ERNEST 3IALTRAVERS.

WITH the exception perhaps of Eugene Aratn, we consider Ernest Maltravers as the work in which Mr. BULWER'S genius is deve- loped in the purest and soundest spirit, though it may not be displayed in the most taking form. Being rather a succession of single scenes artfully linked together, than a carefully-con. structed story where each part is c..nnected with another and forms one inseparable whole, the work is favourable to Mr. Bus- WER's peculiar powers; which are more brilliant than deep, more striking than sustained. The nature of Ernest Maltravers more- over admits, if it does not require, reflections and observations— criticism on literature, remarks on life, sketches of society, and views of morals. Its structure too allows the introduction of cha- racters merely for themselves, without regard to the part they may bear in carrying on the action; and these are often very hap- pily touched off, and always give variety. There is, however, an improvement of a deeper kind. The author's egotism is less ob. trusive ; and if not much weaker than of yore, is displayed in a less offensive shape, taking the character of gravity instead of flippancy, and striving after greatnesss rather than mock fashion. His morality is more elevated, if not stricter. The serious parts are also more intense than in most of his other fictions, although still too frequently theatrical : in short, the school of the artist is not greatly changed, but his design, his drawisig, and his colouring, are considerably advanced. Looking at Ernest Maltravers merely as regards palpable struc- ture, it consists of two leading stories and three subordinates. The two first embrace the career and adventures of Maltravers himself, and of Alice Darvil, a young girl who saves his life at the opening of the novel, and whom, in return, Ile educates, sen- timentally seduces, and loses by an accident. The three satellite subjects are-1. The character and advancement of Lumley Fer- rero ; a selfish but very able man of limited means, who passes his youth in foreign pleasures, on a mothe of calculation, and comes back to England when turned of thirty, to play the unprincipled politician in public and private life. And this personage we think one of Mr. BULWER'S masterpieces, if it be not, in depth,. con- sistency, truth, and finish, one of the masterpieces of modern fic- tion. 2. The character of Castrucci° Ca3iarini, an Italian poet of " words, not things ;" w ho in Italy fancies himself a neglected genius, comes to England with recommendations, becomes a fashionable lion, wastes his capital with a view of securing the hand of an intellectual beauty and heiress, hates Maltravers as a rival both in fame and love, and is left raving mad through remorse for having caused the death of his lady in trying to defeat Maltravers. And this man, too, in his intellectual defi- ciencies, his extraordinary vanity, the violence of his passions, and his idiosyncracy both natural and national, is very ably conceived and executed. 3. Lady Florence Laseelles, the beloved of Ctosarini, but, as the old plays have it, loving Maltravers; who is at last persuaded to love her in return. Their vision of bliss, however, is destroyed by the Italian, who, at the instigation of Lumley Ferrers, forges a letter, which causes a break between the be. trothed, and eventually the death of Florehce. Metaphysically speaking, Lady Florence is drawn with as much truth as either of the two former characters, but she is not so real. If the critic, however, looks beyond mere outward form, Ernest Maltravers seems intended to be (for the work is yet unfinished) the history of the development of the mind of a man of genius,— Alice Darvil, Castrucci° Ctesarini, Florence Laseelles, Lumley Ferrers himself, and all the other characters of any intellectual mark whatever, being subordinate to Maltravers, and of strict use only as they affect his mind by influencing his fortunes. With the exception of Alice Darvil's career after leaving her lover, (and this we suspect is to operate upon him hereafter,) the book is a history of the successive stages in the life of Mr. Ernest Mal- travers. The first stage introduces him as an enthusiastic, very accomplished, very successful, wayward youth, just expelled from a German university for his liberal opinions. Alter living, study- ing, and loving Alice for some months, he loses his father and his mistress; becomes gloomy and fanatical, till he is brought back to reason by the rough but pleasant society of Lumley Fellers,

and the "heavenly moralities •' of the New Testament,—though we imagine the author means not the sermon on the Mount,

