eral to be blind to the beauties of either. | forms, a growing depth and truth of feelHe has attained, thus, an insulated and ing. Few, indeed, can even sportively original position, and may be viewed as a wear, for a long time, the yoke of genius, separate, nor yet a small estate, in our in- without its iron entering into the soul, and tellectual realm. He may take up for eliciting that cry which becomes immortal. motto, "Nullius jurare addictus in verba Bulwer, as a novelist, has, from a commagistri ;"-he may emblazon on his shield pound of conflicting and imported materiDesdichado. Some are torn, by violence, als, reared to himself an independent strucfrom the sympathies and attachments of ture. He has united many of the qualities their native soil, without seeking to take of the fashionable novel, of the Godwin root elsewhere; others are early trans- philosophical novel, and of the Waverley planted, in heart and intellect, to other tale. He has the levity and thoroughbred countries; a few, again, seem born, rooted air of the first; much of the mental anatup, and remain so for ever. To this last omy and philosophical thought which often class we conceive Bulwer to belong. In overpower the narrative in the second; and the present day, the demand for earnest- a portion of the dramatic liveliness, the hisness, in its leading minds, has become in- torical interest, and the elaborate costume cessant and imperative. Men speak of it of the third. If, on the other hand, he is as if it had been lately erected into a new destitute of the long, solemn, overwhelmtest of admission into the privileges alike of ing swell of Godwin's style of writing, and St. Stephens and of Parnassus. A large of the variety, the sweet, natural, and and formidable jury, with Thomas Carlyle healthy tone of Scott's, he has some qualifor foreman, are diligently occupied in try- ties peculiar to himself,-point, polish-at ing each new aspirant, as well as back- times a classical elegance-at times a barspeiring the old, on this question: "Earn- baric brilliance, and a perpetual mint of est or a sham? Heroic or hearsay? Un- short sententious reflections,-compact, der which king, Bezonian, speak, or die." rounded, and shining as new-made soveConcerning this cry for earnestness, we can reigns. We know no novelist from whose only say, en passant, that it is not, strictly writings we could extract so many striking speaking, new, but old; as old, surely, as sentences containing fine thoughts, chased that great question of Deborah's to recreant in imagery, "apples of gold in pictures of Reuben," Why abodest thou among the silver." The wisdom of Scott's sage resheep-folds to hear the bleating of the flections is homely but commonplace; Godflocks?" or that more awful query of the win beats his gold thin, and you gather his Tishbite's," How long halt ye between philosophical acumen rather from the whole two opinions?" That it is, in theory, a conduct and tone of the story, and his comrobust truth; and sometimes, in applica- mentary upon it, than from single and seption, an exaggeration and a fallacy; and arate thoughts. Dickens, whenever he that, unless preceded by the words en- moralizes, in his own person, becomes inlightened" and "virtuous," earnestness is sufferably tame and feeble. But it is Bula quality no more intrinsically admirable, wer's beauty that he abounds in fine, though nay, as blind and brutal, as the rush of a not far gleams of insight; and it is his fault bull upon his foeman, or as the foaming that sometimes, while watching these, he fury of a madman. Bulwer is not, we fear, allows the story to stand still, or to drag in the full sense of the term, an earnest heavily, and sinks the character of novelist man nay, we have heard of the great mod- in that of brilliant essay-writer, or inditer ern prophet of the quality, pronouncing of smart moral and political apothegms. him the most thoroughly false man of the In fact, his works are too varied and versaage; and another, of the same school, tile. They are not novels or romances so christens him "a double distilled scent- much as compounds of the newspaper artibottle of cant." In spite of this, however, cle, the essay, the political squib, the gay we deem him to possess, along with much that is affected, much, also, that is true, and much that is deeply sympathetic with sincerity, although no devouring fire of purpose has hitherto filled his being, or been seen to glare in his eye. And, as we hinted before, his later writings exhibit sometimes in mournful and melancholy 66 and rapid dissertation; which, along with the necessary ingredients of fiction, combine to form a junction, without constituting a true artistic whole. Reserving a few remarks upon one or two other of his works till afterwards, we recur to the three which seem to typify the stages of his progress; "Pelham," "Eugene Aram," and "Zanoni." "Pelham," like "Anastasius," begins with a prodigious affectation of wit. For several pages the reading is as gay and as wearisome as a jest-book. You sigh for a simple sentence, and would willingly dig even for dulness as for hid treasure. The wit, too, is not an irrepressible and involuntary issue, like that from the teeming brain of Hood; it is an artificial and forced flow; and the author and his reader