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solution of a problem which our charitable judgment pronounces him unable to solve in a more legitimate way. And we are right. It is not the vocation of the novel-writer to startle us with exaggerated events, which are only true because they have happened, but to order his world on the general principles of nature as the outer world is regulated-to keep his eye on the broad truths of existence, instead of the special and distorted realities of some individual life; in a word, indeed, to be true to nature, and leave fact to the expositions of a less ambitious art.

And on this principle we cannot reconcile ourselves to the abduction of Violante. It might have happencd-very true; but it did not deserve to be invented. We think the Count de Peschiera and Harley L'Estrange might have made a sufficiently clear revelation of their different intentions and regards without this expedient, and we cannot feel that it is worthy either of the author or of the personages concerned. When we have said this, we think we have about concluded our grievances. Nay, once more; for our own individual taste we do not admire the grand tableau system of making a denouement, and never like Harley so little as when he stands there, in his father's hall, a kind of presiding Fate, holding everybody's destiny in his hands. Having thus relieved ourselves of the last ghost of an objection, we can turn with a good conscience to the singular wealth of this richest and most remarkable of Sir E. B. Lytton's famous novels.

One does not often meet with two philosophers like Parson Dale and Dr Riccabocca. Both so wise and so profound, both so ingenuous and simple, we have seen few things so good as the skill with which the author endows each of these friends with some innocent bit of worldly wisdom, on the point where the other is least suspicious and least defended, so that the Parson secures himself a smile at the simplicity of the exile, and that notable disciple of Macchiavelli chuckles aside in the conscious superiority of a man of the world over the guileless goodness of the Parson. They are so well pleased with this

power of smiling at each other, and yet exercise it so kindly and admiringly, that there is a singular tenderness in the innocent self-complacency; and nothing can be finer than some of their joint undertakings-that descent, for example, upon Lenny Fairfield in his cottage, to teach the aspiring boy that knowledge is not power. How the Doctor charges with his sweep of cavalry when the Parson is out of breath! How the Parson comes in with his heavier metal while Riccabocca collects his forces! With what merciless kindness they demolish the poor lad's eminence of fancied greatness; and what a fine picture is that of the unconscious poet, dismayed yet convinced, looking up at them with all the humility of youth and genius, taking the lesson, which is hard but of good service. The masterly completeness of the argument, and the admirable spirit of its execution, are not more remarkable than the perfect consistency of character which the interlocutors maintain in their discussion, and which makes it, despite its abstract character, as sparkling and rapid in its flow as the lightest dialogue in the book.

Parson Dale never swerves from his character; and if Riccabocca does so, it is only once or twice under very trying circumstances, when he has to be a Duke, and conduct himself accordingly. The good-hearted and kindly Jemima, who has her own wisdom of the affections, deserves the trust which her husband at last comes to repose in her, and does not deserve the contempt which those atrocious doctrines, wherewith he envelopes himself so amusingly, profess for her sex in general. And it does one good to enter the genial precincts of the English squire's most English and most kindly household. Hazeldean and all its doings-the stocks, the temporary estrangement of the rural monarch and his people, the great sermon of Parson Dale, and the return of squire and rustics to their mutual liking and hereditary kindness, are all equally life-like and pleasant. Unlike the reality which we acknowledge in many other remarkable works of fiction-as, for instance, in Jane Eyre

this is not the reality of one powerful individual mind seizing everything

in its fervid grasp, and throwing an impression of itself on the very clouds and atmosphere of its landscape-but a grander, broader faculty, which takes in the life and the sphere of our common race in their own full light and shadow, without the variable checkerwork of its personal passions and experience. In this picture, calm in its placid breadth of repose and quiet, lies the fair green country, with its hall, its church, its cottages. He is no democrat who writes, for his opinion of Mr Sprot, the radical tinker, is not flattering, and he inclines to support the rustic monarchy of Parson Dale and Squire Hazeldean, the spiritual and secular rulers-Church and State; and he is no aristocrat, for he finds his poet hero in Widow Fairfield's cottage-a peasant boy. It is fruitless to say that, in his former productions, neither Pelham, nor Mordaunt, nor Earnest Maltravers, dissimilar as they are, is meant to represent the author-just as it would be very fruitless for Miss Bronte to make an indignant disavowal of having shadowed forth herself in Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe. It makes small matter to us that the hero is not the author-enough that the author identifies himself with the hero, and views the other persons and matters in the book, not so much as they are, but as they affect him. In these matured and mellowed volumes-the essence of a life-this narrower individual view is gone. Knitted together as they are by almost too many threads of connection, every man stands upon his own footing in these volumes; but we do not feel any want of the intenser individuality, and we gain much in the general breadth of treatment and clearness of tone.

