The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. From The Month. "THERE IS NO HELP IN THEM." "PUT not your trust in any child of man." Time teaches well this lesson. If we live Only two-thirds of our allotted span, We mourn the restful trust we used to give, These disappoint and fail; and Love betrays even. We pass into life's school, as children do, brace, Thinking the sun in heaven not more true All people and all things as harmless as they seem. And in the light and warmth of our young faith, And colder yet and sadder comes the change, The stern responsive change within our souls, When our restrain'd affections cease to range, And knowledge, born of perish'd hope, con trols Our shut and silent hearts, and bids them own 'Tis better for their peace that each should beat alone. Alone, yet still for others- still alive To all broad common human joy and pain; Alone and yet not lonely; brave and blest; Thankful that daisies throng when roses fade and fail. "Now pledge me, worthy greybeard!” good old man Drank of the proffered goblet, and, drinking it, he smiled! R. C. F. HANNAY. in From Blackwood's Magazine. LOTHAIR. people which distinguishes the portraits of embryo artists -a prominent feature only shall be like, or the portraiture of the cravats and coats of the sitters shall be faithful; or, failing even that slight exercise of art, I will affix such a name as shall at once suggest the original, and my readers, as they guess, shall be delighted with their own perspicacity. A great humourist once caricatured a work of mine, but I will outCodlingsby Codlingsby. The public thinks itself knowing; so do the bumpkins at a fair who grin applause on the jackpudding, and, as I shall show, with equal reason." And this sardonic pleasantry has been amply justified by the result. The shaking of the THIS is the most elaborate jest which the sportive author has ever played off upon an amiable and confiding public. Addressing the novel-reading portion of that public in his own mind, he has evidently said: "You have been this long while prating of purity of style, truth to nature, probability, and adherence to the rules of art. You have been condemning sensational novels, and false effects, and didactic prosings, and slipshod composition. Well, I will write something which will be more extravagant than the romances of the London Journal,' more inflated in expression and false grammar than the exercises of an aspir-cap-and-bells has been watched with all the ing schoolboy of the fifth form, more foreign gravity due to Jupiter's nod. to life and reality than the hysteric fancies of a convent-bred girl, and, in point of art, on a level with the drop-scene of a provincial theatre. My pictures of high life shall resemble the gin-inspired dreams of the assistant of some fashionable haberdasher, who enjoys glimpses of great houses and great people when he goes out with the goods. I will not even infuse any humour into this performance, the extravagance of which shall be only equalled by its dulness. And yet many of you who instruct others on questions of taste shall accept the book in all seriousness, while those who see through the jest will still be compelled to applaud its success. If the youngest son of any of my laudatory critics, at home for the holidays, had shown his father the composition in manuscript and confessed himself the author, the parent, in the righteous exercise of his authority, would have put the sheets promptly in the fire and lectured the young scribbler on his absurdity; and the jest lies in the extorting the praise of these Lothair, whose rank and parentage are critics by putting the name of the Right carefully concealed throughout the book, but Honourable B. Disraeli on the title-page. whose descent, at least on the mother's side, Many authors have taken foolish young men is known to us (he being, as we have alfor their heroes, and have been censured ac- ready said, the legitimate offspring of Macordingly; but I will not even take a fool-dame Tussaud), comes on the stage some ish young man for mine he shall not be a time before he attains the majority which young man at all-I will get him direct will give the Legislature the advantage of his from Madame Tussaud. My characters presence in the Upper House. We are all shall have that kind of resemblance to real familiar with the satirical views of modern society, which represent men and women of all sorts and conditions as the abject adorers of wealth; but nothing more cynical Lothair. By the Right Honourable B. Disraeli. In three volumes. London: Longmans, Green, & Co.: 1870. It is evident that a work constructed on this plan need not demand much invention, and that old materials will be as good as, or better than, new. When, therefore, it appears that the wealth of the hero is unbounded; that he talks of building cathe drals with the savings of his minority; that his family seat is vaster and more gorgeous than the palace of Aladdin; that there are among his friends dukes possessing enormous wealth and influence, a pushing lady who makes up by tact for want of breeding, obscure adventurers who shake kingdoms, and a marvellous intriguing female who can do everything and rules everybody,— the reader, fancying he has seen something of all this well-worn finery before, will perhaps mutter under his breath, "Old clo' !" The costumes are of the chaste kind supplied to amateur actors by Messrs. Nathan at so much per night; the jewellery, in splendour and taste, resembles the workmanship of the celebrated lapidaries of Birmingham. has ever been achieved in this way than the or more to each separate group, without description of the struggles of the leaders regard to the insignificant fact that they are of society-beautiful women, statesmen, scarcely more connected with each other and dignitaries of rival priesthoods for than the different shoots in an asparagusthe control of this young money-bag. bed. First Lothair visits the ducal seat of "London," we are told, "was at Lothair's Brentham, the owner of which suffered to a feet." Like Mrs. Jarley, he was the de- degree unusually severe from the embarras light of the nobility and gentry. No ball, de richesses :no dinner-party, is considered complete "His Grace was accustomed to say that he without the presence of the gilded youth. had only one misfortune, and it was a great one; Potent, grave, and reverend signiors exer- he had no home. His family had married so cise the most astute diplomacy in approach- many heiresses, and he consequently possessed ing him, and gravely discuss with him the so many halls and castles, at all of which, perimost momentous questions, displaying the odically, he wished, from a right feeling, to deference, the cunning, and the persever- reside, that there was no sacred spot identified ance which might be appropriate in gaining with his life in which his heart, in the bustle over some great potentate who carried the and tumult of existence, could take refuge.” destinies of a nation in his pocket, but His metropolitan mansion was on the same which seem ludicrously disproportioned to magnificent scale. "The Duke was one of their singularly feeble object. It is true the few gentlemen in