t
which might have been derived from a complete amalgamation of the
materials into a consistent work of imagination. Considered also as a
reproduction of ancient men and manners it is strikingly defective.
With many fine strokes of the pencil, where the author confines
himself to the literal fact, his portraits, as a whole, are
overcharged with _Bulwerism_. His imagination is not a mirror. It can
reflect nothing without vitiating it. He does not possess the power of
passing a character through his mind and preserving its individuality.
It goes in as Harold, or Duke William, or Lafranc, but it comes out as
Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart.

The novel contains much of that seductive sentiment, half romantic,
half misanthropic, which is the characteristic of Bulwer's works, and
it is expressed with his usual beauty and brilliancy of style. Here
and there we perceive allusions to his own domestic affairs, which
none but Lady Bulwer can fully appreciate. Every reader of the novel
must be struck with its attempt at the moral tone. Edith, the heroine,
is the bride of Harold's soul, and Platonism appears in all its
splendor of self-denial and noble sentiments in a Saxon thane and his
maiden. History pronounces this lady to be his mistress, and it
certainly is a great stretch of the reader's charity to be compelled
to view her in the capacity of saint. Not only, however, in the loves
of Harold and Edith, but all over the novel, there is a constant
intrusion of ethical reflections, which will doubtless much edify all
young ladies of a tender age. These would be well enough if they
appeared to have any base in solid moral principle, but they are
somewhat offensive as the mere sentimentality of conscience and
religion, introduced for the purposes of fine writing. Suspicion,
also, always attaches to the morality which exhibits itself on
rhetorical stilts, and the refinement which is always proclaiming
itself refined. Since the time of Joseph Surface there has been a
great decline in the market price of noble sentiments.

_The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius
Caesar to the Reign of Victoria. By Mrs. Markham. A New
Edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

This is a new and revised edition of a work which has long been used
in the education of boys and girls. Its information is, of course,
milk for babes. We think that books of this class should be prepared
by persons very different from Mrs. Ma