And the same country which produces Leonard Fairfield, the genius of the story, produces also the handsome, good-hearted Frank Hazeldean, the young man of the book, generous, honourable, but not too wise-the young squire and country gentleman; and Randal Leslie, the villain of the tale. In these days we are not good at villains; not that we love sin less, but, perhaps, that we admire virtue more than in times of old; but certain it is that our rogues are always our greatest failures, the poorest dupes in the

end.

Randal, and the home which produces him, are powerful conceptions; but it is hard to keep up our interest in a sorry knave, whose schemes, as we are aware beforehand, must be foiled, and are foiled accordingly at every point and turn he makes. This cold-blooded and calculating schemer, without a single open vice, yet with every deliberate iniquity which steers clear of passion, is a great attempt at a villain; but while we would not have him more successful, we feel as if it were unnatural and a mistake that he should be so perpetually baffled. Iago works out all his wicked purpose. Randal Leslie succeeds in none.

But the most ambitious characters in this crowd are those two which occupy the foreground, and whose personal relations to each other form the main thread of the story-Audley Egerton and Harley L'Estrange. And now we can indeed properly estimate how great a way in advance our author has travelled, when we see how Glanville and Maltravers have progressed into Harley, and how their chaos of great qualities, half angel, half demon, have blossomed into the bright imagination, the noble powers, and the fresh youth's heart of this favourite of nature. A full grown man, of warm and ardent temperament, experienced in the world, one feels that Harley's thoughts are white and spotless as a girl's, and can understand how tenderly that old poetic sentiment of his first love keeps his heart. Nor is the self-contained and loveless statesman an unworthy companion to the man whom he has once deceived. Harley's excessive wrath, and intended revenge-his conflict of heart and purpose-the disturbance which his own sin brings into his soul, and which he supposes is caused by the knowledge of another's-are not out of keeping with his loving nature; but when that bursts forth into remorse and compunction, and in the flush of many discoveries he finds himself knit in a closer friendship with his friend, relieved for ever of his old fidelity to his first love, and able to free Helen, the whole man makes appearance under this glow of revival, and it is with a quickened breath and eager interest that we watch Harley

on his way to the election, remembering how many destinies are waiting to be concluded on his return.

Let us confess that, but for those perplexing things called heroes and heroines, fiction were the most fascinating of arts. But, alas! that impossible union of the ideal and actual which is demanded from the unhappy novelist in the form of a heroine-an angel in luxuriant ringlets, and dressed with a due regard to fashion, does not pass muster in these criticising days. We are not quite sure what to say of Helen and Violante - the enthusiast temperament and the domestic one. Helen, a sweet child, does not grow in this book. We are told, but cannot be sure, that she has made much progress, and we certainly have not seen her advance from a girl to a woman. On the contrary, Violante does increase in stature and development, and is a worthy poetic creation, not too distinct, but beautiful and ardent enough to be Harley's inspiring genius. There is much vagueness, too, about Leonard. Perhaps it belongs to him rightly in his character of poet; but we think we could have endured a more distinct view; though there are, indeed, times when this young hero recalls to our recollection a portrait we have seen of Burns, where there are the sweet half-surprised eyesthat slightest touch of the feminine which belongs to the poetic character, and the bright ingenuous youthful look, as innocent as it is noble, which should be the singer's too.

