| <Christian Remembrancer Vol. XIII January-June 1847>
| <Tancred; or, the New Crusade. By B. Disraeli>
| <pb n="514">
| In the good old days, before the birth of constitutional 
| governments, when the peasantry had nothing to do but to 
| till their lord's land in peace, and follow him to the field in 
| war ~~ when the burghers cherished no higher aim than 
| the acquisition of a dearly-bought and ill-observed charter 
| of protection ~~ when there were no artizans to starve, and 
| no factories to feed and famish alternately the overflowing 
| towns, ~~ there was little need of state craft.  The king and 
| the barons, if their power was pretty equally balanced, did 
| each one what they liked, without troubling themselves 
| about <reg orig="any thing"> anything </reg> so 
| impracticable as a general consent; or, if mutual 
| concessions were necessary, or mutual co-operation 
| desirable, they met together, and held a <p> 'Talk' </p> ~~ 
| a Parliament ~~ and amicably or powerfully, as the case 
| might be, they arranged the affairs of the nation to their 
| satisfaction.  Gradually more and more classes found their 
| way into the Parliament, and the business grew more 
| complicated; but when at length an exterior motion, a <p> 
| 'pressure from without,' </p> was perceived, it was at once 
| evident that the machine of government had acquired a 
| fresh wheel, or a new clog.  The legislature was no longer 
| absolutely supreme; it was necessary to ascertain the 
| dispositions of the people.  Kings and cabinets were 
| hampered in the introduction of important measures, not 
| only by the necessity of bullying a Parliament, but by the 
| more delicate task of influencing a nation.  But for this 
| purpose the old machinery was inadequate; new engines 
| were required to meet the new difficulty.  Queen Bess and 
| her sagacious council first hit upon the happy expedient of 
| <p> 'tuning the pulpits.'  </p> The clergy were the natural 
| channel of communication between court and people; and 
| as soon as a measure had been arranged at the council 
| board, the next thing was to promulgate it in the churches.  
| No doubt the instrument was well selected for the time, and 
| the results highly satisfactory to her Majesty; but as years 
| wore on, and policies altered, and dynasties were changed, 
| its usefulness became impaired.  Perhaps the people 
| thought it indecorous; perhaps the Government found it 
| inefficient or unmanageable.  Whatever was the cause, the 
| old instrument was, in time, supplanted by a new one; first 
| proclamations and petitions, then pamphlets and 
| newspapers, supplied the bridge of connexion.  The 
| Quarterly and Edinburgh succeeded to the influence of 
| lectures, fasts, and prophesyings; the sermon at Paul's 
| Cross yielded to the 'feeler' in the <hi rend="italic"> Times 
| </hi>.  But even these have proved
| <pb n="515">
| insufficient for the wants, or unsatisfying to the tastes, of 
| our prolific and capricious age.  The political Review has 
| greatly declined in influence since the days when cabinet 
| ministers were wont to disseminate or disguise their 
| sentiments in its pages; and even the Newspaper does not 
| tell upon every section of our diversified population.  
| Science, and morals, and religion, have for some time past 
| been dished up for the public taste in a piquant seasoning 
| of tale and ornament; and the demand for amusement has 
| at length been made and admitted in the field of amateur 
| politics.  The 'article' was voted dull, and the 'leader' curt; 
| the one required too long, the other too frequent, a stretch 
| of attention.  There was evidently an opening for the 
| Political Novel.
| To Mr. Disraeli belongs the credit of the first successful 
| speculation in the virgin market.  Endowed with 
| considerable power for composition, apt in illustration, 
| happy in expression, more versed in English history than at 
| least the majority of his readers, and himself an actor of 
| some repute in the scenes which he describes, he enjoys 
| qualifications well adapted to the line he has chosen.  But 
| above all he possesses two very essential elements of 
| success ~~ an unqualified adoption of party, and a clear 
| and decided theory.  Whatever may have been the early 
| slips, which his pertinacious antagonist, Mr. Roebuck, 
| resuscitates from time to time in the House of Commons, 
| Mr. Disraeli, during all the time that he has been known to 
| the world in print, has been a most energetic Tory.  His 
| earliest political writings (if we are right in attributing to him 
| the 'Letters of Runnymede,' which assailed Lord 
| Melbourne's ministry, man by man, with all the acrimony, 
| and something of the vigour of a Junius) exhibit him full 
| launched upon the tide of party.  Commendation and 
| censure, unsparing and unreserved, are heaped on friends 
| and foes with all the eagerness of a combatant engaged in 
| earnest battle.  The commendation was destined soon to 
| evaporate; the censure, more congenial to his character, 
| has never flagged, though its range has been somewhat 
| enlarged and modified.  It is in personal attack that Mr. 