are equally relieved, when the clear path of the tale at length breaks away from the luxuriant shrubbery in which it is at first buried, and strikes into more open and elevated ground. It is the same with "Anastasius;" but "Pelham," we must admit, does not reach those heights of tenderness, of nervous description, and of solemn moralizing, which have rendered the other the prose "Don Juan," and something better. It is, at most, a series, or rather string, of clever, dashing, disconnected sketches; and the moral problem it works out seems to be no more than this, that, under the corsets of a dandy, there sometimes beats a heart. more unearthly of fossil remains. Call him In "Eugene Aram," Bulwer evidently aims at a higher mark; and, in his own opinion, with considerable success. We gather his estimate of this work from the fact that he inscribes a labored and glowing panegyric on Scott with the words, "The Author of Eugene Aram." Now, probably he would exchange this for "The Author of Zanoni." Nor should we, at least, nor, we think, the public, object to the alteration. 46 Eugene Aram" seems, to us, as lamentable a perversion of talent as the literature of the age has exhibited. It is one of those works in which an unfortunate choice of subject neutralizes eloquence, genius, and even interest. It is with it as with the "Curse of Kehama," and the "Cenci," where the more splendid the decorations which surround the disgusting object, the more disgusting it be- In saying that "Zanoni" is our chief comes. It is, at best, deformity jewelled favorite among Bulwer's writings, we conand enthroned. Not content with the sciously expose ourselves to the charge of native difficulties of the subject-the trite- paradox. If we err, however, on this matness of the story-its recent date-its dead ter, we err in company with the author himlevel of certainty-the author has, in a sort self; and, we believe, with all Germany, of daring perversity, created new difficulties and with many enlightened enthusiasts at for himself to cope withal. He has not bid home. We refer, too, in our approbation, the real pallid murderer to sit to his pencil, more to the spirit than to the execution of and trusted for success to the severe accu- the work. As a whole, as a broad and racy of the portraiture. Him he has spir- brilliant picture of a period, and its hero, ited away, and has substituted the most fan-"Rienzi" is perhaps his greatest work, and tastic of all human fiends, resembling the "that shield he may hold up against all his more hideous of heraldic devices, or the enemies." "The Last Days of Pompeii," on the other hand, is calculated to enchanting, lie like the "soft shadow of an angel's classical scholars, and the book glows like wing," upon its every page. Its beauties a cinder from Vesuvius, and most gorgeous- are not of the "earth earthy." Its very ly are the reelings of that fiery drunkard faults, cloudy, colossal, tower above our depicted. The "Last of the Barons," petty judgment-seats, towards some higher again, as a cautious, yet skillful filling up of tribunal. the vast skeleton of Shakspeare, is attractive Best of all is that shade of mournful to all who relish English story. But we are grandeur which rests upon it. Granting mistaken, if in that class who love to see all its blemishes, the improbabilities of its the Unknown, the Invisible, and the Eternal, story, the occasional extravagancies of its looking in upon them, through the loops language, let it have its praises for its picand windows of the present; whose foot- tures of love and grief, of a love leading its steps turn instinctively toward the thick votary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and the dark places of the "wilderness of and reminding you of that which made anthis world" or who, by deep disappoint- gels resign their starry thrones for the ment or solemn sorrow, have been driven" daughters of men;" and of a grief, too to take up their permanent mental abode upon the perilous verge of the unseen world, if "Zanoni" do not, on such, exert a mightier spell, and to their feelings be not more sweetly attuned, than any other of this writer's books. It is a book not to be read in the drawing-room, but in the fields-not in the sunshine, but in the twilight shadenot in the sunshine, unless indeed that sunshine has been saddened, and sheathed by a recent sorrow. Then will its wild and mystic measures, its pathos, and its grandeur, steal in like music, and mingle with the soul's emotions; till, like music, they seem a part of the soul itself. deep for tears, too sacred for lamentation, the grief which he increaseth that increaseth knowledge, the grief which not earthly immortality, which death only can cure. The tears which the most beautiful and melting close of the tale wrings from our eyes, are not those which wet the last pages of ordinary novels: they come from a deeper source; and as the lovers are united in death, to part no more, triumph blends with the tenderness with which we witness the sad yet glorious union. Bulwer, in the last scene, has apparently in his eye the conclusion of the "Revolt of Islam," where Laon and Laone, springing in spirit from the funeral pile, are united in a happier region, in the "calm dwellings of the mighty dead," where on a fairer