other, feeling each other the world
itself, forgot their deliverance, and wept as for a departed sister.

* * * * *

The Last of the Barons

A romance of York and Lancaster's "long wars," "The Last of
the Barons" was published in 1843, shortly before the death of
Bulwer's mother, when, on inheriting the Knebworth estates, he
assumed the surname of Lytton. The story is an admirably
chosen historical subject, and in many respects is worked out
with even more than Lytton's usual power and effect. Incident
is crowded upon incident; revolutions, rebellions,
dethronements follow one another with amazing rapidity--all
duly authenticated and elaborated by powerful dialogue. It is
thronged with historical material, sufficient, according to
one critic, to make at least three novels. The period dealt
with, 1467-1471, witnessed the rise of the trading class and
the beginning of religious freedom in England. Lytton leans to
the Lancastrian cause, with which the fortunes of one of his
ancestors were identified, and his view of Warwick is more
favourable to the redoubtable "king-maker" than that of the
historians.

_I.--Warwick's Mission to France_

Lacking sympathy with the monastic virtues of the deposed Henry VI., and
happy in the exile of Margaret of Anjou, the citizens of London had
taken kindly to the regime of Edward IV. In 1467 Edward still owed to
Warwick the support of the more powerful barons, as well as the favour
of that portion of the rural population which was more or less dependent
upon them. But he encouraged, to his own financial advantage, the
enterprises of the burgesses, and his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville
and his favours to her kinsfolk indicated his purpose to reign in fact
as well as in name. The barons were restless, but the rising
middle-class, jealous of the old power of the nobles, viewed with
misgiving the projected marriage, at Warwick's suggestion, of the king's
sister Margaret and the brother of Louis XI. of France.

This was the position of affairs when young Marmaduke Nevile came to
London to enter the service of his relative the Earl of Warwick; and
some points of it were explained to the young man by the earl himself
when he had introduced the youth to his daughters, Isabel and Anne.

"God hath given me no son," he said. "Isabel of Warwick had been a
mate fo