| Disraeli is preeminently great.  The specious reasoning, 
| the keenly-edged sarcasm, the indignant appeal, give point 
| and energy to a philippic, which would be withering and 
| crushing, if it were based on truth, and supported by 
| character.  Originally directed against the Whig leaders, it 
| has more recently fallen on his quondam chief, Sir Robert 
| Peel:  and the glowing eulogium of the conservative leader 
| in the Letters of Runnymede throws out in bold relief the 
| picturesque description in one of his later speeches of <q> 
| </q>.  But however his personal fealty may have varied,
| <pb n="516">
| there is an ingenious harmony about his theoretical course, 
| which can only be appreciated by a more definite 
| explanation of his political ideas; which we will accordingly 
| endeavour to exhibit.
| In our modern political life, amongst the crash of 
| newly-created interests, and the infusion of fresh elements,  
| our old party names are fast disappearing.  Whig and Tory are 
| almost acknowledged to belong to a past era; while even 
| the recent progeny of Conservative, Liberal, and Radical, 
| the dragon's teeth of our reformed constitution, have well 
| nigh hewed themselves in pieces.  At least we should feel 
| that the simple enunciation of the party-name would now 
| give but little satisfaction on the hustings.  The candidates 
| for the coming Parliament will have to stand a fire of 
| questions, on all manner of particular topics; and to evince 
| their boldness by a categorical answer, or their skill by an 
| adroit evasion.  How will they sigh for those simpler days, 
| when, to proclaim themselves Whig or Tory was enough to 
| procure the suffrages of an enlightened constituency!  How 
| far more easy and respectable, they will think, to follow 
| quietly in the ranks of a well-drilled party, than to fight each 
| man, like Harry Smith in The Fair Maid of Perth, <p> 'for 
| his hand.'  </p> In this universal confusion, this <hi 
| rend="italic"> mêlée </hi> of combatants, where the eye 
| grows dizzy with the endeavour to track the multitudinous 
| courses of the individual units, it is quite refreshing to meet 
| with such positive grouping, and such distinct theory as Mr. 
| Disraeli is ready to produce.  He perseveringly adheres to 
| the old names of Whig and Tory, though he seems obliged 
| to admit that the latter race is very nearly extinct; he 
| himself presenting a last lingering specimen of it to a 
| degenerate age.  But we need not, therefore, fear from him 
| the reiteration of worn-out phrases, or the disinterment of 
| buried arguments.  No; the names are old:  but his 
| exposition invests them with all the charms of novelty.
| People in general have, probably, not troubled themselves 
| to analyse very exactly their notions on these subjects.  
| They held it as a sort of innate idea that the Tories toasted 
| <p> 'Church and King,' </p> rejoiced in rotten boroughs 
| and the House of Peers, gloried in the Duke of Wellington, 
| or sighed over the golden days of Mr. Pitt; while the Whigs 
| were supposed to occupy their natural place in opposition, 
| as the friends of the people, the enemies of the 
| government and taxation, and the upholders of the rights of 
| man in general.  Probably the local associations of the blue 
| or yellow riband, occupy a more prominent place in the 
| foreground of the picture than any other less material, 
| though more important, feature.  All who are secretly 
| conscious of such vague thoughts, will feel grateful to Mr. 
| Disraeli for a
| <pb n="517">
| theory too simple to be forgotten, too lucid to be misstated, 
| and too complete to be ever at fault.  Like a warrior ready 
| armed, it starts forth to meet every attack.
| The Tories then, so runs the formula, are the supporters of 
| our national institutions; the Whigs are ever aiming at a 
| Venetian oligarchy.  The announcement is somewhat 
| startling, at least as regards the latter clause, for we are 
| willing enough to admit the former; but it is no 
| unconsidered assertion, no chance arrow of party warfare, 
| but a digested and consistent theory, which we must 
| therefore endeavour to exhibit more at length.
| The dynasty of the Plantagenets was the reign of the 
| Aristocracy of England; the aristocracy perished in the 
| wars of the Roses, and the despotism of the Tudors 
| followed.  Nourished by the plunder of the Reformation, a 
| new aristocracy arose to combat the Crown, and by the 
| reign of the first Charles had pretty well recovered all their 
| former powers.  Not satisfied, however, with this moderate 
| victory, they aspired to reduce the throne to an entire 
| subservience, and reign alone in the absolute oligarchy of 
| a pure Whig government.  For this purpose they raised the 
| popular storm, but they could not allay the tempest; the 
| instruments were too strong for their wielders, and, 
| shattered beneath the fury of the Commons and the 
| despotism of the Protectorate, they were fain to acquiesce 
| in the renewed powers of the restored Monarchy.  Taught 
| by adversity, they employed the Crown for their next essay, 
| and hoped to establish a Venetian oligarchy on the 
| groundwork of the elective sovereignty of William III.  But 
| here again, their first efforts were unsuccessful; William, a 
| man of calculating foresight and independent vigour, 
| refused to be a Doge, and though he could not rule by 
| sheer power, contrived to maintain his fair preponderance 
| by adjusting with a nice hand the balance of party.  But the 
| Whigs persevered, and were at length rewarded with the 
| smiles of fortune.  George I. and George II. consented to 
| be constitutional Doges, and the spirit of Whiggism 
| triumphed.  George III. fought hard against them and shook 
| them off.  They made a false step in uniting themselves 
| with the French Revolution, from which it cost them nearly 
| half a century to recover, before they ventured to make 
| another successful push for office, on the cry of 
| Parliamentary Reform.
