brimming with character. The states-weakness, his heart falls back into the man Egerton, the noble and princely fond illusions of his early years, and beHarley, romantic wandering knight and fore we know where we are, lo! we are sentimental adventurer, yet capable of all swept back into romance, and find a mothe higher uses of the State when his mentary refuge from the too clear dayhour comes; the young poet Leonard, so light in that old Arcadia of the poets, finely touched in his visionary yet simple that land where every soul has lingered nature, generous, proud, hasty, impas- one time or another; that impossible sioned, yet humble as genius is, and as paradise where the Two dwell, the primready to repent as to err; the group of itive hero and heroine, the original of all Avenels; the ruined man of letters, Bur- tales. After so many hard and real laley,- how fine, how lifelike is every de- bours through the stony pathways of life, tail! Yet amid all these we turn back to we leave our heroes, each with his Vioour two philosophers with a deeper at- lante or his Helen, in bliss incomparable, traction. The perfection of Lord Lyt- beyond the measure of everyday existton's own philosophy as well as of his ence. This power of returning to the old creative power is in Riccabocca and Par- canons of art-this possibility now and son Dale. then of falling back twenty years or so, and interpolating a chapter of youth into the wiser conclusions of maturity, may or may not increase our reverence for the greatness of the writer; but it is everything for his art. It makes of it just that mingled draught which is most sweet to our lips-the true, the wise, the sad, consenting still to mix themselves with the bright, the ignorant, the happy. Only so can life be truly represented - life which is not all real, strange though the the words may seem, which finds much of its sweetness in illusion, which takes its rare draughts of joy oftenest in dreams - dreams truer than the facts, more real than flesh and blood.

We will not enter into any controversy as to the respective greatness of the names which in our age have illustrated the art of fiction. Each has his different gift, and there is room enough in the literary firmament for all these lights. But howsoever others may excel though one may trace more deeply the hidden springs of character, and another fathom with a more penetrating insight the movements of universal nature we remain unshaken in our opinion that "My Novel" is, as a novel, the most brilliant and perfect of contemporary works of fiction. George Eliot goes deeper, is more realistic, more potent in her grasp, more concentrated in power and thoughtfulness; and Thack- While we acknowledge, however, this eray is much more universally behind the charm of youthfulness, this remnant of scenes, more knowing about all the se- Bulwerism which gives an additional atcrets that lie just under the surface. traction to " My Novel," we must not Neither of these great writers is capable, omit to notice how this book comes in to if we may use the expression, of being the deeper unity of Lord Lytton's works. taken in; the one with a serious perti- The lesson that it teaches is the same nacity of gaze which fathoms nature, the lesson which he has dwelt upon in mystic other with a malicious, half-diabolical, story, and which has led him in to the infallible keenness of vision which lets realms of the unseen for examples to ennothing slip-defy all the arts and all force his moral. The very key-note of the simplicities of man-and woman much of his philosophy is to be found in and are beyond the reach of illusion. But the interview which Riccabocca and ParLord Lytton is never beyond it. Even son Dale hold with Leonard Fairfield in while he rises into the depths of wisdom his cottage, when the sages bring all the with his sages, he is still as ready to be force of their wisdom to contest the prindeluded as they are, and as capable of ciple, upon which the half-taught boy seeing through Leonard's poet-eyes, and sets himself so proudly, that knowledge of throwing a mist of the most rainbow- is power. The Parson's admirable, spirtinted romance round Harley L'Estrange, ited, and startling assertion some time as if he were twenty. Human nature has later that the Devil himself is a failure, still corners for him, nooks here and there is, as it were, the spirit of our author's where the gossamer still sparkles with all teaching made into a maxim. Randal the dews of morning, where the glory is Leslie, the elaborately-designed and careever on the grass, and splendour in the fully drawn villain, is an illustration of flower. He is not always a philosopher, the same principle, with a difference, as an analyzer, a revealer of mysteries. By is the Faun-man Margrave which is times his eyes are veiled over with human 'the insufficiency, unsuccessfulness, mean

