into his books all his learning, as well as all else that was his. They represent - artistically grouped, ingeniously lighted, with suitable accompaniments of music and illusion - the acquisitions of his intellect, the sympathies of his nature, and the achievements of his character.

He wrote in various styles, making deliberate experiments in one after another, and often hiding himself completely in anonymity. He was versatile, not deep. Robert Louis Stevenson also employs various styles; but with him the changes are intuitive they are the subtle variations in touch and timbre which genius makes, in harmony with the subject treated. Stevenson could not have written "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in the same tune and key as "Treasure Island;" and the music of "Marxheim" differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its own. I makes its own style, just as a human. spirit makes its own features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations only by dint of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and phrase that always characterize him. Now, with Bulwer there is none of this lovely inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily, like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal. "The Last Days of Pompeii" shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the incredibilities of "The Coming Race" shall wear the guise of naïve and artless narrative; the humors of "The Caxtons" and "What Will He Do with It?" shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world, gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of "Zanoni" and "A Strange Story" must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction fitted to their transcendental claims. But between the stark mechanism of the Englishman and the lithe, inspired felicity of the Scot, what a difference!

Bulwer's work may be classified according to subject, though not chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and acquainted with their profess

ors.

"Ancient" history also attracted him, and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a "History of Athens." In all his writing there is a tendency to lapse into a discussion of the "Ideal and the Real," aiming always at the conclusion that the

only true Real is the Ideal. It was this tendency which chiefly aroused the ridicule of his critics, and from the "Sredwardlyttonbulwig" of Thackeray to the "Condensed Novels" burlesque of Bret Harte, they harp upon that facile string. The thing satirized is after all not cheaper than the satire. The ideal is the true real; the only absurdity lies in the pomp and circumstance wherewith that simple truth is introduced. There is a "Dweller on the Threshold," but it, or he, is nothing more than that doubt concerning the truth of spiritual things which assails all beginners in higher speculation, and there was no need to call it or him by so formidable a name. A sense of humor would have saved Bulwer from almost all his faults, and have endowed him with several valuable virtues into the bargain; but it was not born in him, and with all his diligence he never could beget it.

The domestic series, of which "The Caxtons" is the type, are the most generally popular of his works, and are likely to be so longest. The romantic vein (" Ernest Maltravers," "Alice, or the Mysteries," etc.) are in his worst style, and are now only in existence as books because they are members of "the edition." It is doubtful if any human being has read one of them through in twenty years. Such historical books as "The Last Days of Pompeii" are not only well constructed dramatically, but are painfully accurate in details, and may still be read for information as well as for pleasure. The "Zanoni " species is undeniably interesting. The weird traditions of the "Philosopher's Stone" and the "Elixir of Life" can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither Dumas nor Balzac has done anything better in this kind; the trouble is that these authors. compel our belief, while Bulwer does not. For, once more, he lacks the magic of genius and the spirit of style which are immortally and incommunicably theirs, without which no other magic can be made literarily effective.

"Pelham," written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy's book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other famous boy's book, Disraeli's "Vivian Grey," though the latter is alive and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the other. Other

characteristic novels of his are "The Last Days of Pompeii," "Ernest Maltravers," "Zanoni," "The Caxtons," "My Novel," "What Will He Do with It?" "A Strange Story," "The Coming Race," and "Kenelm Chillingly," the last of which appeared in the year of the author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards of fifty substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous material besides. Of all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory thing is one of the last," Kenelm Chillingly." In style, persons, and incidents it is alike charming: it subsides somewhat into the inevitable Bulwer sentimentality towards the end a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the miracle was never nearer being accomplished than in this instance. Here we see the thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease what scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran of threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is better still, to grow away from his faults and towards improvement.

But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had better opportunities than most. His social station brought him in contact with the best people and most pregnant events of his time; and the driving poverty of youth having established him in the novel-writing habit, he hereafter had leisure to polish and expand his faculty to the utmost. No talent of his was folded up in a napkin: he did his best and utmost with all he had. Whereas the path of genius is commonly tortuous and hard-beset and while we are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray, or Shelley, or Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had life been longer or fate kinder to them!" -of Bulwer we say, "No help was wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled by circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and enriched by time.

Certainly, as men of letters go Bulwer must be accounted. fortunate. The long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all things went his way. He received large sums for his books; at the age of forty, his mother dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth estate; three-and-twenty years later his old age (if such a man could be called old) was consoled by the title of Lord

Lytton. His health was never robust, and occasionally failed; but he seems to have been able to accomplish after a fashion everything that he undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He lived in the midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the age, and saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed him in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let it be repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the failure was one of manner rather than of heart. Yes, he was a

fortunate man.

His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of his essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising that he did not altogether devote himself to this branch. of art; but all his dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his thirty-eighth years. The first "La Duchesse de la Vallière" was not to the public liking; but "The Lady of Lyons," written in two weeks, is in undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are "Richelieu" and "Money." There is no apparent reason why Bulwer should not have been as prolific a stage-author as Molière or even Lope de Vega. But we often value our best faculties least.

"The Coming Race," published anonymously and never acknowledged during his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing else could so well do, the utter absence, in Bulwer of the creative imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of "vril" has been much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In inventing the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than most men have time to accumulate.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, the greatest American writer; born at Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804; died at Plymouth, N. H., May 19, 1864. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825, in the same class with Longfellow. After leaving college he lived for several years at Salem, writing much but publisning little. In 1836 he went to Boston to become editor of the " American Magazine,” a periodical which proved unsuccessful. In 1837 he put forth, under the title of "Twice-told Tales," a number of pieces which had appeared in various periodicals. A second series of these was issued in 1845. In 1838 he received the appointment of weigher and gauger in the custom-house at Boston; but the Democratic party going out of power in 1841, he was displaced. He was then for a few months a member of the Brook Farm Association at West Roxbury, Mass. In 1843 he took up his residence at Concord, Mass., in the "Old Manse." Here was written the "Mosses from an Old Manse" (1846). In 1845 Hawthorne was appointed surveyor of the port of his native town, but was removed in 1849. "The Scarlet Letter," published in 1850, was planned and partly written during his collectorship. He then took up his residence at Lenox, Mass. Here were written "The House of the Seven Gables," the scene of which is laid in Salem, and "The Blithedale Romance."

In 1852 Franklin Pierce was the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and Hawthorne wrote, as a campaign document, the life of his old college friend, who, upon his election, appointed him to the lucrative post of United States Consul at Liverpool. Hawthorne held this position until 1857, when he resigned, and for two years travelled with his family upon the Continent, residing for a while at Rome. Returning for a short time to England, he completed "The Marble Faun," which was published in 1860. In this year he returned to America, again taking up his residence at Concord. His health began to decline in the spring of 1864, and he set out, in company with ex-President Pierce, upon a trip in New Hampshire. They reached a hotel in the village of Plymouth, where they were to stop for the night, and in the morning Hawthorne was found dead in his bed.

Besides the books already referred to, Hawthorne published