himself.

Strictly speaking, Disraeli has eliminated from our political arena
both "Whig" and "Tory," as understood in the old language of our party
history. And the first sketch of the new policy was flung upon an
astonished public in _Coningsby_, just fifty years ago. No doubt, the
arduous task of educating the Conservative Party into the new faith of
Tory Democracy was not effected by _Coningsby_ alone. But it may be
doubted if Mr. Disraeli would have accomplished it by his speeches
without his writings. As a sketch of the inner life of the
parliamentary system of fifty years ago, _Coningsby_ is perfect and has
never been approached. Both Thackeray and Trollope have painted
Parliament and public life so far as it could be seen from a London
club. But Disraeli has painted it as it was known to a man who threw
his whole life into it, and who was himself a consummate parliamentary
leader.

_Sybil; or, the Two Nations_, the second of the trilogy (1845), was
devoted, he tells us, "to the condition of the people," that dismal
result of the "Venetian Constitution" and of the "Whig Oligarchy" which
he had denounced in _Coningsby_. _Sybil_ was perhaps the most
genuinely serious of all Disraeli's romances; and in many ways it was
the most powerful. Disraeli himself was a man of sympathetic and
imaginative nature who really felt for the suffering and oppressed. He
was tender-hearted as a man, however sardonic as a politician. He had
seen and felt the condition of the people in 1844. It was a time of
cruel suffering which also stirred the spirits of Carlyle, Mill,
Cobden, and Bright. It led to the new Radicalism of which Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. John Morley are eminent types. But the genius of
Disraeli saw that it might also become the foundation of a new Toryism;