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lar are distinguished by all those qualities of subtlety and courage in investigation, as well as candor and boldness in describing its results, which have made him remarkable alike for his opinions and the unselfish sacrifices he has made to enforce them. He contributes to the present number a paper on the cerebral formations of the murderers Manning, and there is another very curious and interesting paper by Mr. Chauncy Hare Townshend.

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal has lost none of its old reputation, and co-exists with Mr. Dickens's Household Words, a journal so far differing in manner as to wear its wellmerited popularity, and to spread through its vast range of readers not alone amusement but information and instruction in all the great questions of the day, without the slightest detriment to the interests of its Scotch brother laborer. The Messrs. Chambers have also commenced with the new year what they call a Pocket Miscellany, consisting of amusing papers reprinted in cheap and handy volumes from the early quarto numbers of their journal-as a literary companion for the railway, the fireside, or the bush. Within the same category perhaps should come certain new additions to Mr. Routledge's "popular library," and among them, with primary claims to notice and respect, two volumes of Twice Told Tales, by that American novelist who has recently achieved such deserved popularity in England. Here, too, we may also mention a little library of graver character, published by Mr. Pickering, with the taste for which he is famous both in selection and production-a collection of "Christian Classics,", in eighteenpenny and two shilling volumes, to which the latest additions are Bishop Hall's Occasional Meditations and Meditations and Vows.

dicious selections which appear monthly, under the title of Half Hours of English History; and for the Imperial Cyclopædia. Under this latter head the tenth part of the Cyclopædia of the British Empire,' most carefully and cleverly compiled, lies now before us. Then, under the series sent forth by the same publisher, entitled the Country House, instruction is offered this month upon the subject of The Piggery; and in the series called Rural Handbooks, issued by another publisher, Mr. Orr, very much in the same form, and also at a shilling, a very complete little treatise is offered on The Cow. The Messrs. Longman's valuable shilling series of The Travellers' Library is continued with unabated vigor on its original plan, and offers this month, to railway readers and others, a re-print of Mr. Macaulay's brilliant essays on the Life and Writings of Addison and Horace Walpole. To railway readers also, and to all others who love pleasant, graceful writing, Mrs. Cowden Clarke presents her fourteenth tale, the last but one in her series, of the Girlhood of Shakspeare's Heroines. It is a different class of readers who will be interested in the second quarterly part of A Narrative of the Kaffir War, plainly written, and with no literary merits of style, but illustrated by official documents which make it valuable. We may note here also Chapman's British Railway Guide, for railway readers an admirable thing, but the contents of which are not exactly pleasant matter to beguile the time of those who sit at home. Nor will it be inappropriate to add to our list those indispensable periodical visitors-The Pocket Peerage and Baronetage of Great Britain and Ireland, a well arranged, compact, and most convenient little volume; and Webster's Royal Red Book, to the careful correctness of which useful compilation, as well as its facility of reference by the ingenious mode of printing adopted, we have repeatedly borne testimony.

Here we discover that we omitted the first number of the Garden Companion from the list of new serials devoted to a special purpose, which may properly be called maga

Among periodical works which do not. come under the old-fashioned class of magazines, we have to notice an edition of Shakspeare issued by Mr. Knight in sixpenny parts, portable in form, with notes placed in a marginal column instead of at the foot, and in the same column little figures also, illustrative of costume. This is called the Com-zines. panion Shakspeare, of which each part is to contain a single play. The first part, now before us, contains King John; and the edition, when complete, is to form three volumes. The re-issue by the same publisher of a very handsome and carefully revised National Edition of the Pictorical Shakspeare, reaches this month its part 29. To Mr. Knight we are indebted also for the ju

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This Florists' Journal, conducted by Mr. Henfrey and other able men, contains two admirable colored plates of heaths and chrysanthemums drawn from nature, besides wood engravings executed in the best style. The letter-press is designed to contain popular descriptions of new plants; and information, botanical and horticultural, interesting to the amateur, without any attempt at technical description. This magazine, which

adds cheapness to its other recommendations, deserves complete success.

Returning to our serials, we find this present January, 1852, selected for the commencement of a re-issue of the Portrait Gallery, with biographies, as published originally by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The re-issue will be completed in twenty-four parts, each part containing seven portraits. Other serials claiming notice belong to the pleasant walks o ffiction, re-issued, or issued for the first time. While awaiting the new circle of friends to whose hearths we are to be introduced by Mr. Dickens at the close of next month, we are invited to read the History, in monthly parts, of Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, the reprint of which, from the magazine in which we have already enjoyed it heartily, commences with the present month. The public, allured by Mr. Leech's delightfully humorous pencil, (as keen for horseflesh as for human,) will find pleasure, we think, in Mr. Sponge's pen. The writer is a thorough master of his subject, and treats it with a fullness of knowledge, breadth of comicality, and racy sense of enjoyment, that surely entitle him to a large and laughing audience. Mr. Lever's monthly publication of the Daltons reaches its twenty-first part, and Mr. Ainsworth's Mervyn Clitheroe stands now at No. 2. It is too early to speak of Mr. Ainsworth's story, but it has made a successful beginning, with good promise of character and incident in a new and agreeable vein.

