SYBTL, On THE TWO NATIONS.

Sybil is a continuation of the Young England part of Coningsby; aid is coloured by that indescribable something which generally disappoints in sequels. It wants the personality of its predecessor. Many of the political and fashionable characters possess traits that will be recog- nized by people acquainted with those classes • but none have the breadth and interest of Lord Monmouth, Rigby, and Lucian Gay, or even the fire-work sort of brilliancy of the theatrical Sidonia. The main subject, too—the condition of the people—has been handled already by so many pens, in poetry, fiction, speeches, articles, reports, and lucnbra- tions of the Poor-law folks, that the theme is getting somewhat hacknied. Abstracting novelty of subject and the extrinsic attraction derived from personal attack, Sybil, however, is an improvement on Coningsby. The swelling rhetoric is sobered down. There is more of story, though it has been dashed in its conception. The character and condition of the poor, although not a new subject, is presented in a more artistical manner than by Jerrold or Dickens. The sordid and the shocking are kept back, unless in some general descriptions of agricultural labourers, and dr and dwellings after Mr. Chadwick. The vices and weaknesses insepara e from the condition of poverty are skilfully marked ; and there is none of the claptrap sentiment which some novelists promulgate at first hand or put into the mouths of their persons. The indifference which habit in- duces to evils that horrify more refined and delicately-nurtured minds is noted with almost philosophical ability; and this quality renders the characters and dialogues of the poor in Sybil more natural than in any other work that has handled the subject. How far this mode of treatment may forward the professed purposes of the author, is another question.

The "two nations in one kingdom " are, as we are told in capitals, " THE RICH AND THE Thou." Sybil is the heroine of the work, and designed to represent the Saxons oppressed by the Normans : but as she

is of gentle blood, and rightful heiress en setate of forty -thousand a year, which a lord and_a_rerjeo sans "keeping her out of the representative principle is not a true one. She is, however, a skilful and delicate creation. Of the Romish faith, her father is employed by a Roman Catholic manufacturer • and Sybil herself has been educated in an English convent,—the only mode by which the gentleness, self-possession, and deep but refined feeling of the heroine, could have been naturally de- veloped. Walter Gerald, her father, is intended as a type of the better kind of Chartists: but as he is constantly brooding over the family traditions of his gentler blood and his right to an estate, he is by no means a true representative of the "physical-force-men, other means failing." Neither can it be said that he is a very natural character, though he is consistently drawn. Stephen Morley, an unsuccessful liner of Sybil, and the editor of a property-in-common journal, represents the combination principle ; as Simon Hatton, a locksmith from the mining districts, exhibits the mere physical force animal in a state of excitement. The hero of the romance is Egremont, the younger brother of a Peer, the lover of Sybil, and the representative of the Normans and Young England. He is a better character than Cosi:eget:7 ; having more matter and stuff in him, with less of a mere fashionable dandy. Perhaps, too, he has a better moral sense, (though he does introduce himself to Walter Gerald under false colours, and pass as a reporter) : but then, there is no Hebrew hero to whom the Englishman is to serve as a foiL Tadpole and Taper, the party hacks, are continued from Coningsby; a few of its other characters are mentioned or appear in passing; a mob of gentle- men and ladies take a part in the fashionable scenes, and besides their ease and nature, have as apparent truth in the lively emptiness of thaw discourse and the folly of their views. There are also several factory hands, miners, manufacturers, and riffraff of all sorts, from Devilsdust and Dandy Mick, who often appear, and even contribute to the denoue- ment, to London blackguards, who show for a moment to exhibit a trait of life and then vanish.

Public events are more closely and systematically connected with the characters than in Coningsby. In politics, the work opens with the ex- pected death of William the Fourth ; and the members of the Rich Nation are occupied with the hopes and fears that event gave rise to. The struggles of the Tories to oust the Whigs, the three-days excitement of the Bedchamber business, with other leading political oiroumstanoes, also occupy the Rich. The Poor Nation is engaged in efforts to raise their condition by planning strikes and a national holyday ; by the National Convention, to which Gerald and Morley come up as delegates, carrying Sybil with them ; and by the riots in the autumn of 1842, which serve to bring about the catastrophe, and restore the heroine to her Roily thousand a year; as a bit of privy conspiracy, after the failure of the Convention, involves Gerald and Sybil in the distress of an arrest for high treason; from which; of course, the hero relieves the heroine.

lads and lasses in the Temple of the Muses—the mine '^ aiscussing politics

ladies in their foolish way, and lords in their se characters representing classes of society, painted by a man who is fami- liar with the originals, though the theatrical character of his mind Induces him to dress them a shade too much in spangles. Considered in this point of view, Sybil, or the Two Nations, is very able. We have already spoken of the manner in which the poor are depicted. The fashionables are equally good, without the affectation of Bulwer or the -claptrap philosophy and ill-natured cynicism of Mrs. Gore. Here is a sample of political conversation among fashionables.