We are of necessity passing over much of this book, and of its characters, full and overbrimming as it is, and can scarcely pause to specify Dick Avenel, with his ambition, his smartness, his humbug, yet his English good-looks and manliness; nor the subdued and admirable sketch of his father and mother. There is good Mrs Hazeldean too, and "poor" Mrs Dale; and big John Burley, and all the Italian interlocutors, good and evil. We can scarcely count the individuals for the crowd, yet we can say with safety that every member of the crowd is an individual; four mighty volumes full, yet every page rich with its own attraction. And so ends the greatest production which Sir E. B. Lytton has yet given to the world.

Thus far we have done our best to justify our judgment of the merit of this great writer. With all his faults, we believe him to be unrivalled in his vocation. He has a broader grasp, a fuller life, than any one of his contemporaries; a more easy and perfect knowledge of all the manifold phases of humanity-The Varieties of English Life. He is never at a loss, whatever the class into which the exigencies of his story lead him; but is equally felicitous in the stately and decorous Earl of Lansmere, and in the ruined genius of Burley; in that kindest of homoeopathists who tries to harden his heart by means of globules; and in the country tradesman's proud old wife, who preserves the good fame of her family with the sternness of a Spartan. Widow Fairfield, Mrs Leslie, and Lady Lansmere are equally characteristic; and had the author been a man of unknown rank and name, we should have found it quite impossible to tell in which class he was most at home. Genius alone does not give this wonderful facility; and these books could only have been written in the prime of a long-trained and much experienced maturity, and by a mind which, not content with mere knowledge of the world, has exercised its great powers to penetrate, not only into the more splendid mysteries of our existence, but into the homely heart of everyday life.

Yet the reputation of Sir E. B. Lytton contrasts strangely with these his more finished productions. This reputation is a restless, brilliant, dazzling piece of renown, flashing in our eyes with irregular and versatile splendour, and not at all like the steady light and broad full atmosphere in which his genius has now developed itself. In spite of his complaints and protests, we cannot separate him from his heroes; and to the imagination of most of his readers, the all-accomplished exquisitism of Pelham and the romantic genius of Glanville, unite in the author, who constantly piques our curiosity, and excites and rouses our interest, by his impatience of his past achievements and daring rush upon the unconquered. Uncontented with one triumph, he forgets what he has gained to-day in the new enterprise into which he

throws himself to-morrow. He is never satisfied to leave a field of adventure unvisited, or a trial of strength unessayed. Instead of building himself up in his stronghold of undisputed excellence, a new opportunity of distinction has always a charm irresistible for this Orlando of literature.

"If a path be dangerous known,

The danger's self were lure alone." And there is an Admirable Crichtonism in his universal accomplishments, which gives a certain charm, fresh and boyish, to the sober and splendid victories of the man. We are reminded of Pelham's adventure with the pugilistic earl, who tempts the dandy to a bout at singlestick, with the amiable and good-humoured purpose of breaking the dandy's head for him. The exquisite humours the savage, and defends himself with affected awkwardness, till he is weary of the rough sport, when suddenly, with easy skill, he lays his rude opponent at his feet, and (like Hogginarmo) there was an end of him. "Calton played well enough for a gentleman," says Mr Pelham, "but he was no match for one who had, at the age of thirteen, beat the Life Guardsman at Angelo's." And we can believe that Bulwer himself as little as his hero could endure the superiority even of the Guardsman at singlestick. That national attribute which runs through so many great and so many little matters that "won't be beat"-which inspires our armies in the field, and strengthens Mrs Perkins for the labours of her ball-is strong in the nature of Sir Edward. His conscious power carries him on with a gay and rapid impulse. He flies at everything, in the rush of his high blood and eager spirit; and tempts, defies, and dazzles criticism in his endless changes. Perhaps more fables are told of him than of any other name in literature;-such rosecoloured bowers the popular fancy erects for its Sybarite-such dainty stories believes of his luxurious retirement. Did he don a smock-frock for the nonce to beguile us, we still could see only a superb dandy in the author of Pelham; for it is difficult to believe that even in this particular our novelist would tamely suffer himself to be surpassed. It is not in our rôle to discuss the qualities of Sir

Edward Bulwer Lytton as a dramatist, a poet, or an orator; but we know, as all the world knows, that in each of these avenues to fame he has pretensions, and that if his success there does not yet entitle him to the highest, it still confers upon him a distinguished place. To very few men has fallen such a lot of universal achievementto very few, such unvarying distinction. One triumph is generally as much as one life is good for; but this man has won all the prizes in this brilliant lottery has triumphantly rescued and increased the laurels which once seemed about to glide from his grasp, and has rung the changes upon the sweet bells of imagination and philosophy, only to gain from them, at each touch of his bold and rapid finger, a new and varying fame.

