THE GREAT TWIN-BRETHREN.
ELEVEN years ago there appeared under this title an ingenious parallel between the then Emperor of the French and the present Prime Minister of England, which attracted a good deal of attention. It may be interesting to reproduce it now, because, though the career of one of these remarkable men ended about four years afterwards in gloom and suffering, con- sequent on a reverse and catastrophe as tremendous as any that history records, the other yet survives, and stands just now at one of those critical moments which determine for good or evil, for success or failure, for repute or condemnation, the &erecter and colouring of the closing scenery amid which he will disappear from the stage of life. It is with Lord Beaconsfield either to. complete and seal the parallel here drawn between himself and his Imperial prototype, or to falsify it by establishing a notable and essential contrast in the final winding-up of an eventful course. No one doubts that the issue of Peace or War rests with him mainly, if not virtually with him alone. In his- seventy-third year, he is about to decide whether he will plunge England into a war which may be successful, as politicians. measure success, and glorious, as soldiers and sailors estimate- renown,—or which, on the other hand, may be futile and dis- astrous to begin with, and, probably enough, disappointing anct regrettable in its ultimate and remoter consequences,—but which,. whether we are baffled or victorious, must augment incalculably the wide-spread distress of the country which he governs, mul- tiply its heavy burdens, quench the light of many eyes and the- joy of innumerable households.
Is it irrational to fancy that one who resembles Louis Napoleon in so many points of character, and who now stands at a con- juncture so similar to that of the Emperor's in 1870, may find food for grave reflection and for timely warning in the blunder- and the catastrophe which terminated the career of his great analogue, till then as strangely and romantically successful and brilliant as his own ?—
" Elaborate parallels between eminent historical characters, after the- manner of Plutarch, are out of date, and usually out of taste ; but some- public men still occasionally from time to time appear simultaneously on the stage whose characters and careers present such singular analogies that the most casual observer can scarcely fail to be surprised into fol- lowing out the comparison. Sometimes those resemblances are con-- fined to the mere accidents of fortune or of life, in which case the delineation of them belongs only to the 'curiosities of literature.' Some-- times they have no reality at all, but are of the nature of pure paradox; and then they are but the exercitations of an ingenious fancy. Some- times they are discoverable between men whose capacities and disposi- tions are almost identical, but whose course of life and whose position, in the world are so utterly dissimilar as to render their resemblances of character doubly curious and instructive. But occasionally the- analogies we speak of pervade the whole nature of the men, and explain the secret, because they constitute the cause, of the success or failure, as well as many of the details, of their respective careers ; and when, they are seen working under external circumstances, various indeed,. but not unlike, they offer about the most suggestive psychological studies which can beguile a leisure-hour.
Now there are at this moment in the great arena where history is made two men who fill, and have long filled, a large space in the public- eye ; both unique men, both successful men, both exercising, directly or indirectly, considerable influence on the world's affairs, and who, in the- fundamental feature s of their characters, as well as in the general out- line and some of the particulars of their careers, present perhaps more- points of resemblance than can be found in any of the famous parallels with which genius has made us all familiar. We mean the Emperor of, the French and the leader of the House of Commons,—one,the first man in France, the other, officially and really, one of the most influential' men in England.
'The principal, if not the single, contrast between them renders their numerous resemblances the more remarkable. Few men can have had more dissimilar origins. Mr. Disraeli is the son of a literary man in comparatively humble circumstances, much respected, but never eminent, who bequeathed to him little except his talents and his ambition. Louis- Napoleon was born in the purple, the son of a king and the nephew of the- greatest conqueror and military genius the earth has seen since Omar. Louis Napoleon, in spite of the adverse surroundings of his youth, had everything to feed and foster that confident anticipation of the ultimate- grandeur of his destiny which, as we know, he never lost, and which- helped so largely to realise itself. Mr. Disraeli had nothing to inspire the conviction of his future greatness beyond his innate consciousness of power and resolution.
