digressions, though always ingenious, even when they are pedantic and egotistic, are sometimes misplaced. These are his most promiment defects or drawbacks. But there is so much variety in his portraits, so much to delight the fancy and exercise the understanding, that it is on these English tales, as we conceive, that the novelist's fame will ultimately rest. His Caxtoniana,' a series of essays (1863) and contributions to the Reviews, are also worthy of his reputation. In the course of his long career he exhibited an amazing versatility of intellect and noble perseverance. He worked himself free of the pruriency and affectations of his early manner, and displayed the matured powers of the artist, with deeper and broader sympathies, and a wiser philosophy of human life.

In 1853 Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer received from the university of Oxford the degree of D. C. L.; in 1856 he was elected Rector of the university of Glasgow; and in 1858 he joined the administration of the Earl of Derby as Secretary for Colonial Affairs In 1 66 he was elevated to the pee age as Baron Lytton. His literary industry was never relaxed. He successfully produced The Lost Tales of Miletus,' a collection of ancient legends in original rhythmical strophes (1866); a translation of "Horace's Odes' (1565); 'Walpole, or Every Man has his Price,' a rhyming comedy (1869); and The Coming Race' (1870). The last is a narrative of imaginary travels; it was published anonymously, and excited much attention and speculation, running rapidly through several editions. In this curious work Lord Lytton seems to have been indebted for some hints to a Latin work by Holberg, the Danish poet, Nicolia Kliminii Iter Subterranean,' of which a translation is given in Weber's Popular Roinances. Both profess to be the narrative of an underground journey, the countries that are the scene of the travels being alike situated in the interior of the earth. In 1972-3, a novel, The Parisians,' appeared in monthly parts in 'Blackwood's Magazine and Lord Lytton had just completed another work. Kenelm Chillingly,' when his busy career terminated. He was seized with a severe pain -a terrible agony-from inflammation in the ear and head, which in three days proved fatal. He died at Torquay on the 18th of January 1-73, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The sudden death of Lord Lytton was much regretted. He was at the head of our literature, with the single exception of Mr. Carlyle; his works were popular over all Europe, and his fertility and industry seemed unabated. His son, the present Lord Lytton, has, with a just pride, said of his father: Whether as an author, standing apart from all literary cliques and coteries, or as a politician, never wholly subject to the exclusive dictation of any political party, he always thought and acted in sympathy with every popular aspiration for the political, Social, and intellectual improvement of the whole national life.'*

* Prefatory Memoir to Speeches of Edward, Lord Lytton, 1874.

Lord Lytton left an unfinished romance, Pausanias, the Spartan,' winch was published (edited by his son) in 1876.

Imagination on Canvas and in Books.

It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of imagin tion on the canvas, that we can best form a critica. idea of the different schoo s which exist in each; for common both to the author and the painter are those styles which we call the fa iliar, the picturesque and the intellectual. By recurring to this comparison, we can without much difficulty classify works of fiction in their proper order, and estimate the rank they should severally hold. The intellectu I wil probably never be the most widely popular for the moment. He who prefers to study in this school, must be prepared for much depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if he achieve them, are not the most obvious to the many. In discussing. for instance, a modern work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some striking passage, some prominent character; but when do we ever hear any comment on its harmony of construction, on its fitness of design, on its ideal character, on its essentials-in short, as a work of art? What we hear most valued in a picture, we often find the most neglected in a book-namely, the composition; and this. simply, because in England painting is recognised as an art, and estimated according to definite theories. But in literature, we judge from a taste never formed-from a thousand prejudices and ignorant predilections. We do not yet comprehend that the author is an artist, and that the true rules of art by which he should be tested are precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantastic caprices of the popular opinion--its exaggerations of praise or censure-its passion and reaction. These violent flue uations betray both a public and a criticism utterly unschooled in the elementary principles of lit erary art, and entitle the humblest author to dispute the cusure of the hour, while they ought to render the greatest suspicious of its praise.

It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of his own supe riority, but with his common experience and common sense. that every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest. is permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury before which he is first he rd. The literary history of the day consists of a series of judgments set aside.

He

But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student. however lowly, in the school I have called the intellectual, which must ever be more or less at variance with the popular canons; it is its hard necessity to use and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar taste, for unless it did so. it could neither elevate nor move. who resigns the Dutch art for the Italian, must continue through the dark to explore the principles upon which he founds his design-to which he adapts his execution; in hoe or in despondence, still faithful to the theory which cares less for the amount of interest created. than for the sources from which the interest is to be drawn-seeking in action the movement of the prouder passions or the subtler springs of conduct-seeking in repose the colouring of intellectual beauty.