ness, and misery of selfish Knowledge | mour in our eyes and blind us to the fact. vulgarly supposed to be Power. How He does blind us so far that we accept far we may receive this as true to fact - the graceful outline enveloped in rainwhether, indeed, the world has wisdom bow-mists of beautiful effect as the symenough in reality to neutralize the advan-bol of WOMAN woman the consoler, wotages of the unscrupulous possessor of man the inspirer, as he himself says. Knowledge and whether, after all, Self- The abstraction is enough for him—he ishness is, so far as external successes has no need for anything further; neither, go, not the best policy. -are questions we suppose, has the majority of readers, into which we need not enter. But at all or the typical would not have been so events, in an age of which Selfishness is long and so placidly accepted instead the special vice (as indeed it is in most of the personal. There is one other ages), the lesson is a worthy one; and point in which the tether is equally visthe curious lines of thought involved ible. The poor are out of Lord Lytton's merit the attention of the reader. Fiction range. He understands gentlemen — and which takes the trouble to enforce such a he understands the cunning hanger-on lesson at all—a moral entirely within its of gentlemen, the rogue, the money-lendrange and which can be embraced in er, the blackleg-but he does not unstory without any artificial strain of inci- derstand the other classes into which dent or purpose · takes by that very aim humanity is divided. In his later books, a higher place than that which nowadays and especially in "My Novel," he attains the art seems dropping into. To make a to a certain power in the one group of novel into a personal plea against some the Avenels; and he is also partially public or private wrong, or to interweave successful in some of the attendant and with romance a demonstration of the or- secondary figures in "What will he do dinary daily economical miseries of life, with it?"-a work which we have not tradesmen's overcharges, house-agents' | left ourselves space to discuss, but which devices, &c., is as little harmonious to the uses of fiction as can well be conceived. But the bigger principle fits well into its place in the large and wide picture of men and women, of life and thought.

contains in the noble vagabond Waife one of his finest creations. But all his previous works are signally unsuccessful in this special region. His peasants and his Cockneys talk an unimaginable jargon, and are as fictitious as the villagers in an opera. It is curious to recognize the points in which one man of genius compensates the world for the deficiencies of another. Dickens evidently felt the same insuperable difficulties in the portrayal of a gentleman.

Of men and women; perhaps it would be wiser to say of men only; for Lord Lytton, with all his gifts, did not possess that of drawing women. It is rare among men - almost if not quite as rare as the faculty of representing men is among women, though the failure in the one case is very much less remarked No, we have no time to speak of Waife upon, and less noticeable indeed, from the -wayward as the genius that produced fact that women have but lately come to him, faulty, foolish, generous, noble- the occupy leading places in works of fiction. most wise, witty, tender, patient, and acA beautiful and sweet abstraction of wo-complished of vagabonds: it is doing mankind, with hair, eyes, throat, &c., nicely put in, with smiles and tears handy, and a few pretty speeches, is all that is really necessary for a heroine of the good old-fashioned type. Lord Lytton has two of these types, the heroic and the gentle, as indeed Sir Walter also had; and most novelists of eminence keep within these safe lines. The sentimental splendour of Violante, the sugary sweetness of Helen, may dazzle the hasty reader; but how to come to any sort of realization of these young women we are unable to inform him. Every mortal man has his tether and here is one region in which Lord Lytton's tether is apparent, though he does his best by glowing diction and lavish sentiment to throw gla

him injustice, indeed, to introduce him at the end, who merits one of the chief niches in the gallery. We place this bowed and travel-worn figure, lowly yet lofty, by the side of Austin Caxton, Riccabocca, and Parson Dale. He completes the cycle worthily, though in his essence he is a vagabond - a wanderer over the face of the earth. Perhaps Lord Lytton hoped in his Guy Darrell, in his Harley L'Estrange, to strike a higher note; but his genial and gentle sages are his greatest achievement. We can suggest no shadow on their perfection, nothing that could raise him and them to a purer, more real or more ideal elevation. They are the quintessence of his work and of his art.

The forehead, indeed, was the man's most remarkable feature. It could not but prepossess the beholder. When, in private theatricals, he had need to alter the character of his countenance, he did it effectually, merely by forcing down his hair till it reached his eyebrows. He no longer then looked like the same man.

The same reason which prevents us | commune, might rather be noticeable for entering into the last of the Caxton group an aspect of hardy frankness, suiting well of novels, also forbids the discussion of with the clear-cut, handsome profile, and Lord Lytton's other appearances before the rich dark auburn hair, waving carethe world. His public life and his poet-lessly over one of those broad open foreical works are alike beyond our space. heads, which, according to an old writer, But we leave these with the less regret seem the "frontispiece of a temple dedithat while his success in both is well cated to Honour." known, it is as a novelist that his fame was won, and as a novelist he will be known to posterity. Taking him all in all, no man of his generation has achieved the same brilliancy of success, or has so true a claim to be the leading and typical novelist of his day. Most of us have recognized him in that capacity since our earliest recollection. And if we cannot The person I describe has been already raise him to the side of Scott, he is at introduced to the reader as Graham Vane. least the one of all our contemporaries But perhaps this is the fit occasion to who has most followed Scott's traditions, enter into some such details as to his and kept in the line marked out by that parentage and position as may make the Father of Story. The many though bril-introduction more satisfactory and comliant faults of his youth were more than made up in his riper age. It would be unbecoming on our part to say anything here of the tale now publishing in our pages, which unites the Bulwer of the past with the Lytton of recent years, in a union which has become affecting by the fact that so much of the work will be posthumous. But we need have no hesitation in repeating what all critics and readers have allowed, that no nobler monuments could be raised to the name of an author, and no finer or more high-toned productions given to the literature of a country, than the three noble Tales which mark the maturity of Lord Lytton's intellect, and the highest level which pure fiction has reached in the present age.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE PARISIANS.