"Both come of a different stock from the nation they have been called to govern ; and this difference, which we believe to have been a great assistance to the Frenchman, has constantly aggravated the diffi- culties of the Englishman. Without even glancing at rumours an& surmises which, having no consistency and being capable of no proof, it would be worse than idle to introduce into our thesis, we need only remember that the Emperor's father, like his uncle, was a Corsiean, and therefore less French than Italian ; and from his Italian blood he probably derives much of that concentration and power of silence and reserve which, whether it be really profundity or not, at least produces the impression of profundity on the volatile and excited people over whom he has attained so strange a sway. No one who has studied the biographies of the subtle, patient, impassive, daring Italian statesmen of the palmy days of the Peninsula, can fail to be struck with the family resemblance both to each other and to the present Emperor. His mother, too, was not French, but West Indian. [It is Mirk= to note, in passing, that three of the most eminent statesmen who at various times 'have ruled France and largely modified her destinies, besides the two Napoleons, have been of foreign origin and birth. Mazarin was Italian, and Necker and Guizot were both Genovese.] Mr. Disraeli, though born in England, as Louis Napoleon wasborn in France, has nothing English about him beyond that unimportant local accident. Jewish by descent and "feature, and belonging in every fibre to that old Caucasian race which -he has so pertinaciously set himself to glorify, he is devoid of the pecu- liar British instincts and sympathies so essential to a leader who has to govern Englishmen by persuasion and allurement, and not by authority. It is impossible to watch him or his proceedings, or his countenance even, in the House of Commons during long debates and on critical occasions, without perceiving bow thoroughly he is au fond out of har- mony with his followers, and without recoguising in this want of sympa- thy and perception the cause of many of his blunders. His deficiencies and his superiorities alike stand in his way with the party it is his singular fate to lead, and to lead to a groat degree against their will ; his subtlety, his inveterate love of mystery and intrigue, his elaborate and tortuous ingenuity, are precisely the qualities most alien from the taste and comprehension of the country gentlemen of England, who -do not appreciate clever craft, and are revolted by want of openness and daring. They, as a rule, like all men whose morale is higher and more wakeful than their intelligence, think more of means than of ends, or at least feel more acutely about them ; and they are in consequence' perpetually offended by the tactics of a leader who by nature prefers stratagem to force, and who, while as tenacious of his purposes as his 'Garlic analogue, is almost as unscrupulous in reference to the paths and measures by which he would achieve them.
"Both men from the outset believed in themselves—a mighty means and usually a sure augury of success. They believed in themselves when no one else did, and when there was no reason why any one else should. There is something touching and worthy of reverence in this -unswerving faith, founded no doubt on a consciousness which cannot be imparted, but which, on the other hand, cannot be shaken or reasoned away. Mr. Disraeli kept to it through years of obscurity and failure— Louis Napoleon through years of exile and imprisonment. The con- viction enabled them to set their aim steadily in view in very early youth, to shape their course deliberately towards it, to labour hard and -appropriately for it, and to suffer nothing to beguile them from it.
" All my life long,' says Philip von Artevelde,—
I have beheld with most respect the man Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him,
And from among them chose considerately, With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage ; And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind Pursued his purposes. I trained myself To take my place in high or low estate As one of that small order of mankind: "Louis Napoleon early announced and never doubted that he would .recover the imperial throne of France. It is said that when Mr. Disraeli applied to Lord Melbourne for employment, and was offered the post of private secretary, he declined it as below the pretensions of a man who had made up his mind sooner or later to be Prime Minister of England, .and assigned this as his reason to the astonished nobleman in question. Those, moreover, who read 'Vivian Grey,' the first production of Mr. Disraeli's fertile pen (published, we believe, when he was barely of age), will be both amused and surprised to see how early and distinctly his ambitious schemes were sketched out, and how closely they have been pursued and realised.
"Both began their public careers in a direction almost—in appearance, -at least—diamotrically opposite to their ultimate position. Louis Napo- leon began as a Carbonaro and conspirator, and narrowly escaped the fate which terminated the course of his elder brother, and removed at least one rival out of his way. Mr. Disraeli began life as a romantic novelist —almost a rhapsodist; the actual leader of the Tory party wished to enter Parliament as a Radical under the auspices of Joseph Home; -the Chief and Idol of the Conservatives denounced a Conservative Government as an organised hypocrisy.' Both inaugurated their brace of wonderful triumphs with almost as wonderful fiascoes,— and fiascoes, curiously enough, of precisely the same character. Mr. Disraeli published some astounding stuff; rubbish it was not, for there is a strange wild vigour about everything he wrote which redeems it from contempt, though by no means from ridicule; but there was a ludic- 'rens amount of rhodomontade in some of his productions which,bad critics not been strangely merciful, or their patient sing-Wally pachydermatous, might well have extinguished the ambitious litte'rateur for ever. His &but in Parliament, too, was a marvel of false taste and bombast, utterly 'unsuited to such an arena ; and as the House at last entirely refused to listen to his rhetorical display, the discomfited, but not disheartened, orator sat down, declaring that those who would not hear him then should hear him later on. Such, at least, is the tradition, and the prophecy has been amply fulfilled. But when Mr. Disraeli again addressed the House he had profited by experience, and adopted a wholly different style from his earlier attempt,—viz., that personal, acrid, epigrammatic manner of which he has since shown himself so consummate a master. Louis Napoleon's blunders, as Mr. Bright the other evening said of Mr. Gladstone's moderation,' are known unto all men.' The tame eagle and the pistolled gendarme at Boulogne, the feeble and futile attentat at Strasbourg, the bombastic proclamations which accompanied these
ambitious failures, and the first address to the French people in 1848, ap- peared to indicate a mind altogether extravagant and unsound, unable to measure chances or to adapt means to ends ; and if the Emperor's career had terminated there, no feeling save that of contempt could have been associated with the memory of one who now, after the lapse of twenty years, is universally recognised as one of the ablest and quite the most remarkable statesman of the ago. This insensibility to failure which is common to the two men—this want of feeling, or of seeming to
feel, the mortification and ridicule attending it—this admirable capacity of drawing from each error and defeat its practical instruc- tion, and ignoring or despising its mere personal annoyance—con- stituto of themselves a power so rare and so efficient as almost to reach to the dignity of genius, and beyond all question have been among the chief causes of the success of both careers. Both turned to the best account, the one his period of imprisonment, the other that of his enforced obscurity ; and a comparison between the Vivian Grey' and the Coningsby ' of the novelist, and between the Strasbourg attentat and the December coup d'etat of tho political adventurer, will give us the measure of the growth of the intellectual stature of the two in the respective intervals between their several achievements.