| This is the history of Whiggism according to Mr. Disraeli.  It 
| has identified itself now with the People, now with the 
| Crown; of old, the ally of the Puritan, more recently, the 
| dependent of the Papist:  but in every case, hiding the 
| same mind beneath a varied form, and aiming consistently 
| at the one high mark of a Venetian oligarchy.  It is 
| somewhat amusing to see the quiet reversal of the tables, 
| by which the popular party of 
| <pb n="518">
| the day is thus calmly transformed into the oligarchical; but 
| indications are not wanting to invest it with a fair amount of 
| verisimilitude.  Read Harrington and Algernon Sidney, says 
| our author, and you will see how deeply the minds of the 
| Whig leaders were imbued with the model of Venice:  it 
| was no unconscious imitation on which they acted, but with 
| a definite purpose of converting the English Sovereign into 
| a Doge, the Cabinet into a Council of Ten, and the 
| Parliament into a Grand Assembly of Nobles; or, to take an 
| illustration from another source ~~ into a Curiata Comitia. It 
| is true that the Oceana and the 'Discourses Concerning 
| Government,' abound in commendations of Venice, and 
| illustrations from its polity; but we doubt whether this direct 
| and conscious application of it can be proved from them.  
| However, it is not our business to defend the Whigs; they 
| may fight their own battle with Mr. Disraeli on this score.  
| His theory is more plausibly supported by more modern 
| facts.  The small knot of leading Whig families, their high 
| descent, their personal exclusiveness, haughty almost to a 
| proverb, their unbroken hereditary principles, ~~ all 
| indicate the genuine materials of a close oligarchy.  And 
| the famous <p> 'finality' </p> declaration of Lord John 
| Russell, lends an air of probability to Mr. Disraeli's account 
| of the Reform Bill, which he considers to have been 
| introduced for no larger purpose than that of obtaining a 
| Whig majority in the House of Commons; a thing, as 
| matters then stood, utterly impracticable under the old 
| arrangement.  The Whig majority was obtained, and what 
| could the nation want more?  The Reform Act was to be 
| <p> 'final.' </p>
| The Whigs desired an oligarchy; but the constitution of 
| England was not oligarchical.  Hence arose a systematic 
| hostility against the great institutions of the country.  
| Church, King, Parliament, a local administration, were so 
| many obstacles in the way of a central government 
| conducted by a few noble families.  England has become 
| great, says Mr. Disraeli (and here, at least, we cordially 
| agree with him), by her Institutions.  In them we have no 
| theoretic figments, no system exact and accurate on paper, 
| which falls in ruins, when the tempest rises, and the rough 
| winds of heaven blow against it; but a vast, irregular, and 
| seemingly inconsistent pile, which has grown together by 
| the slow accumulation of centuries, amid the wants of 
| successive generations.  These, whatever else they lack, 
| have at least the element of permanence; they are rooted 
| in the soil.  With these all innovators have a natural land 
| internecine warfare.  A deadly blow, according to Mr. 
| Disraeli's view, was dealt upon a portion of this 
| time-honoured constitution, by the introduction of the
| principle of Representation
| <pb n="519">
| with its easily-derived inference, that the House of 
| Commons is the House of the People.  The people, he 
| says ~~ that vast congeries of individuals, united by so 
| many bonds of interest and necessity ~~ by the combined 
| influences of organization, climate, time, and history ~~ 
| can only be viewed in masses as a combination of Estates.  
| It is vain to refer to the natural rights of man:  a nation is 
| essentially artificial.  There is the estate of the Lords 
| Spiritual, the estate of the Lords Temporal, and the estate 
| of the Commons.  The two former estates meet in their 
| chamber; the latter, too numerous to allow of the collection 
| of all its members, meets by its representatives.  But the 
| latter has no more right to arrogate to itself the proud title 
| of the <p> 'nation,' </p> than either of the other two.  The 
| Commons are as much a privileged order as the Lords.  
| For besides these three estates, and more numerous 
| perhaps than all together, is the estate of the Peasantry.  
| And yet this estate is entirely, and rightly, excluded from 
| the legislature.  Rightly, if we conceive of the nation as of a 
| body corporate, ruled by a privileged portion of itself; most 
| wrongly, if we speak of the legislature as the 
| representation of the voice of the whole nation.  For if 
| Parliament be the representation of the nation, why require 
| any qualification for a vote?  On what plea can universal 
| suffrage be refused, if the right of a people to legislate for 
| themselves be once conceded?  It is because the estate of 
| the Commons is a privileged order, that we exact certain 
| qualifications as the test of membership, or the condition of 
| admission to that estate.  Not the whole nation, but the 
| estates of the Lords and Commons govern England.  <q> 
| </q>, we quote from a work, which, though it does not bear 
| Disraeli's name, we do not think he would repudiate ~~ the 
| <p> 'Spirit of Whiggism;' </p> <q> <q>.
