❝ stiff-neckedness" that the race from which he springs was celebrated. But Ben is stiff-necked, stiff-backed, stiff-shouldered, stiff-armed, stiff-legged-stiff all over. He walks as though he were impaled; he sits down as gingerly and tender, as though his primary stratum were of glass. Poor fellow! he has, truth to say, a most lachrymose aspect, ever since his break-down in the House. His rueful countenance would not be a bad study for a painter about to engage upon the Knight of La Mancha. On his long and sombre features

"Black melancholy sits!"

If

And your first impulse, on seeing him, would be to mistake him for an emigrant Pole of course, a Polish Jew. How Lady Blessington could have made the mistake of calling him "one of the handsomest men she ever met," is a problem which we can solve only by a reference to the waywardness of ladies' tastes, after they have passed a certain rubicon. He is dark-visaged, doubtless, and this hue is very much in favour with the fair. He is likewise very much indebted to his friseur, and as his hair is stuck out in cauliflower bunches over each ear, we presume that "fat, fair, and forty" considers him therefore a "curled darling." there be one thing more ridiculous than another, it is an awkward cavalier perpetually parading himself through the parks on horseback, Ben rides his hobby with a vengeance. Imagine a tailor's lay-figure strapped on the back of a Bucephalus, -yielding, undulating never-imagine a furled umbrella maintaining its perpendicular on the top of a bobbing saddle-such is Ben on horseback. He mistakes stiffness for grace, pokerish immobility for the maintien of a Centaur. But, considering his extraction, perhaps it would be too much to expect that he should ride like a gentleman. Then, his taste in tigers is utterly abominable. Such a groom, and so mounted! A round-shouldered, pock-marked, hulking fellow, only less awkward than his master, mounted on a cadaverous Rosinante, through whose miserable skin the bones every moment threaten to burst, while they rattle like the remains of a skeleton shaken in a bag. Oh, Mrs. ! Mrs. -! thou rich, and therefore delightful widow :—

"So buxom, blithe, and debonnair!"

What saw'st thou in Ben? Vain question! Cupid is painted blind, not so much to asperse the acuteness of his vision, as to indicate that he obnubilates his victims ! And we must charitably presume that the lady saw in Ben a man of genius!!

Benjamin D'Israeli is now, we believe, in his 32d year. He is the son, as every one knows, of the author of the "Curiosities of Literature"-a sedulous bookworm and literary charlatan, who succeeded for a long time in imposing upon the world as authentic a mass of anecdotes, historical and literary, which were eventually found to be in many cases pure invention, and in not a few varnished over with his own peculiar gloss. The subject which he chose lying in untrodden paths, he succeeded in making a name, and realising a fortune; and as his object was to produce a readable book, he sauced it with all manner of monstrous misrepresentations, treating historical facts pretty much as his brethren do old garments, brushing them up with great care, putting in an occasional stitch, shifting the buttons, and dying them over anew. Succeeding far beyond his expectation with his first venture, the old gentleman successively produced a book "On the Peculiarities of the Literary Character," "An Inquiry into the Literary and Political History of the Reign of James the First," "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," &c. &c. He was, in fact, a diligent transcriber in the British Museum, and had the tact' to select popular subjects. But possessing very moderate powers of discrimination, wherever he met with a tough imbroglio, he solved it in accordance with the workings of a very flighty imagination, and inevitably begot a monstrous brood of fallacies. These were swallowed for a time. His books sold, the Jew grew rich, and passed from the caterpillar into the chrysalis state of a Christian. We do not wish to be hard on the old man, who is living now comfortably and respectably on his property, surrounded by a large family. But

Bolton Corney, Lord Nugent, and others, have stripped him very effectually of the factitious plumes with which he had adorned himself, and exposed him in all his shivering nakedness. In truth, his mis-statements, more especially about Sir Walter Raleigh, and the statesmen of the Commonwealth, were so monstrous, that even mercy is merged in indignation, and one forgets his commiseration for a grey head in indignant contempt for the effrontery of his monstrous fabrications.

When Benjamin was a mere youth, he astonished the town by the cleverest work he has ever produced-of course, we mean his "Vivian Grey," As the maiden effort of an absolute boy, it secured him instantaneous fame, operating with almost as talismanic an effect as Byron's "Childe Harold," or Tommy Moore's "Anacreon." The inferiority of his Contarini Fleming and Henrietta Temple, and still, more of his political writings, has led every impartial mind to the conclusion that he must have been assisted in the composition of Vivian Grey. In fact, a youth, whose unaided pen had written that book, could not have failed to produce a series of the most brilliant fictions. That passages were expunged, and the whole revised by some maturer litterateur (if not the major part rewritten), we take to be demonstrated by invincible evidence.

In addition to the fame which he thus acquired as a writer, Benjamin was fortified by very striking conversational powers-powers which, no doubt, have been greatly exaggerated by that contemptible scribbler, Willis, in the absurd account which he has given of a dinner-party, at which Benjamin first met Lord Durham. His Lordship's "astonishment" must have been at the youth's assurance, not at the "clinkum-clinkum" of his pinchbeck talk, of which no man is better able to estimate the real value, or more likely to be disgusted with the living impersonation of a parish-pump :

"That coolly spouts, and spouts, and spouts away

In one weak, washy, everlasting flood!"

Benjamin, whose head was now completely turned by such sneaking sycophants as Willis, determined to turn politician; and, as at this period he was a Radical of the first water, behold you! he proceeded to fawn upon O'Connell, in the anxious expectation that he might be permitted to annex himself to the tail. From whatever cause, O'Connell withdrew his patronage; and from this time forth the pair stood in the relation of implacable enemies. Benjamin began to assail O'Connell in political letters and speeches, and a very pretty little quarrel was got up between them, which O'Connell terminated most satisfactorily, by calling D'Israeli "a descendant of the Impenitent Thief!" "Jest not (quoth high authority) with a rude man, lest thy ancestors be disgraced!" This dreadful epithet clung to Benjamin like a burr, and goaded him to madness. We can imagine him soliloquising in his chamber :

"How wild a passion works within my heart!

