tenantry and the labourers. Disraeli's head continued to trouble him, but the air and the hills gave him his best chance of recovery. His father, contented with an occasional lecture, left him to himself. He was devoted to his mother and passionately attached to his sister. Altogether nothing could be calmer, nothing more affectionately peaceful than the two or three years which he passed at Bradenham after this migration. Though he could not study in London chambers, he could read and he could write, and over his writing he worked indefatigably, if not with great success. He added a second part to 'Vivian Grey.' Clever it could not help being, but it had not the flavour of the first. He wrote the 'Young Duke,' a flashy picture of high society which might have passed muster as the ephemeral production of an ordinary novelist. Neither of these, however, indicated any literary advance, nor did he himself attach any value to them. In a happier interval, perhaps, when he had a respite from his headaches, he threw off three light satires, which, with one exception, are the most brilliant of all his productions. 'Ixion in Heaven' is taken from the story of the King of Thessaly who was carried to Olympus and fell in love with the queen of the gods. Disraeli's classical knowledge probably went no farther than Lemprière's Dictionary, but Lemprière gave him all that he wanted. The form and tone are like Lucian's, and the execution almost as good. No characters in real life are more vivid than those which he draws of the high-bred divinities at the court of the Father of the gods, while the Father himself is George IV. Apollo Byron, and the ladies well-known ornaments of the circles of the Olympians of May Fair. [Sidenote: POLITICAL SATIRES] Equally good is the 'Infernal Marriage,' the rape of Proserpine and her adventures in her dominions below. The wit which we never miss in Disraeli rises here into humour which is rare with him, and a deeper current of thought can be traced when the Queen of Hell pays a visit to Elysium, finding there the few thousand families who spend their time in the splendid luxury of absolute idleness; high-born, graceful beings without a duty to perform, supported by the toil of a million gnomes, and after exhausting every form of amusement ready to perish of ennui.