| That there is much of sound and useful truth in these views, 
| few of our readers will be disposed to deny; and it is not 
| surprising that their author should be found to have 
| gradually assumed a hostile attitude to the leaders of the 
| Conservative party.  His theoretical views will, at any rate, 
| bear him consistently through a change, which may have 
| been accelerated by more practical motives.  We extract 
| from 'Coningsby' a passage which may serve as a 
| commentary on his famous denunciation
| <pb n="520">
| of 'the Great Conservative Party,' as 'an Organized 
| Hypocrisy.'
| <q> </q>
| These were the views which first found a distinct and 
| popular enunciation in 'Coningsby' and 'Sybil;' and, aided 
| as they were by great power of description, amusing 
| incident, and malicious satire, it is no wonder that they 
| instantly gained a considerable reputation, and doubtless 
| exercised no little influence.  Their author had skilfully and 
| adroitly seized the topic on which minds were beginning to 
| feel unsettled, and struck a note which many felt to be the 
| expression of their own vague sentiments.  Another new 
| feature contributed to increase their interest; namely, their 
| bold and unscrupulous personality.
| <pb n="521">
| While even in the fictitious names the initiated profess to 
| trace living characters, the exoteric public are attracted by 
| elaborate and graphic delineations of the leading men of 
| the day, invested with their proper attributes of name and 
| feature.  The Duke of Wellington, Lord John Russell, and 
| Sir Robert Peel, frequently occur in his pages; their 
| motives are discussed, their characters painted, their 
| intentions conjectured, without the slightest attempt at 
| concealment or disguise.  We select as a specimen the 
| following historical sketch (for such it may be termed) of Sir 
| Robert Peel, partly as a literary curiosity in living biography, 
| partly as a commentary on the vigorous assistance 
| afforded by Mr. Disraeli to Lord George Bentinck in his 
| recent attack on the minister on the painful subject of 
| Canning's death:
| <q>
| <pb n="522">
| </q>
| With these attractions of style and matter, it was natural 
| that the announcement of a new novel 'by the author of 
| Coningsby, and Sybil,' should create a considerable 
| sensation.  The selection of those two names from the 
| author's other works seemed to warrant the expectation of 
| another political novel, but the name afforded no clue to its 
| particular bearings.  Coningsby had turned mainly on the 
| theory of Whiggism and Conservativism; Sybil had been 
| directed principally on the social evils of the relations 
| between rich and poor, the labouring man and his 
| employer.  It is true that these names afforded no 
| indication of the line of the work; but something might have 
| been gathered by a discerning guesser from their second 
| titles of 'The New Crusade' opened an unlimited field of 
| perplexity.  Was it a crusade against Protection, or against 
| Free-trade?  A crusade against the Peers or the Ministers?  
| Against the Church or the Agriculturists?  It would have 
| seemed an unlikely guess, that we were about to be 
| presented with a genuine tale of Palestine, a quasi-religious
| novel, a new crusade on the model of the old.
| <pb n="523">
| 'Tancred' does not rest in the political world, which formed 
| the scene of the former novels.  It passes through it indeed; 
| the same character, the same modes of thought are 
| reproduced; but English politics, parliaments and cabinets, 
| and parties are no longer the engrossing subjects.  Yet, 
| though an unexpected, it is by no means an 
| unconsequential, follower of Coningsby and Sybil.  Hints 
| which there gleamed only now and then, are here worked 
| up into the substance of a book; theories which there 
| occupied a few casual pages, here become the 
| groundwork of the plot.  The importance of Race on the 
| affairs of mankind was a doctrine occasionally inculcated in 
| Coningsby, and dwelt upon with further emphasis in the 
| 'Two Nations,' the rich and the poor, the Saxon and the 
| Norman, of Sybil.  The superiority of the Hebrew race to all 
| others was exemplified in the person of Sidonia, and in his 
| startling catalogue of Jewish financiers, opera-singers, and 
| marshals of the empire.  These two points are the 
| key-notes of Tancred.  That our brief description may not be 
| unintelligible, we will illustrate the first position by a speech 
| of Sidonia ~~ a great Hebrew capitalist, who figures in 
| Tancred no less prominently than in Coningsby.
| <q> </q>
| And again, in the following passage, we have the same 
| idea under a different illustration.  Art, as well as power and 
| prosperity, is the prerogative of Race.  The Greek alone 
| can produce the Grecian beauty.
