government paper full of mutual recrimina- | before his audience: the necessity of tions. Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to smooth acquiring self-knowledge, the necessity of over these feuds and jealousies by certain knowing what is the spirit of the age, and removals acceptable to the country. He the necessity of the religious principle. took upon himself the offices of first lord of the Treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, and Mr. Lowe was transferred to the home office. Mr. Bruce, who, as home secretary, had shown much weakness and vacillation upon the licensing question, was raised to the peerage and appointed president of the council in the stead of the Marquis of Ripon, who had resigned. Mr. Childers, disgusted that the duties of the exchequer had not been intrusted to his hands, gave up the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. Bright, the opponent of sinecures, reigned in his place. Other minor changes were also carried out, which, if they caused the Liberal administration to work more smoothly, at the same time rendered it more toothless. These alterations were, however, viewed with little interest, for it was evident to all that the day was near at hand when ministers would be called upon to give up their seals and to carry their venom and mordancy to the other side of the House. Whilst the tide had thus turned which was to bear him upon its ample flood to office, Mr. Disraeli travelled north, and became the hero of a public reception at Glasgow. The students of the university in that ancient city had shown their appreciation both of Conservative principles and of the great exponent of those principles by electing Mr. Disraeli as their lord rector. It was to deliver his inaugural address that the leader of the Opposition had gone north, there to meet the youths who had done him honour, and to lay before them that course of action most calculated to lead to success in life. The address is one of Mr. Disraeli's most finished compositions, and is remarkable for the prominence given, in a somewhat material and sceptical age, to the necessity of being under the influence of true religion. Three points the lecturer especially brings The address was listened to with marked attention. The subject, the speaker, the recollections the strange career of Mr. Disraeli called forth, all served to create the deepest impression upon the audience. Who better able to preach the gospel of success to a body of young men on the eve of their start in life than he who, by his own talents and exertions, had risen from a stool in an attorney's office to preside over the fortunes of a cabinet? Who better qualified to advise a course of rigid self-examination before entering upon a career, than he who had so carefully and so accurately dissected his own powers and promptings as to predict his future? As a lad, Mr. Disraeli had known that genius was working within him, and he had vowed that the world should recognize it; and the world had recognized it. He knew that he possessed the gift of all those qualities which, when fused together, make the born orator; and in the hour when his maiden speech was ridiculed and shouted down, he had foretold foretold at the moment when an ordinary mind would have been crushed by failure and mortification-that the time would come when the House would hear him; and the hour had come. He knew that he was to be a leader of men, and that it was his mission to regenerate and reorganize a great political party; and in spite of obstacles such as no other politician had surmounted, in spite of feuds, jealousies, and mutinous divisions, he had given a creed to his followers, and had received an obedience from those under his command such as few political chiefs had ever before enjoyed. Who, then, was better able to lecture upon success than he who had attained it? Who better able to preach introspection than he who had practised it to such purpose? Who better able to suggest the discovery of the spirit of the age than he who had found it, inspired it, and turned it to his own ends? No | looked upon as a dullard, while the flippancy wonder that the ambitious student, with the unknown future before him, with his fortune to carve out, with fond hopes and earnest prayers centred in him, hung upon the words of his lord rector, anxious to learn how success was to be achieved, and eager to embark upon the struggle. The youth, began Mr. Disraeli (November 19, 1873), who wished to succeed in life and to obtain that position to which his character and capacity entitled him, had need of two kinds of knowledge: self-knowledge, and the faculty of comprehending the spirit of the age. At the first blush it seemed that self-knowledge was not very difficult of attainment; for if there was any subject on which a person could arrive at accurate conclusions, it should be as to his own disposition and his own talents. But it was not so. The period of youth in that respect was one of great doubt and difficulty; it was a period alike of false confidence and unreasonable distrust, of perplexity, of despondency, and sometimes of despair. It had been said by an eminent physician that there were very few persons of either sex who had attained to their eighteenth year who had not contemplated withdrawing from the world - withdrawing from that world which, in fact, they had never entered. Doubtless that morbid feeling was occasioned in a great degree by a dread of the unknown, but it was also much to be attributed to, and it certainly was heightened by, an ignorance of themselves. How, then, he asked, was that self-knowledge to be acquired? and where were they to obtain assistance in that quest? From the family circle? Its incompetency in that respect was a proverb. Perception of character was always a rare gift, but around the domestic hearth it was almost unknown. Every one was acquainted with the erroneous estimates of their offspring which had been made even by illustrious parents.