We will not congratulate our author on his triumphs; but we will congratulate him that he has lived to fulfil the high promise of his youth-that he has outlived all that could make his name a questionable sound in the literature of his country, and nobly obliterated the impression made by that one unfortunate period of his literary career which had almost lost for him, not success, but the good opinion of good men. Sentimentalism may sometimes wake weak echoes of false sentiment; but we can never persuade ourselves into love for the overstrained, the exaggerated, or the criminal, either in reality or fiction. To the two last works of Sir E. B. Lytton, on the contrary, we turn with affectionate gratititude. There are few men in the world who could introduce us on familiar terms to the society of Austin Caxton, to the friendship of Roland, or make us privy to the amicable controversies of Dr Riccabocca and Parson Dale. For placing such society within our power, we owe the author no common thanks; and in tendering them, we do not repeat only our belief that he has won thereby the highest place in modern literature, but-a greater matter-that he has made a fit use of the genius with which he is gifted, and done his devoir gallantly and well for his great audience, the people -as a man had need to do who exercises one of the greatest faculties bestowed upon earth, under the eyes of Heaven.

THE LATE PROFESSOR EDWARD FORBES.

[EDWARD FORBES was born in the Isle of Man in February 1815, and died near Edinburgh on the 18th of November 1854, in his 40th year, six months after his appointment to the Regius Chair of Natural History in the University of that city. His great and varied gifts and accomplishments, his remarkable discoveries, and his singularly lovable, generous, and catholic spirit, made him an object of esteem and affection to a very wide circle of friends, and a still wider circle of acquaintances. All were exulting in the prospect of the long and honourable career which awaited him, when, in the height of his glory and usefulness, he was suddenly stricken by a fatal disease, and died after a brief illness.

The following lines seek to apply, mutatis mutandis, to the mystery of the great Naturalist's death, certain canons which he enforced in reference to the existence of living things, both plants and animals. Their purport was, to teach that an individual plant or animal cannot be understood, so far as the full significance of its life and death is concerned, by a study merely of itself, but that it requires to be considered in connection with the variations in form, structure, character, and deportment, exhibited by the contemporary members of its species spread to a greater or less extent over the entire globe, and by the ancestors of itself, and of those contemporary individuals throughout the whole period which has elapsed since the species was created.

He further held, that the many animal and vegetable tribes or races (species) which once flourished, but have now totally perished, did not die because a "germ of death" had from the first been present in each, but suffered extinction in consequence of the great geologic changes which the earth had undergone, such as have changed tropical into arctic climates, land into sea, and sea into land, rendering their existence impossible. Each species, itself an aggregate of mortal individuals, came thus from the hands of God, inherently immortal; and when He saw fit to remove it, it was slain through the intervention of such changes, and replaced by another. The longevity, accordingly, of the existing races can, according to this view, be determined (in so far as it admits of human determination at all) only by a study of the physical alterations which await the globe; and every organism has thus, through its connection with the brethren of its species, a retrospective and prospective history, which must be studied by the naturalist who seeks fully to account even for its present condition and fate.

Those canons were applied by Edward Forbes to the humbler creatures; he was unfailing in urging that the destinies of man are guided by other laws, having reference to his possession individually of an immaterial and immortal spirit.

The following lines, embodying these ideas, contemplate his death, solely as it was a loss to his fellow-workers left behind him: their aim is to whisper patience, not to enforce consolation.]

THOU Child of Genius! None who saw
The beauty of thy kindly face,

Or watched those wondrous fingers draw
Unending forms of life and grace,

Or heard thine earnest utterance trace
The links of some majestic law,

But felt that thou by God wert sent
Amongst us for our betterment.

And yet He called thee in thy prime,
Summoned thee in the very hour
When unto us it seemed that Time
Had ripened every manly power:

And thou, who hadst through sun and shower,

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