| <q>
| <pb n="524">
| </q>
| The idea is certainly not altogether new, even if we had not 
| read Mr. Disraeli's previous works.  The distinction of races, 
| the characteristic physical features, and varying mental 
| capacities of Hebrew, Negro, Teuton or Celt, are too real 
| and too obvious to escape observation.  But our author's 
| application of the doctrine is not, we apprehend, so 
| commonly received.  Even the readers of Coningsby, in the 
| high praise of the Caucasian race, saw only, we suspect, a 
| laudation of their own Anglo-Saxon origin, ~~ a sop to the 
| English Demas.  They were, perhaps, scarcely prepared to 
| turn their eyes to Syria and Arabia, as the source of all 
| good, the fountain of modern regeneration no less than of 
| ancient revelation.  Such, however, is the case, if we are to 
| trust Mr. Disraeli; this, it would appear, is not merely his 
| theory, but his religion.  He is a believer in race, rather than 
| in creed, in place rather than in person; a local and 
| ethnological religionist.  Neither Christian, Jewish, nor 
| Mahometan, his views may be better described as Syrian 
| and Arabian.  Whatever may have issued from those 
| quarters is constituted by that circumstance a revelation.  
| These are the sole lands in which the Creator has 
| condescended to reveal Himself to His creatures, these the 
| only races in whose language He has deigned to speak.  
| To them the Voice of Inspiration has been granted; from 
| them have issued, at successive epochs, the ideas which 
| were to mould the world; from them, in this age of growing 
| mammon and waning faith, is to be even now expected the 
| fresh impulse which shall renovate the decaying world.  It 
| is not for the sons of Fronguestan, the children of 
| yesterday, who still roamed wild savages, in their 
| uncleared forests, when the cities of the East were 
| culminating in their meridian glory, it is not for them to lead 
| and animate the world.  The lands that produced 
| Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineveh, and Babylon, and 
| Antioch; the pastures in which Sheikh Abraham fed his 
| flocks, the deserts where Moses legislated, the city in 
| which rests the Holy Sepulchre, these are the scenes from 
| which the new Regenerator may arise.  Once already, so 
| our author seems to intimate, there has issued from these 
| wilds a divine voice in the person of Mahomet; it may be 
| that other prophets are still waiting their destined birth.  
| From time to time, in the lapse of ages, have the myriads 
| of Asia been poured forth upon astonished Europe:  and if 
| we are now apt to fancy those climes exhausted, and that 
| the spirit of action and of power has passed westwards,
| <pb n="525">
| it is but the dream of an ephemeral race, who, in their 
| vanity, measure the duration of time by the brief hour of 
| their own existence.  Vain are all our schemes of 
| improvement and reorganization; if the world is to arise 
| again as in its youth, it must be by a voice from Asia; and 
| that voice, unless we misunderstand our author, must be 
| the voice of a new revelation.  For he appears to think, 
| unless we do him great wrong, that Christianity, as well as 
| Europe, is used up.  Perhaps the following conversation 
| between Tancred and the Emir Fakredeen will convey his 
| views on this subject more distinctly than can be effected 
| through the medium of our paraphrase:  ~~
| <q>
| <pb n="526">
| </q>
| We feel that we ought to crave pardon of our readers for 
| the introduction of such solemn topics in a place where, 
| perhaps, their minds were little prepared to meet them; but 
| the fault must be thrown back upon the author.  This 
| intermingling of sacred and profane, of human and divine, 
| is indeed no light objection to the whole book.  The most 
| awful subjects that can engage our attention are 
| continually projected from the midst of ordinary incidents 
| and conversations, with an abrupt indifference that jars 
| harshly upon the religious feeling.  Without perhaps 
| positive, or at least, manifest, irreverence in their actual 
| treatment, they are yet approached with a careless 
| familiarity, which betrays, through all the cloud of rhetorical 
| declamation, the absence of real appreciation of their truth 
| and importance.  Thus the divine appellations, the names 
| and titles of our Lord, and that holy Name of the elder 
| Covenant, which the chosen people sensitively shrank 
| from uttering, are scattered over these pages with a 
| careless frequency.  In the same irreligious spirit, Tancred 
| is represented as receiving ~~ will our readers credit it? ~~ 
| a new Revelation on Mount Sinai.  Even if the orthodoxy of 
| these volumes were less questionable than it is, we should 
| still protest against this introduction of eternal Truth into the 
| realms of Fable ~~ this attempt to make religion play her 
| part upon the boards of fiction.  Such works as the 
| Paradise Lost, the Messiah, the Death of Abel, the Sacred 
| Dramas, contain the seeds of much evil in the 
| indistinctness with which they cover the boundaries, and 
| divide the certain from the probably, the invented from the 
| revealed.  But it is far worse, when the homage is doubtful 
| in its very intention.  It
| <pb n="527">
| is a hazardous thing to offer unholy fire, or endeavour to 
| prop the ark with an impure hand.
| But it is time to present our readers with a sketch of the 
| story of Tancred, which is certainly not deficient in the 
| usual points which give interest and animation to a novel.  