* The silent, but perhaps pensive boy, was Who was more misunderstood by his parents than the father of Lord Beaconsfield? of youth in a commonplace character was interpreted into a dangerous vivacity which might in time astonish, perhaps even alarm, the world. A better criterion ought to be found in the judgment of those contemporaries who were our equals. But the generous ardour of youth was not favourable to critical discrimination: its sympathy was quick; it admired and applauded; but it lavished its applause and admiration on qualities which were often not intrinsically important, and it always exaggerated. And thus it was that the hero of school and of college often disappointed expectation in after-life. The truth was, such a hero had shown no deficiency in the qualities which obtained him his early repute, but he had been wanting in the capacity adapted to subsequent opportunities. "Some are of opinion," remarked Mr. Disraeli, "that the surest judge of youthful character must be the tutor. And there is a passage in Isocrates on this head not without interest. He was an accomplished instructor, and he tells us he always studied to discover the bent of those who attended his lectures. So, after due observation, he would say to one, 'You are intended for action, and the camp is the life which will become you;' to another, 'You should cultivate poetry;' a third was adapted to the passionate exercitations of the Pnyx; while a fourth was clearly destined for the groves and porticoes of philosophy. The early Jesuits, who were masters of education, were accustomed to keep secret registers of their observations on their pupils, and generations afterwards, when these records were examined, it is said the happy prescience of their remarks was strikingly proved by the subsequent success of many who had attained fame in arts and arms. But the Jesuits, gentlemen, whatever they may be now, were then very clever men; and I must confess that I am doubtful whether the judgment of tutors in general would be as infallible as that of Isocrates. In the first place, a just perception of character is always a rare gift. councils, to find oneself, on his entrance into the business of life, incapable of influencing the conduct of an ordinary individual—all that was bitter; but all depended upon how the lesson was received. A weak spirit would not survive that catastrophe of his self-love. He would sink into chronic despondency, and, without attempting to rally, he would pass through life as a phantom, and be remembered, as an old man, only by the golden promise of his deceptive youth. But a man of sense would accept those consequences, however apparently mortifying, with courage and candour. He would dive into his own intelligence, he would analyze the circumstances of his failure, he would discriminate how much was occasioned by indigenous deficiencies, and how much was to be attributed to external and fortuitous circumstances. And in that severe introspection he might obtain the self-knowledge he required; his failures might be the foundation of his ultimate success; and in that moral and intellectual struggle he might discover the true range of his powers, and the right bent of his character and capacity. So much for self-knowledge-a subject that for ages had furnished philosophers with treatises. When possessed in a high degree, it is the Then there was the second kind of knowledge, proceeded Mr. Disraeli. Assuming that youth had at length attained that indispensable self-knowledge, and that it had an opportunity, in the pursuits of life, of following the bent of its disposition, had it that other kind of knowledge which was required? did it comprehend the spirit of the age in which its faculties were to be exercised? Hitherto it had been as an explorer in a mountain district. It had surveyed and examined valleys, it had penetrated gorges, it had crossed many a ridge and range, till at length, having overcome all obstacles, it had reached the crest of the commanding height, and like the soldiers of Xenophon, it beheld the sea. But the sea that it beheld was the ocean In what vessel was it going to With what instruments was it furnished? What was the port of its des- | man from embracing a profession which tination? "It is singular," said Mr. Disraeli, " that though there is no lack of those who will explain the past, and certainly no want of those who will predict the future, when the present is concerned-the present that we see and feel-our opinions about it are in general bewildered and mistaken. And yet, without this acquaintance with the spirit of the age in which we live, whatever our culture and whatever our opportunities, it is probable that our lives may prove a blunder When the young king of Macedon decided that the time had arrived when Europe should invade Asia, he recognized the spirit of his age. The revelations of the weakness of the great king, which had been made during the immortal expedition of the Ten Thousand, and still more during the campaigns of Agesilaus, had gradually formed a public opinion which Alexander dared to represent. When Caius Julius perceived that the colossal empire formed by the senate and populace of Rome could not be sustained on the municipal institutions of a single city, however illustrious, he understood the spirit of the age. Constantine understood the spirit of his age when he recognized the sign under which he was resolved to conquer. I think that Luther recognized the spirit of the age when he nailed his Theses against Indulgences to the gates of a Thuringian church. The great princes of the house of Tudor, and the statesmen they employed, were all persons who understood the spirit of their age." He Still it might be said, he remarked, "Those were heroic instances. A perception of the spirit of their age might be necessary to the success of princes and statesmen, but was not needful, or equally needful, for those of lesser degree." thought there would be fallacy in that criticism, and that the necessity of such knowledge pervaded the whole business of life. Take, for example, he