With what prodigious flames am I possest!"

Benjamin blustered a vast deal, and called out Morgan O'Connell (the scape-goat, also, in the case of Lord Alvanley). Well, the preliminaries were arranged, and the parties-got bound over to keep the peace! How this result was produced no one can divine; but thus terminated the only "affair" in which Benjamin has ever been engaged.

Our hero next applied to Lord Lyndhurst, who, astonished, doubtless, yet amused, withal, by his extreme effrontery, patronised Benjamin, and introduced him to his party. He thought him clever, and deemed that he might become serviceable to the Tory phalanx, believing, with Shakspere, that

Then came the Runnymede letters in the Times-a parallel for which in turgid balderdash and inane bombast, the world never saw; though Benjamin, no doubt, is of a different opinion, and ready to exclaim-with Lady Macbeth :

"These letters have transported me beyond
The ignorant present time!"

:

The general election followed, and Benjamin set himself up for Maidstone. As the Frenchman said, Benjamin was "effronté pour se faire demi-dieu !" Truth to speak, his effrontery was excessive, and therefore, perhaps, successful. The Carlton Club supported him liberally. His novels had begot the impression that the man had "a great deal in him." He was returned! and the first fruit of his victory was a threat to exterminate O'Connell. The dwarf Jew was to slay the Irish Goliah !

He took his seat in Parliament, and announced his determination to make a speech. He rose-and the House was "on the tip-toe of expectation," as the penny-a-liners phrase it. Out came a wonderful array of words :

"A buzzing noise of bees each ear alarms!"

But how the deuce does it happen that there is no sting in what he says? It is all rigmarole and rhodomontade-a string of unconsidered "jaw-breakers." He fires away to the right and to the left lustily-but all is blank-cartridge! Is it possible that he has gained his reputation :

"With jingling words deceiving th' ear?"

Every moment the truth becomes more apparent. Presently a titter arises, then "derisive laughter!" Then, as he talks of "the hurried Hudson rushing into the portals of the Vatican !" an inexpressible yell of hooting and roaring assails the youth. But he is not so easily disconcerted. He describes Lord John Russell as "standing on a pedestal in the midst of St. Peter's, with the keys of Mother Church in one hand, and in the other!" What Lord John carried in his other hand never was ascertained, for inextinguishable laughter shook even the pencils out of the Reporters' hands, and the "honourable gentleman" found himself, like Trinculo, surrounded

"With noises

Of roaring, shrieking, howling!"

The Speaker himself laughed; and the merry peal resounded far and wide, while its echoes were borne on the breast of father Thames, even to the Surrey side, and to distant Vauxhall. Then Benjamin, gesticulating with savage ferocity, exclaimed : "You won't hear me now; but the time will come when you shall hear me !"

That time has never since arrived. In vain did Benjamin parody Sheridan's celebrated saying: "It's in me, and, by G-, it shall be out of me !" He renewed his efforts repeatedly-like Hudibras,

"He rallied, and again fell to't!"

But though, in consequence of his moderating his tone into a semblance of humility, he is sometimes just listened to, he has never made the slightest impression in the House, and we may fairly predict that he never will. He has nibbled at the Copyright debates, made set speeches upon Chartism and the New Poor Law; but his speeches are sadly deficient in good sense, and no one seems to care for them a rush. He strives to lacker them over with a show of learning, and give them a varnish of historical research. But they are all so eminently unpractical that no man thinks of replying to them; and, however showy, when tested in the newspaper reports next morning, they are found to be an unadulterated stream of rigmarole. Let a jury of charity-boys be selected at random from any part of the kingdom, and pronounce their verdict on the "hurried Hudson" passage. His historical learning is utterly thrown away, in consequence of its inapplicability; and he may revenge himself, if he pleases, as the lawyers did upon that old parliament from which they were excluded, by calling it a " Parliamentum indoctum." His speeches are never by any chance ad rem. Diffusive and indefinite, they run on pulingly, without ever attaining, perhaps without aiming at, a logical conclusion. "From the head" (as Sir Walter Raleigh says, in his History, of a transatlantic tree, which could scarcely be stiffer in its movements than Benjamin), "there issueth forth incessantly a gummy juice !" The reporters must find themselves in something of the position of the Hibernian pulling at the rope, who said: "There's no use in goin' on. Some one has cut off the ind of the thing!"

The implacable sternness of Burke, the author of the "History of the Landed Gentry of England," must have annoyed Benjamin no little. Love or money could not move him to introduce the name of D'Israeli, though the O'Molonys, and O'Driscols, and O'Shaughnessys figure away with no inconsiderable pretension. The herald's office has, however, been less obdurate, and supplied him with a very dashing crest, a tower triple towered. This chivalrous blazonry on his escutcheon is almost as ridiculous as Spring Rice assuming the lofty name of Monteagle. It is just as if an enriched rag-merchant were to take the name of Stuart, and quarter his shield with the lions of England. It is whispered in the clubs that the "tower" or "rook" was chosen by old D'Israeli for his crest, in consequence of his passion for chess-playing. At all events, the D'Israelis did right to fee the herald's office, for "Jerusalem artichokes (says Mortimer) are increased by quartering the roots!"

Benjamin still roars a lion in certain coteries; his talkativeness endearing him, wherever there is

"A fair assembly of the female kind;"

and we have no desire to strip him of these, the only feathers of which he has not been plucked.