landscape rests a "holier day," and where the lesson awaits them, that "Virtue though obscured on earth, no less Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness." No term has been more frequently abused than that of religious novel. This, as commonly employed, describes an equivocal birth, if not a monster, of which the worst and most popular specimen, is "Calebs in Search of a Wife," where a perfect and perfectly insipid gentleman goes out in search of, and succeeds in finding a perfect and perfectly insipid lady. It is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious part of her book. Holding it with a half shudder, and at arm's-length, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in the other and the other infusion of prose criticism, common-place moralizing, sage aphorism, &c., till it is fairly diluted down to her standard of utility and safety. But a religious novel, in the high and true sense of the term, is a noble thought: a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out as it were in flowers: a principle, old as Deity, wreathed with beauty, drama- his editorship, approached our ideal of a tized in action, incarnated in life, purified perfect Magazine; combining as it did imby suffering and death. And we confess partiality, variety, and power. His "Conthat to this ideal, we know no novel in this versations with an Ambitious Student in ill our country, that approaches so nearly as health," though hardly equal to the dia"Zanoni." An intense spirituality, a logues of Plato, contain many rich meditayearning earnestness, a deep religious feel- tions and criticisms, suspended round a Amid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other productions, we may mention one or two "dearer than the rest." The "Student," from its disconnected plan, and the fact that the majority of its papers appeared previously, has seemed to many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless collection of its author's study-sweepings. This, however, is not a fair or correct estimate of its merits. It in reality contains the cream of Bulwer's periodical writings. And the New Monthly Magazine, during honest writer, to shoot folly, expose error, simple and affecting story. The word "ambitious," however, is unfortunate; for what student is not, and should not be ambitious? To study, is to climb " higher still, and higher like a cloud of fire." Talk of an ambitious chamois, or of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an ambitions student. In pursuing, at the commencement of this The allegories in the "Student," strikes us paper, a parallel between Byron and Bulas eminently fine, with glimpses of a more wer, we omitted to note a stage, the last in creative imagination, than we can find in the former's literary progress. Toward the any of his writings, save "Zanoni." We close of his career, his wild shrieking earnhave often regretted, that the serious alle- estness, subsided into Epicurean derision. gory, once too much affected, is now al-He became dissolved into one contemptumost obsolete. Why should it be so? why ous and unhappy sneer. Beginning with should not more heads be laid down upon the satiric bitterness of "English Bards," John Bunyan's pillow, to see more visions he ended with the fiendish gaiety of " Don and dream more dreams? Shall truth no Juan." He laughed at first that he "might more have its mounts of transfiguration? not weep; but ultimately this miserable Must Mirza no more be overheard in his mirth drowned his enthusiasm, his heart, soliloquies? And is the road to the "Den" and put out the few flickering embers of lost for ever? We trust, we trow not. In his natural piety. The deep tragedy disthe Student," too, occurs his far-famed solved in a 'poor pickle herring," yet attack upon the anonymous in periodical mournful farce. We trust that our novelwriting. We do not coincide with him in ist will not complete his resemblance to the this. We do not think that the use of the poet, by sinking into a satirist. 'Tis inanonymous either could or should be re-deed a pitiful sight that, of one who has linquished. It is, to be sure, in some passed the meridian of life and reputation, measure, relinquished, as it is. The tidings grinning back in helpless mockery, and of the authorship of any article of conse-toothless laughter, upon the brilliant way quence, in a Review or Magazine, often which he has traversed, but to which he now pass with the speed of lightning, can return no more. We anticipate for through the literary world, till it is as well Bulwer a better destiny. He who has maknown in the book-shop of the country ted with the mighty spirit, which had almost town, or the post-office of the country vil-reared again the fallen Titanic form of relage, as in Albemarle or George Street. publican Rome; whose genius has travelBut, in the first place, the anonymous led up the Rhine, like a breeze of music, forms a very profitable exercise for the "stealing and giving odor;" who in "Paul acuteness of our young critics, who become, Clifford," has searched some "dark bothrough it, masters in the science of inter- soms," and not in vain, for pathos and for nal evidence, and learn to detect the fine poetry; who in "England and the English," Roman hand of this and the other writer, has cast