
He adhered to some of his principles that of the value of representative institutions, for instance with a faith which was singularly literal; his views upon religion were uncritical to crudeness; he had no sense of humour. Compared with Disraeli's, his attitude towards life strikes one as that of an ingenuous child.
A clear sweet humor and blitheness of heart blend in this romance. What is called its artificial tone is not insincerity; it is the play of an artist conscious of his skill and revelling in it, even while his hand and his heart are deeply in earnest. Werther is a romance, Disraeli's Wondrous Tale of Alroy is a romance, but they belong to the realm of Beverley and Julia in Sheridan's Rivals.
"There was much cause for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and relieved him of many burdens.
Word Of The Day