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the play were of transcendent merit, the very name so presumptuously assumed would condem it as assuredly as John Galt's "Lady Macbeth" was condemned. But, in spite of this preliminary prejudice, Bulwer's Burley is not only as entirely different from Scott's, as a rough literary man of the nineteeth century must be from a rough soldier of the seventeenth; but as a picture of a strange, wild, half-mad man of genius, full, nevertheless, of the milk of human kindness, and of the warmest and noblest feelings, it is almost perfect, and of itself sufficient to immortalise the author.

In contemplating Bulwer's career, we are impressed, in fine, with one or two reflections of a somewhat interesting and important kind. It teaches us the might and worth which lie in determined struggle and invincible perseverance. We do not, by any means, dislike those splendid coup de mains of literary triumph we find in such cases as Byron, Macaulay, Charles Dickens, and Alexander Smith, all of whom "arose one morning and found themselves famous." Nay, we glory in them, as proofs of the power of the human mind, and as auguries of the more illustrious successes reserved for yet brighter and purer spirits in the future. They show what man can do, and hint what man yet may do. But we love still better to see a strong spirit slowly urging his way against opposition, often driven back but never discouraged, often perplexed but never in despair, often cast down but never destroyed, often falling but never fallen, and at last gaining a victory as undeniable as that of a jubilant summer sun. Such was Milton, such Johnson, such Burke, such Wordsworth, such Disraeli, and such Bulwer. The success of these men looks less like the result of accident, or of popular caprice, or of magic, and more like the just and lawful, although late, reward of that high merit which unites moral energy with intellectual prowess, and becomes thus far more useful as an example and a stimulus to others. Not one in a hundred millions can expect such a tropical sunrise of success as befell Byron; but any one who unites a considerable degree of capacity with indomitable determination, may become, if not a Bulwer, yet in his own department an eminent and influential man. We are still more struck with this perseverance, when we remember Bulwer's position in society. Possessed of rank

and ample fortune, he has labored as hard as any bookseller's hack in the empire; proving thus that his love for literature was as sincere as his ideal of it was high, and redeeming it from a certain shade of contempt which has of late, justly or unjustly, rested upon it. It cannot be denied that various causes, such as the poverty of many of our authors, and the mean shifts to which it has often reduced them; the dissipation and blackguardism of a few others; the envious spirit and quarrelsome disposition of a third class; the vast amount of mediocre writing which now pours from the press; the number of pretenders whom the hot and sudden sunlight of advancing knowledge has prematurely quickened into reptile life; not to speak of the engrossment of the public mind with commercial speculation and politics, and the contemptuous indifference of many of our aristocracy and many of our clergy to literary things and literary men, have all combined rather to lower Polite Letters in the eyes of the public. And nothing, on the other hand, can tend, or has tended more to reinstate it in its proper place of estimation than the fact, that not a few, distinguished and successful in other professions, in arts or in arms, at the bar or in the pulpit, have gloried in casting in their lot with this despised profession-have submitted to its drudgeries, borne its burdens, and aimed at and gained its laurels. Eminent lawyers have become literateurs. Eminent officers have become writers of travels. Eminent clergymen have become editors of periodicals and authors of scientific treatises. Eminent physicians, men of fashion, barristers, lords of session, and even peers of the realm, have all aspired to the honor connected with the name of Poet. And Bulwer has brought this to a bright climax, by blending the lustre of rank and riches with the distinctions of the highest literary celebrity. We fear that literature, as a profession, will never thrive to any great extent in this country. The gains of authors are becoming smaller and smaller in each section of the century; and the fact that all our literature threatens soon to be "afloat in the great gulf-stream of cheapness," will probably, we at least think, reduce them further still. In this case, we must depend more than ever upon the supplies from non-professional men, non-commissioned officers, shall we call them? in the great literary army. Nor need we fear that this will at

all deteriorate the value of literary productions. It will have, we think, precisely the opposite effect. Professional literateurs are often forced by necessity to put to press productions totally unworthy of their talents, and in general to dilute and weaken by diffusion their powers. It is obvious that those who write only when leisure permits, and the spur of impulse excites, are less liable to this temptation. And looking both to the past and present, we find that the greatest and best, on the whole, of our writers have not been authors by profession. Shakspeare's profession was not authorship, but the stage. Milton was a schoolmaster and a secretary. Addison, too, was a secretary of state. Pope was a man of private fortune. Fielding was a justice. Richardson kept a shop-so did Godwin. Cowper lived on his patrimony, and on gifts from his relatives. Wordsworth was a stampmaster. Croly is a rector. John Wilson was a professor. Shelley was a gentleman of fortune, and heir to a baronetcy. Byron was a peer. Carlyle has an estate. Browning is a man of fortune and family. Of Jeffrey, Macaulay, Sidney Smith, Hall, and Foster, we need not speak. And our present hero is the proprietor of Knebworth, as well as a scholar, orator, wit, novelist, and poet.

