ing blood at every blow—is ruling the Conservative party -and is treated with respect even by O'Connell, his erst most contemptuous and formidable foe. A year or two more,

he is the leader of the Commons and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This we say is true power, and we

. cannot but exult, much as we do differ in many important matters from Disraeli, in witnessing the rapid rise of this scion of a despised and proscribed family to the height of reputation and influence; and cannot but compare it to the history of the shepherd-boy of Bethlehem, who passed, by a few strides, from waiting on the ewes with young, to the summit of fame as a poet, and of power as a king.

We like, we must say again, the merit that struggles into success infinitely more than that which attains an early, and quick, and easy triumph. Look at the career of Macaulay, and compare it with Disraeli's. The former rose instantly into popularity as a writer; he rose instantly into fame as a parliamentary orator. Till his richly-deserved rejection by Edinburgh, there was not a single " crook” in his “lot.” Even that city has since degraded itself by kneeling, “like a tame elephant,” to receive once more its imperious rider. Disraeli's motto, on the other hand, like Burke's, was Nitor in adversum ; and, like him, at every turnpike he had to present his passport. If Macaulay seem more consistent, it has been because he has always run in the rut of a party, and never entertained really bold, broad, and independent views. Macaulay, once exalted, can kick at those who are farther down than himself; but he never could have had the moral heroism to have looked up from the dust of contempt into which he had been hurled by six hundred of his peers, and to have said, “ the time will come that

you
will listen to me.

We are far from comparing Disraeli to Macaulay, in point of learning, taste, or nervous energy of style; but we are convinced that, in inventiveness, ingenuity, originality, and natural power of genius, he is superior.

At the word " originality,” we see some of our readers starting, and recalling to their minds the “plagiarisms” of Disraeli. We have often had occasion to despise popular clamours against public men, especially when swelled by

the voices of a needy, mendacious, and profligate press : but there has been seldom a clamour more utterly contemptible than that raised against Disraeli for plagiarism. There lives not, nor ever perhaps lived, a literary, or clerical, or parliamentary man, who has not now and then, in the strong pressure of haste, been driven to avail himself of the labours of others, whether by the appropriation of thought or of language, of principles or of passages. Think of Milton, Mirabeau, Fox, Chalmers, Hall—all these were guilty of appropriations considerably larger than any charged against Disraeli. Milton has been called the “celestial thief;" Mirabeau got the ablest of his speeches from Dumont; Fox was often primed by Burke. Most of the thinking in Chalmers's “ Astronomical Discourses" is derived from Andrew Fuller's “ Gospel its own Witness.” Many of Hall's brightest gems of figure are taken from others—from Burke, Grattan, and Warburton-and one or two of them have been retaken by Macaulay from Hall. Plagiarism, in the shape of petty larceny, is so general, that it has ceased to be counted a crime; it is only the habitual thief, the man who lives by plunder, and who plunders on a large scale, that deserves the halter. Now Disraeli is not such a man. His works and speeches are before the world;

1 the Argus-eyes of a multitudinous envy have long been fixed upon them; and the result has been, that not above two or three passages have been proved to be copied from other writers, and all his more brilliant and characteristic works --" Alroy," "Iskander," "Coningsby,” “Contarini Fle

" ming," "The Young Duke," and " Tancred"--are, intus et in cute, his own. Are there ten living writers of whom the same, or anything approaching to the same statement, can be made?

We know not a little of the workings, open or secret, both of the clerical and of the literary worlds; and are certain that there never was a period in which more mean, malignant, and deplorable envy and detraction were working, whether openly or covertly, both among authors and divines—an envy that spares not even the dead, that spits out its venom against names which have long been written as if in stars on the firmament of reputation, but which

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wars especially with those living celebrities who are too honest to belong to any party, too progressive to be chained to any formula, too great to be put down, but not too great to be reviled and slandered, and whose very independence and strongly-pronounced individuality become the principal charges against them. Who shall write the dark history of that serpentine stream of slander, which is winding through all our literature at present like one of the arms of Acheron, and which is damaging the public and the private characters, too, of many a man who is entirely unaware of the presence and the progress of the foul and insidious poison? He that would lay bare the shameful secret history of many of our influential journals, and of our church cliques, would be a benefactor to literature, to morality, to religion, and to man.

