over these he has the mastery of perfect knowledge. We recognize feelings that we had deemed known but to ourselves, and the charm of discovery is blended with that of sympathy. The language that expresses what we had before felt is so familiar, that we only wonder why we had never used it. There is an intense consciousness of self in genius:Why does Mr. Bulwer give the quick sensation and the passionate emotion with such home truth? Because he has first felt them himself, and keenly felt. It is a most extraordinary fallacy to say that the writer who makes others feel does not feel himself. How then has he obtained his knowledge? It is a strange thing to speak a language understood by all but the speaker. Out of his own heart the poet translates the sensations of others. We may say of genius, what some French writer says of love," Un egoisme en deux personnes !"-it is an egotism between the writer and the reader.

We do not mean to say that in all imaginative works the author is his own creation, and "I the hero of each little tale;" but though the action be not, the sentiment must be all his own. A sufficient distinction is not made between the narrative and the sensitive portion of a work: the narrative belongs to the external world; it combines the given materials of observation; it forms the clay model into which the soul must enter. Now that kindling spirit must be communicated from the etherial world within-the writer must animate with his own sensations. He may combine circumstances different from those which excited his own emotions, but those emotions must have been first experienced. Mr. Bulwer never could have drawn the shy, the susceptible, yet proud and reserved Devereux, unless his own feeling had given the key to such a character.

The introduction of Lord Bolingbroke is a leading feature in "Devereux." The analysis of this character is pursued in the noblest spirit ; it is history based on the actual and the generous, and in the majority of judgments, admiration is the portal of truth: common-minded people always depreciate. They forget that it is only by looking up that we see heaven. Where our own motives are low, we always suppose the motives of others to be low also. Such are the real levellers-they refer all things

"To the small circle of their mean desires." But an Arabian tradition occurs to us just in point. The Mahommedans hold that, on the night Leiteth-ul-eadr, the firmament opens for a minute, and the glory of God appears visible to the eyes of those who are so happy as to behold it; at which juncture whatever is asked of God by the fortunate beholder of the mysteries of that critical moment is instantly granted. A Mulatto girl having heard of this superstition resolved to try its efficacy. She was quite out of love with her own woolly locks, and imagining that she wanted nothing to make her thought pretty but a good head of hair, took her supper in her hand presently after sunset, and without letting any body into her secret, stole away and shut herself up in the uppermost apartment of the house and went upon the watch. She had the good fortune to direct her optics to the right quarter, and the patience to look long and steadily, till she plainly beheld the beams of celestial glory darting through the firmament, and the resolution to cry out with all her might, "Oh Lord!

make my head big "-a figurative expression for a good head of hair*. Now we are too much given to form our judgments as the Mulatto girl did her wishes-small, selfish and mean; and quite insensible to the beauty and glory which lie beyond us.

says,

Mr. Bulwer's estimate of Bolingbroke is of a higher order. He does justice to those splendid abilities which wanted only a fitting sphere, and to which we firmly believe success would have been like sunshine, ripening and perfecting. The great mistake of his life was his adherence to the Stuart cause. Voltaire "It is well to be born clever, better to be born rich, but best to be born fortunate." A more ill-fated race than the House of Stuart never existed-and that ill-fortune they communicated to their adherents. It shows to an extraordinary degree the hold that feudal prejudices had taken, when fidelity to the Stuarts was for so many years a religion of honour. The principles of government were strangely mistaken, when personal allegiance was considered the foundation of the social contract. The duty of the subject to the monarch is very different from that of the soldier to his general. Obedience, being honour, was the basis of the feudal system; such a principle was no foundation of freedom.

"What is grey with time becomes religion."

To this picturesque creed we must ascribe the devotion shown to the Stuart cause; there was nothing to warrant it in the personal character of the four English monarchs. The first James was an imbecile pedant, cruel, as the weak are, from fear. The first Charles was obstinate, hypocritical, and cruel also: the second Charles was indolent, profligate, and cruel again; while the second James, to all the bad qualities inherent in his race, added a blindness and bigotry peculiarly his own. The principal events of each reign were connected with the scaffold; the noble head of Raleigh fell first; then, in Strafford, Charles gave up his true and trusted friend. Russell and Sidney were sacrifices to Charles the Second's hoarded vengeance; and our English annals have scarcely a more sanguinary period than James the Second's brief reign. The future is like an obstinate child, the past teaches, but it will not learn: the ingratitude which Bolingbroke experienced from the court of St. Germains was only a "thrice-told tale." It must, however, be confessed that, when Bolingbroke found his return to his own country only to be obtained by bribing the low avarice of the new monarch's German mistress, he might be pardoned for doubting whether the change of dynasty was a change for the best. Posterity has, however, been the gainer, by his later years having been given to the study rather than the office; an intellect like his belongs rather to the future than the present. We all remember Swift's admirable illustration of why the coarser order of mind is better suited than one of finer calibre to ordinary use. “Take,” said he, "this paper-knife: it is blunt and common-looking; but it gets through those thick quires of paper with all dispatch. But take you a

