have considered Pasion both as sinned against and sinning, we might be content to dismiss our trapezite here, but the domestic history of the man claims a brief additional notice. When he came to die, Pasion bequeathed a faithful freedman of his, his bed and his board, his wife and his bank. Himself of humble origin, himself formerly a slave and similarly favored by his old master, Pasion preferred to leave his property and family to the care of an attached and grateful friend, rather than in the hands of a graceless spendthrift such as his son Apollodorus seems to have been. Many years after the death of the banker, Apollodorus brought suit against Phormio; and among the speeches of Demosthenes we find two which present the relations of Apollodorus, the son, and Phormio, the freedman, from very different points of view. The old witticism about Demosthenes the cutler's son, who like Demosthenes the cutler, sold swords with charming impartiality to both combatants, finds an excellent illustration in these two speeches, for now Phormio is berated for marrying above his station, and now Apollodorus is snubbed for sneering at a better man than himself. But whether Apollodorus or Phormio be up or down in the oratorical seesaw, matters not; the memory of Pasion is sacred to every speaker. Old Isocrates may grin a toothless grin when he hears his name; but Pasion was a good man, for he died rich.

B. L. GILDERSleeve.

THE LATE LORD LYTTON.

TH

HE intelligence of the death of Lord Lytton, coming as it did without any previous announcement of his danger, was well calculated to produce in both hemispheres a profound and painful impression. For more than forty years he had been in different characters a prominent actor on the public stage, and his age was not such as to forbid the expectation of further rich fruits from an intellect at once vigorous and mature. No such hope, however, can be realised now, and nothing remains for us but to examine the results of his active and laborious life and count over the treasures he has left us. For ourselves, we approach this task in no carping, scarcely even in a critical spirit. As none would have recognised more readily and cordially than he, his works must of course be subjected to the trying ordeal of time and of severe criticism: if found worthy to stand they will endure; if not, they will have served

their purpose and will pass away. It is vain to attempt to smooth an author's path to immortality by covering up his defects and exaggerating his merits. In dealing with the lives and actions of individuals, biographers and historians may employ such arts with much greater prospect of success. The real truth concerning actions, even the most conspicuous, is often difficult to evolve; motives are still more frequently obscure and doubtful; but when an author has put the last touches to his work and given it to the world, it stands alone, to be tried and judged on its own merits. Neither paternal nor friendly partiality can do anything permanently in aid of its reputation. We shall not in the case before us attempt to anticipate the verdict of posterity. The immortality so often and so arduously sought is of difficult achievement. It is not every writer who is entitled to repeat the proud boast of the Roman poet:

"Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam".

or the prophetic lines of the English

"But there is that within me which shall tire

Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire."

Nay, it is by no means to every meritorious and fascinating author that such language can be allowed; rewards like these belong in literature as in other pursuits, only to the few.

Lord Lytton's own generation has pronounced its verdict clearly and emphatically. He goes before the court of posterity with whatever advantage this can give him; meanwhile it is not our part to anticipate the decision to be rendered hereafter. Standing, as it were, beside the open grave of a great man, we can feel no disposition to criticise harshly his defects or shortcomings. The sudden close of this long, brilliant and varied career is, we conceive, eminently fitted to excite sentiments of a very different kind. The man who has given us so much pleasure, has awakened in us so many emotions, has suggested to us so many reflections, whom we had almost come to regard as a friend and companion, is no more. can give us nothing further; we feel no desire at present to pick flaws and, point out faults in what he has already bestowed. The occasion then, we think, is not favorable for a minute and impartial examination of the late lord's productions. We purpose, on the contrary, merely to glance at some of the salient points of his career and peculiar characteristics of his genius.

