would give new charms to virtue. His pen would ried lady ought ever to read such productions. teach a sublime morality. It would elevate the They defile the mind of lovely and innocent wosoul by examples of nice honor, noble disinterest-man. They introduce into that mind, impure edness, heroic sacrifices, and a manful triumph and indelicate images of which it never would over the passions. It would hold up for our imitation, a purity without spot or blemish, a generous philanthropy, and all the gentler affections united to the severer virtues. Such are the elevated paths in which the novelist should tread. They lead to a renown not unworthy of the ambition of any man. The benefactor of his race is best entitled to the wreath of glory. If he who makes a blade of grass to grow where none had grown before, called forth the praise of one deeply versed in the philosophy of life, what language can convey the admiration which is due to him, who makes not a single virtue only spring up in the waste of the human heart, but eradicates every noxious plant, and sows thick the seeds of moral excellence. History has been said to be philosophy teaching by example: and fictitious history, if true to nature, has scarcely less claim to this exalted praise, than the faithful annals of the most philosophic historian. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the sober narration of actual events teaches half so effectually as the scenes of the drama, or the vivid creations of the novelist. How full of horror are the crimes of Richard, when blazoned by the genius of a Shakspeare! In the history we read the story of the monarch's crimes, but in the drama we behold the hellish workings of a demoniac spirit. But however qualified Mr. Bulwer may be for the office of censor morum, and however great the services he might render, as the apostle of truth and virtue, by a proper direction of his acknowledged abilities, it cannot be denied that there is much in his writings the tendency of which is directly and grossly immoral. I do not speak of the want of what is usually called "poetical justice;" I do not here complain of his preference for fictions, which terminate "with the affliction of the good and the triumph of the unprincipled;" I do not insist that he should violate the ordinary occurrences of human life, which often exhibit virtue in distress and vice in prosperity; though the instructor of manhood would naturally prefer so to cast his plot, and to mould his fable, as to give to merit its due, and to vice its condign punishment; but I impute to Mr. Bulwer the fostering of vice by exhibiting it in the most alluring colors-by softening down its revolting features, and taking off the odium which it always should inspire; and notwithstanding the beautiful moral sentiments which are scattered through his works, I will venture to affirm that no young man rises from the perusal of his last novel, without a consciousness that certain vices seem to him more venial than before. No young lady-nay, no mar have dreamed, and with which it should never become familiar. Say that it is true to nature: shall he who caters for the public, and mainly for the female public, fill his pages with what is vicious or disgusting, under the plea that it is natural? What apology is it for introducing us into a brothel, that the revolting scenes are delineated with truth? "Is everything that is natural to be represented on the stage?" asked Voltaire, in reference to the vulgarities of Shakspeare-illustrating his remark at the same time by an allusion as coarse and as vulgar as those of the author whom he criticised. By no means. He who selects an improper subject, which in its development must bring a burning blush upon the modest cheek, is worthy of all censure. To say the least, it is in wretched taste. What cannot decently be read by a gentleman to a lady, is not fit to be read by either, and especially by the latter. Good sense, therefore, will promptly reject whatever is impure, nor soil its pages with a tale equally offensive to modesty and taste. But" the head and front" of Mr. Bulwer's offending hath not this extent only. The whole force of his genius is sedulously employed in softening down the ugliness of vice. His favorite object seems to be to lessen our abhorrence of crimes, by exhibiting them in connection with eminent qualities. Vice, thus associated with elevation of character and exalted virtues, is forgotten or forgiven in our admiration of them; and our principles are undermined by the love of virtue itself. The great moralist has said,—and truly said, Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, That to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. But Mr. B. is not content to leave the success of vice to the mere influence of habit. The crimes of his heroes are redeemed by resplendent qualities, and the genius of the writer wins our pity for villains, who should rouse our indignation. The instances of this predilection are not unfrequent in the works of Mr. Bulwer. Take the character of Reginald Glanville, the real hero of Pelham, who begins life with seduction, and well nigh ends it with murder and the gallows. Yet withal he is a most interesting character, and excites our admiration and sympathy. Take Eugene Aram. What laborious efforts to clothe that felon with all the inspiration of genius, with the acquisitions of the scholar, and the sentiments of a man of virtue, while he delights by his intelligence, and is invested with all the graces of a fine exterior and prepossessing manners! Who VOL. IV-7 Justice is not done, however, to the character of Maltravers by this general outline. He is represented in the work as of a noble and com rises from his history