saw

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minarets of Stamboul rising before him at sunset, he felt 'an excitement which he thought dead.' He was not, as travellers have usually been, disappointed when better acquainted with the city. He can scarcely find words to describe all that he the costumes of its inhabitants of many creeds and races; the phase of Eastern life which he beheld for the first time; the beauty of the Bosphorus, with its palaces, mosques, villages, groves of cypress, and woods of Spanish chestnuts; and the magnificence, novelty, and variety of the goods on sale in the bazaars, including all the products of the Empire, from diamonds to dates.' In short, all here is very much like life in a pantomime or Eastern tale of enchantment, which I think very high praise.' He appears, too, to have taken a liking for the Turks. He wrote in his imaginative style to Edward

Bulwer:*

'I confess to you that my Turkish prejudices are very much confirmed by my residence in Turkey. The life of this people greatly accords with my taste. To repose on voluptuous divans, and smoke superb pipes; daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half-a-dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caique, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawingrooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.'

He found that'the habits of this calm and luxurious people entirely agreed with his own preconceived opinions of propriety and enjoyment.' He even took to wearing a turban, as well as to smoking a six-feet-long pipe and squatting on a divan. He was greatly gratified by a certain Mehemet Pasha telling him that he could not be an Englishman, but rather one of an Eastern race, because he walked so slowly. The measured gravity of his gait will be remembered by those who knew him in after years. This predilection for the Turks remained to him through life, and may possibly have influenced him at the most important period of his career, when called upon to direct the policy of England at the time of the wanton aggression of Russia upon the Ottoman Empire. He detested the Greeks,' he wrote, more than ever'; and we doubt whether he ever entertained a more favourable opinion of them than he had formed from his experience of them when in the Levant.

On

He passed Christmas at Constantinople, and then departed on his long-contemplated and long-deferred visit to Egypt. his way he landed in Cyprus, and spent a day on shore.

* Letter already quoted.

Did

the

the idea then occur to him, which he developed in 'Tancred,' and years after put into execution, that the true policy of England, if she desired to maintain her influence and ascendency in the East, was to occupy this island? From Cyprus he sailed to Jaffa, whence he rode with a party, well-mounted and wellarmed,' to Jerusalem. His sensations on visiting the Holy City of his race may be easily imagined. His description of it as seen from the Mount of Olives, in a letter to his sister, is so truthful, as well as so poetic, that we cannot refrain from quoting it :

The next day we commenced our journey over the delightful plain (of Ramle), bounded in the distance by the severe and savage mountains of Judæa. In the wild stony ravines of these shaggy rocks we were wandering the whole day; at length, after crossing a vast hill, we saw the Holy City. I will describe it to you from the Mount of Olives. This is a very high hill, still partially covered with the tree which gives it a name. Jerusalem is situated upon an opposite height, which descends as a steep ravine, and forms, with the assistance of the Mount of Olives, the narrow valley of Jehoshaphat. Jerusalem is entirely surrounded by an old feudal wall, with towers and gates of the time of the Crusaders, and in perfect preservation; as the town is built upon a hill, you can from the opposite height discern the roof of almost every house. In the front is the magnificent mosque, built upon the site of the Temple, with its beautiful gardens and fantastic gates; a variety of domes and towers rise in all directions; the houses are of bright stone. I was thunderstruck. I saw before me apparently a gorgeous city. Nothing can be conceived more wild, and terrible, and barren than the surrounding scenery, dark, stony, and severe; but the ground is thrown about in such picturesque undulations, that, the mind full of the sublime, not the beautiful, rich and waving woods and sparkling cultivation would be misplaced. The city on the other side is in the plain, the ravine not being all round. It is, as it were, in a bowl of mountains. ... Except Athens, I never saw anything more essentially striking; no city, except that, whose site is so pre-eminently impressive. I will not place it below the city of Minerva. Athens and Jerusalem in their glory must have been the finest representations of the beautiful and the sublime.'

Whilst gazing upon Jerusalem those thoughts and emotions must have come to him, which he afterwards embodied in 'Tancred.'

He arrived in Alexandria on the 12th of March, 1831, and remained some time at Cairo, the life in that city enchanting him. He saw, but was not presented to, the celebrated Mehemet Ali Pasha, and ascending the Nile' to the confines of Nubia,' spent a week at Thebes on his way with the learned Egyptologist, Sir Gardner Wilkinson. The state of politics.

in England, and the impending Reform Bill, made him anxious to return home; but his departure from Egypt was delayed by a sad event which caused him inexpressible sorrow, and cast a gloom over his life for many years, the death by small-pox of his companion and friend, and the intended husband of his sister, Mr. Meredith.

He returned to England in the summer of 1831 greatly improved in health by his travels. The day after his arrival in London he wrote to Mr. Austen that he was 'in famous condition; indeed better than he ever was in his life, and full of hope and courage.' He at once returned to his literary labours, and already in February of the following year the MS. of 'Contarini Fleming' had been accepted by his old friend Mr. Murray. It was published in the following May. The pictures in it of Oriental life, with which his recent travels had furnished him, were pronounced by competent authorities to be better than anything which had appeared since the travels of Bruce. Dean Milman, no mean critic, declared it to be a work in no way inferior to "Childe Harold," and equally calculated to arrest public attention even in those times.'

