TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD BEACONSFIELD'S STATUE.
SIGNOR RAGGI has done his work admirably, and it is perhaps not, on the whole, to be regretted that the distinction of creating so fine a statue to Lord Beaconsfield should have fallen to an Italian. The countryman of Machiavelli, if he was present at the ceremony of the unveiling, must have been amused to find Sir Stafford Northcote singling out for special remark the one moral feature which, so far as we know, was not only "conspicuous by its absence" in Lord Beaconsfield, but is quite as conspicuous by its absence in the lineaments of that splendid and characteristic statue. " He might be said," remarked Sir Stafford Northcote to his audience, "to have been one of those characters with whom, although they are unlike ourselves, we all so deeply sympathise." It is tolerably certain that Signor Raggi never dreamt of representing the countenance of a man with whom, although he is unlike ourselves, we English all so deeply sympathise. The face with which the great political strategist looks down on London is certainly not one to attract much sympathy from Englishmen, though it is one to fascinate with a certain wondering admiration. Signor Raggi has caught perfectly the attitude of mind in which, as we believe, the whole career of Lord Beaconsfield was lived. That attitude is one of dubious and quizzical inspection of a scene which is but half-understood, but, nevertheless, understood sufficiently for very effective action. Lord Beaconsfield is deeply interested in the people he surveys ; he sees much in them of a narrow efficiency ; he feels, indeed, more disposed to thank God for their grotesque prepossessions than even to quiz them, though he cannot wholly restrain the doubtful smile into which his lips break as he inspects them ; but the last thought which would enter that ingenious and finessing brain, would have been one of sympathy with them, or even one of a kind to which they could give their sympathy, if they would. We do not think that Lord Salisbury shot his arrow quite as carefully away from the true mark as Sir Stafford Northcote. But when he said that Lord Beaconsfield's " whole nature and being were bound up in a desire for the greatness and continued existence of his country," we imagine that Lord Beaconsfield, if he could have listened to Lord Salisbury, would have indulged in one of those dubious smiles. It is quite true, no doubt, that he did set himself to protest against the tendencies threatening " to obliterate the line that divided us from other lands, and which seemed to neglect and to efface the peculiar glories of the English people;" but then, he set himself to protest against those tendencies because he was the head of the Conservative Party, and because that was the aspect of Conservative feeling in which he discerned more of common-sense and significance than in most other aspects of it. He never forgot his own early remark that " it is even the duty of public men occasionally to adopt sentiments with which they do not sympathise, because the people must have leaders." And in this case, no doubt, he held that England, while she remained distinctively English, would be greater than she could ever become as a mere yeast or leaven in the fermenting mass of cosmopolitan life. But whether he ever indulged in that disinterested and passionate desire for the greatness of his country with which Lord Salisbury credits him, we must say that we profoundly doubt. Judging by his writings, Lord Beaconsfield's sympathies were rather with Eastern than with Western peoples, and the interest with which he marshalled the ranks of those peculiarly English country gentlemen, " acred up to their lips," whose army he commanded, partook perhaps in about equal proportions of the interest with which Sir John Lubbock experiments on his ants, and of the interest with which Frederick the Great drove back his flying soldiers, and taunted them with being unwilling to die in his service, (" Wollt ihr immer leben I") Lord Salisbury is not quite as far from the mark as Sir Stafford Northcote, for it is clear that what Lord Beaconsfield really intended to do was to enhance the greatness of the British people. But to say that his heart and imagination were bound up in that achievement, which he undertook because he was the Conservative leader, and because he loved to succeed in his career, seems to us singularly rash in any one who has studied all Lord Beaconsfield's writings, and noted the diffused indications of genial contempt for the British people which they contain.
We cannot, then, concur in the least in the conventional Conservative .praise that the late Lord Beaconsfield " rooted himself in the affections and obtained a command over the hearts of the whole British people." Such a boast seems to us to miss the true significance of that great career altogether,. as well as to miss entirely the expression of the fine statue which Italian sympathy with Lord Beaconsfield's audacity and finesse has created for our admiration. It is a genuine political diplomatist who looks down upon Westminster, with that wrinkled forehead and that dubious smile, though a diplomatist to whom the characters of individuals, much as they mattered, mattered even less than the characters of large masses and classes of the people. The lesson taught us by the statue is the lesson of the old fable of the horse and the man, over again. Mr. Disraeli learnt enough of the English people-whom he never, however, fully understood—to spring into the saddle more than once, and to manage them not without even some grandeur of effect. But his interest in us was, as we believe, more the kind of interest taken by a skilful rider in a horse which he had never thoroughly learnt to understand, than any of a nature to attract to himself a large measure of sympathy such as that with which Sir Stafford Northcote so quaintly credits him. That we were all of us fascinated by the spectacle of his achieve-. ments, that we all felt that the interest of our public life was greatly enhanced by the element of Mr. Disraeli's unknowableness—for never did a British Minister have colleagues who were more complete agnostics as to the probable strategy of their chief,—that we all regretted his death as the vanishing from amongst us of a strange and picturesque figure, the secret of whose power we had never penetrated, is certain enough. But just as he was a student of England—with occasional intervals of mastery—to the end, so England in her turn was to the end. rather absorbed in studying Lord Beaconsfield than in either obeying him or trusting him. He was a pleasant enigma to us, which we never solved, though we believed—not always wisely—that his power was too much limited by the character of the medium in which it moved, to endanger greatly ous safety and our welfare. We do not in the least believe that this attitude towards Lord Beaconsfield has changed in any way since his death. On the contrary, as we look back on his career, its main features come cut more significantly. The sudden and unscrupulous change from Radicalism to Conservatism, — the fierce but wholly unimpassioned assault on the late Sir Robert Peel, a mere necessity of Mr. Disraeli's great ambition,—the advice which induced the late Lord Derby " to dish the Whigs" by furthering the progress of democracy, instead of arresting it,—the attempt to make the Indian Empire the pivot of our influence in Europe,—and the profound sympathy with Mahommedanism which breathed through the whole policy of Lord Beaconsfield's last administration,—are understood now as they were never understood before, as indicative of a policy grandiose and imaginative, but wholly experimental and unscrupulous, the policy of a sort of political alchemist ruthlessly trying to turn the English clay to gold, and caring little what risk he might be running by the pretentious pyrotechny in the display of which his unscientific science had embarked him. To our minds, the best lesson which the English people could deduce for their own benefit from that striking and most picturesque career might be expressed in the words of Scripture :—" Be ye not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding : whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee." Lord Beaconsfield put the bit in our mouths and the bridle on our necks, and though we were able to throw off his yoke, we may some day, if we do not grow in wisdom, find a new Lord Beaconsfield whom, once seated in the saddle, we could not again displace.
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