Turning from gay to grave, we close our catalogue of serials by calling attention to the most important first appearance of the month, the first quarterly part of Doctor Wm. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Those who are familiar with the value of those other standard works of a like kind, produced under the same editor, the Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Biography, and Mythology, and of Antiquities, will appreciate the gain that must accrue to English scholarship by the completion, with this last dictionary, of an entire body of classical information that will have no parallel in any other language.

is the Banking Almanac, with a complete Banking Directory and very convenient Diary attached. The Family Almanac and Educational Register contains so full an account of the colleges, endowed grammar schools, &c., and their management, as to be a book of great importance to all men who are studying or advocating any questions of educational reform. The Post Magazine Almanac is strong upon the subject of Insurance Companies. The Farmers' Almanac provides, as usual, information fitted to the wants of its supporters. The Comic Almanac shows this year no lack of its usual humor, providing for another class the wonders of George Cruikshank's pencil; and Punch's Almanac and Pocket Book, with a capital colored plate and etchings by Leech, and full of mirth in the letter press, keeps up the reputation of our ancient jester. To another class the Scottish Temperance League Register and Abstainers' Almanae will give precisely those statistics which it wants. Reformers' Almanac and Political Year Book contains a summary of the session of 1851, and of the acts passed therein, with other matter dear to politicians; while the Fine Arts Almanac and Artists' Remembrancer spreads its sail out for a breath of favor from again another class. This Fine Arts Almanac seems to us excellently compiled, and to be worth taking up for reading or reference apart from the mere accidents or incidents of the day. spiders, Raphael and Zadkiel, spread their nets for the ignorant, and trade like good astrologers on superstition; while Messrs. Deane and Dray trade like good ironmongers, and, according to a fashion common among tradesmen in our day, issue Deane's Illustrated Almanac, with numerous pictures of knives and forks, fire-irons, and cinder-sifters.

The

Those goodly

We have not mentioned in this rapid sketch more than a sixth part of the serials submitted to the public. Let any gentleman, therefore, who may think of ordering his bookseller to send him monthly all the periodicals, pause and consider.

We were breaking off, when suddenly one duty was remembered, a duty which it is always pleasant to discharge, and with the The ALMANACS for 1852 now claim atten-performance of which we must conclude our tion. There is the British Almanac and Companion, able as ever, and containing, of course, among other matter, essays on the Exhibition and the Census of 1851. There is the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, full of valuable statistics having reference to the United States. There

summary. It is to call attention to the great ability displayed by Mr. Bohn in the selection, month after month, of sterling matter for his Antiquarian, Classical, and Standard Libraries. Of all the new year's periodicals and serials we would give the first place to these. We have, in the three series, three

books for January, 1852, the titles of which | alone bespeak the claim of Mr. Bohn to our thankful remembrance. They are the first volume of a new edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, the fourth volume of a translation of Vasari, and Lucretius trans

lated literally into prose, with the metrical version of Mason Good as an appendix. To a large class of readers the cheap and accessible edition of Browne will be peculiarly welcome. This first volume is occupied by the Vulgar Errors.

From Fraser's Magazine.

MR. BENJAMIN DISRAELI AS LEADER AND LEGISLATOR.

MR. DISRAELI is the de facto leader of the who may one day be his friends, or at least Tory Opposition, or Country Party, in the the object of his guardianship. If, to gain House of Commons. The position is bril- a temporary triumph, he makes too great an liant and commanding. It has dazzled and onslaught on principles, he unsettles the gratified the ambition of some of the greatest foundation of his future dominion. Thereorators and most powerful statesmen of past fore, in his uttermost hostility there must and present, times. Not to go too far up mingle somewhat of prudent caution and pathe stream of parliamentary history, there ternal care. While a negative, not to say a are the names of Pitt, Canning, and Peel; fictitious policy will serve as a pretext for men who labored hard and long at their assaults, there must always be a positive constitutional task, by their tactics and their policy in reserve. To harmonize these two, oratory forging with patient toil the weapons yet not disclose too much of either, demands wherewith they made the laws, For, the tact, finesse, and political probity of no comlegitimate leader of an opposition must not mon order; at least in the present day, when be regarded as a mere partisan chief, al- political strife is no longer internecine, and though it is for him to lead the assault or to the result of every fresh struggle adds to the defend the breach. A man called by his arguments for systematic compromise. Here party to that high and honorable post, and is but the outline of the qualifications reconfided in by them while there, becomes an quired in a Leader of Opposition, not of the important and necessary part of the great powers and qualities they imply. Eloquence, constitutional machine. Besides his militant personal influence, tact, strategic genius, functions, he is the interpreter of the grow-temper, foresight, magnanimity, knowledge, ing wants or the baffled wishes of at least a considerable portion of the community; the wisdom of our system providing that those wants and wishes shall be reduced to some practicable shape, so that the responsibility of new legislation shall fall on those who oppose the old, and thus the nation be never left without lawgivers and laws. The Leader of the Opposition, therefore, becomes de facto a ruler of the people, long before he is so de jure. If he rightly comprehends his mission, even his strategy must be prospective. Like a general manoeuvring in a friendly country, he must never gain victory at too great a loss to the body-politic. In wounding even his political adversaries, he runs the risk of too deeply injuring those

