and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear
witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied
Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that
he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he
was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers.

All this is reflected on the surface of _Sybil_, and, notwithstanding
curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and
true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted
than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard,
the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his
daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell
you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant
answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You
are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town."
This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations
among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no
chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the
depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to
produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories,
which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier
simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given
fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of
Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not
blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures
of human suffering in _Sybil_.

Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported,
continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary
offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties