“Without being a system-monger,” he resumes, repeating the refrain of his previous _Revolutionary Epick_, “I cannot but perceive that the history of Europe for three hundred years has been a transition from feudal to federal principles.” If not their origin, these contending principles have blended with all the struggles that have occurred.--“The revolt of the Netherlands impelled, if it did not produce, our revolution against Charles I. That of the Anglo-American colonies impelled, if it did not produce, the Revolution in France.” “This,” he says, “is not a party pamphlet, and appeals to the passions of no order of the State.” “It is wise,” he concludes, “to be sanguine in public as well as in private life; yet the sagacious statesman must view the present portents with anxiety, if not with terror. It would sometimes appear that the loss of our colonial empire must be the necessary consequence of our prolonged domestic discussions. Hope, however, lingers to the last. In the sedate but vigorous character of the British nation we may place great confidence.” The very pressing unsettlement of those days will afterwards claim a mention; nor should I now omit Disraeli’s sentence in his _Crisis Examined_, to the effect that “Lord Grey refusing the Privy Seal and Lord Brougham soliciting the Chief Barony” were “two epigrammatic episodes in the history of reform that never can be forgotten.” Mr. John Morley has well observed that about all Disraeli’s utterance there was something spacious. The ideas that I am about to examine are not to be brushed away by the sneers of triflers. Whatever may be thought of them, and however they may fairly be encountered by criticism, dissented from or condemned by judgment, they are still alive. Disraeli bathed the political landscape in a large and luminous atmosphere. To literature, as I shall hope to show, he lent a fresh and original charm. Over existence he never ceased to spread the glow of endeavour, of aspiration, and of purpose. His heart was with the youth and the labour of England. He made for the strength and union of every divergent class. He struck and stirred the national imagination. Disraeli’s sincerity was that of a master in the world’s studio, imbuing the fainter shapes around him with the vivid colours of the true pictures in his own brain. It was that, also, of a great man of action who translates dreams into deeds. It is not often that the literary mind is allied to a practical bent. He himself has reminded us that such an union--“as in the case of Caius Julius”--is irresistible. He was always himself, and never under “the dangerous sympathy with the creations of others.” He believed that “every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this.”[49]