Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/107

 Rh "Last of the Heroes," and take rank with the "Last of the Mohicans," the "Last of the Barons," the "Last of the Cavaliers," and all the finalities of fiction. With him died that noble race who expressed our great-grandmothers' artless ideals of perfection. Seventy years later, D'Israeli made a desperate effort to revive a pale phantom of departed glory in "Lothair," that nursling of the gods, who is emphatically a hero, and nothing more. "London," we are gravely told, "was at Lothair's feet." He is at once the hope of United Italy, and the bulwark of the English Establishment. He is—at twenty-two—the pivot of fashionable, political, and clerical diplomacy. He is beloved by the female aristocracy of Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, die happy with his kisses on their lips. Five hundred mounted gentlemen compose his simple country escort, and the coat of his groom of the chambers is made in Saville Row. What more could a hero want? What more could be lavished upon him by the most indulgent of authors? Yet who shall compare Lothair to