(Matthew, chapter v., v. 27. 28.) By the desire of his guardian. Maltravers travels with Ferrers; and four years afterwards, stage the second opens at Naples, where we find the" heavenly morah- ties " quite forgotten, and their student in love with another mans wife. By this passion, and the worldly accomplishments of the lady, the mind of Maltravers receives new lights ; but he is saved from the consequences of a tie of this kind, partly by the virtue of the lady, partly by his own. The scene of the third stage is the Lake of Como; in a villa on whose banks he has retired to study, and is pouring out his mind on paper. Here he meets Cm-arini, and his brother-in-law De Montaigne,—a sober-minded, thoughtful, experienced Frenchman. The jealous vanities and absurdities of Cassarini disgust him with authorship, and he burns his manuscripts ; but the persuasions of De Montaigne induce in to renew his labours' and on this they part. Maltravers re- turns to England, where he retires to solitude and publishes suc- cessfully; comes into the great world, and publishes again and again; but overtasking himself in some great unfinished work, his physician forbids literary labour; and to keep himself from idleness, he gets into Parliament, where he succeeds more to his own satisfaction than to the wonder of the world. Shortly after this, he meets with Florence; the denouement of which connexion we have told already ; and on the death of his affianced bride and the madness of Caosarini, Mr. Maltravers goes abroad, and the work closes.

It is easy to see that this character is Mr. BULWRWS pet, and that upon it he has lavished much of his care and all his fond- ness. It does not, however, strike us that he has succeeded felici- tously. In his qualities Maltravers has little or nothing new. There is the same mixture of the coxcomb, the genius, the pseudo-philsopher, and the principal man of a second-rate melodrama' as in all Mr. BULWER'S other heroes. The propor- tions, indeed, may be differently mingled, and the dandy is not so offensive in Maltravers as in some of the rest; but in the essen- tial peculiarities he is the same—Mr. Pelham sobered and grown older. Something more of dignity and staid elevation than that gentleman he may indeed possess; but " it is a kind of strutting dignity," and " he is tall by walking on tiptoes." Many of the lighter social scenes are distinguished for a bril- liant ease; some of the descriptive ones for graceful though not a very definite beauty ; and a few of the serious incidents for con- siderable power, but injured occasionally by a straining after theatrical point and effect. Any of these would bear transplant- ing; but we prefer the more sketchy or reflective passages, as being better in themselves, more characteric of the leading fea- tures of the volumes, and afibrding Us from their shortness a greater variety. This is a philosophical

COMPARISON OP ANCIENT ROME ND MODERN ENGLAND, WITH • WORD FOR THE WHIGS.

" In the last slays of their republic, a coup d'a:il of their social date might convty to us a general notion of our own. Their system, like ours—a vast

ariso cracy, rather than a monarchy ; an aristocracy, heaved and agitated, but

kept ambitious and intellectual by the great democratic ocean which-roared be• law and around it. An immense distinction between rich and poor ; a nobility rumptuotia, wealthy, cultivated, yet scarcely elegant or refined ; a people with m;glity aspirations for more perfect liberty, but always liable, in a crisis, to be influenced and subdued by a deep rooted and antique veneration for the very

aristocracy against which they struggled ; a ready opening through all the walls

of custom and privilege, for every description of talent anti ambition ; but so deep anti universal a respect for wealth, that the finest spirit grew avariciotia, griping, and corrupt, almost unconsciously ; and the man who rose from the people did not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affected to lament ; and time man who would have died for his country could not help thrusting his hands into her pockets. Cassius, the stubborn and thoughtful patriot, with his heart of iron, had, you remember, an itching palm. Yet what a blow to all the hopes and dreams of a world was the overthrow of the free party after the

death of Cesar ! 'What generations of freemen fell at Philippi ! In England,

perhaps, we may have ultimately the same struggle; in France, too, (perhaps a larger stage, with far more inflammable actors,) we already perceive the same war of elements which shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the

generous Julius with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the colossal

patricians to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court, and cheated a people out of the substance with the shadow of liberty. How it may end in the modern world, who shall say? But while a nation has already a fair de- gree of constitutional freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and auful as that between the aristocratic and the democratic principle. A people against a despot—that contest requires no prophet ; but the change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth is, indeed, the wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, clouds, and darkness. If it fail, for centuries is the dial- hand of Time put back ; if it succeed—"

Maltravers paused. " And if it succeed ?" said Valerie.

'' Why, then, man will have colonized Utopia!" exclaimed Maltravers, with sparkling eyes.

