if the character had been sketched by Juvenal or Molière. We know that, in London as well as in Paris, Pelham has been represented as the model of dandyism, and the author accused of having proposed his hero as an example worthy of imitation. This is a proper piece of social controversy for the present eccasion, and we will say a few words on the subject. It is undeniable that the reader is taught to admire Pelham, in spite of his airs and haughtiness, but this very circumstance gives truth and strength to the satire. Had Mr. Bulwer described the idol he designed to break as altogether worthless and contemptible, the world would have been shocked by the absurdity of the caricature. If, in the very first pages, Pelham had been represented as insensible and indifferent; if, at the age of sixteen, he had acquired the fastidious languor and apathy which were supposed to be the highest consummation of fashionable existence; if, on his entrance upon the stage, he had been invested with the vices in matured perfection that are only produced by long and continuous indulgence of disastrous passions; had he possessed a brazen forehead, cheeks which feelings never flushed, eyes where tear-drops never glistened; in fine, all the attributes that can only be acquired after having passed the dangerous round of debauchery, gambling, and ambition,-the reader might say to the author, "Your hero is a monster, such as the world never saw; we regret beforehand all the inferences that may be drawn from an impossible character; your premises are utterly false, and we therefore care not a jot for your conclusion."

Pelham stands at the head of a countless host of fashionable novels, like Ivanhoe, leading its train of historical romances. It is a fiction peculiarly English; had Mr. Bulwer sought at Paris for the original of Henry Pelham, he must have given up the search in despair. The French capital has no Court Journal, to detail in millinery romance the dresses at the last drawing-room, or the display of fashions at Almack's; a couple of lines, dry, dull, and reckless, contain the sum of all that Parisian journalists deign to say respecting a ball at the Tuileries or the English embassy. At Madrid, Vienna, or Berlin, the aristocracy is too widely dissevered from the middle classes to inspire the slightest interest. It is very singular that M. Planche has better described the psychological character of Pelham, and more completely developed the causes of its success, than any of Mr. Bulwer's English critics. We must let him explain the reasons why the attempt to draw a French Pelham would not have the slightest chance of success :

"It is because the English aristocracy, in spite of the rude assault

that it now sustains, which menaces indeed its overthrow and the dispersion of its very fragments, has struck deep roots in the history and constitution of the country. In spite of the destruction which its recent opposition to the declared will of the people threatens, it has continued, ever since the accession of the House of Hanover, in the greater part of the questions and accidents that interested it personally, to associate the country in its fate, to attach national independence and national glory to its cause. It is because, without going farther back, we can trace its history for one hundred and sixty-four years, can count its battles and its victories, can see it always active, always ready for contest, whether it were necessary to defend the soil from foreign invaders, or to protect public freedom against a stretch of the royal prerogative.

"But in France, at the same epoch, whilst the English aristocracy drove out James II., and gave the throne to William III., how were the nobles employed? The whole body of the noblesse was grovelling at the footstool of Louis XIV.; the demi-god of Versailles had no longer need, as at his first entrance into his Parliament, of his whip and spurs to impose silence on factious murmurers ; a word, a curl of the lip, an almost imperceptible motion of the eyebrow, was sufficient to enforce obedience to his sovereign will. Has it done anything since to regain public confidence or esteem?".

We have dwelt thus long on Pelham, because it is one of the works which best illustrates the question between novelists and dramatists, which we proposed to consider. It is, in a great degree, a satirical drama, belonging to the school of Aristophanes rather than Menander; the tragical tale blended with the original design, though it possesses deep romantic interest, is felt to be a digression, and almost an impertinence. Had the stage retained its monopoly of holding the mirror up to nature, Pelham would have been just such another comedy as the School for Scandal; that it is not so is by no means a proof that the author wanted dramatic talent, it is simply explained by seeing that every fiction must, more or less, derive its form from the age in which it appears.

M. Planche seems not indisposed to favour this opinion in his examination of Eugene Aram, a fiction which, Mr. Bulwer himself informs us, was originally designed to assume the form of a tragedy. Of this work our critic speaks in terms of the warmest admiration :

Eugene Aram is, next to Pelham, the most important of the author's works. It would not have established the author's reputation so rapidly, but it will sustain it more surely. It is a poem at once marvellous and pathetic, a village tragedy in which the actors are few, and derive no celebrity or lustre from their social rank,but it is a tragedy so full, so rapid, so rich in terror and in tears, that Euripides or Sophocles would not have disavowed it. The characters introduced have nothing exclusive or conventional; they possess, on the contrary, all the depth

and majesty that belong to universality. This production is assuredly the result of long meditation.