a rapid but vigorous glance upon even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots the tendencies of our wondrous age; who, of his i's. Besides, secondly, the anony-in his verse, has so admirably pictured the mous forms for the author an ideal charac- stages of romance in Milton's story; who ter, fixes him in an ideal position as it were, has gone down a "diver lean and strong," projects him out of himself; and hence after Schiller, into the "innermost main," many writers have, surpassed themselves, lifting with a fearless hand the "veil that both in power and popularity, while writing is woven with Night and with Terror;" under its shelter. So with Swift, in his and in "Zanoni" has essayed to relume "Tale of a Tub;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney the mystic fires of the Rosicrucians, and to Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter Scott; Addi- reveal the dread secrets of the spiritual son, too, was never so good as when he put world; must worthily close a career so on the short face of the Spectator. Wil-illustrious. May the clouds and mists of son is never so good, as when he assumes detraction, against which he strove so long, the glorious alias of Christopher North. And, thirdly, the anonymous, when preserved, piques the curiosity of the reader, mystifies him into interest; and, on the other hand, sometimes allows a bold and not fail, (to use the words of Hall), "to form, at evening, a magnificent theatre for his reception, and to surround with augmented glories the luminary which they cannot hide!" 1846.] THE LAST RECOLLECTIONS OF NAPOLEON. From Blackwood's Magazine. eral change, embracing the infinite varieties THE LAST RECOLLECTIONS OF NAPO. purposes, nothing could seem more impro LEON. History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena. By General Count Montholon. 2 vols. London: Colburn. bable. But it has always been the course of things. Without Charlemagne, the little principalities of Gothic Europe would never have been systematized into an empire-without Luther, what could have been the progress of the Reformation ?— without Napoleon, the French Revolution would have burnt itself out, vanished into its materials, combined them into a new and powerful shape, crowned this being of his own formation with the imperial robe, erected it in the centre of Europe, and called the nations to bow down before a new idol, like the gods of the Indian known only by its mysterious frown, the startling splendor of its diadem, and the swords and serpents grasped in its hands. THERE are few things more striking than the analogy in civil and physical changes of the world. There have been in the his-air, or sunk into ashes. He alone collected tory of man periods as distinctive as in the history of nations. From these periods society and nations have alike assumed new aspects, and the world has commenced a new career. The fall of the Roman Empire was the demarcation between the old world and the new. It was the moral deluge, out of which a new condition of man, new laws, new forms of Religion, new styles of That the character of Napoleon was a thought, almost a totally new configuration. of human society, were to arise. A new singular compound of the highest intellecsettlement of the civil world took place:tual powers with the lowest moral qualities, power absorbed by one race of mankind is evidently the true description of this exwas to be divided among various races; and traordinary being. This combination alone the development of principles of government and society, hitherto unknown, was to be scarcely less memorable, less unexpected, or less productive, than that voyage by which Columbus doubled the space of the habitable globe. The Reformation was another mighty change. It introduced civil liberty into the empire of tyranny, religion into the realm of superstition, and science into the depths of national ignorance. The French Revolution was the last, and not the least powerful change within human experience. Its purpose is, like its operation, still dubious. Whether it came simply for wrath, or simply for restoration-whether, like the earthquake of Lisbon, it came only to destroy, and leave its ruins visible for a century to come; to clear the ground of incumbrances too massive for the hand of man, and open the soil for exertions nobler than the oid, must be left to time to interpret. But there can be no question, that the most prominent agency, the most powerful influence, and the most dazzling lustre, of a period in which all the stronger impulses of our being were in the wildest activity, centred in the character of one man, and that manNapoleon. It is evidently a law of Providence, that all the great changes of society shall be the work of individual minds. Yet when we recollect the difficulty of effecting any gen accounts for the rapidity, the splendor of It is another striking feature of this catastrophe, that the whole family of Napoleon sank along with him. They neither possessed his faculties, nor were guilty of his offences. But as they had risen solely by him, they perished entirely with him. Future history will continually hover over this period of our annals, as the one which most resembles some of those fabrications of the Oriental genius, in which human |