A DIVISION IN THE DRAWINOROOMS.

" Soon after this, there was a stir in the saloons; a murmur, the ingress of may gentlemen: among others, Lord Valentine, Lord Milford, Mr. Egerton, Mr. Berners, Lord Fits-Heron idr. Jermyn. The House was up; the great Jamaica division was announced; the Radicals had thrown over the Government, who, left in a majority of only five, had already intimated their sense of the un- equivocal feeling of the House with respect to them. It was known that on the -morrow the Government would resign. "Lady Deloraine, prepared for the great result, was calm: Lady St. Julians, who had not anticipated it, was in a wild flutter of distracted triumph. A vague yet dreadful sensation came over her in the midst of her joy, that Lady Deloraine had been beforehand with her; had made her combinations with the new Minister; iierhaps even sounded the Court. At the same time that in this agitating vision the great offices of the Palace which she had apportioned to herself and her hus- band seemed to elude her grasp, the claims and hopes and interests of her various 'children haunted ler perplexed consciousness. What if Charles Egremont were to get the, yilace which she bad projected for Frederick or Augustus? what if Lo Marney became Master of the Horse? or Lord Deloraine went again to Ire- ? In her nervous excitement she credited all these catastrophes; seized upon 4 the Duke,' in order that Lady. Deloraine might not gain his ear, and resolved to get home as soon a;tyztible, in order that she might write without a moment's Ices of time to Sir

" ' They will hardly go out without making some Peers,' said Sir Vavasour IlLebrace to Mr. Jermyn. Why, they have made enough.'

"' Hem ! I know Tubbe Swete has a promise, and so has Cockawhoop. I don't think Cockawhoop could show again at Boodle's without a coronet.' " 'I don't see why these fellows should go out,' said Mr. Ormsby. What does it signify whether Ministers have a majority of five, or ten, or twenty? In my time, a proper majority was a third of the House. That was Lord Liverpool's majority. Lord Monmouth used to say, that there were ten families in this -country, who, if they could only agree, could always share the Government. Ah ! those were the good old times. We never had adjourned debates then; but sat it out like who had been used all their lives to be up all night, and

then su at Watier's afterwards: " . my dear Ormsby,' said Mr. Berners, do not mentioa Watier's; you make my month water.'

" Shall you stand for Birmingham, Ormsby, if there be a dissolution ? ' said Lord Fitz-lieron. " ' I have been asked,' said Mr. Ormsby: ' but the House of Commons is not .the House of Commons of my time, and I have no wish to reenter it. If I had a laate for business, I might be a member of the Marylebone Vestry.'

The romance of the novel is but so-so. The scheme of an estate lept wrongfully from the true owners, by missing papers and the roguery

of an agent, is vulgar and worn-out, besides its unintelligibility in the --ase before tui. The other 'sections designed for stirring interest appear \ like a sober imitation of the absurdities of Handistone ; or perhaps both romancists have drawn from the same authorities. - A mysterious ad- - mission of a candidate to a "union," with masked members, and a skeleton for joint-president—attacks upon a inanufa-ctory- and a noble- man's residence by miners, with the destruction and burning of the castle—the shooting of Sybil's father by yeomanry, to get him out of the way, that the representatives of the Two Nations may be united without the fashionables being shocked by the apparition among them of a man who had been overlooker at a factory—and the stoning of Egre- anont's brother, Lord Marney, at the head of his troop, in revenge for the death of Gerald, that the hero may get a title and estate—are all needless, and in the milliner taste.