With a very slight alteration the same criticism is applicable to Rienzi: both belong to the same class of prose epics; but the characters, the incidents, and the situations are infinitely more dramatic than narrative. Eugene Aram is, in fact, a tragedy deprived of its proper form, and in some degree injured by the softening down of the hero's character to a standard which conventional laws have imposed upon moralists. The stern sophist, the unrepenting murderer, the cold calculator of chances, would not have added devoted and enthusiastic love to his attributes; but, what is of much greater importance, the conciseness and correctness required for the development of the fable on the stage would have imposed on the writer a task from which he has ever shrunk-we mean the task of paying some attention to style and expression. It is impossible to read any one of Mr. Bulwer's productions without a strong conviction that a fatal facility of writing is his besetting sin; blocks of polished marble are put together in his edifices not unfrequently with mud instead of mortar, and the Ionic shaft has sometimes a Corinthian capital. His dramatic power is proved by his novels; the only question that remains to be decided is whether he possesses sufficient industry to master the difficulties of acquiring a new form. In this effort the strength of his own will must be the measure of his future success. We trust that we have said enough to show that excellence as a novelist is far from being presumptive proof of failure as a dramatist. In the opinion, however, of all our dramatic critics, Mr. Bulwer's tragedy is a failure, and the author feels their censure as he would an injury done to a favourite child. But the severity of the critics, and the soreness of the author, are equally out of place. The fault is in the age; though novels have not disqualified novelists from writing dramas, they have cut them off from the greatest source of inspiration, a fitting audience; while the progress of civilization has swept from them all the models of prominent, that is, dramatic, character. Shakspeare saw in his generation husbands as jealous as Othello, statesmen as unscrupulous in the use of means to gratify ambition as Macbeth; Ancient Pistol was probably one of his tavern companions, and Dogberry the parish constable of Stratford. Where are we to find such marked characteristics of habits of thought or action in this Pelhamite reign of affected indifference and real uniformity? In Mr. Bulwer's play

"Groom talks like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well."

But so they do in the present world-if, as Shakspeare says"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” it follows that the fortunes of the world and the stage are intimately blended, and that the sobriety and quaker-like stillness which have seized the great theatre must of necessity rule the small one. In short, before a good drama can be produced, a dramatic age must be created :—are human abilities adequate to such a task?

The last question that remains for discussion is, Can the power and the popularity of the drama be restored? We have incidentally stated our reasons for answering in the negative; we cannot conceive a return to the circumstances which gave the theatre supreme importance; we cannot conjecture any new combinations that can be substituted for those which have passed away. The drama once stood alone; it is now one of many, and of many that have stronger pretensions to public favour, or at least which possess more powerful sway over the public mind. The days are gone by when a play would shake a minister and even threaten a dynasty, and the genius that in these days wishes to impress itself on the national intellect and character is forced to seek a larger audience than can be cooped into a theatre.

In presenting our readers with specimens of what may be called the gossiping and personal criticism which is just now the fashion in Paris, we have confined ourselves to Planche's reviews of English writers, and in some degree also to his incidental remarks on the analogies between narrative and dramatic fictions. We have controversies enough of our own, without meddling in the disputes between the partisans and the opponents of Victor Hugo; and we hope that our conversation, though rather desultory, will prove more agreeable than formal discussion. Should any prove dissentient, let them be satisfied by our declaration that we shall not pursue the subject further at present.

ART. IV.-1. Beiträge von den Constructionen in Holz und Eisen, und der Ausbildung des Characters neuerer, zeitgemässer Baukunst. (Contributions relative to Constructions in Wood and Iron, and the forming a Character for a newer and more appropriate species of Architecture.) Von Hugo Ritgen, Doctor der Philosophie und Architect zu Giessen. Leipzig & Darmstadt, 1835.

2. Die Holzarchitectur des Mittelalters, mit Anschluss der schönsten in dieser Epoche entwickelten Producte der gewerblichen Industrie: in Reise-Studien, &c. (Timber Architecture of the Middle Ages, including other Specimens of Art and Manufacture belonging to the same period.) Gesammelt von C. Bötticher, Architect. Folio, 1stes und 2tes Heft. Berlin, 1836.

3. Gesetze der Pflanzen und Mineralienbildung angewendet auf Alt-Deutschen Baustyl. (The Laws of Vegetable and Mineral Structure applied to old German Architecture.) Von J. Metzger. Stuttgart, 1835.

4. Beiträge zu der Lehre von den Construktionen. (Contributions to the Theory and Practice of Constructions.) Von Doctor Georg Moller. Folio. Leipzig and Darmstadt.

WHILE two opposite parties in architecture are warmly advocating their respective systems, to the exclusion of any other, are at variance on every other point, and agree only in recommending their own favourite style, not merely as the most beautiful in itself, but applicable to every purpose, and to all our present necessities; a third comes forward and assures them both, that, much as they may seem to differ from each other, they both embrace one fundamental error in common-namely, that of substituting imitation for art, imagining, it would seem, the highest triumph of the latter to give, as near as may be, the fac-similes of works of former ages, instead of attempting to impress upon their own productions that consistent beauty of character and expression, which would render them in their turn worthy to take their place beside those styles which gradually developed themselves into completeness and perfection. To such an extent is this unfortunate predilection for imitation-or to give it its proper name, copying-carried, that, although the architect who should venture to ingraft ideas of his own upon the particular style which he takes for his model, would incur the danger of being stigmatized as a capricious and adventurous imitator, it is held quite allowable to deviate from it into some bastard mode, which, though it originated either in ignorance and unskilfulness,