Disraeli, long known as a brilliant satirist and romance writer, before he was elevated to the lead of the House of Commons, is an author different from either Mr. James or Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, but with merits of a very high description. He is not feudal and pictorial, like the first, nor profound and tender, like the last ; he is more political and discursive than either. He has great powers of description, an admirable talent for dialogue, and remarkable force, as well as truth, in the delineation of character. His novels are constructed, so far as the story goes, on the two dramatic principles, and the interest sustained with true dramatic effect. His mind is essentially of a reflective character; his novels are, in a great degree, pictures of public men or parties in political life. He has many strong opinions —perhaps some singular prepossessions —and his imaginative works are, in a great degree, the vehicle for their transmission. To any one who studies them with attention, it will not appear surprising, that he should be even more eminent in public life than in the realms of imagination; that the brilliant author of " Coningsby" should be the dreaded debater in the House of Commons—of "Vivian Grey," the able and lucid Chancellor of the Exchequer. His career affords a striking example of the truth of Dr. Johnson's observation, that what is usually called particular genius is nothing but strong natural parts accidentally turned into one direction and that when nature has conferred powers of the highest description, chance or supreme direction alone determines what course their possessor is to follow. The strong turn which romance and novel writing, in the first half of the nineteenth century, took to the delineation of high life, which its charms, its vices, and its follies, naturally led to a reaction, and a school arose, the leaders of which, discarding all attempts at patrician painting,aimed at the representation of the manners, customs, ideas, and habits of middle and low life. The field thus opened was immense, and great abilities were eagerly turned to its cultivation. At the very head of this school, both in point of time and talents, must be placed Mr. Dickens, whose works early rose into great, it may be said unexampled, celebrity. That they possess very high merits is obvious, from this circumstance : no one ever commands, even for a time, the suffrages of the multitude, without the possession, in some respects at least, of remarkable powers. Nor is it difficult to see what, in Mr. Dickens's case, these powers are. To extraordinary talent for the delineation of the manners and ideas of middle life, and a thorough acquaintance with them in all their stages below the highest, he unites a feeling and sensitive heart, a warm interest in social happiness and improvement, and most remarkable powers for the pathetic. To this must be added, that he is free from the principal defects of the writers who have preceded him in the same line, and which have now banished their works from our drawing-rooms. Though treating of the same subjects and grades in society, he has none of the indelicacy of our older novelists. We see in him the talent of Fielding, without his indecency ; the humour of Smollett, without his grossness. These brilliant qualities, joined to the novelty and extent of the field on which he entered, early secured for him a vast circulation and widespread reputation. It was founded on more than the merit, great as it was, of the author— selfish feelings in the readers combined with genius in the writer in working out his success The great and the affluent rejoiced in secret at beholding the manners of the middle class so graphically drawn. To them it was a new world ; it had the charm of foreign travelling. They said in their inmost hearts, "How different they are from us !'' The middle class were equally charmed with the portrait ; every one recognised in it the picture of his neighbour, none of himself —Alison's Europe.
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