In the gloom of the wild forest, in the stillness of the sea, Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie! In my sad and lonely hours, Like the rainbow in the evening, like the blossoms on the tree, Here's a health, my Scottish lassie !-here's a parting health to thee! EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, 1805– THIS very versatile writer,-novelist, poet, dramatist, critic, historian. s essayist, the youngest son of General Bulwer, of Norfolk, was born in 19.. and educated at Cambridge, where, in 1825, he gained the "chancellor's prize" for his English poem on Sculpture. In 1827 appeared his first novel.-Filland,-which was followed, in the five succeeding years, by Pelham, The Ima owned, Devereux, Paul Clifford, and Eugene Aram,-thus completing whityks might be called his first period of authorship. That all these works shor great talent in delineating character, a lively fancy, and no small powers sarcasm, and contain many passages of eloquent sentiment and rich descrip tion, no one will deny; but that their general moral tone is an unhealthy o not tending to make the reader wiser or better or happier, all must admit; a they cannot give to their author any permanently enviable fame. About 1831 he succeeded Campbell as editor of the New Monthly Magazinq” soon after which, he published his poem of Milton, which is considered b best work in verse. In 1833 appeared England and the English, a series of acctan and sarcastic sketches of national manners. This was followed by Pilgrims the Rhine, an illustrated book; The Last Days of Pompeii, an interesting cha sical story; and Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes, the best of all his romantie fictions. In 1836 he published a play.-The Duchess of La Vallière.-which" was a failure. The next year came Ernest Maltravers, containing his views 1 He was Sir Edward Bulwer till 1843, when, on the death of his mother, who was of the ancient family of Lytton, of Hertfordshire, he succeeded to her estates and adopted her family name. His name in full is Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton. 2 Founded on a traditionary incident in the college life of the great epic poet, that, while walking out in the fields on a beautiful summer's day, he lay down under a tree and tell asleep. While thus sleeping, an Italian lady of rank rode by in her carriage, and, struck with his unequalled beauty, left a card at his 'art and life; succeeded by Athens, its Rise and Fall,-" full of research and plendid rhetoric." Upon the coronation of Her Majesty Victoria, in 1838, he as created a baronet, "as the appropriate representative of British literature." 1 this year appeared Leila, or the Siege of Granada, and Calderon, the Courtier, -works of fiction of a lighter order; which were followed by others, entitled Tight and Morning, Day and Night, Lights and Shadows, and Glimmer and Gloom. hen came Zanoni, a tale of the supernatural,—“the well-loved work," as he alls it," of his mature manhood." In 1846 appeared The New Timon; and in 348, King Arthur,-both poems of considerable merit. His next novels were— The Last of the Barons, Harold, and Lucretia. He now entered into a new walk of fiction, in My Novel, The Cartons, and What will He do with It?" in which the novelist, turning from baser ore, has ruck upon a vein of pure and lustrous gold," and given us works far in adance of his early productions. In 1862 he published A Strange Story, which rst appeared in All the Year Round; and in 1863 he gave us Caxtoniana, or Essays on Life, Literature, and Manners. In addition to all these works of etion, plays, poems, and essays, Sir Bulwer Lytton has contributed numerous rticles to the Westminster and Edinburgh Review. In 1841 he wrote A Hisorical Review of the State of England at the Accession of Queen Victoria; and in 845, having received a wonderful renovation of his own health at a water-cure stablishment, he published The Confessions of a Water Patient. His political career, if not so marked as his literary, has been one highly reditable to himself. At the age of twenty-six he entered Parliament as nember for St. Ives, and was returned at other times from other places, making is whole term of service about fourteen years, down to 1858, when he became member of the Cabinet (Colonial Secretary) under the Derby administration. But with the resignation of Lord Derby's government in 1859, he retired from office with the rest of his colleagues. Though not a frequent debater, he was considered one of the most finished speakers in the House, and always won its earnest and respectful attention. It will thus be seen what an active and prolific life Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's has been. No one can fail to be struck with his prodigious industry and voluminousness as an author; for he has given to the world more than forty distinct works, most of them originally in three volumes. In every department of literature which he has attempted he has done well,-in most, very well: but it is upon his novels that his fame will ultimately rest, and these will ever entitle him to a distinguished place in English literature.3 1 Collier. Beautiful and the True."- Westminster Review, 2 They are English stories, " uniting the cha- | April, 1865. racteristics of town and country life, and presenting the contrasts of national character." "No one has been more successful than the man whom a hundred thousand readers hail as the first of living novelists, the Prince of Fiction, the great modern apostle of the It can hardly be doubted that, when regarded with candor and without prejudice, he is entitled to rank among the greater and finer intellects of his day, and may reasonably urge pretensions to a prominent niche in the temple of literary fame."-Quarterly Review, April, 1865. DEATH OF GAWTREY, the coinERA "Open, in At both doors now were heard the sounds of voices. the king's name, or expect no mercy!" "Hist!" said Gawtrey. "One way yet, the window-the rope." Morton opened the casement; Gawtrey uncoiled the rope. The dawn was breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure. of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the rope across the street to the th opposite parapet; after two or three efforts, the grappling-hook d caught firm hold, the perilous path was made. "Go first," said Morton; "I will not leave you now; you wil be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till yo are over." "Hark! hark! are you mad? You keep guard! What is your strength to mine? Twenty men shall not move that door while my weight is against it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, J ;; you will hold the rope for me; it may not be strong enough fort: my bulk of itself. Stay!