| Tancred, Marquis of Montacute, the only son of the Duke 
| of Bellamont, is introduced to us on the great festival of his 
| twenty first birth-day, which is celebrated with a profuse 
| magnificence, that recalls to our memory (as we cannot but 
| think the writer intended it should do) certain festivities of a 
| similar nature which about two years ago rose into general 
| notoriety, on the doubtful distinction of a 'leader' in the <hi 
| rend="italic"> Times </hi>.  However, we are not aware 
| that the likeness thus indicated extends to the character of 
| Tancred; we suspect no living member of the aristocracy 
| has sat for the portrait.  Educated with an anxious care at 
| home, and scarcely trusted under a vigilant 
| superintendence to complete his course at Christ Church, 
| Tancred has nevertheless contrived to form his opinions 
| and mould his mind in solitude and independence; so that 
| when the Duke proposes to him to enter the House of 
| Commons, he is startled by the sudden exhibition of 
| sentiments, possessing at least the charm of novelty for his 
| Grace's ear.
| <q> </q>
| The remedy to these social evils, the clue to these 
| mysteries, he proposes to his astonished father to seek in 
| the Holy Land.
| <q>
| <pb n="528">
| </q>
| Tancred's parents are obliged to yield a reluctant assent to 
| the determined will of their son; but a journey to Jerusalem 
| fairly requires some time for preparation, and they trust in 
| the interval to devise some expedient to change or 
| frustrate his intentions.  As a preliminary measure, the 
| Duchess insists on sending him to converse with a Bishop; 
| less, we suspect, for any other purpose, than to give our 
| author an opportunity of sketching the character of an 
| eminent living prelate with all the epigrammatic brilliance of 
| his unrivalled, because utterly unscrupulous, style.  The 
| conference fails of its object; the Bishop opposes to 
| Tancred's yearnings after an angelic communication the 
| prospect of a new see at Manchester, and finding him 
| impracticable, satisfies himself with pronouncing him a 
| visionary.  Baffled in this cherished scheme, the Duchess 
| is induced to launch her son in the fashionable world, from 
| which she had hitherto studiously withheld him:  even balls 
| and club-houses are less dangerous in her eyes than Syria 
| and Jerusalem.  And here we are once more among the 
| scenes and persons of the former novels; Coningsby, Sybil, 
| and Tancred all meet round the dinner-table of Sidonia; but, 
| as is generally the case with these re-productions, they 
| have lost the freshness of their original appearance, and 
| produce nothing but disappointment.  Altogether, this 
| portion is the least effective part of the work.  Ultimately, 
| the Duchess' scheme proves ineffectual, though it seemed 
| twice to be on the point of success.  Two ladies 
| successively threw in the way of Tancred's intended 
| expedition the impediment of incipient love.  The spell of 
| the former was broken by a conversation on the 'Vestiges 
| of Creation;' the chains of the latter fell off on the fatal 
| discovery that she dealt largely in 'scrip.'  The first of these 
| two incidents is so characteristic of Disraeli's method of 
| fixing a topic of the day, that we think the reader will like to 
| see it entire.
| <pb n="529">
| <q> </q>
| The criticism is graphic and just, and reminds us of a 
| similar passage in 'Coningsby,' where Mr. Rigby 
| recommends Mr. Wordy's 'History of the late War,' in 
| twenty volumes, written to prove that Providence was on 
| the side of the Tories ~~ a work, whose prototype it is not 
| difficult to conjecture.  Under our author's hands, the novel 
| is assuming very much the form of the old satire, or older 
| comedy.  Men and measures, books and actions, whatever 
| engages for the time the attention of the public, ~~ all are 
| made to find their place in its pages, either in undisguised 
| simplicity, or covered only with the faintest affectation of a 
| decent concealment.  Hiding grave opinions beneath a 
| serious comicality, it passes on all that occurs a judgment 
| which is likely to penetrate the further from its seeming 
| lightness.
| <pb n="530">
| Breaking loose from the snares which threatened to detain 
| him, Tancred at length sets out on his pilgrimage, armed 
| with the following letters of introduction and credit from the 
| all-powerful Sidonia.
| <q> </q>
| Arrived at Jerusalem, he perplexes the natives by the 
| unwonted phenomenon of an Englishman and a Protestant 
| passing a night in prayer before the Holy Sepulchre; and 
| on the following days he wanders forth to visit Gethsemane.
| <q>
| <pb n="531">
|  </q>
| We shrink from the irreverent boldness which can 
| introduce these awful topics to decorate a sentence or turn 
| a period; but it would be difficult to deny this extract the 
| praise of a well-managed composition; and the sentiment 
| of the last paragraph is both true and beautiful.
| As he leaves the village of Bethany, Tancred is tempted by 
| an open portal to stray into a garden, where he encounters 
| the lady, who, according to all the rules of romance, is 
| bound to fill that niche in the story, which has, as yet, been 
| vacant.  Eva, the daughter of Besso, the Rose of Sharon, 
| though she lives only in the glories of her nation, is 
| nevertheless disposed to listen and discourse most 
| learnedly on the mutual relations of Jew and Christian.  But 
| Eva is betrothed to her cousin Hillel; and the interview at 
| Bethany does not ripen into a declared love till the close of 
| the third volume, which mercilessly abandons the lovers in 
| the crisis of their fate, and leaves the unhappy reader to 
| the anticipation of three more volumes to complete the tale.