In a philosophical point of view the failure is complete. Beyond a vague (repetition of some all-but-forgotten crotchets about the British Constitu- tion, the Peace of Utrecht, Lord Bolingbroke, the Revolution of 1688, and other dreams of Mr. Disraeli in his younger days, there is no enunciation of any principle whatsoever. The incidents that might have pointed a moral are equally barren. In the Two Nations the poor can only rise to connexion with the rich by being of old descent and entitled to an im- mense fortune : the excellent representative of the last-resort-physical- 'force Chartists is shot ; the representative of social reform by mutual co- operation is shot likewise; the animal Chartists, when they approach the Bich, get dead drunk, set the house on fire, and are burnt in their own blaze; whilst Mick and Devilsdust, the factory operatives, are set up in business, for getting the title-deeds in the burning of the castle, and become capi- talists themselves. With power to combine every probable opportunity and incident of social life in the form of a fiction, philosophical Young England can only imagine two modes of amalgamating the Two Nations —killing off the poor, or making them rich.

The original germ of the plot was very good, but marred in its deve- lopment by the introduction of these Minerva-press weaknesses. The structure is indifferent : too much broken up into fragments, as if the writer, having formed his general scheme, had been too much hurried to consider the parts and their relations. The natural rule, that an in-

• cident should be completed before it is left, is not, perhaps, so necessary in narrative as in the drama : but Mr. Disraeli, after having begun a lesser theme, continually leaves it in medio for something else. We understand 'that publishers, with an eye to the tactics of circulating-libraries, require that a volume should close with a suspended interest, in order that those who only get a volume at a time should send for the rest : but the neces- sity for the application of this canon occurs but twice in three volumes, ^whereas Mr. Disraeli is constantly illustrating it. Neither, except in the latter part, where the trouble springs out of the Chartist conspiracy, does the story move with much rapidity. It is rather a succession of conti- nuous scenes, depicting various aspects of life among the rich and the poor : the hand-loom weaver in his wretched toil and distress— L. ..zwry

complaining of n their wild way, way; together with

" All I repeat,' said Lord Marney to his mother, as he rose from the sofa where he had been some time in conversation with her, 'that if there be any idea that I wish Lady Marney should be a Lady-in-Waiting, it is an.err61-, Lady Delorain' e. I wish'that to be understood. I am a domestic man, and I wish Lady Harney to be always with me; and what I want I want for myself. I hope, in arranging the Household, the domestic character of every member of it will be considered. After all that has occurred, the country expmts that.' • " 'But, my dear George, I think it is really premature—' "'I dare say it is; but I recommend you, my dear mothero be alive. 'I heard

D

Lady St. Julians just now, in the supper-room, asking the Duke to promise her

that her Augustus should be a Lord of the Admiralty. She said the Treasury

would not do, as there was no house; and that with such a fortune as his wife

brought him, he could not hire a house under a thousand a year.' - " He will not have the Admiralty,' said Lady Deloraine. " She looks herself to the Robes: "'Poor woman ! ' said Lady Deloraine.

" 'Is it quite true ? ' said a great Whig dame to Mr. Egerton, one of her own

party. •

" Quite,' he said.

" 'I can endure anything except Lady St. Julian's glance of triumph,' said the Whig dame. ' I really think, if it were only to ease her Majesty from such an infliction, they ought to have held on.' " ' And must the Household be changed ? ' said Mr. Egerton. " 'Do not look so serious,' said the Whig dame, smiling with fascination; are surrounded by the enemy.'

" Will you be at home tomorrow early ? ' said Mr. Egerton. " As early as you please.'

" ' Very well; we will talk then. Lady Charlotte has heard something: nova verroris: "'Courage ! we have the Court with us, and the Country cares for nothing' "

Let us go to a contrast. The scene of the outcasts in Hyde Park was

lately handled by Mrs. Norton from the sentimental view and during a

sterner season. Here is a harder picture in fine weather. •

SUMMER NIGHT.

"On the same night that Sybil was encountering so many dangers, the saloons of Deloraine House blazed with a thousand lights, to welcome the world of power and fashion to a festival of almost unprecedented magnificence. Fronting a royal park, its long lines of illumined windows and the-bursts of gay and fantastic music that floated from its walls attracted the admiration and curiosity of another party that was assembled in the same fashionable quarter, beneath a canopy not less bright, and reclining on a conch scarcely lesi luxurious; for they were lit by the stars and reposed upon the grass. " say, Jim,' said a young genius of fourteen, stretching himself upon. the turf, I pity them ere jarvies a sitting on their boxes all the night and waiting

for the nobs what is dancing: they as no repose.' • "'Bat they as porter,' replied his friend, a sedater spirit with the advantage of an additional year or two of experience. They takes their pot of half-and-half by turns; and if their name is called, the link what they subscribe for to pay, sings out here; and that's the way their govners is done. " I think I should like to be a link, Jim,' said the young one.