without a sigh for his fate? | Norman line, with all the pride of that noble race, Who reads the catastrophe without sympathy for and all the virtuous aspirations of well bred and the murderer? And are these sentiments which well educated youth. Mr. Bulwer draws his should be cultivated by the wise and good? character for the reader in his prefatory address. Would Mr. Bulwer desire to diminish the odium" He is a man with the weaknesses derived from against crime, and to eradicate the ingenuous re- humanity-with the strength that we inherit from voltings of the heart from deeds of infamy? Would the soul; not often obstinate in error, more often he break down the barriers between virtue and irresolute in virtue; sometimes too aspiring, somevice, and teach the rising generation, who pore times too despondent; influenced by the circumover his speculations by the midnight lamp, to stances to which he yet struggles to be superior, look upon those barriers as erected by the false and changing in character with the changes of prejudices of society? If he would not, let him time and fate; but never wantonly rejecting those no more introduce to us the most corrupting vices great principles, by which alone we can work out in the most alluring guise. Above all, let him the science of life,-a desire for the good, a pasnot assail human virtue in its weakest point. Let sion for the honest, a yearning after the true." not his tales furnish apologies for an offence, to which the passions, though unprompted, too naturally lead. He seems to have flattered himself,* that his works have at least had a tendency to di-manding presence; his spirit resolute and intrevert the young from the imitation of the villains of the Byron school, by the examples which he sets before them. Speaking of Pelham, he says, "it contributed to put an end to the satanic mania-to turn the thoughts and ambition of young gentlemen without neckcloths, and young clerks who were sallow, from playing the corsair and boasting that they were villains." He seems to be content to have multiplied crime by diminishing its intensity; for let him be assured that there is not one who will play the corsair for ten thousand who would be seduced by the imposing character of Ernest Maltravers, and by the alluring scenes of illicit love, which are spread before their eyes in the pernicious work, the title of which stands at the head of this article. "The satanic mania" will always find a salutary check in the terrors of Jack Ketch; but the Lovelaces, and the Lotharios, and the Maltravers' will riot without a compunctious visiting, when even the restraints of public opinion are withdrawn, and illicit love has ceased to inspire for the shameless culprits, the just indignation of every virtuous mind. It is my purpose to offer some remarks upon the adventures of Maltravers; not indeed from the critic's chair, Mr. Editor, for I am no critic. I am a plain old man-bred up in the simple manners of the "Old Dominion," where seduction is heard of only in romances, and conjugal infidelity may be said to be unknown. Her judicial decisions, from the revolution to the present day, have not the blot of a single case of crim. con.; and unless our manners are corrupted by foreign romances, or our own home manufacture of the like pernicious stuff, we may hope to retain for generations to come, a purity which has never been surpassed in any age or nation. ERNEST MALTRAVERS is one of the last works of Mr. Bulwer. The hero is a young man of the Preface to Pelham. pid, his manners fascinating and graceful. His character is decidedly intellectual; his mind highly cultivated, his tastes refined, his conversation brilliant and profound, and his aspirations are all for literary renown, or the noble distinction of a great, a pure and disinterested statesman. His love of virtue is deep-seated and pervading; his principles elevated and noble, his tendencies decidedly religious; while his firmness and decision forbid the fear of vacillation, either from infirmity of temper or the seductions of the passions. He is indeed certainly not the creature of feeling,by no means particularly susceptible. Except in his liaison with Alice Darville, (which by the way is wholly at variance with his character, as afterwards developed,) he exhibits little of the ardor of youth in his intercourse with the sex. He is on the other hand rather cold and fastidious, either from pride, insensibility, or devotion to higher objects, and difficult of conquest, though the favorite of the fair. From such a character, we should scarcely have expected, in his very outset, the grossest violations of that virtue after which he is represented as so anxiously yearning-yet the author plunges him at once into guilt. He had been educated at Gottingen, in obedience to his own whim, and was returning to a kind and indulgent father, in the north of England. He travels on foot, and finds himself benighted on a wild and desolate common. He makes for a light which proceeds from an humble cottage, whose only inmates are a ruffian, with his beautiful daughter, a girl of fifteen. The offer of a guinea for a guide, and the exposure of his watch excite the cupidity of the villain, who urges him to spend the night there. He consents, but the daughter takes occasion to warn him as she retires, that he would be robbed and murdered. A scene ensues, which reminds one of a similar incident in the history of Ferdinand Count Fathom. The doors are locked, the keys remo "Father says one man talks nonsense, and the other folks listen to him." "Your father is-no matter. school is?” You know, at least, what a ved, and escape seems impossible. His young protectress, however, steals the key and releases him. He