e present half century has witnessed
the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even
Bacon's fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser
than any which Bacon's age believed. "The one is, in fact, the
natural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to exclude
the miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an
invariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man
rebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those 'blank
misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,' taking
refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages." It
was the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspired
the mystic creations of "Zanoni" and "A Strange Story." Of these works,
which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our
actual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show
that, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor
nature nature.

In "Zanoni" the author introduces us to two human beings who have
achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling,
calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other,
Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in
its utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and
absolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to
love, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his
love for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state,
to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child.
Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in order
to save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has delivered
him from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to
outlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is
the impersonation of thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives
on.

Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction,
as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend
it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
"Faust," deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest
to the mind something more subtl