The low and the high of art are not very readily comprehended; they depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the emotion which the characters are intended to excite; namely, whether of sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high. There is nothing high in a boor's head by Teniers-there is nothing low in a boor's head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two? The absence or presence of the ideal! But every one can judge of the merit of the first. for it is of the familiar schoo!; it requires a connoisseur to see the merit of the las, for it is of the intellectual.

Power and Genius-Idols of Imagination.-From The Last of the

Barons.'

The father and child seated themselves on the parapet, and saw, below, the gy and numerous vessels that glided over the sparkling river, while the dark wal Baynard's Castle, the adjoining bulwark and battlements of Montfichet, and the t 1 watch-tower of Warwick's mighty mansion, frowned, in the distance, agamat t....q soft blue sky.

'There,' said Adam quietly, and pointing to the fendal roofs-there seems to rise power; and yonder' (glancing to the river)-yonder seems to flow genius! A cen

tury or so hence the walls stall vanish, but the river shall roll on. Man makes the cast and founds the power-God forms the river, and creates the genius. And yet, Sybill, there may be streams as broad and stately as yonder Thames, that flow afar in the waste, never seen, never heard by man. What profits the river unmarked? what the genius never to be known ?'

It was not a common thing with Adam Warner to be thus eloquent. Usually silent and absorbed, it was not his gift to moralise or declaim. His soul must be deeply moved before the profound and buried sentiment within it could escape into words. Sybill pressed her father's hand, and thongh her own heart was very heavy, she force her lips to smile, and her voice to soothe. Adam interrupted her

Child, child, ye women know not what presses darkest and mos bitterly on the minds of men. You know not what it is to form out of immaterial ti gs some abstract but glorious object-to worship-to serve it-to sacrifice to it, as on an altar, youth, health, hope, life-and suddenly, in old age, to see that the idol was a phantom, a mockery, a shadow laughing us to scorn, because we have sought to clasp it.' O yes, father, women have known that illusion.'

What do they study?'

'No, father, but they feel!'

'Feel! I comprehend thee not.'

'As man's genius to him, is woman's heart to her,' answered Sybill, her dark and deep eyes suffused with tears. 'Doth not the heart create-invent? Doth it not dream? Doth it not form its idol ont of air? Goeth it not forth into the future to prophesy to itself? And, sooner or later, in age or youth, doth it not wake itself at last, and see how it hath wasted its all on follies? Yes, father, my heart can answer, when thy genius would complain.'

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH.

MR. W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, son of a solicitor in Manchester, was born in 1805. He has written several novels and romances, partly founded on English history and manners. His first novel, Sir John Chiverton,' appeared in 1825. His next work, 'Rookwood,' 1834, is a very animated narrative, in which the adventures of Turpin the highwayman are graphically related, and some of the vulgar superstitions of the last century coloured with a tinge of romance. In the interest and rapidity of his scenes and adventures, Mr. Ainsworth evinced a dramatic power and art, but no originality or felicity of humour or character. His romance, Crichton,' 1836, is founded on the marvellous history of the Scottish cavalier, but is scarcely equal to the first. He has since written 'Jack Sheppard' (1839), a sort of Newgate romance, The Tower of London,' Guy Fawkes, Old St. Paul's,' Windsor Castle,' The Lancashire Witches,' The Star Chamber,' 'The Flitch of Bacon,' The Spendthrift,' &c. There are rich, copious and brilliant descriptions in some of these works, but their tendency must be reprobated. To portray scenes of low successful villainy, and to paint ghastly and hideous details of human suffering, can be no elevating task for a man of genius, nor one likely to promote among novel-readers a healthy tone of moral feeling or sentiment. The story of 'Jack Sheppard,' illustrated by the pencil of Cruikshank, had immense success, and was dramatised.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

The RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, son of Mr. Isaac D'Israeli, author of the 'Curiosities of Literature,' was born in London, December 21, 1804. He was privately educated, and placed in a solicitor's office, in order to give him some knowledge of business. His inclination, however, was for literature, not law, and in 1826 he appeared as an author, publishing Vivian Grey,' a novel, in two volumes. A second part was added in the following year. The work was read with great avidity. It contained so many and such direct references to public men and recent events-such sarcastic views of society and character in high life-and was at once so arrogant, egotistic, and clever, that it became the book of the season and the talk of the town. Passages of glowing sentiment and happy description gave evidence of poetic feeling and imagination. In 1828, the young novelist continued his vein of sarcasm in 'The Voyage of Captain Popanilla,' an adaptation of Swift's 'Gulliver' to modern times and circumstances. He then sought out new scenes abroad, travelling over Italy and Greece, residing for a winter in Constantinople, and exploring Syria, Egypt, and Nubia. On his return to England, Mr. Disraeli began to mingle in the political contests and excitement caused by the Reform Bill and the advent of the Whigs to power. He was ambitious of a seat in parliament, and made three unsuccessful efforts for this purpose-the first two as an extreme Reformer, and the third in the character of a Conservative. He quarrelled with O'Connell and Joseph Hume, wrote furious letters against all gainsayers, and sent a challenge to O'Connell's son. He then became the Coryphæus of the party denominated "Young England,' and professed to look for the elements of national regeneration and welfare in the exertions and energies of the heroic youth' of the country.

From 1830 to 1833 he produced several works of fiction-‘The Young Duke,' 'Contarini Fleming,' 'The Wondrous Tale of Alroy,'The Rise of Iskander,' 'Ixion in Heaven,' &c. The best of these is Contarini Fleming,' which he afterwards termed 'The Psychological Romance.' Though in the highest degree improbable as a story, and exaggerated in tone and sentiment, passages of fine imagination, satire, and description abound in this romance. The hero seemed to be a self-delineation of the author-an idealised Disraeli, revelling in scenes of future greatness, baffling foreign diplomatists and political intriguers, and trampling down all opposition by the brilliancy of his intellect and the force of his will. In Alroy,' the author's imagination ran to waste. It is written in a strain of Eastern hyperbole, in a sort of lyrical prose, and is without purpose, coherence, or interest. Nothing daunted by the ridicule heaped on this work, Mr. Disraeli made a still bolder flight next year. In 1834 appeared, in quarto, 'The Revolutionary Epick, the Work of Dis

raeli the Younger, Author of The Psychological Romance. Such a title was eminently provocative of ridicule, and the feeling was heightened by the preface, in which the author stated that his poem was suggested on the plains of 'i roy, but that the poet hath ever embodied the spirit of his time." He instanced the Iliad,' the 'Eneid,' the 'Divine Comedy,' and the Paradise Lost,' adding: "And the Spirit of my Time, shall it alone be uncelebrated? For me remains the Revolutionary Epick."" Accordingly, the Genius of Feudalism and the Genius of Federalism are made to appear before the throne of Demogorgon, to plead in blank verse the cause of their separate political systems, and Faith and Fealty and Young Eng. land' are triumphant. No work of Mr. Disraeli's was ever without some passage of origirality or power, and a few of the monologues and descriptions in this epic are wrought up with considerable effect; but on the whole it is heavy and incongruous, and was universally considered a failure. S me political di sertations succeeded—' The Crisis Examined,' 'Vindication of the English Constitution,' 'Lettrs of Runnymede' &c. These are strongly anti- Whiggish, written after the model of Junius, and abound in elaborate sarcasm and invective, occasionally degenerating into bombast, but with traces of that command of humorous illustration which afterwards distinguished Mr. Disraeli as a parliamentary debater. The years 1836 and 1837 were marked by the production of two more novels-Henrietta Temple, a Love Story,' and Venetia.' The former is one of the most pleasing and consistent of the author's fictions; the second is an attempt to portray the characters of Byron and Shelley in connection with a series of improbable incidents. Shortly after the appearance of his tale of Venetia,' its author was gratified by the acquisition of that long-coveted honour, a seat in parliament. He was returned for the borough of Maidstone, along with Mr. Wyndham Lewis, who died in 1838, and in the following year Mr. Disraeli married the widow of his late colleague, who, in 168, was elevated to the peerage with the title of Viscountess Beaconsfield.

Mr. Disraeli's first speech was looked forward to with some interest, for he had menaced O'Connell with the threat, We shall meet at Philippi,' and had piqued the public curiosity by his political reveries and the bold satire; so that a performance rich in amusement, if not one of high triumph, was anticipated. in style and delivery the speech resembled Mr. Disraeli's oriental magnificence: it was received with shouts of derisive laughter, in the midst of which the speaker fairly broke down, but in conclusion he thundered out with prophetic sagacity: 'I have begun several times many things, and have often succeeded at last. I shall sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.' It was long, however, before he ventured on a second attempt; and when he did come forward again on that trying arena, it was obvious that he had profited by the fail. ure and by the subsequent discipline it had led him to undertake. it