flies and arrives on the confines of the nearest town, whither also the fair Alice had made "Yes, I have talked with girls who go to school," &c. her escape from her infuriated father. He takes her under his protection, hires a cottage and an Now, without controverting Mr. Bulwer's assuold female domestic-instructs his protege in murance that such answers were really given by a sic and morality, and procures for her a teacher young girl, to the interrogations of a magistrate in other branches of education. Her improvement ture, that that young girl bore no resemblance to upon her examination, I will venture the conjecis most rapid in music, morality, religion. Some this intellectual creature, whose quick perceptions months elapse and he perceives the hazard of their situation. He proposes to place her in some re-ed in the subsequent narration. It is inconceivaand uncommon readiness at learning, are displayspectable family. Distressed at the thought of separation, she faints—she is revived—he whispers love his principles give way, and "she loses caste forever in the eyes of her sex." Such are the first scenes in this reprehensible work. It commences, with a guilty connexion, which the author endeavors, but in vain, to palliate and exThe vestibule itself is foul, though filled with images seductive to youth, and designed for their attraction. cuse. and such lively parts, and who had not been altoble, that such a girl, with such instinctive virtues, to school, should have never heard of the existence gether without an intercourse with girls who went of a God, or imbibed any knowledge of those common feelings, in relation to female virtue, which are so universal as to deserve above all others the character of being innate. The object of all this labored attempt, to exhibit When first introduced, Alice is represented as is to prepare the reader to look upon the fault of this young girl in a state of profound ignorance, most lamentably ignorant. "Her countenance was beautiful, nay even faultless, in its small and childlike features, but the expression pained you--it was so vacant. In repose it was almost the expression of an idiot, but when she spoke or smiled, or even moved a muscle, the eyes, color, lips, kindled into a life which proved that the intellect was still there, though but imperfectly awakened." Her ignorance would be pronounced to be exaggerated beyond belief, had we not Mr. Bulwer's assurance, that the picture is taken from the life. Here it is the pretty Alice, as a venial error—and this object is all but avowed in a succeeding passage. "Oh! how happy they were now-that young pair! How the days flew like dreams! No doubt we blame them, and women very properly: but men, at least, cannot blame them very justly. For all of us male animals have either been as happy once in our lives, or wished to be so.".... "But Alice was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool, better than ever. She had invented a new prayer for herself, and she prayed as regularly and as fervently, as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the code of heaven is gentler than that of earth and does not declare that ignorance excuseth not the crime. If a jury of cherubim had tried Alice's offence, they would hardly have allowed the heart to "Poor child! in what a den of vice you have been brought bear witness against the soul !" up!" "Anan, sir." Again: "Maltravers smiled and stroked those beautiful ringlets, and kissed that smooth innocent forehead, and Alice nestled herself "But I suppose you have been taught, at least, to say your in his breast." catechism-and you pray sometimes?" "I have prayed to father not to beat me." But to God?" "God, sir, what is that?" "Maltravers drew back, shocked and appalled. Premature philosopher as he was, this depth of ignorance perplexed his wisdom. He had read all the disputes of schoolmen, whether or not the notion of a Supreme Being is innate ; but he had never before been brought face to face with a living creature who was unconscious of a God. After a pause he said It is really making heavy draughts upon our credulity, to tell us of the unconsciousness of fault of the lovely Alice, so intelligent, so improved and so improving, when "she blushes and trembles" at the sight of her lover, when they next meet, and is daily imbibing from him lessons of morality and religion, which he as devoutly "My poor girl, we misunderstand each other. You know instils! that there is a God." In this illicit intercourse, this state of open concubinage, Maltravers lived for some months, when from the columns of a newspaper he learns the illness of his father. He hastens to his bedside (only thirty miles distant), and finds him dying. After his interment he returns to the cottage. Alice, in the meantime, has been found and carried off by her father. Frantic at his loss, he drives to a magistrate's, takes every necessary step for her recovery, but in vain. He sinks into melancholy, becomes fanatical, but is soon cured of that by a young man of base heart, but of a powerful against seduction and crim. con. as the materiel of works designed for the hands of modest women. It is, as I have said, in wretched taste—a taste that I am truly sorry to see imitated on this side of the Atlantic. The gross scenes in the " Valley of the Shenandoah," and "George Balcombe," could never have found their way into those productions, but for the proneness of our writers to make the British novelists their model. Let them remember, however, that what might suit the British public, and ancient times, is unfit for the less corrupted taste of our unpolished land in this our day. It is the disregard of decency in the drama, even more than the thunders of the