He

There are more reasons than one which render the death so lately announced to us by the terse cable dispatch, an event peculiarly impressive. Bulwer-for it is difficult to make the early familiar name give place to the later was the last of the great English novelists that commenced their career at about the same period. The old generation is dying out, we must look for new men to succeed them; but where are they to be found? Nay, even if their equals or superiors were at hand and waiting to entertain and instruct us, we could not, without a pang, see the last link broken that united us to an elder age. Moreover, Bulwer was an eminently representative man

of a class which there seems a strong disposition just now to abate as a nuisance, the long-descended, high-spirited, cultivated and polished gentlemen of England. Will the feverish life of the future afford opportunity for such careful study and elaborate culture? If we are to have no more such men, it is natural that we should feel the mòre keenly the loss of so fine a specimen of a class about to become extinct.

Again, various as were the fields of the late author's literary activity, marked as were the differences between his works, and striking as were the contrasts between his characters, he yet projected with wonderful distinctness his own individuality into his writings. On every book, however they may have differed, he left his peculiar impress, which the least sagacious critic could hardly mistake. It was like hearing the same performer on a great variety of instruments. Hence it was that between the appreciative reader and himself there arose a close and interesting relation. When a thought peculiarly Bulwerian appeared there was a smile of pleased recognition; when he seemed to run counter to his ordinary tone of reflection, a start of surprise, followed by an immediate effort to reconcile the apparent contradiction, was the result. Thus there ran through his writings a twofold interest. On the one hand, we were interested in the work; on the other, in the writer, his views, his sentiments, his own personal development and progress. Hence it is that even those of his fictions least meritorious as works of art are never devoid of interest. This strong individual nature impressing itself so constantly upon his writings; produces a feeling for the man distinct from the author, and causes the intelligence of his death to communicate a shock to many of his readers, which at first sight might appear unnatural in regard to one known to them only through the medium of his works. Somewhat in contrast with this peculiarity is another, not less strongly marked, which we have already glanced at, viz: the marvellous variety of his productions. If we look only at his prose fictions, it is sufficiently astonishing that the man who wrote Pelham should also have written Zanoni - that the author of Harold should have been the author of What Will He Do With It?-that The Last Days of Pompeii should have proceeded from the same pen as Paul Clifford. But this is by no means the whole. The great novelist has also been a poet, an essayist, a historian, an orator, and a dramatist; in almost all these fields has achieved decided success, has met in none with decided failure. There is something wonderful in such breadth of range, such comprehensiveness of culture. When we recollect that he has in addition been a man of fashion, a student, a traveller, and an active politician, that in the intervals of original composition he has given relaxation to his mind, not by complete repose, but by applying himself to translation, and that he has written a political pamphlet of which more than twenty editions were called for within a few weeks, and a comedy which had a longer run on its first performance than The School for Scandal, we may well stand astonished at the spectacle of such almost incredible intellectual activity. In this life there seems to have been no time set apart for repose or relaxation; his only rest

was change of labor. It is this "many-sidedness" which has enabled him to attract readers of such various conditions and characters. He has sentiment for the romantic, reflection for the thoughtfu!, information for the curious, wit, knowledge of the world, and narrative interest for all capable of appreciating them. Old and young, serious and light-hearted, the retired scholar, the gay votary of pleasure, the ardent dreamer, the active man of business, all can find in his works something suited to their respective characters and tastes. Closely connected with this eclecticism of character and culture is that knowledge of the world with which his pages abound. seemed to have taken for his motto,

"Homo sum, et humanum nil a me alienum puto,"

He

and to have adhered to it faithfully. He labored assiduously in the vocation he had chosen ; he studied much and variously; his life was as full and as various. Nothing that "comes home to men's business and bosoms" seemed to him unworthy of attention. No class of society, no marked individual type was devoid of interest for him. Man, as he existed in his own England or in foreign countries, at the apex or the base of the social pyramid, was the object of his zealous and unwearying study. His interest never flags in tracing the progressive development of individual character, in pointing out the possibilities open to human nature; in either extreme he is equally at home. has drawn with the same masterly hand the portrait of Lord Lilburne and of Jasper Losely. His own unflagging interest in the characters which he presents and the pictures which he paints, sustains the interest of the reader. When we have once entered into his conception, it is almost impossible not to sympathise with the zeal and earnestness with which he sets himself to work it out.

