why does the novelist so seldom launch his hero (or her hero) upon it?

In so far as the English novel is concerned, perhaps the nature of British institutions supplies the answer. Novelists have never shrunk from the introduction of absolute monarchy or despotic ministers into their pages. The man who can sway the resources of a kingdom, decide in a moment matters of life or death, war or peace-whether you call him Louis XI., Cromwell, Richelieu, or anothermakes an obvious appeal to the imagination. But the constitutional sovereign or the member of a party government has not the same range of impressive action. All that he can generally do by himself is to threaten to upset the coach, and even this exploit is not always feasible. In short, we believe that the parliamentary hero has never been common in fiction, for the excellent reason that heroics are out of place in Parliament. That very peculiar system of government which the genius of our race has evolved proceeds by methods so indirect that, while parliamentary success is by general consent a matter of personality, perhaps more a matter of personality in the House of Commons than anywhere in the world, it is not easy for a novelist to indicate the steps to the goal. Your hero can always conveniently and credibly head a forlorn hope, transfix the villain in a duel, rescue the drowning orphan, pilot a ship through the narrowest channels, soften the most obdurate heart by long fidelity, display unaltered attachment to a damsel disfigured by the small-pox; but there is no reader so accommodating as to believe that by an outburst of fiery eloquence any hero forces the resignation of a corrupt minister or turns a division in the House. Eloquence has its effect in Parliamentabout that there is no question; but the effect is a little too remote and roundabout to be heroic. Disraeli observed a wise discretion when he conducted Coningsby across the threshold of the House of Commons, and there dropped a veil over his career, just as, in the old-fashioned novel, hero and heroine were through many complications brought to the altar and the resultant felicity was taken for granted. The developement of character under the ordeal or discipline of matrimony has indeed afforded material to many novelists, but the theme has seldom proved heroic; and the same applies unquestionably to the experiences of political life. But, however unromantic may be the treatment, there hangs always about love and marriage the indestructible glamour of sex, and the problems which have to be handled

in a study of matrimonial drama come home to the business and the bosoms of all mankind. On the other hand, the hopes and fears, the temptations and the triumphs of political life in England are in a sense so esoteric and so indirect that they must be expounded as matters unfamiliar; and in the process of exposition the reader's mind is apt to find itself reluctantly robbed of a picturesque though vague illusion. A political novel, seriously attacking the subject in the spirit of frank realism, must be very like an Ibsen play, and, as a matter of fact, that brilliant and bitter comedy, The League of Youth,' with its poignant satire on the unconscious contradictions, incongruities, and even indecencies into which the rhetorical temperament is prone to lead one who aspires to lead others, contains more of the root of the matter for us than any recent work, though it is written, of course, with reference to Scandinavian politics and politicians. And, indeed, if you look for heroism in politics, it is apt to be not unlike the heroism of the gentleman in An Enemy of the People,' who became a martyr for conscience sake upon a question of drainage. Ibsen's doctor, who insisted on reporting that the town drains were in an unsound condition, although the mayor and corporation urged upon him that no good citizen would bring inevitable ruin on the watering-place of which he was a burgess, is a true type of the hero in politics, be they imperial or municipal. But it is very hard to make him a sympathetic figure, and most people declare that An Enemy of the People' is not a play at all, much less a tragedy, but a squabble about sanitation.

If one thinks over the dramatic occurrences in the politics of the last few years, it is plain that the satirist has more openings than the seeker of heroic moments. No doubt Mr. Gladstone, greatly tempted by the greatest of all temptations, power, which, as it seemed to him, he and he only could rightly use, is a superb tragic figure, but a tragic failure. A novelist may certainly conduct his hero up to a situation like that in which Mr. Morley stood at Newcastle when he refused to be dictated to on the question of an eight hours' day, fought, and won his battle; but will the novel-reading public be content with that for a consummating achievement? The action may be heroic-it was indeed -but it lacks the halo of romance. And the truth that parliamentary life is not a romantic business is sufficiently evidenced by the one truly romantic figure that Parliament has shown to the world in these last decades; for Mr.

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Parnell was to all intents and purposes a rebel, only present in Parliament as a soldier in a hostile country.

Still, although novelists-and particularly English novelists have comparatively seldom made the endeavour to show how human character displays itself under the special influences and in the special opportunities which the political arena affords, the political novel is a well-marked class and a class sufficiently extensive to require subdivision. There are those which are novels pure and simple, which pursue the proper end of fiction; and there are those which, although not limited to a single extraneous purpose, like the books which one calls almost technically novels ' with a purpose,' have yet other objects in view than the telling of a story. When Disraeli wrote 'Coningsby' he defined his purpose in a dedication: it was to scatter some suggestions that may tend to elevate the tone of public life, ascertain the true character of political parties, and 'induce us for the future more carefully to distinguish 'between facts and phrases, realities and phantoms.' The book was, in short, a political pamphlet; a glorified pamphlet, no doubt, but still a pamphlet having for its object a general survey of the political situation created by the passing of the Reform Act in 1832 and the events immediately succeeding. It had other objects, a larger scope than the pamphlet proper can embrace; in it that strange, half-visionary mind of the great political dreamer gave the rein to an opulent imagination, as yet undisciplined by the exercise of power; and the Hebrew, himself the embodiment of the imperishably vital principle in a stock that had kept itself separate and unmistakeable through many wandering centuries of heterogeneous association in the chance medley of mankind, prophesies concerning race and natural aristocracies, the prerogatives and the duties of blood; while in the same volume the expert politician of the English House of Commons advocates, opposes, and satirises particular and transitory catchwords, men, and measures. Prose fiction, in Stevenson's brilliant phrase, 'drags with a 'wide net,' and the net has seldom spread wider than in 'Coningsby.' There you encounter, for example, a reflexion on the fact that the French serve their dishes on cold plates to save their china, accompanied by the politician's shrewd argument for a treaty of commerce which should facilitate exchanging the fabrics of our unrivalled potteries for their 'capital wines,' and thereby improve the dinners of two nations; while a little lower on the same page some passing