even to the minutest details,-how rare in their separate manifestation, and still more rare in combination!

Bearing these conditions in mind, the nation ought to look with jealous scrutiny at the character and pretensions of the man who fills the post of Leader of the Opposi tion in the House of Commons. Mr. Disraeli is just now that man. Are we not bound then to inquire by what means he reached that post, and by what right he keeps it?

This we shall endeavor to do in the following pages, premising that our tests will be applied, not to the measures Mr. Disraeli may recommend, but to the manner in which he conducts his party: so that if the result of our scrutiny be favorable to him, we shall

in nowise commit ourselves to an approval of his policy; while if it be unfavorable, we shall be exonerated from the charge of political partiality.

has resulted from the gradual expulsion of the fiery spirit of enterprise or self-display, than for that less questionable steadiness which is but the consolidation of mediocrity. Mr. Disraeli's past life will bear this test; and, even more than some of his contemporaries, he gains in the present aspect of his character by the contrast it affords to that past life; while, as even in his wildest escapades there was always manifested a noble daring, and aspirations only provocative of ridicule because unsupported by adequate powers, the confidence inspired by his later achievements ought not to be lessened by fears of a relapse. Mr. Disraeli has performed many foolish and bombastic feats, but he has never done a mean thing: his extravagances have always been on the chivalrous side even in his exultation at the success of his attacks upon Sir Robert Peel, when others pursued that statesman with rancor in his retreat, Mr. Disraeli never forgot the courtesy and respect that are due to a fallen foe. From the hour of Sir Robert's resignation, his assailant, however bitter while the work was still to be done, never uttered one

Five years ago we passed in review the then career of Mr. Disraeli as an author and politician. The result of a very elaborate examination was a singular array of contrasts and incongruities, of failures and triumphs, of incomprehensible eccentricities and uncomprehended powers. As an author, we found him commencing with a novel of singular originality and force, which at once fixed attention on its youthful writer; and finishing after an interval full of literary extravagances, with fictions displaying no great advance in constructive or artistic skill, and chiefly interesting as being astonishing political pamphlets in three volumes. As a politician, his progress had been as striking as had been his retrogression, or at least his non-advancement, in the other branch of intellectual activity. From his first début, some two-and-twenty years ago, in the political arena, he had, it is true, attempted a series of " vigorous assaults on the portals of the Temple of Fame" with ridiculous ill-word in his disparagement. success, until at last the culminating point of his folly was reached in his maiden speech to the House of Commons in the year 1837, which was, without exception, (the relative pretensions of men being borne in mind,) the most extraordinary fiasco ever known in that assembly. But here if he touched the earth, it was but to rebound with fresh | strength. We had gone through our examination of the previous life of Mr. Disraeli in no spirit of malice or ridicule, but rather in a sincere admiration of the singular vigor of mind, perseverance, and self-control, which, within a very few years after this most signal failure, could have so strengthened, wrought, and toned exuberant and hitherto ill-disciplined powers, as to enable him to constitute himself the triumphant assailant of the most powerful and practised parliamentary champion of the day, and ultimately attain the leadership of the party which that champion had abandoned. It is not by hiding the early errors of eminent men that service is done to their reputation; it is rather the contrast presented by their later years that raises them in public estimation. When the superabundant heat and excitability of youth have passed away, the traces of such extravagances mark the native force of genius or character of which they were the evanescent ebullitions; and it is notorious that mankind feel even more respect for a maturity that