| On a hint from Alonzo Lara, Tancred, unsatisfied at 
| Jerusalem, resolves to seek Mount Sinai; but his journey is 
| doomed to be interrupted by the schemes of a personage 
| who plays a conspicuous part throughout the two last 
| volumes.  Fakredeen, an Emir of the house of Shehaab, a 
| princely family of Lebanon, had the misfortune, while yet 
| an infant, to lose his father in a civil broil.  Brought up in the 
| household of Besso, and ever retaining a sincere, though 
| somewhat whimsical, affection for his foster-father and 
| sister, he nevertheless soon left the quiet home of the 
| merchant to engage in a ceaseless whirl of intrigue for the 
| recovery of the political importance attaching to his house.  
| His character is well conceived and admirably sustained.  
| Full of quick feelings and good impulses, but without one 
| atom of constancy, or one dash of principle, and with an 
| imaginative and inventive faculty absolutely overflowing 
| with expedients, he makes and mars the most elaborate 
| schemes with a rapidity perfectly astonishing, and an 
| unconscious roguery that spares neither friend nor foe, 
| while the innocent openness with which he discloses all his 
| plans disarms all anger.  His political aspirations allow Mr. 
| Disraeli the opportunity of expatiating
| <pb n="532">
| in a favourite field, that of our foreign, and, more 
| particularly, our Eastern policy.  In the days when his 
| oratory was directed against the Melbourne government, 
| no antagonist was more often singled out by him than Lord 
| Palmerston, no topic more pertinaciously urged than the 
| Syrian war of 1839.  Now, however, that his political 
| animosity is directed into another channel, he is content to 
| pass over the policy of that war in silence, while he 
| bestows the highest praise on the ability with which it was 
| planned and effected.  Fakredeen's intricate combinations 
| at home, and elaborate mystifications of the foreign powers, 
| are sketched out with great piquancy.  The Emir's greatest 
| triumph and keenest enjoyment consists in perplexing 
| Aberdeen and Guizot with contradictory reports, or 
| deceiving them with unblushing falsehoods.  His teeming 
| brain, ever fertile in resources, appears to be about equally 
| useful in getting him into scrapes, and helping him out of 
| them.  The following is a sample of the extent of his 
| political information, and the universality of his schemes.  It 
| is the close of the conversation with Tancred, from which 
| we have already given an extract.
| <q>
| <pb n="533">
| </q>
| This ambitious and intriguing personage, at the time of 
| Tancred's arrival in the Holy Land, happens to be in want 
| of a few piastres, to pay for the purchase and convoy of 
| sundry muskets, for the use of his friends of the Mountain.  
| Was it to be expected that he should neglect so obvious an 
| occasion of providing them, as the journey of Sinai of an 
| English noble, with an unlimited letter of credit on Adam 
| Besso?  If he were only captured by a Bedoueen tribe, his 
| ransom might be fixed at any sum that the Emir's wants 
| might suggest.  The Great Sheikh of the children of 
| Rechab, the father-in-law of Besso, is persuaded to 
| undertake the office.  But Fakredeen has no sooner 
| secured his captive, than he is himself captivated by the 
| gentle manner and lofty wisdom of his new acquaintance.  
| Possessed as strongly by his new impulse, as by his 
| former plans, his only object now is to procure his friend's 
| release; but the Great Sheikh has no notion of giving up his 
| share of the ransom.  However he consents to allow 
| Tancred to proceed on parole on his pilgrimage to Sinai; 
| and there in a trance, by night, the long-expected 
| communication is vouchsafed.  Certainly whatever other 
| merits Mr. Disraeli may possess, he does not rise to the 
| conception of a Divine message; the address of <q> </q>, 
| is verbose and rhetorical.  After enlarging, in language, 
| which, to speak charitably, borders on the profane, on the 
| universal supremacy of Arabian principles under their <p> 
| 'last development,' </p> in Christianity, he delivers the new 
| mission in a vein of proper oracular obscurity.
| <q> </q>
| The prosecution of this lucid and promising injunction is 
| deferred by a fever, from which our hero is very 
| opportunely recovered by Eva's skill in leechcraft, and by 
| the negotiations necessary to induce the Great Sheikh to 
| forego his prey.  However this is at length accomplished, 
| and Tancred accompanies
| <pb n="534">
| his new friend Fakredeen to his mountain castle of 
| Canobia, to recruit his health by the fresh breezes of 
| Lebanon, and discuss and arrange his plans for the 
| conquest of the world on Arabian principles, of theocratic 
| equality.  As a preliminary step, it is necessary to unite the 
| discordant tribes of Lebanon in one grand confederacy; for 
| the Christian Maronites and Pagan Druses, the two chief 
| races of the mountain, have been accustomed to entertain 
| for one another the full proverbial hatred of neighbourhood.  