MR. BULWER ON THE REIGNING BEAUTY.

It was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austsian embassy at Naples; and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de St. Ventaduur. Gene- rally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in the election of a beauty to the Idalian throne. Nothing disappoints a stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the world has given the golden apple. Yet he usu- ally falls at last into the popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things besides mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the hour—tact in society, the charm of manner, a nameless and piquant brillancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus. Few persons at- tain preeminent celebrity for any thing without some adventitious and extra- neous circumstances which have nothing to do with the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a mysterious or personal charm about them. " Is Mr. So-and-So really such a genius ?"—" Is Mrs. Such-a- One really such a beauty ?" you ask incredulously. " 06, yes," is the an- swer. " Do you know all about hint or her ? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened." The idol is interesting in itself, awl therefore its leediug and popular attribute is worshipped.

LONDON SOCIETY.

Now this great world is not a bad thing, when we thoroughly understand it ; and the London great world is at least as good as any other. But then, we scarcely do understand that or anything else in our beaux jours ; which, if they are sometimes the most exquisite are also often the most melancholy. and the most wasted portion of our life. ilaltravers had not yet found out either the set that pleased him, or the species of amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and about the vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends; going to balls and dinners, and bored with both, as men are who have no object

in society. Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a metier of

sonic kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual object • social pleasure, or to obtain a relaxation front some toilsome avocation. Thus,

if you are a politician, politics at once makes an object in your closet. and a

Social tie between you and others when you ate in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a less degree ; and though, as fewer persons care about literature than politics, .your companions must be more select. If you are

eery young, you are fond of dancing; if you are very profligate, perhaps, von

are fond of flirtations with your friend's wife. These last are objects in their way; hut they don't last long, and even with the most frivolous, are not oc- cupations that satisfy the whole mind and heart, in which there is generally an aapiration after something useful. It is nut vanity alone that makes a.man of the mac invent a new bit, or give his name to a new kind of tilbory ; it is the inductive of that mystic yearning after utility which is one of the maoter ties between the individual and the species.

A FOREIGN ADVENTURER IN LONDON.

Meanwhile, Ctesatini threw himself into the fashionable world ; and, to his own surprise was !Wit and caressed. In fact, Castrurciu Was exactly the sort of person to be made a lion of. The letters of introduction that he had bron,;ht Iona PdriS, were addressed to those gteat personages in England between who= and personageir equally great in France, polities makes a bridge of connexion. Ors:wird appeared to them as an accomplished young man, brother-in-law to a distitiguished member of the French Chamber. Maltravera, on the other hand, introduced him to the litetary dilettanti, who admire all authors that are ti .it rival.. The aingular costume of Catsarini, which would have sevii!teil percale in an Englishman, enchanted them in an Italian. He looked, they arid, like a pod. Ladies like to have verses written to them ; and Ctetkuini. who talked very little, made up for it by aeribbling eternally. Tile young mat'', !wad ...on grew tilled with comparisons between himself in Linehan and Petrel eh at Avig• non. As he had always thought that faille Was ill the gift of lords and ladies, and bad no idea of the multitude, he fancied himself already famous. And since one of his strongest feelings was his jealousy of Mahravers, he was delighted at being told he was a much mom interesting creature than that haughty personage, who wore his neekcluth like other people, and had not even those indispensable attributes of genius—Idack coils and a sneer. Fine society, which, as Madame de Stael well says, depraves the ft it °loos mind and braces the strong one, completed the ruin of :ill that was in oily in Cresarini's intellect. He soon learned to limit his desire of effect or diginction to gilded saloons; and his vanity contented iticif upon the scrap; and morsels front which the lion heart of true ambition turns in tidied:in. But this was not all. Cmsarini was envious of the greater affluence of Maltraveis. his own fortune was in a small capital of eight or nine thousand pound.; hut, thrown in the midst of the wealthiest society in Europe, he could not bear to sacrifice a single claim upon its esteem. Ile began tic talk uf the satiety of wealth ; and young ladies listened to him with remark:file interest when he did so : he ob. taimd the reputation of rielms; he was too vain not to he charmed with it. lie endeavoured to maintain the claim by adapting the extravagant excesses of the day. He bought horses, lie gave away jewels, he made love to a marchioness of forty-two, who was very kind to him said very fond of i'caste, he gambled, he was in the high road to demtraetion.

