There are the puzzled whom novelty bewilders, and there are the cautious who suspect it. And there is the wholesome instinct of the plain majority to pin itself to immediate “measures” without recognising that a “principle” may change expedients for bringing its idea into effect. Again, there are many--especially in England--who, in their genuine scorn of pinchbeck, mistake the great for the grandiose, and certain that nothing which glitters can be gold, invest imaginative brilliance with the tinsel spangles of Harlequin. There are, too, the second-rate and the second-hand, whose life is one long quotation, and who doubt every coin unissued from the nearest mint; and there is, moreover, a sort of stolid crassness readily dignified into sterling solidity. All this is natural. Institutions and traditions themselves have been aliens until naturalised in and by the community. Imagination gave them birth, national needs accept them; and the contemporary sneer is often succeeded by the posthumous statue. Perhaps the most curious feature of the prosaic and imperceptive man is his ready confusion of the dramatic with the theatrical, of attitude with posture, of pointed effects for a big purpose with affectations for a small. Flirtation might just as well be confounded with love, or foppery with breeding. And yet these same unimaginative censors have often contradicted their protests by their actions, and squandered great opportunities by futile strokes of the theatre. So early as 1837, Sheil, who from the first admired the young Disraeli (then Bulwer’s intimate and the meteor of three seasons), whom Disraeli praised in one of his earliest election speeches, and who was surely no mean judge of intellectual eloquence, warned him after his _début_ that “the House will not allow a man to be a wit and an orator, unless they have the credit of finding it out.... You have shown the House that you have a fine organ, that you have an unlimited command of language, that you have courage, temper, and readiness. Now get rid of your genius for a session; speak often, for you must not show yourself cowed, but speak shortly. Be very quiet, try to be dull, only argue and reason imperfectly, for if you reason with precision, they will think you are trying to be witty. Astonish them by speaking on subjects of detail. Quote figures, dates, calculations, and in a short time the House will sigh for the wit and eloquence which they all know are in you; they will encourage you to pour them forth, and then you will have the ear of the House, and be a favourite.” Seventeen years afterwards, when the dashing _littérateur_ had become Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, Mr. Walpole thus defended him against his enemies on the Budget. “... Whence is it that these extraordinary attacks are made against my right honourable friend? What is the reason, what is the cause, that he is to be assailed at every