BY LORD LYTTON.

BOOK SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

It is several weeks after the date of the last chapter; the lime-trees in the Tuileries are clothed in green.

In a somewhat spacious apartment on the ground-floor in the quiet locality of the Rue d'Anjou, a man was seated, very still, and evidently absorbed in deep thought, before a writing-table placed close to the window.

Seen thus, there was an expression of great power both of intellect and of character in a face which, in ordinary social

plete.

His father, the representative of a very ancient family, came into possession, after a long minority, of what may be called a fair squire's estate, and about half a million in moneyed investments, inherited on the female side. Both land and money were absolutely at his disposal, unencumbered by entail or settlement. He was a man of a brilliant, irregular genius, of princely generosity, of splendid taste, of a gorgeous kind of pride closely allied to a masculine kind of vanity. As soon as he was of age he began to build, converting his squire's hall into a ducal palace. He then stood for the county, and in days before the first Reform Bill, when a county election was to the estate of a candidate what a long war is to the debt of a nation. won the election; he obtained early successes in Parliament. It was said by good authorities in political circles that, if he chose, he might aspire to lead his party, and ultimately to hold the first rank in the government of his country.

He

That may or may not be true; but certainly he did not choose to take the trouble necessary for such an ambition. He was too fond of pleasure, of luxury, of pomp. He kept a famous stud of racers and hunters. He was a munificent patron of art. His establishments, his entertainments, were on a par with those of the great noble who represented the loftiest (Mr. Vane would not own it to be the eldest) branch of his genealogical tree.

He became indifferent to political contests, indolent in his attendance at

This gentleman, at the age of forty, married the dowerless daughter of a poor but distinguished naval officer, of noble family, first cousin to the Duke of Alton. He settled on her a suitable jointure, but declined to tie up any portion of his property for the benefit of children by the marriage. He declared that so much of his fortune was invested either in mines, the produce of which was extremely fluctuating, or in various funds, over rapid transfers in which it was his amusement and his interest to have control, unchecked by reference to trustees, that entails and settlements on children were an inconvenience he declined to incur.

the House, speaking seldom, not at great party that he should accept one of the length nor with much preparation, but highest offices in the new Cabinet. He with power and fire, originality and acquitted himself well as an administragenius; so that he was not only effective tor, but declared, no doubt honestly, that as an orator, but combining with elo- he felt like Sinbad released from the old quence, advantages of birth, person, sta- man on his back, when, a year or two tion, the reputation of patriotic indepen- afterwards, he went out of office with his dence, and genial attributes of character, party. No persuasions could induce him he was an authority of weight in the to come in again; nor did he ever again scales of party. take a very active part in debate. "No," said he, "I was born to the freedom of a private gentleman - intolerable to me is the thraldom of a public servant. But I will bring up my son so that he may acquit the debt which I decline to pay to my country." There he kept his word. Graham had been carefully educated for public life, the ambition for it dinned into his ear from childhood. In his schoolvacations his father made him learn and declaim chosen specimens of masculine oratory; engaged an eminent actor to give him lessons in elocution; bade him frequent theatres, and study there the effect which words derive from looks and gesture; encouraged him to take part himself in private theatricals. To all this Besides, he held notions of his own the boy lent his mind with delight. He as to the wisdom of keeping children had the orator's inborn temperament; dependent on their father. "What num-quick, yet imaginative, and loving the bers of young men," said he, "are ruined sport of rivalry and contest. Being also, in character and in fortune by knowing in his boyish years, good-humoured and that when their father dies they are certain of the same provision, no matter how they displease him; and in the meanwhile forestalling that provision by recourse to usurers.' These arguments might not have prevailed over the bride's father a year or two later, when, by the death of intervening kinsmen, he became Duke of Alton; but in his then circumstances the marriage itself was so much beyond the expectations which the portionless daughter of a sea-captain has the right to form, that Mr. Vane had it all his own way, and he remained absolute master of his whole fortune, save of that part of his landed estate on which his wife's jointure was settled; and even from this encumbrance he was very soon freed. His wife died in the second year of marriage, leaving an only son Graham. He grieved for her loss with all the passion of an impressionable, ardent, and powerful nature. Then for a while he sought distraction to his sorrow by throwing himself into public life with a devoted energy he had not previously displayed.