Since beginning this paper, our attention has been called to the onslaught of the Times” on Disraeli. It has forcibly recalled to our mind the words of Burns

“Oh, wad some power the giftie gi'e us,

To see ourselves as ithers see us.' In describing Disraeli as the incarnation of genius without conscience, how faithfully has the “ Times” described the general notion in reference to itself, provided the word “intellect” be substituted for “genius.” For, with all the talent of the “ Times," we doubt if it has ever displayed true genius, or if one paragraph of real inspiration can be quoted from amid its sounding commonplaces and brilliant insincerities. But talent, without even the pretence of principle, is so notoriously its characteristic, that we marvel at the coolness with which it takes off its own sobriquet, and sticks it on the brow of another-marvel till we remember that the impudence of the leading journal is, like all its other properties, its mendacity, its mystery, its inconsistency, its tergiversation, its circulation, and its advertising, on a colossal scale.

We are not prepared as yet to predict the future history or the ultimate place of Benjamin Disraeli. One thing in him is most hopeful. He does not know, any more than Wellington or Byron, what it is to be beaten. His motto is, “Never say die.” When newly down he is always

most dangerous. Prodigious as is the amount of abuse and detraction he is now enduring, it may be doubted if he were ever so popular, or if there be a single man alive who is exciting such interest, or awakening such expectation. This proves, first, that he is no temporary rage or pet of the public; secondly, that he has something else than a selfish object in view; and, thirdly, that there is a certain inexhaustible stuff in him which men call genius, and which is sure to excite hope in reference to its possessor till the last moment of his earthly existence. Gladstone is a man of high talent; but few expect anything extraordinary from his future exertions. Disraeli is a man of genius, and many look for some grand conclusive display or displays of its power. Let him gird himself for the task. Let him forget the past. Let him pay no heed

" whatever to his barking, snarling opponents. Let him commit himself to some great new idea, or, at least, to some new and wider phase of his old one. He has been hitherto considerably like Byron in his undulating and uneven course, in the alternate sinking and swelling of the wave of his Destiny: Let him ponder that poet's last noble enterprise, by which he was redeeming at once himself and a whole nation when he died. Let Disraeli address himself to some kindred undertaking in reference to the children of his people; and then, as Byron died amid the blessings of the Greeks, may he inherit, in life, in death, and in all after-time, the gratitude and praises of God's ancient and still much-loved children, the Jews. We are hopeful that there is some such brilliant achievement before one of the few men of genius the House of Commons now contains.

No. VIII. -SMIBERT AND THE HIGHLANDS.*

This is truly a splendid volume. Whether we look to its exterior or its interior—to the pink cover, decorated with

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the golden thistle to “Scotia dear”—or to the many beautiful specimens of tartan, which add a rainbow of lustre to its

pages or to the plain clear type-or to the interesting, varied, and richly anecdotical letterpress—we have seen few ornamental books, for years, which can vie with it. No book, assuredly, since Stewart of Garth’s “ History of the Highland Regiments,” has appeared one-half so attractive to Highlanders, or to any, whether in Scotland or England, who have the Highland blood flowing in their veins, or any admiration for the scenery of the Highlands. We feel ourselves, on the double wings of this elegant history, and on the rich sunshine of an August afternoon, wafted away to the mountains of Scotland. The

, land, which in maps seems to blacken into massive grandeur as one casts his eye northwards, opens before us its dark barriers, and we pass, as permitted guests, amid its wild and primitive scenery. There arise, first of all, its unplanted heights, the dwellings of the storm and the eagle

-its old granite rocks—its clefts of everlasting snow-its heathy wildernesses lying serene around, as if they had long ago forgotten to mourn for their desolation, but were cherishing it, as a solitary source of pride—its bold barren peaks, sharp, fixed, and silent as death. Then there are the thousand lakes of the mountain land, spotting its sterility with peace; some like large drops of silver-others likestill, bright plates—others like abortive rivers, struggling in vain against their barriers—and others pulsing in correspondence and reply to the pulse of the everlasting ocean. Î'hen there are its woodlands—from the coppice of the glen to the great pines of the forests—feathering the sides of the mountains, and casting the shadows of their round tops upon the precipices which tower above them. Then there are the green vales, winding onwards through the dark hills, and, as they run, expanding like rivers into the clear, broad, sunny straths, which lie along the landscape, like friths of verdure and beauty. Then there are the streams and the cataracts, the noisy tenants of a silent land: here gliding with peaceful murmur, there fretted into childish fury by the opposition of rocks, or by the coercion of channels—here sunk in woods, and there rushing lonely through the solitary moor

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