If a warm interest in the progress of Mr. Bulwer's mind, and a watchful sympathy with its struggles, fit the writer for this very pleasant office, some comments on his works may not be unacceptable. And in the first place, we would disclaim indiscriminate admiration. His friends, by excusing or denying his defects and errors, have done him more harm than his enemies ever could. A key for explaining most, perhaps all of the fantastic disguises which character puts on in this our nineteenth century, has been furnished by one, whose profound wisdom and keen powers of observation would, in earlier ages, have entitled him to the honors of a Seer, when he said that the great misfortunes of our day consists in our being obliged to get rid of the false, before we can arrive at the true. An intense light is shed upon the world, the eye of youth vainly strives to scrutinize every object in its wide horizon: alas! we have the ambition, but not the strong unerring vision of the eagle.Our views are wide, but their limits are often ill defined, the details misunderstood, and the coloring confused. We find ourselves obliged to pace, snail-like, over the ground we surveyed with a monarch's ken, in order to correct those trifling errors, which have perverted the whole idea. Too many dazzled eyes love the ground ever after their first over-bold essays. And those, of more enduring nobleness, who persist in patient strivings to arrive at a more just estimate of that beauteous empire which lies beneath the Sun of truth, too often fall asleep amid the dews of evening, before a fit result has crowned a day of such toil. This process, so curious, so unlike the simplicity of antique development, and now obvious in every form of intellectual life, can nowhere so conveniently be studied as in the successive efforts of a writer like Mr. Bulwer, born ambitious, with strong feelings and passions as the imagination which represents them, educated in the bosom of the most sophisticated society of modern Europe, daring in thought, and free in speech, not obliged by any prudential motives to consult the superficial tastes. and wishes of the public, his first aim the doing justice to the powers he feels himself to possess-his second, Fame. I am about to speak of Mr. Bulwer's novels exclusively, as it is through them that he is best known; and his other works are comparatively unimportant. He is in popularity, the successor to Walter Scott, and, though following with no equal step, has attracted the public attention more than all the disciples of the Waverly school. The public love, indeed, will never wait on another as it did on that noble being in whom the most expansive genius was adorned by the most beautiful fairness of mind, and guided by consummate good-sense, in whom wit, benevolence, imagination and acute penetration were balanced and combined, as we can never hope again to see them in any individual. We do not intend to pursue a comparison which would be as unnecessary as invidious, since Mr. Bulwer is the founder of his own school, and therefore ought not to be compared with one, whom he has panegyrized with more taste and justness than any one, except Miss Martineau, who ever attempted it. The first written, though, we believe, not the first published tale of Mr. Bulwer, was "Falkland," a dark manifestation of that diseased love of excitement which follows the premature development of the mind and passions, and of the guilt and misery to which it naturally leads. Its merit, either of invention or conduct, is small; the impression it leaves, searing and painful. A few passages of highly wrought eloquence in describing the minuter feelings, and the lines beginning. ""Tis midnight, round the lamp which o'er Is widely spread the varied lore Which feeds in youth our feverish dream:" Which so forcibly describe what Coleridge defines as "Misology," a malady too well known to the youthful spirits of this day, are all which we think worth noting in this register of the sickness of the soul. "Pelham" is the book which first gave Mr. Bulwer celebrity, and opened the way for the series formerly called the Pelham, but now more honorably, the Bulwer novels. This has many faults and many beauties. The characters, in all their minuteness of portraiture, convey no impression of life; the extremes of passion are often overwrought, the wit is like that of Sheridan, the wit of bon mots and sharp contrasts, not the quiet but more deeply meaning ludicrous of nature. The philosophy which teaches that it is possible to seem the thorough worldling, and to be the man of delicate feelings, independant and honorable mind, is false.-But there is much knowledge of life and books; much reflected upon too, though as yet the true alchymy has not been applied, without which these ample materials are little better than dross and false brilliants. There are many passages of fine writing, in too ambitious a style, 'tis true, but still sparkling with talent, and, sometimes, musical with pathos. In the delineation of the more lightly shaded sentiments, in seizing and embodying what floats on the surface of life, the suppliance if not always the perfume of the minute, the author excels. As an instance of high power, we would mention the scenery (if I may so phrase it) of the day preceding the murder. This coming event casts its shadow before; all is full of presage, sombre, lurid, clogging! The squalid misery of the event penetrates every corner of the mind, and the crime seems rising on vampire wings from the most sullen recess of the night. 