" I wish you may get it,' was the response: it's the next best thing to a crossing: it's what every one looks to when he enters public life; but he soon finds 'tain't to be done without a deal of interest. They keeps it to themselves; and never lets any one in unless he makes himself very troublesome and gets up a ply agin 'em.' ' I wonder what the nobs for said thevorLig-JaV pensively: '`iota'•of kidne s

'Oh ! no; sweets is the time of day in these here blowouts: syllabubs like blazes, and snagon as makes the flunkies quite pale: •. -

" I would thankyou, Sir, not to tread upon this child,' said a widow. She had three others with her, slumbering around; and this was the youngest, wrapt in her only shawl. " Madam,' replied the person whom she addressed, in tolerable English, but with a marked accent, I have bivouacked in many lands, but never with so young a conuade: I beg you a thousand pardons:

"'Sir, you are very polite. These warm nights are a great blessing; but I am sure I know not what we shall do in the fall of the leaf.'

" Take no thought of the morrow,' said the foreigner, who was a Pole—had served as a boy beneath the suns of the Peninsula under Soult, and fought against Diebitsch on the banks of the is Vistula. It brings mr‘iy changes.' And, arranging the cloak which he had taken that day out of pawn around him, he delivered himself up to sleep, with that facility which is not uncommon among scldios. " Here broke out a brawl: two girls began fighting and blaspheming; a man immediately came up, chastised and separated diem. ' I am the Lotd Mayor of the night,' he said, and I will have no row here. 'Tis the like of you that makes the beaks threaten to expel us from our lodgings.' His authority seemed generally recognized: the girls were quiet; but they had disturbed a sleeping man, who roused himself, looked around him, and said with a scared look, Where am I? What's all this ?' " ' Oh ! it's nothin',' said the elder of the two lads we first noticed; only a couple of unfortinate gals who've prigged a watch from a cove what was lushy and fell asleep under the trees between this and Kinsington: "'I wish they had not waked me,' said the man: walked as far as from Stokenchurch, and that's a matter of forty miles, this morning, to see if I could get some work, and went to bed here without any supper. Fm blessed if I wom't dreaming of a roast leg of pork.'

" ' It has not been a lucky day for me,' rejoined the lad: I could not find a single gentleman's horse to hold, so help me, except one what was at the House of Com- mons; and he kept me there two mortal hours, and said when he came out, that he would remember me next time. I ain't tasted no wittals today, except some cat's meat and a cold potato what was given me by a cab-man: but I have got a quid here, and if you are very low I'll give yon half.'"

The following is another picture—probably the most real of the three.

- SCENE EN THE FACTORY DISTRICTS.

" It was a cloudy, glimmering dawn. A cold withering East wind blew through the silent streets of Mowbray. The sounds of the night had died away; the voices of the day had not commenced. There reigned a stillness complete and absorbing. " Suddenly, there is a voice, there is movement. The first footstep of the new week of toil is heard. A man muffled up in a thick coat, and bearing in his hand what would seem at the first glance to be a shepherd's crook, only its handle is much longer, appears upon the pavement He touches a number of windows with great quickness as he moves rapidly along. A rattling noise sounds upon each pane. The use of the long handle of his instrument becomes ap t as he proceeds, enabling him as it does to reach the upper windows of e dwelli whose inmates he has to rouse. Those inmates are the factory-girls, who su scribe in districts to engage these heralds of the dawn; and by a strict observance of whose citation they can alone escape the dreaded fine that awaits those who have not arrived at the door of the factory before the bell ceases to sound. " The sentry in question, quitting the streets, and stooping through one of the small archways that we have before noticed, entered a court. Here lodged a mul- titude of his employers; and the long crook, as it were by some sleight of hand, •

seemed sounding on both sides and at many windows at the same moment. Arrived at the end of the court, he was about to touch the window of the upper story of the last tenement, when that window opened, and a man, pale and care- worn, and in a melancholy voice, spoke to him. " ' Simmons,' said the man, you. need not rouse this story any more: my daughter has left us.' " Has she left Webster's ? '

" No; but she has left us. She has long murmured at her hard lot, working like a slave and not for herself; and she has gone, as they all go, to keep house for herself.' " That's a bad business,' said the watchman, in a tone not devoid of sympathy. " Almost as bad as for parents to live on their children's wages,' replied the man mournfully. " And how is your good woman?' As poorly as needs be. Harriet has never been home since Friday night. She owes you nothing?'

