and _Sybil_ was the first public manifesto of the new departure. The
political history of the last fifty years is evidence of his insight
that, to recover their political ascendancy, a Conservative Party must
take in hand "the condition of the people," under the leadership of "a
generous aristocracy," and in alliance with a renovated Church. These
are the ideas of _Sybil_, though in the novel they are adumbrated in a
dim and fantastic way. As a romance, _Sybil_ is certainly inferior to
_Coningsby_. As a political manifesto, it has had an almost greater
success, and the movement that it launched is far from exhausted even
yet. One of Disraeli's comrades in the new programme of 1844-5 was a
member of the last Conservative cabinet. And when we consider all the
phases of Tory Democracy, Socialistic Toryism, and the current type of
Christian Socialism, we may come to regard the ideas propounded in
_Sybil_ as not quite so visionary as they appeared to the Whigs,
Radicals, Free Traders, and Benthamites of fifty years ago.

In _Lothair_, which did not appear until twenty-five years after
_Sybil_, we find an altered and more mellow tone, as of a man who was
playing with his own puppets, and had no longer any startling theories
to propound or political objects to win. For this reason it is in some
ways the most complete and artistic of Disraeli's romances. The plot
is not suspended by historical disquisitions on the origin of the Whig
oligarchy, by pictures of the House of Commons that must weary those
who know nothing about it, and by enthusiastic appeals to the younger
aristocracy to rouse itself and take in hand the condition of the
people. In 1870, Mr. Disraeli had little hope of realising his earlier
visions, and he did not write _Lothair_ to preach a political creed.
The tale is that he avowed three motives, the first to occupy his mind
on his fall from power, the second to make a large sum which he much
needed, and the third to paint the manners of the highest order of rank