"Passing over a few minor coincidences,—such as that both men, though not built in the mould which is popularly supposed to fascinate the sex, owed the first and most essential steps of their success to women; that both, though eminently men of action, have been voluminous, varied, and ambitious authors ; and that the utterances of both, whether in speeches or in books, have been peculiarly distinguished, and will be exclusively remembered, by phrases of brilliant and epigrammatic in- cisiveness,—we go on to notice that in many most characteristic and fundamental features, their dispositions are as similar as their careers. Both are singularly patient and persistent—pertinacious in their pur- poses, flexible in their measures ; knowing that there are usually many ways to the same end, having learnt from written history as well as from the history of their own experience that in political life nearly everything depends upon a happy choice of times and opportunities— and religiously convinced 'quo tout vient it bout it qui sait attendre' —they have both known how to play a waiting game :—Cunctando restituit rem. The policy of both has, in one and the same sense, been tentative,—that is, they have tried this door and that to the temple of grandeur and of fame, and as they found each in turn barred against them or stiff in opening, they have gone on to another, or waited till the barrier was relaxed or removed. They have in common a curious mixture of daring and of prudence ; they have neither of them any sentimental or fanatical preference for plans and instruments and paths and means ; they never, or most rarely, attempt to force the hands of Providence;' they recognise in a certain amount of difficulty, in a given measure of obstacle or resistance, an indication that victory is not in- tended for them then and there; they watch, that is, for divine guidance and intimations, as they respectively conceive such, or for what in their minds does duty for such. It is probable that neither man will ever come to ruin through obstinacy. In this respect the contrast between the Emperor of the French and his imperious uncle is most remarkable ; the first Napoleon was full of passion, and his passion wrecked his genius. He never know when to temporise, when to give way, when to recede and acknowledge himself beaten. No intellect, BO grand and so piercing, was ever so misled or so blinded by impetuous and unconquerable pride. What was vehement self-will in tho first Napoleon is quiet and tough volition in the second. The one would never yield, and so was utterly crushed in the end. The other yields often, yields in time, yields with sagacity, and so usually gains his aim at last. The result has been that the nephew—with not a tithe of his uncle's genius, utterly destitute of his wonderful faculty of dazzling men's imaginations and subjugating their wills, surrounded by more powerful rivals, and fallen upon a loss favourable conjuncture—has al ready reigned longer than his uncle. The uncle became First Consul at the end of 1799, and Emperor in 1804, and fell in 1814; that is, ho was on the throne for ten years, and first magistrate of Fiance for fourteen. The nephew was elected President in December, 1848, and Emperor in December, 1852,—that is, he has been on the throne for fourteen years and first magistrate for eighteen—and he is there still. [18(J7. Throe years later he succumbed to a woman and a weakness—and is nowhere now.] "Mr. Disraeli is two years older than his analogue, and has been in power almost as long. He entered Parliament for the first time in 1837, and became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Tory party in the Commons in the year of the coup d'itat, 1852; and he, liko the Emperor, is there still. Our readers can draw the rest of the parallel for themselves, and by the light of the days that are passing over us now. Never have the mingled persistence and pliability of the man been MOTO striking than in the present Session.
"This paper has grown to a far greater length than we designed at first, and the points of comparison are far from being exhausted. Wo will, how- ever, only glance at two more. Both men are possessed with the same funda- mental idea in politics, that of basing the throne of authority—despotism in the one country, Toryism in the other—on pfebisettes, universal suffrage, or the votes of the residuum. Beth recognise in the ignorance, the pas- sion, the excitable prejudice, or the immovable stupidity of the Manes, their natural allies, theirs arest supporters, the most inaccessible and inde- feasible foundation of their power. Democracy at the root—autocracy at the summit. Both men, finally, we believe, are unusually free from what are ordinarily called passions—certainly from the malignant or unkindly passions. One of Louis Napoleon's bitterest antagonists surprised us, in the earlier days of his greatness, and not long after the coup cleat, by describing him as a singularly 'inoffensive' man. Ho was (ha said) amiable and considerate to those abaut him, kind to his dependents, steady to old friends, not exactly generous or forgiving, but quite with- out vindictiveness—never hesitating at a necessary crime or cruelty, but at the same time never committing a superlious one.' He did not, our friend said, like wickedness or brutality, and never wasted either. Much the same thing, we believe, may be said of Mr. Disraeli. We are assured that be hates no antagonist; that he is generous and considerate to the younger members of his party and a great favourite with them ; that he would promptly and without scruple crush an enemy in his way, but never one out of his way, simply because be was an enemy ; and that he would find little difficulty in taking his most inveterate foe by the band and acting cordially with him if the object be had in view
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