* We must give the conclusion of the story. Unfortunately for the Mulatto, her prayer "Make my head big," was taken literally, for early in the morning the neighbours were disturbed by the terrible noise she made, and they were forced to hasten to her assistance with tools proper to break down the walls about her ears, in order to get her head in at the window, it being grown to a monstrous magnitude-I forget how many bushels in circumference!

razor, and its fine edge will scarce serve the purpose, and very probably cut your fingers into the bargain."

Sir Robert Walpole was the very antipodes of Bolingbroke-the one was the shrewd, sensible man of the world; the other the man of genius. Walpole inspires no enthusiasm, because he never felt it; whereas our interest in Bolingbroke takes a tone of poetry: still we lean to the belief that Walpole was the minister best fitted to his time. He preserved peace, he encouraged trade, and we best feel his worth by a comparison with his immediate successors: his worst fault was contempt of his kind; though "every man has his price" was too much justified by the political profligacy of the day. It is difficult for the keen-sighted minister, surrounded by small deceits and selfish motives, to think well of "the venal tribe "whom he has to hurry through. He has no time to make allowances, as Mr. Bulwer himself says, "It is in solitude that we learn benevolence!"

One of the most exquisite portions of "Devereux" is that given to the history of Isaura. No writer enters into the poetry of woman's nature like Mr. Bulwer; she is with him—

"A beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth."

It is one of the social errors of to-day-and error is the mother of misery -its feminine position. Women are the poetry of life, and as such should be kept apart from the coarse and commonplace. The natural and the actual are now at variance; and herein is shown the tenderness and delicate perception of our author; he always places his heroine in circumstances that call forth the true and the beautiful. We see Isaura, first, the sole happiness of a widowed father-a loving, patient, gentle child. Next as the bride, all the energies of her nature devoted to one object-affectionate, enthusiastic, feeling the whole current of her being wrapped up in another. He is perfectly aware that affection alone shows "how divine a thing a woman may be made;" and it is in that faith he works out his loveliest creations. Though all treat of it, not one writer knows how to write about love; they lower into commonplace, or run into exaggeration. Mr. Bulwer writes with a deep and true sympathy, because he has a keen sensibility to the exalted and refined. Religion is only another word for belief; and, above all things, the heart has its religion.

We have left ourselves but little space for the other characters. We can do no more than allude to Montrieul, the most vivid personification ever drawn of the individual merged in a system. We can only point attention to the poetry of pain, as embodied in Aubrey, who is a poem in himself. But we must remark the utterly different species of talent shown in drawing a character like Sir William Devereux,- -So simple, so kindly, whose very weaknesses are matters of affectionate interest. The death-bed of that benevolent old man is one of the most touching scenes that we know. But Devereux is a book to be read and re-read;-we lay it down, as we do all Mr. Bulwer's writings, with a more enlarged and exalted idea of human nature ;—we are the better for having dwelt among his creations. Mr. Bulwer's great merit and his great charm is, that he appeals to our highest and noblest class of emotions. He redeems, with the spiritual and the beautiful, our selfish and ordinary world: he writes in the light and the warmth of the heart.

L.

PORTRAITS OF NOTORIOUS CHARACTERS. NO. I.

THE THEATRICAL LESSEE.

