German and French writers, and American ones also, of whom Edgar Allan Poe may be regarded as the representative, have exerted their ingenuity in the construction of stories capable of exciting the most vivid and profound sensations of horror, and to attain their object they have often wisely made their tales terminate in mysteries of manifold terrors, so that the reader is left to choose his own explanation of the drama out of various suggested tragedies all alike painful. But nowhere has romance produced so dark and awful a position as this. It may be that suffering acutely from nervous derangement, she took an overdose of the poison through her lips, or unacquainted with the strange potency of the fluid, applied it in the palm of her hand to the exterior of her aching jaw,-and then fell down, loving life and dreading death; perhaps she ran to her door to cry for help. It is very probable that, overwrought with anguish, at the prospect of being left to the tender mercies of her stern husband, without one European woman to protect her, her heart strings burst-and life fled! Perhaps nature was too strong, her heart would not break—and she wrested death from the hand that would not give it, and perished a suicide! It may perchance be that her destruction was achieved by poison administered to her by the agents of a savage woman, whom fiendish jealousy urged on to the committal of murder, while the husband stood bywatching the devil's work, and admiring its exquisite cunning. We know not which of these suggestions to acceptin which the truth lies; and in the alarm of perplexity we surround the one death with all the horrors of all the different awful modes in which it might have been accomplished. Farewell "L. E. L.," gentle woman, high-souled poetess, deeply wronged, passionately admired! and as Landor sung, let us repeat a lament for thee! A Dirge for the departed! bend we low Around her bed of unwakening rest; Still as the heart within her marble breast, A dirge-Oh weave it of low murmurings, Be the faint melody; the name it bears, Shall thrill our England's heart, for many linkéd years. CHAPTER XI. SIR EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON, BARONET. SUCH is the prolix and perplexing name and title of one of the foremost of our living writers. The confusion caused by this string of appellatives has been a long standing joke with the public, and even at this day it is not rare to find an admirer of "The Caxtons," and an enthusiastic defender of "The Rise and Fall of Athens," who is as ignorant of his favourite author's name as was the last of that series of footmen whom Thackeray has clothed with celebrity. Have you read "Bulwer's last ?" is a familiar enquiry to the ears of every one, and just now the usual answer is, "Ah, that queer stuff that is now coming out in Blackwood. Well-really-I can't yet, see what he'll make of it; but everything that Bulwer writes must be good." One of the great drawbacks of the present age of "action" to the young man is, that he is compelled by it to impudence and assumption, is forced to throw aside that habit of reverence, which is really congenial to generous youth, and to jostle, scan, measure, and judge his superiors, as though he were at last their equal. The young author may not rest content with admiring the great masters of his art, with feebly imitating them, and gratefully acknowledging the benefit of their instructions; other conduct is required of him-the pen is put in his hand and he is commanded to criticise. Nor is he allowed to use the pen to tell the deeper and more honourable feelings of his heart; emotions of love, wonder, even of genial sympathy he must restrain, and in their place must foster a spirit of arrogant and flippant self-sufficiency; by turns he must censure with a gibe and praise with a sneer, affect now a cold contempt and now an insulting pity. It is for him to point out not the author's beauties but his defects, not his patient research and general truthfulness, but his superficial errors and occasional failings. But it must be done! The bookseller cries for copy, and hunger cries for dinner. By birth Bulwer Lytton was above the class from which the ranks of the literary profession are filled, for though not of a dazzling lineage he was on both sides of gentle origin. His father was General Bulwer, of Heydon Hall, Norfolk, (the son of a certain William Wigget who became possessed of considerable estates in Norfolk, on the death of a maternal uncle, William Bulwer, whose name he took) and his mother was an accomplished and richly endowed lady, with a remote collateral descent, through her grandmother and great-great-grandmother, from a daughter of the Lyttons of Knebworth, Hertfordshire, into the possession of which estate she came by unusual good fortune. General Bulwer had two children besides Edward, namely, William-Earle-Lytton, his eldest son and his heir, and Henry Lytton, his second son, the Privy Councillor and Diplomatist, who besides having represented the Court of St. James's at Madrid, and subsequently at Washington, has contributed to literature "An Autumn in Greece," "France, Social and Literary," "The Monarchy of the Middle Classes," and "A Life of Lord Byron." General Bulwer died in 1807, leaving his young family to the care of their highly-endowed mother. Edward, the youngest, was born in 1805, and consequently was only about two years old at his father's death. There can be no doubt as to the singular precocity of the child's intellect for he was an author almost before he had mastered the art of constructing pot-hooks and hangers. When only five or six years old he wrote poems in imitation of Bishop Percy's ballads, and in 1820, when he was but just fifteen years old, he, or his vain friends for him, published his first volume of poems, entitled "Ismael, an Oriental Tale, with other Poems." Of course the verses of such a child are ridiculous enough in themselves, but they are remarkably good for so infantile a writer, and are an interesting proof of the care bestowed on his nursery education, and the industry which marked his earliest as well as all his after years. Perhaps the most amusing, and certainly not the least creditable poem in the collection, is one on "Waterloo," in which the deeds of the principal heroes are sung in strains which Pope and Homer between them inspired. The following sketch of the stalwart Shawe is a fair sample of the whole. "Two British Heroes, of a meaner name, That day shone proudly in the Field of Fame ; Mean time brave Shawe usurps the martial plain, A cuirassed band of Gallic heroes saw * Frenchmen, charge forwards! and your king's applause, |