pulpit, that has driven many modest females from the theatre: and the same just sense of what becomes the sex has long since banished from their libraries, such works as Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Sorrows of Werter; and such dramas as Farquar's, and Congreve's, and Otway's: the coarse and vulgar scenes of which are not even redeemed by their wit, their interest, or their tenderness. If, in many things, our world is getting worse, it is some consolation to us to know, that the female part of it, at least, nauseate vulgarity, and shrink sensitively from ribaldry and double entendre. and acute mind. With him he makes a tour to tice to Mr. Bulwer's merits. But I do protest the continent and here we have a gap in the narrative, after the manner of Vivian Gray. We next meet with our hero four years afterwards at a brilliant ball in Naples, at the Palazzo of the Austrian Embassy. Madame Valerie de Saint Vantadour was the reigning beauty of the hour She incontinently falls in love with him-yet she was "a lady who belonged to a race, in which women are chaste and men are braye." The passion of the lady flatters his ambition, and without loving, "he is resolved to establish his power over her," maugre her insignificant husband, whose rights are not deemed worthy of the least consideration. At a favorable moment he avows his passion. Madame de Saint Vantadour confesses her love, but "throws herself upon his generosity, beseeching him to assist her own sense of right, to think well of her and to leave her." He drops upon his knee, declares his admiration of her virtue, and after a violent struggle with his feelings he rushes from the apartment. And this is virtue!!! A man of five and twenty makes love to a married woman, who fervently avows her tenderness, utters a spirited declamation in behalf of virtue, declares it to be "her lover, her pride, ker comfort, her life of life," attempts a defence of her strange deviation from her avowed principles, and throws herself upon his generosity to aid her, in resisting the promptings of her frailty. And yet we are told that "Maltravers woke to a justering than in blaming him. Happily, there is ample and higher appreciation of human nature, and of woman's nature in especial. He had found honesty, truth and virtue, where he might least have expected," &c. Verily, this is most unparalleled virtue! It is of a piece with that of Macbeth, "who would not play false, and yet would gladly win," who let "I dare not, wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the adage." It is utterly at variance with the sublime morality of that religion which teaches that sin is in the heart, and declares in the thunders of the law, "the SOUL that sinneth, it shall surely die." The unpleasant portion of my task is accomplished. I rejoice at it, for I really admire Mr. Bulwer's genius, and take more pleasure in prais room for commendation in all his works. The residue of these volumes is filled with profound reflections, and if the incidents are not altogether unexceptionable, they are not liable to the great objections which have been made to the early scenes in the history of Maltravers. As the reader is by this time, I fear, wearied with my speculations, I shall devote a large portion of the space which remains to me, to extracts from the work. Our author has several remarks on the female sex, and the advantages of their society, in which I heartily concur. "To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice's form and features, there is nearly always something of Nature's own gentility in very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall a giggling); it shames us inen to see how rough, masculine angels. A vulgar boy requires, Heaven knows much sooner they are polished into conventional shape than our what assiduity, to move three steps-I do not say like a gentle. man, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the least ad But what is the moral of this part of the adventures of Maltravers? Is it, that elevated principles, high breeding, cultivated intellect-the sacred pledge of conjugal fidelty are all insufficient to sustain even the noblest lady against the frailties of the human heart? If Valerie de Saint Vantadour, prodigally gifted, imbued with the noblest sentiments, and raised above the rest of her sex in a corrupt society, by a virtue hitherto without ble-vantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred to mish, could receive the addresses of a lover without disdain, how shall we censure those, who, with so much more reason, may plead their weakness as an excuse for their aberrations? Such are my objections to this licentious novel. I shall always take pleasure in doing jus *Page 106, one but she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a bow without upsetting the table. There is sentiment in all wo men, and sentiment gives delicacy to thought and tact to manner. But sentiment with men is generally acquired, an offspring of the intellectual quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral.” * * * * "What a new step in the philosophy of life does a young man of genius make when he first compares his theories and expe. rience with the intellect of a clever woman of the world! Perhaps it does not elevate him, but how it enlightens and refines! What numberless minute yet important mysteries in human cha. In sua arte cre Let us hear him. racter and practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from | rary men, are always interesting. dendum est. "People talk about thinking; but, for my part, I never think, Mr. Bulwer gives us his notion of proper except when I sit down to write." I believe this is not a very matches in the following sentences: "People, to live happily with each other, must fit i, as it were the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle, and so forth. We talk of congenial minds, but married persons must not too closely resemble each other." I cannot agree with the following: "Perhaps it would be better if we could get rid of love alto gether. Life would go on smoother and happier without it. Friendship is the wine of existence, but love is the dram-drinking." * "Perhaps," she said, after a short pause, " we pass our lives happier without love than with it. And in our modern social system," she continued, thoughtfully, and with great truth, though it is scarcely the conclusion to which a woman often arrives, "I think we have pampered love to too great a preponde. rance over the other excitements of life. As children, we are taught to dream of it; in youth, our books, our conversations, our plays are filled with it. We are trained to consider it the essential of life; and yet, the moment we come to actual experience, the moment we indulge this inculcated and stimulated craving, nine times out of ten we find ourselves wretched and undone. Ab, believe me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world in which we should preach up, too far, the philosophy of love!" The difference between the influences of devoted love, and of youthful fancy, is forcibly stated: "The new influences that he had created had chased away her image. Such is life. Long absences extinguish all the false lights, though not the true ones. The lamps are dead in the banquet-room of yesterday; but a thousand years hence, and the stars we look on to-night will burn as brightly. Maltravers was no longer in love with Valerie. But Valerie--ah, perhaps hers had been true love!" "She had once more seen the lover of her youth, and thenceforth all was night and darkness to her. What matter what be. came of her? One moment, what an effect it produces upon years! One moment! Virtue, crime, glory, shame, wo, rapture, rest upon moments! Death itself is but a moment, yet eternity is its successor !"" common case, for people who don't write think as well as people who do ; but connected, severe, well developed thought, in contradistinction to vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object; and therefore we must be either writing inen or acting men, if we desire to test the logic and unfold the symmetrical and fused colors of our reasoning faculty." "Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame... perhaps few men of real genius are, until artificially worked up to it. There is in a sound and correct intellect, with all its gifts fairly balanced, a calm consciousness of power, a certainty that, result of strength. Men of second-rate genius, on the contrary, when its strength is fairly put out, it must be to realize the usual are fretful and nervous, fidgeting after a celebrity which they do not estimate by their own talents, but by the talents of some one else. They see a tower, but are occupied only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height (which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the earth. It is the short dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong man is not always man who is always throwing up his chin, and is as erect as a using the dumb-bells." "The poor author! how few persons understand, and forbear with, and pity him! He sells his health and youth to a rugged taskmaster. And, oh blind and selfish world, you expect him to be as free of manner, and as pleasant of cheer, and as equal of mood, as if he were passing the most agreeable and healthful existence that pleasure could afford to smooth the wrinkles of the mind, or medicine invent to regulate the nerves of the body!" Speaking of the pleasures of intellectual ambition, Maltravers is made to say: "It is not the ambition that pleases," replied Maltravers; "it is the following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear to us in a short time by habit. The moments in which we look be How just the sense of self-respect attributed in yond our work, and fancy ourselves seated beneath the everlastthe following passage to Maltravers, and how ad-ing laurel, are few. It is the work itself, whether of action or mirably hit off is the paltry vanity of Cæsarini at literature, that interests and excites us. And at length the dry. a single stroke. Ah! I have seen such Cæsarinis.tellectual labor there is another charm; we become more inti. "He had a Quixotic idea of the dignity of talent, and though himself of a musical science and a melody of voice that would have thrown the room into ecstasies, he would as soon have turned juggler or tumbler for polite amusement, as contended for the bravos of a drawing-room. It was because he was one of the proudest men in the world that Maltravers was one of the least rain. He did not care a rush for applause in small things; but Cesarini would have summoned the whole world to see him play at push-pin, if he thought he played it well.” ness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of custom. But in in mate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow friends, as it were, and the affections and aspirations unite. Thus we are never without society, we are never alone; all that we have read, learned, and discovered is company to us.” Yet, afterwards, we find "He was digusted with the littleness of the agents and springs of political life; he had formed a weary contempt of the barren. ness of literary reputation. At thirty years of age he had necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early youth, and he Mr. Bulwer's remarks upon literature and lite- had already broken up many of those later toys in business and |