We close this paper by expressing our very hearty congratulations to Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer on his recent reception and appearances in Edinburgh; our warm gratitude for the hours of pleasure and profit his numerous works have given us; and an ardent wish that his future life may be calm and bright; and that the current of thought and feeling in his future works may take, still more decidedly than of late, a practical and a Christian course, and catch on its last waves the hues of heaven's light, blended with the tints of fancy and of poetry!

NO. VII.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI.*

THERE are two races, the contrast between whose former and present position is so deep and marked, as to produce the most melancholy reflections. We refer, of course, to the Greeks and the Jews. The ancient Greek was the noblest of nature's children; he was not so much a man as he was a petty god-or, rather, some statue that had walked down from its pedestal. Mrs. Jameson says of the Venus de Medici, that she looks as if she would come down if she could, while the Hercules Farnese looks as if he could come down if he would. Were he thus to descend, he were the alter idem of the nobler of the ancient Greeks, in whom beauty and grandeur met together-elegance and energy embraced each other-and in whom, if symmetry seemed sometimes to disguise strength, strength was ever present, albeit half-seen, to support the symmetry. Their very children were taught to contend for prizes for beauty, and had statues erected to them if they succeeded. Their style of dress was itself a dream of beauty. Their language was as picturesque as it was expressive and rich. They inhabited a country which to all the romantic variety of Scottish landscape added the richness and warmth of an oriental clime; now towering up into the snowy grandeur of Olympus, and now softening into the unparalleled luxuriance of the Vale of Tempe; here rugged as the defile of Thermopylae, and there panoramic as the Bay of Athens. The creations of their genius were just the projected images of their own beautiful selves. The heroes of their song were themselves, in shapes of sublime trial and ideal contest. Their gods were themselves-walking on the mountain-tops of imagination, and covered with celestial glory as with snow. Their hell was the contorted reflections of their own Macedonian defiles or Albanian deserts; and their heaven was the colored image of their own Cretan vales. Towering over this magnificent peoplethe heroes of a hero-land, the Mont Blancs of a mountain region-were the grand men of Greece, men whose names sound

*The Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, M. P.: a Literary and Political Biography, addressed to the New Generation.-Tancred. By B. DISRAELI.

yet like peals of thunder-Pericles, Epaminondas Demosthenes, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander, Plato, Homer-in whom the beauty of the land became all but divine, its strength Herculean, and its sublimity that of an Alp in the evening sun, or a hero of celestial race when his set time is come, and when he feels himself growing into a god. And then its statuary, so cool, and clear, and bright; and its oratory and logic, naked, nervous, and gigantic as a Thracian gladiator; and its drama, at once formal and fiery, passionate as the bosoms and one as the wall of Pandemonium; and its philosophy, seeking to draw down the secrets of the gods to men, even as Franklin afterwards led down the lightning from its cavern like a lion in a leash, and yoked it to the majestic car of human progress; and its poetry, either in its narratives and pictures, clear and literal as a mirror in the state-chamber of kingsor, in its choruses and dramatic raptures, deep and dithyrambic as that melancholy music which seeks, it is said, not altogether in vain, to soothe the agonies of the lost, and

"To mitigate and suage,

With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain,
From mortal or immortal minds!"

Such was Greece, such were the Grecians. What is it, and
what are they, now? Even in
mented freedom, what are they?

their late won and blocd-ceAlas! we must still say,

"'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more;"

and throw the shroud of silence over the corpse of the beautiful! Still more striking, however, is the contrast between the ancient and the modern Jews. As the Greeks were the favorite people of nature, the Jews were the chosen people of God. As the Greeks seemed their own deities come down to men, the Jews were the representatives of that inscrutable ONE who filleth immensity, and the praises thereof. In Him they lived, and moved, and had their being. As a nation, they rose and sunk on God as on a wave-now heaven-high, and now deep as the centre. Their progress seemed the progress of God's plan in the world; their decline the temporary retreat of the awful billow. In their prosperity they were like angels basking in the face of their Father-under their beat

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