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POT-POURRI.

"Si jeunesse savait!"

I PLUNGE my hand among the leaves :-
An alien touch but dust perceives,

Nought else supposes;

For me those fragrant ruins raise
Clear memory of the vanished days
When they were roses.

WATCHING BY NIGHT.

WATCHING by night, O Sleep, I picture thee, Now as a bridge that links two neighbouring lands,

One worn and barren as the sea's bare sands, One sown and fruitful with all things to be. Now as a mist that spreadeth silently,

I see thee hiding with thy vaporous hands All good that gladdens, and all guilt that brands;

All cares that follow, and all joys that flee.

"If youth but knew!" Ah, "if" in truth - And now a seraph, an angelic guide,

I can recall with what gay youth,

To what light chorus,

Unsobered yet by time or change,
We roamed the many-gabled Grange,
All life before us;

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Thy white wings reaching to thy noiseless
feet,

I see thee leading to each loved one's side
The longed-for figure that each loves to

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From Blackwood's Magazine.
LORD LYTTON.

so lightly, so easily woven. None of us could have predicted, even then, what THIS has been a mournful winter, full further development his mind might take, of the sombre excitement of public loss or whether it was reserved for the Bulwer an excitement which, though very differ- of our youth to become not only the acent from the penetrating anguish of per- complished and wise historian of the sonal bereavement, affects us with an ab- splendour of mature manhood, but the stract sadness almost more heavy. Those expositor of a new romance of Age, soft symptoms of the ending of a generation with all the silvery lights of the long-ex- those breakings-up of dynasties, of tended evening, the mixture of earthly sovereignties more extended than any wisdom and visionary insight which beroyal house possesses · those periodical | longs to Genius grown old. This possiheavings of the volcano of time, in which bility is now, however, ended. He who so much is carried away from us - do won so many laurels will win no more: they not impress us almost more strongly, there is no new chapter to be added to though more vaguely, than individual the record which we know so well; unloss? Another wave has beaten upon less, indeed, it be written in the last work, the eternal shore, strewing the beach which will be given to the public almost with mournful relics, and another is as soon as this page —and in which the coming, and another, that which carries last thoughts of the man who has taught ourselves, perhaps, the next; and so the us and charmed us for nearly half a cenlong cadence goes on for ever. We who tury, will be read with a certain sentiment were the children a little while ago, are of affectionate sadness too warm to admit, now the fathers and the mothers, hon- for the moment, of anything like critioured, respected, smiled at, made allow-cism. ance for, as is the lot of the older generation; and by-and-by a great hush will face of the young Bulwer's first work is come, and standing over us, as we now stand over our predecessors, calm voices will record what we have done. How different is that record with the oldest, with the loftiest, to-day while life lasts, tomorrow when it is over! No uncertainty now is in the tone, no fear to offend, no delicacy lest some chance touch should cause a wound, no flattery to win a smile. In one day, in one hour, criticism changes into history-the career rounds off before our eyes, a perfect thing, to be judged now as a whole, never before but in parts. It is past; it is ended; it is perfect. This is the first rule of the mournful yet splendid grammar of life.

And with few lives is this so emphatically the case as with that of the great writer whom, a few days ago, we laid with his peers, in sorrow and in honour, under the noble arches of Westminster; the highest and last acknowledgment which England can give to a completed fame. During the very last years of his life he was making new reputations carelessly, as a child makes garlands, not even taking the trouble to put upon his head the wreaths

Nearly half a century! - for the pre

dated 1828; and during the whole of that long period his mind has more or less been in constant communication with the mind of his country. He has in this very fact a curious advantage which few writers share with him. His great contemporaries, Dickens and Thackeray, altogether lacked the thread of sympathy, of common growth and development, with his audience, which so long a career naturally produced. Dickens did not develop his first works are his bestthere is no fulness of youth in them, and no ripening of maturity in those that followed. Thackeray, on the other hand, was scarcely known as a writer until his mind was fully matured: no young man could have written "Vanity Fair." But Bulwer, who was the magician of our youth, grew with us as we grew, gained maturity as we gained it, and has had a longer and closer influence upon us, a spiritual intimacy more complete and extended, than almost any other mind of the age. People who have been young will remember with tender delight and gratitude those pages (alas! so much less

