The wonderful in Nature can never be unnatural. It is only the affectation of it that is so--and that is usually accompanied by Mrs. Malaprop’s “nice derangement of epitaphs.” Now, so far as Disraeli’s characters merely typify--and they do often--causes or movements, they are not romantic, however picturesque their garb. But so far as they do not, they are essentially romantic, and, where politicians in council are not concerned, this is constantly the case. Nothing can be more romantic, both in matter and manner, than the first introduction of “Sidonia.” The “Princess Lucretia Colonna” in _Coningsby_, is romance incarnate. “Morley,” again, in _Sybil_ is a most romantic figure. The whole episode of the “Baronis,” in _Tancred_, is genuinely and strikingly romantic. So is the figure of “Theodora” in _Lothair_; and all these occur in political novels. But in the non-political they abound. The early squibs are, perhaps, the only romantic skits in our language. _Vivian Grey_, too, is full of romance, and comprises the romantic drolleries of “Essper George,” a modern Sancho. The whole of _Venetia_ and all the action of _Contarini_ are romantic; so is his only and halting drama, _Alarcos_. Though at times, and from causes which I shall consider, there is in these early novels something of old Drury, and too much occasionally of the “Ha!-and-Pah!” attitude, these are only blemishes in the costume; the figures remain romantic. But it is, perhaps, in the short but charming descriptions of character and of scenery that Disraeli best showed his powers for the romantic and the picturesque. Take the character of “Fakredeen;” take even the character of Sir Robert Peel in the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_. Take a hundred touches from his _Home Letters_, and those to his sister and family. He there says that “description is a bore,” but he contrived in a few strokes to picture without describing. The sunset at Athens, “like the neck of a dove.” His vignettes of the Parthenon, of the Lagoons, of Jerusalem, of Syria, both here and in _Contarini_, _Tancred_, and _Lothair_, are etched by a master-hand. Disraeli casts over his scenes the reflected glow of associative feeling. Peruse the beautiful rendering of “Marney Abbey” in _Sybil_ (too long to quote). It is essentially a placid scene romantically described, with an individual feeling of soft regret and tender awe communicated to the dreamy landscape. It proves his delight in what he called “the sweet order of country life;” his feeling for the “order of the peasantry ... succeeded by a race of serfs who are called labourers and burn ricks.” If we would note the contrast in unromantic writers of genius, we have only to re-read Jane Austen’s description of Northanger Abbey, where, be it marked, in purposely deriding the false romance of a girl’s sickly fancy, she must have desired to depict the demesne with every impressive attribute.