"'Not a halfpenny. She was as regular as a little bee, and always paid every Monday morning. I am sorry she has left you, neighbour.'

' The Lord's be done. It's hard times for such as us,' said the man; and, leaving the window open, he retired into his room. " It was a single chamber of which he was the tenant. In the centre, placed so as to gain the best light which the gloomy situation could afford, was a loom. In two corners of the room were mattresses placed on the floor, a check curtain, hung upon a string, if necessary concealing them. In one was his sick wife; in the other, three young children—two girls, the eldest about eight years of age; between them their baby brother. An iron kettle was by the hearth; and on the mantelpiece some candles, a few lucifer-matches, two tin mugs, a paper of salt, and an iron spoon. In a further part, close to the wall, was a heavy table or dresser: this was a fixture; as well as the form which was fastened by it. " The man seated himself at his loom; he commenced his daily task.

" ' Twelve hours of daily labour at the rate of one penny each hour; and even this labour is mortgaged ! How is this to end? Is it rather not ended ? ' And he looked around him at his chamber, without resources: no food, no fuel, no fur- niture, and four human beings dependent on him, and lying in their wretched beds because they had no clothes.

The absence of a Hebrew hero does not admit of so full an introduc- tion of Hebrew topics as in Coningsby ; but such opportunity as occurs is not lost. Disraeli, however, has changed his theme. The Jewish glories in religions, not mundane matters, are now " the go." We hear of the blessed Hebrew Virgin, and of Hebrew saints and martyrs. Nay, this theory sometimes mars a distress. There is a rather forced and rhetorical description of Sybil in her trouble,—for pathos and devotion are not exactly Mr. Disraeli's forte ; but it might have passed without a smile save for the unfortunate term.

"And shall she not pray to the holy Virgin and all the saints? Sybil prayed: she prayed to the holy Virgin and all the saints; and especially to the beloved St. John—most favoured among Hebrew men, on whose breast reposed the Divine Friend."

Mr. Disraeli, however, goes further than phrases. Whilst honouring the Pope, he denies his supremacy ; and looks not to his Sovereign for a bead of the Church, but to some yet unknown converted Jew,—who hi:probably "the coming man."

MR. DISRAELI ON THEOLOGY.

"The Church of Rome is to be respected as the only Hebrmo-Christian Church extant: all other Churches established by the Hebrew Apostles have disap ; but Rome remains; and we must never permit the exaggerated position w ich it assumed in the middle centuries to make us forget its early and Apostolical cha- racter, when it was fresh from Palestine and as it were fragrant from Paradise. The Church of Rome is sustained by Apostolical succession: but Apostolical suc- cession is not an institution complete in itself: it is a part of a whole; if it be not part of a whole, it has no foundation. The Apostles succeeded the Prophets. Our Master announced himself as the last of the Prophets. They in their turn were the heirs of the Patriarchs, men who were in direct communication with the Most High. To men not less favoured than the Apostles the revelation of the priestly character was made, and those forms and ceremonies ordained which the Church of Rome has never relinquished. But Rome did not invent them: upon their practice, the duty of all congregations, we cannot consent to her founding a claim to supremacy. For would you maintain, then, that the Church did not exist in the time of the Prophets? Was Moses, then, not a Churchman? And Aaron, ws he not a High Priest?—Ay, greater than any Pope or Prelate, whether he be at Rome or at Lambeth.

"In all these Church discussions, we are apt to forget that the second Testa- ment is avowedly only a supplement. Jehovah-Jesus came to complete the Law and the Prophets. 'Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing. Chris- tianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete without Christianity. What has Rome to do with its completion? what with its com- mencement? The Law was not thundered forth from the Capitolian mount; the Divine Atonement was not fulfilled upon Mons Sacer. No; the order of our priest- hood comes directly from Jehovah; and the forms and ceremonies of His Church

are the regulations of His supreme intelligence. * • I do not bow to the necessity of a visible head in a defined locality; but were I to seek for such, it would not be at Rome. I cannot discover in its history, however memorable, any testimony of a mission so sublime. When Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate, the Ineffable Word did not select a Roman frame. The Prophets were not Ro- mans; the Apostles were not Romans; she who was blessed above all women, I never heard she was a Roman maiden. No; I should look to a land more distant than Italy, to a city more sacred even than Rome."