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Why do we dwell at all on the early follies of this parliamentary phoenix? Because they have a direct connection with the question of Mr. Disraeli's fitness for the post he now holds, and for its possible prospective responsibilities. If we are to belive that the whole opposition is a sham-that Mr. Disraeli is not the leader; that Sir Edward Bulwer, or Mr. Gladstone, or some other 'coming man," is to supersede him; that he is merely used as a guerilla chief or a free lance, to be cast aside when the work of attack is finished, that he may make room for more legitimate commanders to march into possession under cover of his assault; if the man who has rallied his party from confusion-almost from despair-to lead them to the rout of the ministry, and the then momentary trusteeship of the nation; if, contrary to all the laws of parliamentary chivalry, Mr. Disraeli's legitimate pretensions are to be treated with contempt, and the whole vision of a Country Party and a successful Opposition is to vanish like a dissolvingview, why then we should be compelled to place Mr. Disraeli's Present on a footing with his Past, and wait for that Future, which a man of his powers and courage would inevitably prepare for such purblind cunning and perfidious folly. But as we see nothing in the mental, moral, or physical conformation of Mr. Disraeli that should put

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him beyond the official any more than the | Whether Mr. Disraeli seized on the leaderparliamentary pale-as he has displayed ship of that party, or whether he was elected more eloquence, more varied debating pow- to it,-whether, at first, he did or did not ers, more strategic skill, and has achieved enjoy the confidence of those who were seemmore victories than any of his colleagues or ingly following his lead, or whether, like competitors, we are compelled to adopt the another "adventurer" of our time, he first belief, notwithstanding all that we read in seized on it vi et armis, and afterwards obprint and hear in society to the contrary, tained, by a sort of half-compulsory vote, that this successful party-leader and most the sanction of those whom he had taken by subtle and brilliant debater is as eligible for surprise,-these are questions which much high office as any other intellectual biped agitated the public at the time, but which who may in former days have triumphantly have now lost their interest. Still, their confulfilled the ostensible and preliminary con- temporaneous discussion, while it consoliditions. If, then, Mr. Disraeli, as Leader of dated, in one sense, the position of Mr. Disthe Opposition, is a reality and an entity, raeli, by stripping it of its fabulous or mythinot a myth, it follows that, according to our cal character, also tended to the spread of opening theory, he becomes a prospective prejudices against that gentleman in the participator in the government of the coun- public mind. To a policy of mere revenge try, and is invested with the present respon- had naturally succeeded a blind impulse of sibilities of the man who leads on his troops mere reaction. "Deep-mouthed Boeotians" to the destruction of existing powers and commenced a noisy agitation for a restoration systems. Hence, the necessity of severely of "protection to native industry;" they testing his principles and theories-of divin- called aggregate meetings of the ultras and ing from bis past pyrotechnics and his pres- the discontented of all classes, and they orent nebulosities, some consistent political ganized associations with very big names scheme, or some concrete policy. and very little aims,-bodies whose threats were "all sound and fury, signifying nothing." The same Boeotian orators, flushed with success, became pilgrims, apostles of the new reaction; they stirred up the agricultural mind in its clayey homes and fenny fastnesses; the whole island rang with the indignant growl of a responsive chorus. Every success of this kind was a new obsta cle in the path of Mr. Disraeli. The new agitation tended to the planting of a fixed idea, and added to the difficulty of managing the unmanageable. The press used it as a means of annoyance to Mr. Disraeli, who was now made responsible for all the vagaries, all the statistical and economic blunders of his insubordinates; now threatened with deposition from his giddy and uncertain elevation, whither were to be raised the rampant Bootians aforesaid. If a Nemesis had guided him to the destruction of the temporary ascendency of Sir R. Peel, so now a like spirit of fatalistic justice dictated his own punishment, and the means thereof. The ridicule, the sneers, the sarcasms, the damnatory quizzing, that had formed his weapons, were now employed against him in his turn. flogged with scorpions, put your head in a hornet's nest, turn Turk and try to increase the degree by adding to the quantity of your marital happiness, or be the premier of a falling party,-do anything. rather than provoke the attacks of the witty and malicious satirists who furnish the public with their diurnal

Look back at the state of things in 1846. The first sentiment of the Tory party was one of indignation at what appeared to them rank treason to political ties and traditions. Their first policy was one of revenge; of which Lord George Bentinck supplied the moral, Mr Disraeli the mental agency; Lord George was its originator, Mr. Disraeli its instrument. We all know with what success these two champions of a surprised interest wreaked its natural vengeance on Sir Robert Peel. If they could not avert the storm, they at least overthrew the master who had raised it. Even then, the bond of cohesion among the representatives of the owners and occupiers of land was little better than mere hatred to a name; and the public had too much faith in the newly-inaugurated system, to suppose that any more philosophical or germinative principle could lurk behind so barbarous a standard. The parliamentary successes of Mr. Disraeli, brilliant although they had been, were not of a character to render him a favorite with any portion of the public, but those of a stern, staunch, and steadfast nature, who continually fed the flame of a retrospective animosity. Mr. Disraeli's own abstinence from any further attacks on the fallen minister, withheld the stimulus even from this passion.

The sudden death of Lord George Bentinck produced, however, a total change in the position of the Tory, or Country Party.

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