THE theatrical lessee is a practical logician. Being destitute of money, he enters into contracts, binding himself to pay some fifty thousand pounds per annum being equally destitute of morals, he undertakes to provide rational entertainment for a " discerning public." Peculiarly innocent of all idea of the uses and objects of the stage, he resolves upon taking the drama under his special protection. In short, having nothing to lose, he determines to risk all he is worth; being Dogberry, he becomes constable of the watch, as the "most desartless man." He regards Shakspeare as an author properly honoured in having his statue erected outside the theatre: he confesses that if "Hamlet" were now to be offered him, an entirely new play, he would not produce it—unless, perhaps, the author undertook to appear as the Ghost. As an indifferently bad actor, even Shakspeare would have a claim upon him. He evinces his understanding of the scope and principle of the drama, when he observes, "We don't want literature, we want pieces.”—He objects to all productions that have much "talk" in them; they only tend to encourage the high-priced actors. First-rate performers he looks upon as necessary evils, and he engages them-one at a time, at short intervals: third-rates are his favourites, because they show by their acting that the regular drama" sends people to sleep,-they prove that Shakspeare "don't draw!" That is the only point which he conscientiously struggles to establish that the public despises excellence; and upon the truth of his proposition his chance of being tolerated depends. He may, however, be brought to forgive an actor for being a genius, always providing that he is not likewise a gentleman: the actor who introduces gentlemanly habits into the theatre is supposed to offer a personal insult to the lessee. In like manner he resents, as becomingly as he can, the impertinent superiority of the few ladies of his company who obstinately maintain the singularity of unsullied virtue; purity of character he considers to be a disgrace to his establishment. His remonstrance is,— "I may as well shut up my theatre at once, if common decency is to be observed." The interests of the stage require that every pretty actress should listen to honourable green-room proposals, and submit to a change of viscounts occasionally, at the suggestion, and for the accommodation, of the lessee. The qualifications of an actress are thought to depend upon the question-not "what she can do?" but "whose cab brought her to the theatre ?" The actor he engages on the strength of his lungs, the actress on the strength of her legs. If compelled, by perverse fortune, to come to terms with the first tragedian of the day, and to engage him for the entire season, the lessee resorts to every imaginable expedient of personal and professional annoyance, of low insult and irritation, to drive him from the theatre in disgust, just at the moment when the example of his high name and the exercise of his fine genius are supposed to be no longer essentially requisite. He begins by "biting his thumb" to provoke, and ends by biting the finger of the irritated. If we take the portrait of the Lessee in another attitude, we find him instructing counsel to prove him "a rogue and a vagabond according to

Act of Parliament,"-proclaiming himself a violator of the law, in having acted forbidden tragedies and comedies, and showing that the man who had lent him the purchase-money can have no partnership in the profits of illegality. The lessee closes the house for his own advantage and accommodation, and stops one-third of the company's salary; he replies to the general remonstrance, however, with the assurance that 'all who demand it shall be paid-and those who ask find him better than his word, for he not only discharges their claims, but them also. The lessee has one favourite plan-to reduce salaries when business falls off; he has another favourite plan-to forget to raise them again when business revives. His statesmanship consists in making his actors take share in his losses, and not in his gains. His idea of attraction is opposed to every law of physics; for, when his audiences are scanty, he thinks his company too numerous: the public will not come, and he proceeds to discharge some of his actors: his treasury is low, and he takes decisive steps to diminish the receipts. A blank box-book suggests to him the propriety, not of adding to, but of lessening the attraction; when a forty-horse power is not enough, says the lessee, a thirty must be tried. The lessee's sayings and doings all tend consistently to one point--all tend to lower public taste, to taint public morals, to lessen public amusement; to subvert the stage, to degrade the actor, to destroy the very profession; to dishonour the drama, to repress imagination, and dry up the springs of human sympathy; to make the existing generation scoff where their fathers admired and reverenced, and to render a noble and humanizing art a mere convenience for ignorant pretension, licentious intrigue, and sordid speculation.

THE "OLDEST INHABITANT."

THE Oldest Inhabitant's mind is a blank memorandum-book-his head is a wallet "wherein he puts alms for oblivion." His experience convinces him, more and more every day, that London is situate on the banks of Lethe. Ask him for the date of an event, and, if of modern occurrence, he has a distinct recollection of having forgotten it; if referable to a remoter period, he forgets whether he remembers it or not. He knows that he is of an ancient family, but cannot, for his life, tell what has become of his ancestors: he conjectures with much shrewdness that his forefathers must be dead. His father, who was a soldier, had been, he thinks, in the same regiment with the celebrated Captain Shandy, and knew him well. His crest is a fore-finger with a piece of thread fastened round it,-his motto, "Non mi ricordo." He thinks he can recollect having seen his grandmother when she was a little girl, and is quite positive that his parents died without issue. He is puzzled to know when, where, and how he acquired possession of a daughter; and conceives that his son must now be quite old enough to be his own father. He, however, distinctly remembers the events of his boyhood; the name of the head master of Christ's hospital in those days was the Rev. Cornelius Nepos; one of his schoolfellows was called Alcibiades: he is not certain that Julius Cæsar was in the same class with himself, but he has a vague notion that they were a good deal in each other's company. He is confident that he passed a considerable portion of his time, when a lad, at a place called Troy-though he cannot now call to mind the