he is very much beloved, and I know of no | ideas, but I never could arrange mine. one who with such talents is so unaffected They were always in confusion, and always and sincere, or who, with such personal will be, I am afraid. I will try to make abuse as he has suffered, could be so cheer- something of them, however. ful and so firm. His politics are strong against the Quarterly Review. I do not, my dear sir, at all ask you to review his book unless you are disposed to do it, from reading it, as though it were a book put into your hands by a stranger. Keats is gone to Italy. I did not see him before he left London, nor has he, I believe, yet written to England. Before your review of his book I had said that I would rather employ his poems as a test (to ascertain any person's liking for poetry) than, perhaps, the writings of any man living. I am pleased to see this opinion confirmed by you. There are one or two things in the review which had struck me, and which I shall now set down as incontrovertible. Keats was, I believe, better when I am ever, dear sir, your very faithful his friend who accompanied him wrote and obliged servant, J. H. REYNOLDS. from the Downs. We have been illuminating here, and we shall now have ad A little later in the same year Proc-dresses and petitions, I suppose, out of number. I think I ought to write an ode. tor himself writes on very much the But to whom? same subjects, though he pays a higher tribute to Keats's poetical powers. 25 Store Street, Bedford Square, Nov. 13, 1820. MY DEAR SIR, I received your very kind letter only this morning, and I hasten to reply to it, sending you at the same time nearly all that I have scribbled about Tragedy and so forth. Pray endeavor to like it as well as you can; but I know and feel how kindly you are disposed towards me. What I have done has cost me a little trouble, but I shall go on now like wildfire. I generally write very fast (too fast), and when once certain that you do not dislike what I have done I shall go on well. have read over and over (and thought, too, on) our great old-fashioned dramatists, and have merely to pick up from my recollection what is already in my head, though I cannot at once turn to it. I have heard and read about the arrangement of one's I Thank you for all the kind things you say of me. "Almost dost thou persuade to be a Whig. Your kindness is I more convincing than another's logic. shall at least recollect it longer (and have it more by heart) than the most ingenious of arguments. My dear sir, pray think me what I truly am, Your obliged friend and servant, B. W. PROCTOR. These scattered leaves from a great critic's correspondence perhaps contain little that was not known by every one and subjects are so familiar that it has before; but it is just because the names been possible to gather some fragments from a miscellaneous collection, and produce them as they are with no orderly arrangement. MR. W. C. ANDREWS has patented a plan for supplying fuel in an altogether novel way. He suggests that at the coalmines the coal should be reduced to a fine powder and mixed with a large quantity of water, so as to form a thick liquid having the appearance of ink, and that this mixture should then be pumped into pipes by powerful engines and carried to any convenient point. The liquid would have to be forced through the piping at a speed of from six to seven miles an hour, so that the coal-dust should have no opportunity of settling before it arrived at its destination. Here it would be discharged into tanks, where the solid portion would gradually settle to the bottom, and the sediment so formed would afterwards be collected and compressed by hydraulic rams into blocks of convenient sizes for fuel. 44 315 VI. TREASURE ISLANDS IN THE POLAR SEA, Chambers' Journal, For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. ་་་་ Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE IDEAL POPULAR LEADER. He is one who counts no public toil so hard As idly glittering pleasures; one con trolled By no mob's haste, nor swayed by gods of gold; Prizing, not courting, all just men's regard; With none but manhood's ancient order starred Nor crowned with titles less august and old Than human greatness; large-brained, limpid-souled; Whom dreams can hurry not, nor doubts retard; Born, nurtured of the people; living still The people's life; and though their noblest flower, In nought removed above them, save alone In loftier virtue, wisdom, courage, power, The ampler vision, the serener will, And the fixed mind, to no light dallyings prone. Spectator. WILLIAM WATSON. TO ONE LONG DEAD. TWENTY years ago!-twenty years ago! I was but a nine years' child-and how much could I know? You crossed my path, and I saw your face and called it to mind no more; And I never heeded when first I heard you were dead on a far-off shore. And now from the printed page stand out, in letters of fire aglow, The thoughts you had, and the words you wrote-twenty years ago! Twenty years ago !