'Devereux' and the 'Disowned' may be classed with 'Pelham,' inferior in execution, but of the same order, and based on the same outward tending, corrupting principles of life and ac tion. Next come "Paul Clifford" and "Eugene. Aram," in which we may perhaps astonish our readers by saying, that we perceive the beginning of a new state. Those which we have named, we give up, as decidedly injurious to those by whom they are most likely to be studied, that is, the numerous class of Fanfurons, (to borrow a word from the subtle-toned French) who would gladly engraft on an earnest, healthy state of society, the follies and the vices of a luxurious and decaying monarchy. Although none of the social capital is in such hands or heads, and the cool observer will think they must needs have some pet folly, before settling into insignificance, it is impossible not to sympathize with the anxious father or mother who, annoyed and mortified by the would-be Pelham of the family, almost wishes for the would-be Byron back again. But "Paul Clifford" and "Eugene Aram" are of a different. class, and are little to be dreaded, inasmuch as only calculated to act strongly on those more deeply feeling and thinking characters, who have received from nature that regenerating and preserving love of truth, spoken of above. Mr. Bulwer now begins to appreciate genuine feeling and ambition. True, he complains of the frame of society which, as he deems, distorts these qualities. True, he wishes to strip from many a lordly brow the veil of hypocrisy. True, he has painted a refined and intellectual highwayman, and a noble-minded murderer. True, the extent of tolerance threatens us with libertinism, the love of innovation with anarchy, and deference for the feelings of the heart, with utter dereliction of principle. True, the wit, (and what can surpass the irony of Augustus Tomlinson and Corporal Bunting?) is full of mockery, and carries venum on the feathered shaft. True, Mr. Bulwer does not clearly see his own drift; his philosophy, once consistent in its worldliness, is now becoming a strange, ill-fused amalgam. Yet with all this, we maintain Mr. Bulwer to show himself on the right track. The very mistakes in his characters, display strong tendency to the ideal. He has become the champion of human nature; he longs to reduce it to its original elements; he sighs for consistency in himselfin others in the world. He attacks the fabric of society too violently, without considering what he would put in its place; like Schiller, in his "Robbers" and "Ghost-Seer," he errs; but, like Schiller, his very errors savor of progress. And now, we meet him still farther advanced. With reverence for the established, and hope for the new; with more feeling of what is vital in human nature, and less disgust at its vulgarities and meanness-with less ornament in the garb, and more symmetry in the form of his creations-with the philosophy of life maturing, knowledge accumulated and ripened, who shall say that Mr. Bulwer has not in these few years, done much to get rid of the false?—who shall not hope that so rich, so brilliant a mind, will be regenerated into new blossom, by becoming thoroughly imbued with the true? "The Pilgrims of the Rhine" is distinguished by elegance, a light spiritual way of treating every subject, and a tone of deep and mournful, but natural tenderness. Every tale by which it is adorned, is good in its own way: "The Maid of Malines" seems the general favorite; "The Fallen Star," if not the best written, is of the finest conception. The author may be satisfied who wished it, "A spell to lure the anxious world awhile, "The Last Days of Pompeii" is a work of such beauty, that one sighs, as on leaving an atmosphere of roses, on rising from its perusal. And here we would again mention Mr. Bulwer's improvement, in what the greatest masters treasure most,— "Beauty of form." It is like one of the superb vases which the kings of art's golden time, used at their festivals. Here, a scene of richest tranquility, there, of brooding gloom, here, of triumph, there, of impassioned wo; but every shape of life, fromthe highest to the lowest, etherialized into beauty, by their sculptured purity of contour, and all arranged with exquisite skill, to subserve one design. The touches of humor have no tinge of sarcasm, they are quite free from English sternness. and have the playfulness of sunny climes. Ione and Glaucus 106 are too bright and fair, to deeply interest our feelings; but they are the needful golden thread to the varied warp. Lydia is not of earth, but an air-drawn similitude of some of our porcelain moulds. Arbaces is a fine and distinct portraiture. This fruit, is too mellow for the wasp of criticism. We meant, not to dissect, but to express our opinion of Mr. Bulwer's past, our pleasure in his present, and our hope for his future. We shall make but three short extracts, for we do not approve of detaching blocks from marble palaces. This description of the Apollo: "And now when the Greek saw the eyes of thousands, and tens of All evidence thousands upon him, he no longer felt that he was mortal. of fear-all fear itself was gone. A red and haughty flush spread over the paleness of his features-he towered aloft to the full of his glorious stature. In the elastic beauty of his limbs and form-in his intent but unfrowning brow-in the high disdain, and in the indomitable soul, which breathed visibly-which spake audibly-from his attitude, his lip, his eye-he seemed the very incarnation, vivid and corporeal, of the valor of his land—of the divinity of its worship-at once a hero and a god!" And this "The convert recognized the voice, and turning, he beheld the mysterious old man, whom he had seen in the congregation of the Naza renes. The old man was sitting upon a fragment of stone, covered with ancient mosses; beside him were his staff and scrip; at his feet lay a small shagged dog, the companion in how many a pilgrimage perilous and strange. The face of the old man was as balm to the excited spirit of the Neophyte; he approached, and, craving his blessing, sat down beside him. "Thou art provided as for a journey, father," said he; "wilt thou leave us yet?" My son," replied the old man, "the days left me on earth are few and scanty; I employ them as becomes me, traveling from place to place, comforting those whom God has gathered together in his name, and proclaiming the glory of his son, as testified to his servant." "Thou hast looked, they tell me, on the face of Christ?" "And the face revived me from the dead: know, young proselyte to the true faith, that I am he of whom thou readest in the scroll of the apostle. In the far Judea, and in the city of Nain, there dwelt a widow, humble of spirit, and sad of heart; for of all the ties of life, one son alone was spared to her. And she loved him with a melancholy love, for he was the likeness of the lost. And the son died. The reed on which she leaned was broken, the oil was dried up in the widow's cruise. They bore the dead upon his bier, and near the gate of the city, when the crowd were gathered, there came a silence over the sounds of wo, for the Son of God was passing by. The mother, who followed the |