-stay one moment. If you escape, and I fall-Fanny-my father, he will take care of her—you remember-thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that's right!" With a firm pulse Morton threw himself on that dreadful w bridge; it swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly-holding his breath-with set teeth-with closed eyeshe moved on-he gained the parapet-he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal staircase; for? that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed. Presently the explosion of a firearm was heard; they had shot through the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward and uttered a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window—| he seized the rope-he hung over the tremendous depth! Morten knelt by the parapet, holding the grappling-hook in its place with convulsive grasp, and fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that clung for life to that slender cord! "Le voilà! le voilà!" cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of the pursuers,--they had burst into the room-an officer sprung upon the parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and, as he moved on, glared upon the s foe. The policeman deliberately raised his pistol-Gawtrey ar 1 From Night and Morning. Gawtrey, the chief of a gang of coiners in Paris, and his associate, Morton, are detected by the police, and pursued to the garret in which they have been living. rested himself-from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below; even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him; his hair bristling his cheek white-his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed, so intense, so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half laugh, half yell-of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey's lips. He swung himself onnear-near-nearer-a yard from the parapet. "You are saved!" cried Morton; when at that moment a volley burst from the fatal casement-the smoke rolled over both the fugitives a groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardiest on whose ear it came. Morton sprung to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones, far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass-the strong man of passion and levity-the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks -was what the Cæsar and the leper alike are, when all clay is without God's breath-what glory, genius, power, and beauty would be forever and forever, if there were no God! POMPEII. Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floors,-in its forum the half-finished columns as left by the workman's hand,-before the trees in its gardens the sacrificial tripod,-in its halls the chest of treasure, in its baths the strigil,-in its theatres the counter of admission,-in its saloons the furniture and the lamp,-in its triclinia the fragments of the last feast,-in its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of faded beauty,—and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life! In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a fine ashen dust that had evidently been wafted slowly through the aperture until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphore,-vain precautions for the prolongation of agonized life! The sand, consolidated by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck and bosom of young and round proportions,-the trace of the fated Julia! It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been gradually changed into a sulphureous vapor, the inmates of the vaults had rushed to the door to find it closed and blocked by the scoriæ without, and in their attempts to force it had been suffocated by the atmosphere. In the garden was found a skeleton, with a key by its bony hand, and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the master of the house, the unfortunate Diomed, who had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been destroyed either by the vapors or some fragment of stone. Beside some silver vases lay another skeleton, probably of a slave. The houses of Sallust and of Pansa, the temple of Isis, with the juggling concealments behind the statues,-the lurking-place of its holy oracles, are now bared to the gaze of the curious. In one of the chambers of that temple was found a huge skeleton, with an axe beside it: two walls had been pierced by the axe,the victim could penetrate no farther. In the midst of the city was found another skeleton, laden with coins, and many of the mystic ornaments of the fane of Isis. Death had fallen upon him in his avarice, and Calenus perished simultaneously with Burbo! As the excavators cleared on through the mass of ruin, they found the skeleton of a man literally severed in two by a prostrate column; the skull was of so remarkable a conformation, so boldly marked in its intellectual, as well as its worse physical, developments, that it has excited the constant speculation of every itinerant believer in the theories of Spurzheim who has gazed upon that ruined palace of the mind. Still, after a lapse of eighteen centuries, the traveller may survey that airy hali, within whose cunning galleries and elaborate chambers once thought, reasoned, dreamed, and sinned the soul of Arbaces the Egyptian! Viewing the various witnesses of a social system which has passed from the world forever, a stranger, from that remote and barbarian isle which the imperial Roman shivered when he named, paused amid the delights of the soft Campania, and composed this History! CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY! You speak of the growing sect of the Christians in Rome. Sallust, to you I may confide my secret: I have pondered much over that faith, I have adopted it. After the destruction of Pompeii, I met once more with Olinthus,-saved, alas! only for a day, and falling afterward a martyr to the indomitable energy of his zeal. 1 This is an extract from a letter from Glaucus to Sallust, ten years after the destruction of Pompeii. |