-twenty years ago! The words I read came hot from a heart rent by the earthquake-throe. The narrow spite and the stupid scorn; and the wounds from a friendly hand, And the loneliness that seeks in vain for a heart to understand And the bitter doubts, and the questions wild, that I thought no heart could know, You had known them, and fought them through, -twenty years ago! You, whom I thought so lightly of, twenty years ago, Sought to help, and spend your strength, · and found life ebbing fast, And cried aloud for Love; and leaned on a broken reed at last. Blind and helpless, you staggered out reeling beneath the blow, Into the dark, with a broken heart, so many years ago ! Twenty years ago !-twenty years ago! And I stretch vain hands across the dark -I whom you did not know! Oh, friend! oh, friend! the slow tears come, to think of all your pain! Dear, suffering heart, God comfort you! and give you peace again! Over there, in the undimmed light, at last you love and know— Who hungered and thirsted for righteousness, twenty years ago. All is past that you suffered then-twenty years ago! But oh! that you could hear me speak, and tell you it hurts me so ! O loving God! the pity of it, that hearts should wander so long! How can it be, when they yearn to thee, and thou art true and strong? Yet surely 'tis well at the last-for they say that all roads lead to Rome; And the winding path that he travelled by hear, But chill thee with averted gaze and cold; Her poets' chant, whose tuneful heart- Met and faced with an aching heart the Peal from the Periclean Age of Gold. riddle of this world's woe; C. A. KELLY. From The Nineteenth Century. THE QUEEN AND LORD BEACONSFIELD. rounded by the ashes of the "Venetian party, ," but among the villagers of a On the wall of Hughenden Church Buckinghamshire hamlet, under a memay be seen a memorial tablet, record-morial raised to him by the occupant ing the gratitudé aud affection of Queen of the throne, was a fit climax to the Victoria for the services and for the creed he professed in youth, and carmemory of a man who without ques-ried with him to almost supreme power, tiou was the most interesting and and to the grave. If he began political striking figure of her reign. The in- life amid the contemptuous jeers of a scription which it bears was written by Tory House of Commons, he lived to the queen herself. "To the dear and receive the profound adulation and honored memory," so it runs, "of enjoy the absolute confidence of the Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, this Conservative party. If the first thirty memorial is placed by his grateful and years of his political existence were affectionate Sovereign and friend, Vic-passed in the cold shadow of royal toria R.I. 'Kings love him that speak-disapprobation and dislike, he lived to eth right.' Prov. xvi. 13." This become the darling of the court and to inscription is in many ways note- earn the inscription which adorns his worthy. To find a memorial erected tomb. These variations of sentiment by a sovereign to a subject is in itself were in no way due to changes in sufficiently remarkable, but so rare an Disraeli himself, but rather to the slow act of condescension is unique coupled appreciation by others of his rare perwith public expressions of gratitude sonality. and friendship. These qualities are not common in kings accustomed to accept devotion or service as their due, and even from Queen Victoria such strong words read strangely when it is remembered that they are from the hand of a queen of England towards one whom her ancestors would have scorned as the son of a hated and despised race, whom to this day some of her relatives and regal cousins hound and persecute with all the unenlightened fervor of the Middle Ages. It was meet, however, that in a Christian church such a memorial, raised by the supreme head of that Church, to a Jew by blood and by every fibre of his nature, should be rounded off by a quotation from the proverbial philosophy of the most famous ruler of his race, and fitter still that there should be found affixed to it a signature, the novelty of which to English eyes recalls the fact that Lord Beaconsfield aspired to rank with Bismark and Cavour as the consolidator of imperial rule. If in politics an opportunist, in character no man could have exhibited greater consistency throughout a long life; and that Lord Beaconsfield should lie, not in Westminster Abbey sur His character never underwent any marked development, while the ideas which well-nigh choked his youth found expression in maturity and old age. In his political enthusiasms and hatreds he was alike consistent and persevering. No one ever suspected him of a weakness for the Whigs whom he hated, nor