THE PLANS or AN riNoListi ADVENTI7RER.

Looking round the English world, Ferrer. saw that at his age lit 1 with an equivocal position, and no chances to throw away, it was nectssary that he should cast off all attrilnitea of the character of the wanderer and the :,to, t'cn.

"There is nothing re.pect Able ii luhmi4 n,1 a call," s:O.,1 to Lim. self, (that " sly" w:is Ilia grand (amid:011'0 " tattling star ion y. Such are the appliances of a here.to.day•gent.,o.niorrow kiail of life. One never looks substantial till one pays rates and taxes, and has a bill w tis one's butcher."

Accordingly, without saying a word to anybody, Fecrera took a long lease of a large house in one of those quiet streets that proelaitn the owners do net wish to be made by fashionable situations—streets in whieli, if you have a large house, it is supposed to be because you C.D1 afford one. his evil very particaidir in its being a respectable Street; Great George Street, Westminster, was the one he selected.

No ft ippery or baubles common to the mansion of young bachelors, no huhl, and marquetrie, and Sevre china, and cabinet pictures, distinguished the large dingy drawing-rooms of Lumley Ferrer-i. Ile bought all the old furniture a bargain of the late tenaut,—tea-coloured chintz curtains, awl chairs and sofas that were venerable and solemn with the accumulated dust of twenty-five years. The only things about which he was particular went a very long dining-table that would bold forty, and a new mahogany sideboard. Somebody asked Lim why he cared about such aiticles. " I don't know," said lie, " but I observe all respectable family men do; there must be something in it, I shall discover the secret by and by." Iii this hotoie did Mr. Ferrere ensconce himself with two mithile-aged maid: servants and a man nut of livery, whom lie chose from a multitude sof candi- dates, became the man looked especially well-fed. Having thus settled himself, an I told every one that the lease of Ilia house was for sixty•three years, Lumley Ferrer. made a little calculation of his pro- bable expeuditure ; which he found, with good management, might ailment to about one-fourth more than ilia income.

" I shall take the surplus out of my capital," said be, and try the experiment for fire years; if it don't do, and pay inn profitably. why then either men are not to lie lived upon ot Lumley Ferrera is a inuell duller thug then he thinks

himself ! " • • • • •

Fetiera gave a great many dinners; but he did not go on that foolish plan which has been laid down by persons who put tend to ksow life, as a meaus of popularity ; he did not profess to give dinners better than other people. He knew that, unless you are a very rich or a eely great man, no fully is equal SO that of thiuking that you soften the }waits of your friends by sour a la bisque, and Vermullt wine at a guinea a bottle ! Thev all go away, IA) ing, " IA hat right has that d—d fellow to give a better dialler than we du? What tumid taste, what ridiculous presumption 1" No, though Ferrers himself was a most scientific epicure, and held the luxury of the palate at the highest poseible price, he dieted his filen& on what he termed " respectable fare." His cook put plenty of flour into the oyster-sauce ; coins-head and !shoulders made his iiivariable fish ; and four entree, without flavour or pretence!, were duly supplied by the pastrycouk, awl carefully eschewed by the host. Neither did Mr. Ferrer. affect to bring about him gay wits and brilliant talkers. Ile confined himself to men of sahstaidial consi- deration ; and generally took care to be himself the cleverest person present ; while he turned the conversation on serious matters crammed for the occasion,— polities, stocks, commerce. and the cm iniinal cede. Pruning 1114 gaiety, though he retained his frankuess, he sought to be known as a higoly-iMormed, pains- taking man, who %%mild be sure to rise. His connexions, such a certain name- less charm about hinn—consisting chiefly in a pleasant countenance, a bola yet winning candour, and the absence of ad hauteur or pretence,—enabled hino to Resemble round this plain table, which, it' it gratified no taste, wounded no self-love, a sufficient number of public men of rank and eminent men of busi- ness to answer his purpose. The situation he had chosen, so uear the Houses

of Parliament, was convenient to politicians; and, by degrees, the large dingy drawiug-rooms became a frequent resort for public men to talk over those thou- sand underplots by which a parry is served or attacked. Thus, thwegh not in Parliament himself, Ferrets became ineensibly associated with Parliamentary men and things; and the Ministerial party, whose politics he eepuused, praised him highly, made use of him, and rueaut, borne day or other, to do something for him.

