energies of the present in a Gothic mausoleum, weird with wan emblems, and chill and solemn as a cathedral vault. Disraeli recognised that our country thrives by adaptation and adjustment; that it is the region of natural growth, and not of sudden blossom; of the oak, not the aloe. In inter-dependence, even more than independence, in the mutual ties of classes, Disraeli discerned the English root for democratic ideas which had all along lurked in the soil. England is great because of that same insular inaccessibility to ideas which repelled Heine. Her slowness of insight vanishes gradually, and not by leaps and bounds--through growth and conduct rather than through universal theories. An idea knocks at our gates for generations before it wins admittance; but when it once enters, it becomes naturalised and ceases to be alien; it becomes actualised; it dwells and walks and votes, and has commerce at large. It becomes part of the popular life and parcel of the national behaviour. “Young England” prepared the ground for social regeneration. It sought to raise the conditions of labour. It was no rose-water club, but, short-lived as it proved, was a real forerunner of measures. A word, therefore, upon it may be pardoned in this connection. Many in the past century have played the part of “saviours of society.” Robert Owen, Ferdinand Lassalle, Napoleon III., Karl Marx, and the eccentric Mr. Urquhart, who furnished some of the _traits_ for Disraeli’s “Sidonia.”[79] But none in this country have been at once so genuine and effective as this association of “Young England;” for, enlisting the enthusiasm of the high and the young, it struck into the roots of national character, without which no development is feasible. Young England aimed further, at rendering leadership sympathetic with labour. It wanted to revive in the lowly a sense of privilege, and in the noble to quicken higher standards of obligation; it wished to recall the heroic; and this it tried to accomplish, not by social disturbance, but by seeking to arouse ancient ideals still slumbering in national traditions. For this purpose it appealed to youth--“the trustees of posterity;”[80] to the power of personal influence and example; and above all, it hoped, as I have already noticed, to counteract the soullessness of utilitarianism. “Ah, yes!” (Disraeli makes Gerard observe in _Sybil_); “I know that style of speculation.... Your gentlemen who remind you that a working man now has a pair of cotton stockings, and that Harry the Eighth was not so well off. At any rate, the condition of classes must be judged of by the age and by their relations with each other.” It was also a vigorous protest against that retort of the Liberal on the Radical--the sluggish doctrine of _laissez-faire_, the principle of “stew-in-your-own-juice,” “devil take the hindmost,” “muddling through,” and “let _ill_ alone.” Disraeli had combated it from the first:--