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reference to the Carlists calls forth the glorification of a 'past, but real aristocracy, an aristocracy that was founded on an intelligible principle, which claimed great privileges 'for great purposes, whose hereditary duties were such that 'their possessors were perpetually in the eye of the nation, and who maintained, and in a certain point of view 'justified, their pre-eminence by constant illustration.' And in the dramatis persone there is the same odd juxtaposition of idealising fancy with close practical observation; Sidonia, young, beautiful, and wise, Jew and grandee of Spain, who saves the credit of nations with his finance and wins steeplechases with his horsemanship, rubs shoulders. with the immortal placemen, Tadpole and Taper. And it is just this twy-natured character that prevents the average reader from caring for Disraeli's novels; he will not be at the pains to understand. And in a sense the average reader is right. They lack the unity of art; they are not really novels, though everywhere is evidence in abundance of the novelist's gift. Tadpole and Taper, Dioscuri of the lobby, with their hierarchical superior, Mr. Rigby, the placeman in excelsis, attest the faculty of satiric creation; Lord Monmouth perhaps proves even a higher gift. When Harry Coningsby comes present himself for the first time to his grandfather, the grand seigneur overwhelms him with a bow worthy of Louis XIV., and the boy subsides into tears; a trait perhaps overcharged, but highly characteristic of the writer. But the ideal Eton boy, as Disraeli conceives him, knows that he has got to be brave, and at dinner he is very brave. One of the guests, Mr. Ormsby, takes friendly notice of him, and inquires about Eton. Coningsby answers boldly.

"Gad, I must go down and see the old place," said Mr. Ormsby, touched by a pensive reminiscence. "One can get a good bed and bottle of port at the Christopher still?"

"You had better come and try, sir," said Coningsby. "If you will come some day and dine with me at the Christopher, I will give you such a bottle of champagne as you never tasted yet."

'The marquess looked at him but said nothing. “Ah, I liked a dinner at the Christopher," said Mr. Ormsby. "After mutton, mutton, mutton every day, it was not a bad thing.

"We had venison for dinner every week last "Buckhurst had it sent up from his park. dinner; breakfast is my lounge."

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season," said Coningsby; But I don't care for

Ah, those little rolls and pats of butter!" said Mr. Ormsby. "Short commons, though. What do you think we did in my time? We used to send over the way to get a mutton chop."

""I wish you could see Buckhurst and me at breakfast," said Coningsby, "with a pound of Castle's sausages."

"What Buckhurst is that, Harry?" inquired Lord Monmouth, in a tone of some interest, and for the first time calling him by his Christian

name.

"Sir Charles Buckhurst, sir, a Berkshire man; Shirley Park is his place."

'Why, that must be Charley's son, Eskdale," said Lord Monmouth; "I had no idea he could be so young."

"He married late, you know, and had nothing but daughters for a long time."

"Well, I hope there will be no Reform Bill for Eton," said Lord Monmouth musingly.'

Thackeray knew how to represent Lord Steyne well enough, but Thackeray would hardly have realised how the man, who had through a long career denied himself no gratification, would be gratified by the sight of youth just beginning life and making a fool of itself in a spirited way. Thackeray would have been apt to make Lord Monmouth round on his grandson with a laugh that would make the boy wince; Disraeli realises how the sight of Coningsby makes the old viveur feel young again. He repeats the touch, in describing the Montem in which Coningsby took part, when he makes Lord Monmouth look at the great Duke's triumphal progress through the cheering boys, and say, 'I would give his fame, if I had it, and my wealth, to be sixteen.' No writer has felt more keenly the glamour of youth than this dreamer whose young men all see visions; but, for all that, he does not trouble to make Coningsby more than a puppet or mouthpiece emitting the ideas that Benjamin Disraeli wished to utter-ideas which had a perfectly definite reference. For, although the characters figure for the most part under borrowed names, with the leaders no such concealment is used, and the author passes judgement explicitly on the actions of the Duke of Wellington, and expressly suspends judgement on Sir Robert Peel. In short, Disraeli, in Coningsby' and everywhere else, uses the novel primarily as a vehicle for disseminating ideas, and not as a means of illustrating human character by the art of narration, which is the true aim of a novelist.

Such was the aim of Anthony Trollope, the one novelist whose imagination positively revelled in the atmosphere of St. Stephen's. The sort of inhibitory effect which we have conceived to be exercised upon the average fancy by the un... romantic conditions of a parliamentary career could never touch him, for Trollope never felt the need to idealise