His speeches served to bring his party into power, and he yielded, though reluctantly, to the unanimous demand of that

joyous, he was not more a favourite with the masters in the schoolroom than with the boys in the play-ground. Leaving Eton at seventeen, hs entered at Cambridge, and became, in his first term, the most popular speaker at the Union.

But his father cut short his academical career, and decided, for reasons of his own, to place him at once in Diplomacy. He was attached to the Embassy at Paris, and partook of the pleasures and dissipations of that metropolis too keenly to retain much of the sterner ambition to which he had before devoted himself. Becoming one of the spoiled darlings of fashion, there was great danger that his character would relax into the easy grace of the Epicurean, when all such loiterings in the Rose Garden were brought to abrupt close by a rude and terrible change in his fortunes.

His father was killed by a fall from his horse in hunting; and when his affairs were investigated, they were found to be hopelessly involved - apparently the assets would not suffice for the debts. The elder Vane himself was probably not aware of the extent of his liabilities. He had never wanted ready-money to the last. He could always obtain that from a

money-lender, or from the sale of his funded investments. But it became obvious, on examining his papers, that he knew at least how impaired would be the heritage he should bequeath to a son whom he idolized. For that reason he had given Graham a profession in diplomacy, and for that reason he had privately applied to the Ministry for the Viceroyalty of India, in the event of its speedy vacancy. He was eminent enough not to anticipate refusal, and with economy in that lucrative post much of his pecuniary difficulties might have been redeemed, and at least an independent provision secured for his son.

Graham, like Alain de Rochebriant, allowed no reproach on his father's memory indeed, with more reason than Alain, for the elder Vane's fortune had at least gone on no mean and frivolous dissipation.

It had lavished inself on encouragement to art on great objects of public beneficence - on public-spirited aid of political objects; and even in mere selfish enjoyments there was a certain grandeur in his princely hospitalities, in his munificent generosity, in a warm-hearted carelessness for money. No indulgence in petty follies or degrading vices aggravated the offence of the magnificent squan

derer.

"Let me look on my loss of fortune as a gain to myself," said Graham, manfully. "Had I been a rich man, my experience of Paris tells me that I should most likely have been a very idle one. Now that I have no gold, I must dig in myself for iron."

The man to whom he said this was an uncle-in-law —if I may use that phrase the Right Hon. Richard King, popularly styled "the blameless King."

This gentleman had married the sister of Graham's mother, whose loss in his infancy and boyhood she had tenderly and anxiously sought to supply. It is impossible to conceive a woman more fitted to invite love and reverence than was Lady Janet King, her manners were so sweet and gentle, her whole nature so elevated and pure.

guished member of Parliament, of irreproachable character, and ample fortune inherited from a distant kinsman, who had enriched himself as a merchant. It was on both sides a marriage of love.

It is popularly said that a man uplifts a wife to his own rank; it as often happens that a woman uplifts her husband to the dignity of her own character. Richard King rose greatly in public estimation after his marriage with Lady Janet.

She united to a sincere piety a very active and a very enlightened benevolence. She guided his ambition aside from mere party politics into subjects of social and religious interest, and in devoting himself to these he achieved a position more popular and more respected than he could ever have won in the strife of party.

When the Government of which the elder Vane became a leading Minister was formed, it was considered a great object to secure a name so high in the religious world, so beloved by the working classes, as that of Richard King; and he accepted one of those places which, though not in the Cabinet, confers the rank of Privy Councillor.

When the brief-lived Administration ceased, he felt the same sensation of relief that Vane had felt, and came to the same resolution never again to accept office, but from different reasons, all of which need not now be detailed. Amongst them, however, certainly this: - He was exceedingly sensitive to opinion, thinskinned as to abuse, and very tenacious of the respect due to his peculiar character of sanctity and philanthropy. He writhed under every newspaper article that had made "the blameless King" responsible for the iniquities of the Government to which he belonged. In the loss of office he seemed to recover his former throne.

Mr. King heard Graham's resolution with a grave approving smile, and his interest in the young man became greatly increased. He devoted himself strenuously to the object of saving to Graham some wrecks of his paternal fortunes, and having a clear head and great experience in the transaction of business, he succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations formed by the family solicitor. A rich manufacturer was found to purchase at a fancy price the bulk of the estate with the palatial mansion, which the estate alone could never have sufficed Mr. King could, not, indeed, boast of to maintain with suitable establishments. noble ancestry, nor was he even a landed So that when all debts were paid, Graproprietor; but he was a not undistin-ham found himself in possession of a

Her father had succeeded to the dukedom when she married Mr. King, and the alliance was not deemed quite suitable. Still it was not one to which the Duke would have been fairly justified in refusing his assent.