"Moonstone" and the "Woman in White," are among the most absorbing
narratives in the whole range of fiction. His studies of the morbid
workings of the mind are often striking, but with the exception of
Count Fosco and a few others, his characters are not strongly marked.
Thomas Hughes accomplished a truly noble work in the composition of
"Tom Brown's School Days" and "Tom Brown at Oxford,"--books which have
found their way to every boy's heart, and have appealed to all that was
most healthful and manly there. The novels of Benjamin d'Israeli are
chiefly interesting in their relation to the character of their
illustrious author. As works of art they are faulty in construction,
exaggerated in description, and unnatural in effect. "Vivian Gray" and
"Lothair" cannot pretend to be truthful studies of English life, nor
would their author, probably, have represented them as such. But so
much of the great statesman's power was instilled into his novels that
they have a certain interest even for those who are most alive to their
faults. They are the conceptions of a very rich imagination, and
contain many pictures which, if untrue to nature, are still extremely
vivid. D'Israeli's chief literary, and perhaps also his chief political
characteristic, was a constant endeavor to make striking effects. The
reader may be sure to find nothing commonplace in his writings. Every
scene and every character is painted in the brightest of colors. If the
background be sombre, it will simply throw out more brilliantly the
figures in the foreground. It is said that most men have a favorite
word. That of d'Israeli was "wondrous." He took his reader into
wondrous baronial halls, filled with wondrous gems, with wondrous
tapestries, with wondrous paintings, and introduced him to wondrous
dukes and duchesses, looking out from wondrous dark orbs, and breathing
through almond-shaped nostrils. He loved to bring the royal family on
the scene, and to trace the awe-inspiring effect of their august
presence. When we open a novel of d'Israeli's we are certain of moving