cerely eloquent in praise of the aspiring will, the spirit behind the forms and shows of things, which saved him and his hero Coningsby from "profligacy" on the one hand and from "pedantry" on the other—
That noble ambition, the highest and the best, that must be born in the heart and organized in the brain, which will not let a man be content, unless his intellectual power is recognized by his race, and desires that it should contribute to their welfare. It is the heroic feeling; the feeling that in old days produced demi-gods; without which no State is safe; without which political institutions are meat without salt; the Crown a bauble; the Church an establishment, Parliaments debating-clubs, and Civilization itself but a fitful and transient dream.
The tragedy of the romantic dreamer and intellectual who seeks in action to embody his dream, is to discover with Sybil that "great thoughts have very little to do with the business of the world; that human affairs, even in an age of revolution, are the subject of compromise; and that the essence of compromise is littleness." The decrepit power which the radical had been taught existed only by sufferance Disraeli discovered, as Sybil discovered, "was compact and organized, with every element of physical power at its command, and supported by the interests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and the strong prejudices of classes influential not merely from their wealth but even by their numbers." He had thought himself "a man of destiny;" he was to find, like Prince Florestan in "Endymion,"