6

The reputation which he had acquired by Vivian Grey,' his travels in countries at that time rarely visited by Englishmen, and his calculated eccentricities of dress and manner, now opened the doors of society to him; and we find him intimate with Edward Bulwer, Count d'Orsay, Lady Blessington, and most of the leaders of fashion, male and female, who appreciated his genius and encouraged his foppishness. 'He was as popular,' he wrote, with the Dandies as he was hated by the second-rate men, and made his way very easily in the highest set.' He was admired and petted by fine ladies and beautiful women, and revelled in their admiration and flattery, and in the curiosity which his appearance and opinions excited. It would have been surprising if his head had not been turned by his social success. But he was too shrewd to confine himself to the delights of the fashionable world. He sought the acquaintance of men who, he believed, might be of service to him when, as a Member of Parliament, he could enter upon political life. He met Peel at a dinner party, and found him most gracious, and in a very condescending mood. But "I reminded him by my dignified familiarity,' he writes to his sister, both that he was ex-Minister and I a present Radical.' At a soirée given by Edward Bulwer he was introduced by particular desire' to Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, his future wife, whom he describes in the same letter as 'a pretty little woman; a flirt and a rattle, gifted with a volubility which he thought unequalled,

6

unequalled, and of which he could convey no idea.' She told him that she liked silent and melancholy men,' a character that he could have had little difficulty in assuming to please the fair lady. About the same time he acquired the friendship of Lord Lyndhurst, who soon detected his genius, understood him whilst he was a riddle to other men, and gave him advice and encouragement which profited him greatly in shaping his political

career.

In 1832, Mr. Thomas Baring having been raised to the Peerage, the seat in Parliament, which he held as Member for High Wycombe, became vacant. Disraeli, anticipating the event, had entered into communication with persons of some influence in the borough, with a view to offering himself as a candidate for its representation. His family had already some connection with the county of Buckinghamshire, as his father had lived for several summers at Hyde Hall, near Chesham, a house belonging to his friend Plumer Ward. On the 10th of June he wrote to Mr. Austen :

I have just received a despatch from Wycombe, informing me that the crisis has commenced. I must go down, declare, and canvass. Baring is my opponent. . . . I start on the high Radical interest, and take down strong recommendatory epistles from O'Connell, Hume, Burdett, and hoc genus. Toryism is worn out, and I cannot condescend to be a Whig.'

He had to please, he said, all parties, 'Whigs, Tories and Radicals, Quakers, Evangelists, Abolition of Slavery, Reform, Conservatism, Corn Laws,' and he feared that he might compromise himself with the ten-pounders'; but he was sanguine of success, although he had as his opponent so formidable a personage as Colonel Grey, the son of the Prime Minister.

A few days later he tells Mr. Austen:

'We are hard at it. Sir Thomas, you know, has resigned. His son was talked of. I have frightened him off, and old Pascoe Grenfell, and Buxton. Yesterday the Treasury sent down Colonel Grey with a hired mob and a band-never was such a failure. After parading the town with his paid voices, he made a stammering speech from his phaeton. All Wycombe was assembled. Feeling it was the crisis, I jumped upon the portico of the Red Lion, and gave it them for an hour and a quarter. I can give you no idea of the effect. I made them all mad. A great many absolutely cried. I never made so many friends in my life, and converted so many enemies. All the women are on my side, and wear my colours, pink and white. Do the same. The Colonel returned to town in the evening, absolutely astounded out of his presence of mind, on dit never to appear again. If he come, I am prepared for him.'

The

The portico of the 'Red Lion,' which was adorned with a wooden image of that noble animal, existed not many years ago -if it does not still exist-and was pointed out by old inhabitants who were present at the scene, as the place whence the young man of genius,' as he announced himself in the 'posters,' placarded on the walls of the borough, and on every available space in the neighbourhood, addressed the electors in his first public speech on record. It probably had, on those who heard it, the effect he described, for his oratorical powers must even at that time have been remarkable, as he was told that 'Grey spoke highly of them to Bulwer,' saying that he had never heard ‘a finer command of words.' But in those days it was not a brilliant speech, or the cheers of the mob, or the sympathy of the women which decided an election. Government influence,

and a very liberal outlay of money in a borough containing but few voters and notoriously corrupt, greatly outweighed the eloquence of even a young man of genius' destitute of both. After a gallant struggle he was beaten.

He stood for Wycombe a second time, at the general election on the passing of the Reform Bill in November, 1832; but having lost the Radical support, and receiving only very lukewarm help from the Tories, he was again defeated. Both parties were distrustful of him, and failed to comprehend his peculiar political views; for even then he claimed to be the preacher of a new creed and the founder of a new party.' He, however, attributed his want of success to the neglect of his agent in attending to the registration, and to the rates of many of his old supporters not having been paid up.

Although much absorbed in politics, and engaged in fresh negociations for obtaining a seat in Parliament and in publishing a pamphlet entitled What is he?' to explain his political opinions, he worked, to use his own expression, 'like a tiger' to finish a romance which he had contemplated writing during his travels, and in which he could turn to account the scenes which he had witnessed in the East, and had described in his letters. He chose for his theme a romantic tale founded upon a tradition existing among the Jews of the Captivity, that they were to find amongst the descendants of David a prince of the House of Judah, who was to restore them to their native land, and to establish them once more as a great and independent nation. The subject was one which suited his poetic imagination, and which was especially congenial to his taste as con

* The numbers were, for Gray, 23; for Disraeli, 12; only 35 voters having polled!

nected