.AUTHORS.

The biographies of authors—those ghost-like beings who seem to have bad no life hut in the shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts— dimmed the inepiration he might have caught from their pages. Those slaves of the lamp, those silkworms of the closet, how little had they enjoyed, how little had they lived ! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale desti• nies of the world, they seemed burn but to toil and to spin thoughts for the common herd ; and, their task performed in drudgery and in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their exhanetion. Nettles had they been in life, and as names they lived for evet —in life as in death any and unsubetantial phantoms.

MR. /WEINER'S RATIONALE OF SEDUCTION.

Much of our morality (prudent and right upon system) with respect to the Met false step of women, leads us, as we all knoo, into bat oatous errors as to individual exceptions. Where from puie and confiding love that filet false step has been taken, many a woman has been saved, in after life, from a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates who crowd our sums and theatres, have rarely, in the first instance, been corrupted by love, but by poverty and the contagion of circumstance and example. It is a miserable cant phrase to call them the victims of seduction; they have been the victims of hunger, of vanity, of curiosity, of evil ..fereate counsels ; but the seduetion of love hardly ever conducts to a life of vice. If a woman has once really loved, the beloved object makes an impenetrabie harrier between her and other men ; their advances terrify and revolt ; she would rather die than be unfaithful even to a memory. Though man loves the sex, woman loves only the individual; and the more she loves him, the more cold she is to the species. For the pas- 1111011 of ooman is in the sentiment, the fancy, the heart. It rarely has much to do with the coarse images with which boys and old ineu—the inexperienced and the worn-out—connect it.

One source of interest, which numbers will feel or fancy in Ernest Maltravers, is of an adventitious kind, so far as merit is concerned. We allude to the parallel which some reviewers have drawn already, and which many readers will echo, between the writer and his hero. How for this may be true in the particulars, either as regards the mind or the conduct, we know not. Mr. BULWER, in a chapter of interlude, which had better have been left out, dis- tinctly repudiates the connexion ; and it is not likely there should be a very exact resemblance in details. As regards the leading outline, however, the parallel is clear enough, whether accidental or intended. Each is a man of family, fortune, and fashion; each is a successful author ; neither makes a Fast-rate figure in the Senate ; but Mr. Maltravers has the advantage over Mr. BULWER, in having refused office under two Governments. Yet although this interest is adventitious, and its excitement by the author not in the purest taste, it has of course considerable attraction, and that of an autobiographical kind. If the reader wishes to scan the whole, he must peruse the work; but we will pick out a few of the most striking sketches of the most important epochs in the life of Mr. Maltravers.

• •

MR. MA LTRAVERS AT TWO•AND•Ilt ENTY.

He was one of remarkable appearance. llis long fair hair floated with a careless grace over a brow more calm and thoughtful than became his years ; his manner was unusually quiet and self collected, and not without a certain stateliness, rendered more striking by the height of his stature, a lordly contour of feature, and a serene but settled expression of melancholy in his eyes and smile. • Maltravers, besides being now somewhat ripened front his careless boyhood into a proud and fastidious man, had a natural love for the becoming. This love was unconsciously visible in trifles : it is the natural parent of good taste. And it was indeed an in-born good taste which redeemed Ernesi's natural care• lessnese in those personal matters in which young men usually take a pride. An habitual and soldier-like neatness of drew), and a love of order and sym- metry, stood with hint in the stead of elaborate attention to equipage and .dress.

Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was handsome or not ; and, like most meta who have a knowledge of the gentler sex, he knew that beauty had little to do with engaging the love of women. The air, the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests, and the

something to be proud of, these are the attributer of the man made to be

loved. • • e • • • •

Ernest Maltravers wae not so good a man as when lie left England. He had lived in lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence nor rigid in its canons, and that does not make a loan better. Moreover, thrown into bustling life, with ardent passions and intellectual supetiority, he had been led by the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the other had delivered him ; the necessity of roughing it through the world, of resisting fraud to-day and violence to. morrow, had hardened over the surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still fresh and living. He had lost much of hie chivalrous veneration for women, whom he had begun to con- sider rather as playthings than idols ; he found that they deceive us as often as we deceive them. He found also that their ferlioge are frequently less deep than they appear, and that they fall in love and fall cut of it, without bieakiug their hearts. Again, too, the last few years had been spent without any bigfi aims or fixed pursuits. Maltravers had been living on the capital of his facul- ties and affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for a .lever and ardent man not to have sonic paramount object of life.

MR. MALTR•VERS' scoot.% xsiel".

Maltravers was an admirable scholar. The stores of the immortal dead were as familiar to him as his own language. The poetry, the philosophy, the manner of thought and habits of life of the gractful Greek and the luxurious Roman, were a part of knowledge that constituted a comrnou and household

portion of his own associations and peculiarities of thought. Ile had satu- rated his intellect with the Pactolus of old ; and the grains of gold canoe down from the classic Tmohus with every tide. This knowledge of the dead, often so useless, has an inexpressible charm when it is applied to the places where

the dead lived. We care nothing about the ancients on Highgate lull; but at Beim, Pompeii, by the Vitgilian Hades, the ancients are society with which we thirst to be familiar. To the animated and curious Frenchwoman what a

cicerone was Ernest Maltravers! llow eagerly elm listened to accounts of a lute more elegant than that of Paris; of a civilization which the world never can .know again ; twit mieur ! for it was rotten at the core, though most glorious in the complexion. Those cold names and unsubstantial shadows which Madame de St. Ventadour had been acemtmmed to yawn over in skele• ton histories, took from the eloquence of Malttavers the breath of life ; they glowed and moved, they feasted and made love, were wise and foolish, merry and sad, like living things. On the other hand, Maltravers learnt a thoweand new secrets of the existing and actual world from the lips of the at- complished awl observant Valerie. What a new step in the philosophy of life does a young man of genius make when he first compares his theories and ex. perience 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 impottant mysteries in human character and practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from the sparkling persiflage of such a companion. Or education is hardly ever complete without it.

TIIE CAUSES OF MR. MALTRAVERS' SUCCESS.

His first work was successful—perhaps from this reason, that it bore the stamp of the honest awl the real. He dill not sit down to report of what he had never seen, to dilate on what lie had never felt. A quiet and thoughtful observer of life, his descriptions were the more vivid, because his own first im. pressions were not yet worn away. His experience had sunk deep, not on the arid endue of matured age, but in the fresh soil of youthful emotion,. Another reason perhaps that obtained success for his essay wits, that he had more varied and more elaborate knowledge than young withors think it necessary to possess. He did not, like Cmsarini, attempt to make a show of words upon a slender capital of ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or homely, it was still in him a faithful transcript of considered and digested thought. A third reason—and I dwell on these points not more to elucidate the career of Matra. vers, than as hints which may be useful to others— a third reason why Maltra- vers obtained a prompt and favourable reception from the public was, that he had not hackneyed his peculiarities uf diction and thought in that worst of all schools for the literary novice—the columns of a magazine. Periodicals form an excellent mode of communication between the public and an author already established, who has lost the charm of novelty but gained the weight of ac- knowledged reputation; and oho, either upon politics or criticism, seeks for frequent and continuous occasions to enforce his peculiar theses and doctrines. But upon the young writer this mode of communication, if too long continued, operates most injuriously both as to his future prospects and his own present taste and style. With respect to the first, it familiarizes the public to his man- nerism, (and all writers worth reading have mannerism,) in a form to which the said public are not inclined to attach much weight. Ile forestalls hi few mouths what ought to be the effect of years,—namely, the wearying • world soon nauseated with the toujours perdrix. With respect to the last, it induces

a man to write for momentary effects, to study a false smartness of style mul reasoning, to bound his ambition of durability to the last day of the month, to expect Immediate returns for labour, to recoil at the " hope deferred" of serious works on which judgment is slowly formed.

MR. MALTRAVERS FAMOUS.