He

In the case of many authors the public verdict is almost unanimous as to their best work, or, at any rate, as to their two or three best works. Not so with Lord Lytton. In a large circle of admirers perhaps no two could be found to agree upon his masterpiece, and each would maintain the claims of his favorite work with equal confidence. Striking as are the peculiarities of his style and his thoughts, his severest critic could not say of his productions, with even the appearance of truth necessary to give currency to the sneer, Ex uno disce OMNIA. Another peculiarity which distinguishes all the various classes of his writings is the polished and scholarly air by which they are pervaded. Not that they are by any means free from defects of style and language. It will be remembered that he laughingly confessed to Lady Blessington his inability to contend with grammatical difficulties. Nevertheless, there is an air, a grace, difficult to define, impossible not to feel a nameless something breathing from his pages that unmistakably proclaims the scholar and the gentleman. This is partly due, no doubt, to that exquisite taste which, as Lord Brougham has observed in his sketch of Fox, intimate acquaintance with the classics bestows; partly also to his thorough familiarity with the beau monde. There existed in him an extraordinary combination. He was a patient student and an indefatigable writer, but he was also a man of the world and of fashion, an habitué of the most

exclusive circles, a distinguished member of the most brilliant and polished society in Europe. Herein consists one great charm of his writings. On the other hand, any tendency which this might have been supposed to foster towards partial and contracted views in art, was more than counterbalanced by that various and almost universal interest, that energetic spirit of inquiry and research, which we have already noticed. Thus we are not surprised to learn that he spent his college vacations in rambling on foot through England and Scotland, that he made a horseback tour about the same period through France, and that he obtained a commission in a cavalry regimentnay, so far did this spirit of adventure, this desire of exploring the various and complex modes and phases of life carry him, that it has been conjectured that he at one period joined for a short time a gypsy tribe in their wanderings. "Reflection in one's chamber and action in the world," he writes to a friend, "are the best critics. With them we can dispense with other teachers; without them, all teachers are in vain." Few physicians have adhered so closely to their own prescription; but he might well have added study to reflection. This omission, however, proceeded from no want of appreciation of the advantages of study; for no man theoretically or practically rated them more highly than Lord Lytton.

If we turn now from the examination of the late distinguished author's intellectual peculiarities as displayed in his works, to contemplate briefly the events of his life, we are struck at once and forcibly by the fullness and variety to which we have already adverted while commenting on his writings. Never was presented a better illustration of the great dramatist's oft-quoted line:

"And one man in his time plays many parts."

Even in his youth he might have exclaimed with his own Maltravers, "J'ai vécu beaucoup dans peu d'années"; prolonged as his career was to the borders of age, he seemed to have concentrated a score of ordinary lives into his sixty-seven years, so various were the spheres of his activity, so diverse the objects of his pursuit.

Not less noteworthy are his perseverance, his patience of labor, his indomitable resolution to succeed, or, at least, to do all that in him lay to command success. Failure seemed but to add new zeal and energy to his efforts. The fact that he had succeeded in one thing made him not an iota better satisfied with defeat in another. He was not content to be a successful novelist, and abandon the drama after the somewhat discouraging reception of his first venture in that direction. The partial failure of the Duchesse de la Vallière on the stage spurred him on to the production of The Lady of Lyons. The night of its first appearance was one of double triumph to the author. He had made a successful speech in the House of Commons, and reached the theatre in time to hear the thunders of applause which greeted the first performance of his play. What must have been his reflections as he recalled the hostile critics who had derided alike his pretensions as a dramatist and as an orator?

It is well known that Bulwer made more than one false start before he achieved reputation by the publication of Pelham. Making all due