London who lived in a that they talk terrible nonsense and terrible palace." This fortunate peer had several twaddle still it appears to be the best daughters, each more beautiful than the they have; and their rivalry, though more other. Two of these are married, and one decorous, is hardly more respectable, and son-in-law, St. Aldegonde, not yet a duke, much less amusing, than that of a crowd of but a duke's heir, and evidently a great faMoors whom we once saw in Tangier tear-vourite with the author, is an execrable rufing each other's beards and pulling each fian, as we shall see, who would never have other's turbans in a mad struggle for a four-been tolerated for an hour in any decent penny-piece which an English stranger had house, but whose brutal eccentricities are dropped from a balcony. Whether Lothair shall ultimately be labelled Protestant or Roman Catholic is absolutely represented to be a matter of considerable importance to others than himself; and there are some female Danäes of irreproachable morals, each of whom, it is evident, will have her young affections crushed and her soft heart broken if the golden showers should fall into any lap but hers. One of these disappointed fair ones, indeed, hides her anguish in a convent, unable to endure the hollow world when a rival is to have the prize. If the reader will only consider what chance any of the youths of his acquaintance just turned of twenty would have of obtaining all this homage on the score of his own unassisted merits, he will the better appreciate the stinging satire of the description of Lothair's social successes. The first volume is taken up with the appearance of most of the characters on the stage, and the plan is adopted (which we do not, however, recommend to less experienced authors) of devoting one chapter detailed with affectionate approbation. This patrician is humoured to such a degree by his wife that we are told, "when he cried for the moon it was promised him immediately." He smokes Manilla cheroots of enormous length;" but the other son-in-law, Lord Montairy, was differently minded, for of him it is recorded that “ 'he was so distractedly fond of Lady Montairy that he would only smoke cigarettes," and the domesticity of his tastes is further evinced thus : "Lord Montairy was passionately devoted to croquet. He flattered himself that he was the most accomplished male performer existing. He would have thought absolutely the most accom plished, were it not for the unrivalled feats of Lady Montairy. She was the queen of croquet. Her sisters also used the mallet with admirable skill, but not like Georgina. Lord Montsiry always looked forward to his summer croquet at Brentham. It was a great croquet family, the Brentham family; even listless Lord St. Aldegonde would sometimes play, with a cigar never out of his mouth. They did not object to his smoking in the air. On the contrary, they | Lady Corisande is remarkable for nothing so rather liked it.'" much, next to her name, as for the stanch But the gem of the household is theness of her Protestantism. But now another element comes into play, for we are introyoungest daughter, not at all original or duced to Cardinal Grandison. This prelate, amusing, or differing in any way from the one of Lothair's guardians, is a highly-influordinary silly young lady of slight novels,ential member of the Romish Church. He except in her name, which displays the author's invention and research to great advantage, for she is called Lady Corisande, and to all the beauty of her sisters she adds a refined expression peculiar to herself. What the father of these divinities was like we may partly guess from that remarkable nobleman's own estimate of himself and of them: “Every day when he looked into the glass, and gave the last touch to his consummate toilette, he offered his grateful thanks to Providence that his family was not unworthy of him." The first time that Lothair hears Corisande sing, he thus accosts that siren : “Your singing,' he said, 'is the finest thing Iever heard. I am so happy that I am not going to leave Brentham to-morrow. There is no place in the world that I think equal to Brentham.' And I love it too, and no other place,' she replied; and I should be quite happy if I never left it." " Nor is this remarkable identity of tastes the only link between these innocent beings. "Lothair's vast inheritance was in many counties and in more than one kingdom. is very tall, extraordinarily thin, and en tirely devoted to the interests of the Papacy; and being better acquainted than most people with the extent of his ward's worldly possessions, it naturally occurs to him that so rich a young man, with a cardinal for his guardian, ought, by a little judicious management, to be brought, along with his property, within the fold of the true Church. Accordingly the worthy ecclesiastic, in hist very first interview with the hero, sets about this politic design, though the style of his conversation is so insupportably tedious that any ordinarily-constituted youth thus exposed to it would have fled the neighbourhood at all hazards, never returning during the Cardinal's lifetime. His uncommon thinness is fully accounted for by the manner in which we find him receiving an invitation to dinner: "I never eat and I never drink,' said the Cardinal; I am sorry to say I can יי not — a degree of involuntary abstemiousness which must have been very convenient and exemplary during feasts of the Church, and which renders any extreme of emaciation credible. The next group we are introduced to is Lothair was the possessor of as that which surrounds Mr. and Mrs. Putney many palaces and castles as the Duke him- Giles. Mr. Giles is a solicitor, but, neverself." A few more such proprietors, and theless, is not without claim to a place in the all the rest of our county families would be high society in which we find him, since we forced to go into lodgings. Thus naturally are assured that "many of his clients were fitted to be the Duke's son-in-law, Lothair among the most distinguished personages of signifies a wish to stand in that relation to the realm." Mrs. Giles is a lady with the the illustrious peer. The Duchess, however, weakness, not unfrequently depicted in novto whom he imparts his desire, thinks he had els, of desiring to get into a class higher better wait, and Lothair accepts the advice than her own. Lothair dines with this pair, with exemplary docility. He had previously and we subjoin a short specimen of the told her of his intention to build on his es-table-talk. Somebody has mentioned the tates, as soon as he should be master of Gulf Stream: them, no less than two thousand cottages, a number which, if collected in rows, would have made an average county town, and which thus attests the magnificence of Lothair's disposition. All this time he has been surrounded by A bighly Protestant atmosphere- indeed “And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his calmer neighbour, "I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor and myself went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where there is a very nice piece of water; indeed some people call it a lake; but it was quite frozen, |