Maltravers appeared once more in the haunts of the gay and the great. Its felt that his new character had greatly altered his position. He was no longer courted and caressed for the same vulgar and adventitious circumetances of for. tune, birth, and connexions, as before, yet for circumstances that to hitu seemed equally unflattering. He was not sought for his merit, his intellect, his talents, but fur his momentary celebrity. He AU an author in fashion ; and run after as auy thing else in fashion might have been. He was invited less to be talked to than to be stared at. hie was far too proud in his temper, and too pure in his ambition, to feel his vanity elated by sharing the entlitteiasm of the circle, with a German prince or an industrious flea. Accordingly, he soon repelled the advances made to him ; was reserved and supercilious to flue ladies, refused tobe the fashion, and became very unpopular with the literary exclusives. They even began to run down the works, because they were dissatisfied with the author ; but Maltravers had based his experiments upon the vast masses of the general public. He had called the PEOFLE of his own and other countries tube his audience and his judges; and all the coteries in the world could not have injured him. He was like the member for an immense constituency, who may offend individuals as long as he keep his footing with the body at large. But while he withdrew himself from the insipid aud the idle, he took care not to be- come separated from the world. He formed his own society according to his tastes; took pleasure in the manly and exciting topics of the day; and sharp- ened his observation and widened his sphere as an author, by mixing freely sad boldly with all chases as a citizen.

MR. MALTRAVERS AS AN AUTHOR.

It would not suit the design of this work to follow Maltraver3 step by step in his course. I am only describing the principal events, not the minute de- tails, of his intellectual life. Of the character of his wotks, it will be enough to say, that whatever their faults, they were original—they were his own. He did not write according to copy, nor compile from commonplace books. He was an artist, it is true—for what is genius itself but art ? But he took laws, and harmony, and order, from the great code of Truth and Nature; a code that demands intense and unrelaxing study, though its first principles are few and

simple; that study Maltravers did not shrink from. It was a deep love of truth that made him a subtle and searching analyst even in what the dull world con- sider', trifles; for he knew that nothing in literature is in itself trifling—that it is often but a hair's breadth that divides a truism from a discovery. He was the more original, because he sought rather after the true than the new. No two minds are ever the same; and therefore any man who will give us fairly and frankly the results of his own impressions, uninfluenced by the servilitiea of imitation, will be original. But it was not from originality, which really made his predominant merit, that Maltravers derived his reputation ; for his origi- nality was not of that species which generally dazzles the vulgar ; it was not extravagant or bizarre; he affected no system and no school. Many authors of his day seemed more novel and unique to the superficial. Profound and durable invention proceeds by subtle and fine gradations; it has nothing to do with those jerks and starts, those convulsions and distortions, which belong not to t'ae vigour and health, but to the epilepsy and disease of literature.

MR. MALTAAVERS AS A SENATOR.

His success in public life was not brilliant nor sudden. For, though he had eloquence and knowledge, he disdained all oratorical devices ; and though he had passion and energy, he could scarcely be called a warm partisan. He met with much envy, and many obstacles ; and the gracions and buoyant sociality of temper and manners that had, in early youth, made him the idol of his cone temporaries at school or college, had long since faded away into a cold, settled, and lofty, though gentle reserve, which did not attract towards him the animal spirits of the herd. But though he spoke seldom, and heard many, with half his powers, more enthusiastically chimed, he did not fail of commanding atten- tion and respect ; and though no darling of cliques and parties, yet in that great body of the people who were ever the audience and tribunal to which, ia letters or in politics, Maltravers appealed, there was silently growing up and spreading wide a belief in hie upright intentions, his unpurchaseable honour, and his correct and welbconsidered views. He felt that his name was safely invested, though the return for the capital was slow and modesate. He wig contented to abide hie time.

MR. MALTRAVERS AT TI1E END OF THE WOAA..

Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the common etrecgth of men, in health, power, coascious superiority, premeditated vengeance— wise,. gifted; all his (smiths ripe, developed, at his (command; the complete and all-armed man. prepared for defence and offence m:ainst eve' y foe—a man who once roused in a righteous quarrel would not hove 1,nailed before an army ;* and ti ere and thus was his dark and fierce pus pose &shed from his soul—shivered into atoms at his feet. • "Don Juan, who was much more sentimenish Swore they should see him by the dawn or day, Or that the hussian army should repent all."