And now having a true prophet, having surrounded him with a band of disciples, so that the transmitted rays of wisdom may be bearable to our mortal eyes, we expect some result worthy of this startling machinery. Let the closed casket open, and the magic light stream forth to dazzle the gazing world. We know, alas! too well that our expectation cannot be satisfied. There is not any secret doctrine in politics. Bolingbroke may have been a very clever man, but he could not see through a stone wall. The whole hypothesis is too extravagant to admit of any downright prosaic interpretation. But something might surely be done for the imagination, if not for the reason. Some mystic formula might be pronounced which might pass sufficiently well for an oracle so long as we are in the charmed world of fiction. Let Sidonia only repeat some magniloquent gnome from Greek, or Hebrew, or German philosophers, give us a scrap of Hegel, or of the Talmud, and we will willingly take it to be the real thing for imaginative purposes, as we allow ourselves to believe that some theatrical goblet really contains a fluid of magical efficacy. Unluckily, however, and the misfortune illustrates the inconvenience of combining politics with fiction, Disraeli had something to say, and still more unluckily that something was a mere nothing. It was the creed of Young England; and even greater imaginative power might have failed in the effort to instil the most temporary vitality into that flimsy collection of sham beliefs. A mere sentimentalist might possibly have introduced it in such a way as to impress us at least with his own sincerity. But how is such doctrine to be uttered by lips which are, at the same time, pouring out the shrewdest of sarcasms against politicians who, if more pachydermatous, were at least more manly? In a newfangled church, amidst incense and genuflexions and ecclesiastical millinery, one may listen patiently to a ritualist sermon; but no mortal skill could make ritualism sound plausible in regions to which the outer air of common sense is fairly admitted. The only mode of escape is by slurring over the doctrine, or by proclaiming it with an air of burlesque. Disraeli keeps most dexterously in the region of the ambiguous. He does at last produce his political wares with a certain _aplomb_; but a doubtful smile about his lips encourages some of the spectators to fancy that he estimates their value pretty accurately. His last book of 'Coningsby' opens with a Christmas scene worthy of an illustrated keepsake. We have buttery-hatches, and beef, and ale, and red cloaks, and a lord of misrule, and a hobby-horse, and a boar's head with a canticle. Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino,