There's a shout in reply from Cromwell's troops,
Who are singing dolorous lays ;

And thundering cheers from the cavaliers,
Who scoff at their psalm-singing ways.

And then, 'midst the clashing of swords and spears,
Old friends encounter each other;
Ho!-silence yon lad, who with grief seems mad
At the death of his traitor-brother!

Duke Hamilton's faint in the foremost ranks,
And Buckingham's bloody and hoarse;
The King is in front, a-bearing the brunt ;
But a plague on the Scottish horse!
The Royalist troopers they fight amain,
Yet the odds are twenty to one;
And a Puritan cry ascends on high,
For the battle is lost-and won!

*

'Tis a joyful day for the Parliament,
But a sorry one for the King,
Who gallops pell-mell towards Boscobel
As he heareth the curfew ring;
For the Puritan flag usurps the place
Of the standard on ev'ry tow'r ;

"God save the King!" none shall venture to sing, An' they value their heads an hour!

AT THE LITERARY FUND DINNER.

NNIVERSARY of the Royal Literary Fund-the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, First Lord of the Treasury, in the chair." O for the pen of a Bulwer or Macaulay! O for the teeming imagination of a Poet! Here is a text for an epic. Here is a scene for a picture which might make the fortune of a Painter. Perhaps at the Royal Institution you might find more men of science. You might find more artists at the Royal Academy, more politicians at a Club dinner. But here, at the table of the Royal Literary Fund, you have, in a single constellation, a representation in miniature of all that is distinguished in politics, in literature, science, art, and arms. This table represents the flower of English intellect, of English valour, and of English genius. Statesmen, soldiers, men of science, artists, novelists, critics, journalists, men whose writings are the inspiration of their age, men of metal, and men of broad acres, all met together to do honour-to whom? A man of genius like themselves, a man with no escutcheon but literature, and yet one who by his genius has attained the highest honours of his country, and who, by a rare caprice of Fate, wears at once the blue ribbon of Politics and the blue ribbon of Literature.

Look around! The scene alone is an inspiration. There in the gallery, why not at the tables ?-are those whom Mr. Disraeli calls the Priestesses of Fate? What are they thinking of the scene? Perhaps, like Dr. Johnson, that all animals, except man, look best at their food? But they keep their thoughts to themselves; and I, at least, have no wish to be inquisitive upon the point. Let us keep our eyes on the tables. That pale, thoughtful-looking gentleman to Mr. Disraeli's right hand is Lord Stanhope, the President of the Literary Fund, and one of the most accomplished men in the Peerage. His companion on the left is Lord John Manners, the amiable and chivalrous Lord Henry Sidney of "Coningsby." "An Author ?" Yes; the Poet Laureate of Mr. Disraeli's "Young England" party, and the author of that romantic couplet,

Let Wealth and Commerce, Laws and Learning die;

But leave us still our old Nobility.

That is his passport to the society of literary men. What else do you wish? That gentleman with the luxuriant beard and gold glasses is the soul of the Indian Government, Sir Stafford Northcote. He too is an author. "And a poet?" No; a financier. Here is a poet, the gay and ever youthful Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton. That noble head and figure is Sir Roderick Murchison, who can tell you from a glance at a geological map where you may find gold as easily as Mr. Robert Hunt can tell you where our coal beds lie. He is the representative of science, or perhaps I ought to say of the whole circle of sciences; for, like Dr. Whewell, science is his forte and omniscience his foible. Still, Sir Roderick is a capital fellow, and the staunchest of friends. Loyalty with him is an instinct. The representative of Art ought to be near at hand; and there he is. That pleasant-looking man is the courtly Sir Francis Grant, President of the Royal Academy. The Bishop of Rochester represents what Mr. Disraeli calls "the theocratic principle" of our Constitution. And that small man with the finely-chiselled features and that restless grey eye? Is the genius of Westminster Abbey, Dean Stanley, the terror of Convocation, and the herald of a religious creed based on criticism. Here is Sir William Bovill as the representative of Westminster Hall; and there is Sir W. Page Wood, a man of letters and the keenest lawyer in Lincoln's Inn. Sir William Codrington, one of our Crimean Generals, is a fine specimen of an English soldier; and what shall I say of Sir Edward Belcher, except that he is one of the most illustrious of our Arctic heroes? Sir William Stirling Maxwell represents the literature of art; and Dr. Forbes Winslow the literature of medicine. Need I go further? Yes; here are a couple of littérateurs who ought not to be passed over, Mr. Theodore Martin and Mr. Edward Dicey. Mr. Dicey is one of the most graphic of special correspondents; and it is to Mr. Martin that we owe that agreeable volume of chit-chat from Her Majesty's Diary, which is the most popular book of the season.

And the hero of this gay and glittering scene-who and what is he? There he is proposing a toast to the Queen as a Royal Author, and, what is perhaps more in this age of light literature, a successful author. You can hardly call Mr. Disraeli a handsome man. He has none of the dash or portliness or hauteur of Lord Derby or Sir Robert Peel or Lord Palmerston. He is a man of slight build, a thin, spare figure. But you may scan every guest at the table, and scan them in vain, to find a more striking head and face. These are a study, and you can form no idea of them by Mr Disraeli's photographs. The face is of an Eastern cast. D'Israeli is written in

every line of it, and every line is eloquent of the man.

The head

is splendidly developed. The forehead is high and ample. In his youth Mr. Disraeli had the reputation of being one of the handsomest men about town. He and Bulwer Lytton and D'Orsay were the heroes of Lady Blessington's soirées. Those who knew him then tell you of a youth of lithe and limbre figure, of handsome features, of dark flashing eyes, and ambrosial curls, of a youth who, like his own "Vivian Grey," was the envy of men and the admiration of women, and who, too, like "Vivian Grey," was distinguished by his wit and eloquence and his wild ambition not less than by his personal traits. But Time and Time's attendants, Thought and Passion, have wrought their usual havoc. Those ambrosial curls are nearly all gone. That rich olive complexion has lost its bloom. The eye alone retains its lustre, and that is still deep, glowing, and brilliant, as it was thirty years ago. In that you may still trace the Adonis of Gore House. But the glittering son of Aurora is now on the shady side of sixty, and is at the highest point of his daring ambition; and the long and often bitter struggles of those thirty years have left their mark upon him. There is a haggard expression about Mr. Disraeli's features which says even more than his words,"I have come to this assembly like one who comes from the heat of combat to repair to the pure flow of some pellucid stream to slake the thirst of battle." The proud disdainful smile which plays upon his lips speaks with mute eloquence of the House of Commons. You may trace in that "Vivian Grey's" motto—a smile for a friend and a sneer for the world; and though I believe Mr. Disraeli is in private one of the most genial and kind-hearted of men, the most marked and distinguishing expression of his face is an expression of pride and of deep and bitter scorn. Yet no one ought to be surprised at either of these expressions who reflects on Mr. Disraeli's origin, his pride of race, his daring ambition, and the long and bitter personal contests he has gone through in the House of Commons to attain the high position which he holds to-day by favour and command of his sovereign.

What and where are Mr. Disraeli's thoughts to-day? Perhaps with that wild imaginative youth whose eye is wandering listlessly over the pages of Tidd or Chitty, but who in his heart is dreaming delicious dreams of coming fame. Perhaps with the dashing headstrong editor of the Representative, writing raw and sensational philippics about a Tory Democracy, and deceiving himself with the fond illusion that the Representative is destined to silence and to supersede the Times. Possibly with those brilliant groups of wit, beauty, and

fashion which Lady Blessington gathered together at Gore House; for it was here that the author of "Vivian Grey" won his first laurels in the field of literature; and here that he met a congenial spirit in the author of " Pelham." What a host of associations must be clustering in Mr. Disraeli's memory around those magic wordsGore House! Tom Moore and his songs, Louis Napoleon and his fantastic dreams about sovereignty, Bulwer Lytton and his novels, D'Orsay and his coats and caricatures. Or Mr. Disraeli may be thinking-who knows?-of the poet who, standing on the Plain of Troy, surrounded by the tombs of heroes, saw the lightning playing on Mount Ida, and conceived the idea of immortalizing his name with the names of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as the author of the Revolutionary Epic. These were the sort of ideas that Mr. Disraeli was always forming in his own mind. He strolls through the galleries of Venice. A thought strikes him. "The whole system of moral philosophy is a delusion fit only for the play of sophists in an age of physiological ignorance." He will found a new school of philosophy. He hears the story of Alroy's wild career. He takes his harp to found a new school of poetry. Rambling in the sierras of Andalusia, beneath the clear light of a Spanish moon, Mr. Disraeli listens to the chant of the old Spanish ballad of Count Alarcos and the Infant Solisa. He turns it into a tragedy and presents it to the world as "an attempt to contribute to the revival of English tragedy." Mr. Disraeli, like Contarina Fleming, is always a hero in his own eyes, and never more so than in those days when in the eyes of the world he was nothing. To play a great part in the House of Commons, to form a party, to lay down the principles of a policy, to govern empires-these were the darling hopes of Mr. Disraeli's ambition. They were wild and fantastic hopes! To-day Mr. Disraeli is a statesman among literary men. Thirty years ago he was the very reverse-only a literary man among statesmen. Yet, wild and fantastic as those hopes looked then, they have all been realised. "Nemesis favours genius," and the pale spectre who five and twenty years ago stood up in the House of Commons and asked permission to say a few words in reply to O'Connell and was hooted down, takes the chair to-day at the Royal Literary Fund Dinner as the leader of a great party, as First Minister of the Crown, and as the author of a scheme of Representative Reform which may possibly reverse the "oligarchal coup d'état" of 1832, and accomplish the purpose of Mr. Disraeli's youth by constituting the Tory party the popular political confederation of the country.

But to men of letters Mr. Disraeli is neither the leader of the Tory