instanced, the choice of a profession; a knowledge of the spirit of the age might save a young the spirit of the age doomed to become obsolete. It was the same with the pursuits of commerce. Such knowledge might guard a man from embarking his capital in a decaying trade, or from forming connections and even establishments in countries from which the spirit of the age was gradually diverting all commercial transactions. knowledge of the spirit of the age, he maintained, was necessary for every public man; and in a country like England, where the subject was called upon hourly to exercise rights and to fulfil duties which, in however small a degree, contributed to the aggregate of that general sentiment which ultimately governed states, every one was a public man, although he might not be a public character. Yet it did not follow, because the spirit of the age was perceived, that it should be embraced, or even that success in life depended upon adopting it. What he wished, said the speaker, to impress upon his audience was that success in life depended on understanding what the spirit of the age was. The spirit of the age might be an unsound and injurious spirit; it might be the moral duty of a man, not only not to defer to, but to resist it; and if it were unsound and injurious, in so doing he would not only fulfil his duty, but he might accomplish his success in life. The spirit of the age, for instance, was in favour of the Crusades. They occasioned a horrible havoc of human life; they devastated Asia and exhausted Europe; and in all probability, in acting in that instance according to the spirit of the age, a man would have forfeited his life, and certainly wasted his estate, with no further satisfaction than having massacred some Jews and slain some Saracens. "What then, gentlemen," he asked, "is the spirit of the age in which we ourselves live; of that world which in a few years, more or less, you will have all entered; where you are to establish yourselves in life; where you have to encounter in that object every conceivable difficulty-per- | marks and very name of the country. plexities of judgment, material obstacles, Indeed, it entirely effected its purpose, tests of all your qualities, and searching which was to destroy all the existing social trials of your character; and all these cir- elements and level the past to the dust. cumstances more or less affected by the This experiment has had fair play, and you spirit of the age, an acquaintance with can judge of its results by the experience which will assist you in forming your of eighty years. decisions and in guiding your course? It appears to me that I should not greatly err were I to describe the spirit of this age as the spirit of equality; but 'equality' is a word of wide import, under which various schools of thought may assemble and yet arrive at different and even contradictory conclusions. I hold that civil equalitythat is, equality of all subjects before the law, and that a law which recognizes the personal rights of all subjects-is the only foundation of a perfect commonwealth, one which secures to all liberty, order, and justice. The principle of civil equality has long prevailed in this kingdom. It has been applied during the last half-century more finely and completely to the constantly and largely varying circumstances of the country; but it had prevailed more or less in Britain for centuries, and I attribute the patriotism of our population mainly to this circumstance, and I believe that it has had more to do with the security of the soil than those geographical attributes usually enlarged upon. "Another land, long our foe, but now our rival only in the arts of peace, thought fit, at the end of the last century, to reconstruct its social system, and to rebuild it on the principle of social equality. To effect this object it was prepared to make, and it made, great sacrifices. It subverted all the institutions of the country: a monarchy of 800 years, whose traditionary and systematic policy had created the kingdom; a national church-for, though Romanist, it had secured its liberties; a tenure of land which maintained a valiant nobility that never can be restored; it confiscated all endowments and abolished all corporations, erased from the map of the soil all the ancient divisions, and changed the land "It is not in Scotland," said Mr. Disraeli, "that the name of France will ever be mentioned without affection, and I will not yield to any Scotchman in my appreciation of the brilliant qualities and the resplendent achievements of its gifted people. We are not blind to their errors, but their calamities are greater than their errors, and their merits are greater than their calamities. When I heard that their bright city was beleaguered, and that the breach was in the wall, I confess I felt that pang which I remember, as a child, I always experienced when I read of Lysander entering the City of the Violet Crown. But, gentlemen, I may on this occasion be permitted to say that of all the many services which France has rendered to Europe - Europe, that land of ancient creeds and ancient governments, and manners and customs older than both-not the least precious is the proof she has afforded to us that the principle of social equality is not one on which a nation can safely rely in the hour of trial and in the day of danger. Then it is found that there is no one to lead and nothing to rally round. There is not a man in the country who can assemble fifty people. And rightly, since for an individual to direct is an usurpation of the sovereignty of the many. Those who ought to lead feel isolated, and those who wish to obey know not to whom to proffer their devotion. influences are dead. All depends on the central government, a sufficient power in fair weather, but in stormy times generally that part of the machine which first breaks." All personal Civil equality, continued Mr. Disraeli, prevailed in Britain, and social equality prevailed in France. The essence of civil equality was to abolish privilege; the |