doubted his sympathy for the people whom he trusted, and his regard for the throne which he upheld. As a Tory Democrat he appeared an abnormal growth to the "sublime mediocrity" of Peel and of his party, yet he lived to establish household suffrage and to convert the diadem of the English kings into an imperial crown. In youth Disraeli brooded over problems of statecraft, and these very problems he lived largely to solve as a minister. To those who read his political tracts, cast by him into the original form of the political novel, and who were familiar with his foppish appearance and his florid style of speech, it appeared impossible that he should figure in any other character than that of the political charlatan and social buffoon. Yet over these prejudices, permanent in some minds, completely overcome in others, Disraeli triumphed by sheer force of talent and energy. With the dawn of a new era | reluctance that the Conservative party, in English politics, in 1832, his strenu- under severe pressure from its chief, ous public life began; and when, half yielded to his leadership, and even as a century later, he had had his fill of late as 1867 powerful Tory peers, like life and honor, men began to appre- Lord Lonsdale, were known to doubt ciate how full the intervening years whether Disraeli would ever be loyally had been of indomitable strife, devoted accepted by the party in succession to to the gradual conquest of the ear of Lord Derby as their head. That the the House of Commons, of the confi- English people were far from placing dence of the Conservative party, of the trust in him was clear from the migood-will of the sovereign, and of the nority in which for twenty-two years support of the nation. All these were they left his following in Parliament; finally won, and this extraordinary and it was well known that in his office child of Israel, whose ancestors were of chancellor of the exchequer he had unhappy refugees hunted from Spain been unwillingly approved by the to Venice, whose immediate forbears queen, so violent was her prejudice were poor immigrants into a London against him, mainly on the ground that suburb, sat himself down in the seat the holder of that office was not of the chief of the house of Stanley, brought into personal contact with the dictated his will to the proudest aris- sovereign. By 1874 the English people tocracy on earth, posed as the repre- had been won over, and Mr. Disraeli sentative of the English race among was at last, after a prolonged and pathe assembled powers of Europe, took tient novitiate, entrusted with a large Great Britain into the hollow of his majority in the House of Commons. hand, clothed a nation boutiquière with Thenceforth his task was easy, and the imperial purple, left behind him a entire confidence of his party was his cause identified with his name, and a reward for the triumph they owed to party strong enough to defend it, and his adroit leadership. Mr. Disraeli finally sank into a grave smothered then stepped from the ranks of clever with flowers by the hands of the peo-politicians, and took his place among ple, and surmounted by a memorial European statesmen. It was at this inscribed by the hand of the queen. time that the last barrier between the The Napoleonic era of marvels fur-prime minister and the queen fell to nishes no example more romantic of the ground. Dislike, dating from a the triumph of individual capacity over time when Disraeli's bitter invective hostile conditions. was goading to fury Sir Robert Peel's Although much has been made by friends, and among them the soverpolitical adversaries of the flattery by eign, had long since given way; but which Lord Beaconsfield is supposed to only half-confidence had supervened, have influenced the queen, there is not bred of mistrust in the alien and too a serap of evidence to show that in his nimble politician. Now this in turn relations to the sovereign he employed was swept aside, and Lord Beaconsfield arts or adopted methods foreign to filled the place so long left vacant, and those used by Lord Aberdeen or by Sir became the "friend" of the queen as Robert Peel. The secret of his suc-well as first minister of the crown. cess lay not in subservience to the will Antipathies, to a far greater extent of the monarch, but in masculine ap- than is generally supposed, have a preciation of her sex. It is noteworthy physical basis, and although Disraeli that among all his personal triumphs in youth possessed a certain weird that over the queen was the longest beauty, it was of a kind unlikely to deferred. In 1852, when he took office attract favorably either men or women as chancellor of the exchequer, his of a northern race. When he first rose position as leader of the House of Com- to address the House of Commons on mous was assured. Yet it was with the 7th of December, 1837, he was 1 |