| With this view the Emir holds a grand hunting-party, which 
| is described with the graphic vividness of which Disraeli is 
| so perfect a master.  In the course of the feast, Tancred 
| discovers that there is yet another tribe to be conciliated, 
| the Ansarey, who hold the northern passes of Lebanon, 
| and who appear to be enveloped in a mystery which 
| neither Druse nor Maronite can unfold.  Their origin, their 
| race, their religion are all unknown; and they guard their 
| secret so jealously that no stranger has been known to 
| enter their country.  All obstacles, however, vanish before 
| the determined will of Tancred; he obtains an audience of 
| the Queen of Ansarey, and has the satisfaction of 
| promulgating his divine mission at her hitherto inhospitable 
| court.  We will give the interview entire, that the reader may 
| have the benefit of Tancred's commentary on the 
| somewhat obscure text of his desert vision:  ~~
| <q>
| <pb n="535">
| </q>
| After this magnificent annunciation, we leave the reader to 
| imagine Tancred's vexation at the discovery that the 
| Queen of the Ansarey rules over a nation, not of Arabians, 
| nor Jews, nor even Mahometans, but of pure, old, classical 
| Pagans.  Driven from Antioch by the advance of 
| Christianity, the gods of the Greeks took refuge, it seems, 
| in the mountains; and the statues of Phoebus, Apollo, and 
| Olympian Jove, enshrined in the caverns of the Ansarey, 
| receive the homage of the Queen Astarte.  This is not a 
| very promising opening for the New Crusade; and its 
| prospects are still further darkened by the sudden 
| conversion of Tancred's friend, Fakredeen, to idolatry, 
| under the auspices of the beautiful Queen.  Beyond this 
| opening scene we are not as yet allowed to penetrate.  
| After a series of intrigues, terminating with a great battle, 
| Tancred retraces his steps to the Holy City, and the garden 
| of Bethany; where his declaration of love to Eva is 
| interrupted by the sudden announcement of the arrival of 
| the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont at Jerusalem; with 
| which startling piece of intelligence the volume abruptly
| <pb n="536">
| closes.  The ulterior fortunes of the New Crusade, the more 
| full development of its principles, the narrative or prophecy 
| of its success or failure, are left in Tartarean gloom, without 
| even the promise of a future explanation; unless, indeed, 
| the doctrine of final causes may warrant us in arguing the 
| intended existence of three more volumes from the 
| manifest imperfection of the three before us.
| But if the future of the New Crusade is still unrevealed, this 
| first disclosure of it is not without its moral.  It stands in 
| singular opposition with the fact, that, in his capacity of the 
| representative of the New Generation, Mr. Disraeli has 
| sometimes appeared as the advocate and exponent of the 
| Church, and has been occasionally in political connexion 
| with some who are undeniably devoted to her.  But the 
| Church acknowledges no friends; she seeks only for loyal 
| sons.  The present work will have shown that Mr. Disraeli 
| can scarcely rest his claim to that title upon his creed; 
| whether his practice would more justly secure it to him, it is 
| not our province to determine.  And this fusion of practical 
| independence with theoretic Churchmanship is not wholly 
| without countenance in the present day:  it cannot safely 
| be overlooked as an individual idiosyncrasy.  His historical 
| religionism carries the thoughts almost involuntarily to the 
| French and German schools.  It is not now the fashion to 
| produce either grave argument or light ridicule against our 
| holy religion; its enemies first treat it as a fact, and then 
| explain it.  Like Guizot or Michelet, the author of Tancred 
| appears to regard the Catholic Church as a great historical 
| phenomenon, highly useful and beneficial in its season; but 
| like other historical ideas, limited in its operation by time 
| and place, and superseded or ignored by the lapse of ages.  
| It has been a great phenomenon, springing from a past 
| state of things, and preparing the way for another stage in 
| the history of man.  And with this view of its relative 
| position, he seems to adopt something of the Straussian, 
| or of Salvador's, method in the explanation of its historical 
| facts.  The children of Israel, we are told, <q> </q>.  It is 
| difficult to recognise in this sketch the Scriptural narratives 
| of Abraham and Joseph.  And again, there is not much 
| harmony
| <pb n="537">
| between the phraseology of Scripture, and the language in 
| which we are told that the Egyptian slavery <q> </q>.  The 
| reader will require to be reminded that this language 
| relates to the <p> 'man Moses,' 'slow in speech,' </p> a 
| reluctant agent in the Divine Hand, and <p> 'very meek, 
| above all the men which were upon the face of the earth;' 
| </p> and that he is speaking of the race, of whom it is 
| written, <q> </q>.  Texts like these, and they are numerous, 
| stand in curious opposition to the theory of natural 
| excellence which Mr. Disraeli would fain assign to the 
| Hebrew race.  Their greatness surely lies rather in their 
| destiny than in their physical organization:  they were <p> 
| 'a chosen generation, a peculiar people;' </p> they were 
| entrusted with the <p> 'Divine oracles;' </p> an awful 
| honour, guarded by a fearful penalty.  Our readers will 
| doubtless thank us for recalling their thoughts, in 
| conclusion, to some lines, which give, as we think, a more 
| true, and not less solemn, view of the position of the Jews:  
| ~~ <q> </q>