readable by us now) full of sentiment, full | prehensive of social philosophers. His of youthful exuberance, enthusiasm, mag-glance takes in all society, not to find out nificence, which are always dear and sub- its defects, not to represent its humours lime to youth. When Bulwer gave forth only, with no specialty of class or purthe lofty splendour of those high-flown pose, but with a large and extended vispassions and sorrows, we too were high- ion, less intense, perhaps, than that of flown, and revelled in the lofty diction some writers in a more limited circle, but and elevation of sentiment in which there broader and fuller than any. His was not was more than genius — which embodied the faculty which preaches or criticises, in its first fervour and reality that Youth which takes public grievances or individwhich he always looked back upon with ual hardships as a foundation for fiction, such warmth of regretful admiration. or works in illustration of a principle. And yet no man had less occasion to re- Lord Lytton's art was of a broader, older, gret his youth. From the exuberance of more primitive description-it was the that period of poetry, the "years that art which represents. Human creatures bring the philosophic mind" matured acting upon no given standard, working and developed his rare gifts into some-out no foregone conclusion, appear to us thing greater and broader than the most in his brilliant pages. He neither selects enthusiastic admirer of his early genius the odd and the eccentric, like one of his could have hoped. The author of the great rivals, nor sets himself forth as an "Caxtons," and of the cycle of noble anatomist of human motive, like another; works which followed - first produced, but, while giving its corner to eccentricity we are proud to remember, in the pages and a due importance to the unseen workof this Magazine-made proof of some-ings of the mind, lays in the lines of his thing more than genius,-of that large broader landscape, his larger outlines of knowledge of things and men which only form, with a humanity which outreaches experience of the world, and the facilities and transcends the specialties of purpose. for observing it possessed by a man to It is characteristic of this breadth and whom all circles are open, could have humanness of his mind, that there should given. Men to whom the thoughts and be so strong a distinction between his projects of a statesman are familiar as earlier and his later works; for in his those of a poet, who are deeply acquaint-youth he was young, as other men are ed with the laws that act upon society as well as of those that influence the individual mind, are, by the nature of things, of very rare occurrence among us. But Lord Lytton added to the inspiration of nature almost everything that experience could give him. It was equally easy to him to place upon his canvas the Nestor of society, the wise man of the world, learned and skilful in all emergencies, No man could possess this varied and and the noble vagabond incapable of any sympathetic reputation who had been pruwisdom at all but that taught by generos- dent enough to act upon the famous rule ity and love; the statesman, heavily which enjoins an author to keep a work weighed, and full of the responsibilities by him so many years before he prints it. of Government, and the light-hearted Had Bulwer done this, "Pelham" and youth of fashion, acknowledging no re- his earlier works would never have apsponsibility; the duke and the cobbler; peared at all; and though probably, in the bookworm and the rural squire. that case, his reputation in the abstract This wide range gave him an extent of would have been higher, it would have power which we think no other writer of been of a totally different kind. As it the day has reached. He is the most was, he was rash enough to pour his brilliant of story-tellers, the most com-learly utterances into the world warm and

young, with all the defects of his age and in his maturity he was mature, with all the widened views, the deeper conceptions, that belong to advancing life,— more serious, more tolerant, more understanding of all difficulties and heartaches, more humorous in kindly, keen appreciation of mental peculiarities and freaks, more tenderly sorrowful, more softly gay.

swift as they came from his lips, and he works or perhaps it would be now right had his recompense accordingly. To to say, the last group but one, since there many critics he has been the object of yet remains, beyond the ground of critiunsparing attack; he has represented the cism which we have chosen, another sentimental, the high-flown, the sham- mystic Three, the almost posthumous magnificent, in many a popular diatribe; children of his genius-belongs emand some voices usually worth listening phatically to the first class; but yet is so to have denied him genius altogether, clearly distinct from all his earlier promoved no doubt by the promptings of a ductions, that we reserve it for discusmore mature taste and graver judgment sion by itself. Among the novels of than that which revels in the fine dis- society published in his earlier years, tresses of Godolphin and Maltravers."Pelham" is the greatest as well as the But with all these drawbacks his reward first. It was followed by "Godolphin," has been in proportion to the generous the "Disowned," the two novels which rashness with which he gave all that was embody the fortunes of Maltravers, and in him to the world. There was a day in the exaggerated but admirably-constructwhich Godolphin and Maltravers were ed and powerful story of "Night and splendid to us also. We have outgrown Morning." All these works profess to that day, and so did their author; but we afford us a picture of society, and the like him the better for having been young manner in which certain characters make with us, foolish with us. No splendour their way through it. The "Disowned," of maturity could quite replace this sym- it is true, belongs to a somewhat earlier pathetic bond. Goethe's "Meister," age than our own; but as it is not treated saved up till the man was old, and mean- with any attempt at archæological coring had gone out of it, is a cold and rectness, it may fairly be considered dreary puzzle even to those who love among the novels of contemporary life. Goethe best; but Bulwer's Meisters, These, then, compose the first class of sent forth red-hot out of the glowing their author's productions. We have youth that produced them, woke other said that Bulwer's Meisters came forth youths to an enthusiasm which men smile at, but do not forget. There is thus a compensation to the hasty, to the bold, to those writers who cannot always be thinking of their reputation, and who give out what is in them with prodigality, as the fountain flows. They may not win the crown of perennial excellence; but it is something to lay hold of the sympathy of your contemporaries, to be young and to grow old with them, and to feel thus a silent multitude by your side as you go forward in the inevitable race.

red-hot and glowing out of the delightful foolishness of his youth; but we confess that there may be many readers who will fail to see any resemblance between the young heroes whom he conducts through so many lively and stormy scenes, and the dreamy being to whose apprenticeship and journeyman experience of life the great German gave so much toil and trouble. A closer glance, however, will show the resemblance to which-in, we think, the preface to "Maltravers"—our author himself refers. His invariable aim Lord Lytton's books divide themselves is, through many diversities of circumnaturally into various classes, all exhibit- stances, to exhibit to us an apprenticeing distinct phases and developments of ship—a training in the School of Life, his mind. He has himself so arranged with the results naturally arising from it. them, indeed, in the later editions issued Love, it may be said, is the paramount under his supervision; and we will con- inspiration and interest of each; but yet sider them according to his classification. love itself is but one of the educational There are stories of life and manners; processes through which the subject of historical romances; tales of magic and the story is perfected. And in every mystery; and what for want of a better case success and reputation are the title we may call romances of crime. The rewards which the author allots to his last and greatest group of his mature creations. The alternative of failure

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