Sectarianism we have known carried so far that persons of the same rank in society would never interchange civilities, because they happened to belong to different communions. What sort of a meeting might one imagine between a Quaker and an Episcopalian, a Baptist and a Catholic, a Jew and a New-Jerusalemite-in heaven ? On earth, they can hardly sit in the same room together!

The most original and refined wit can be relished only by a very few. The grosser mind is more popular. A delicate wit requires fine judgment to appreciate it. A wit needs to have his audience packed..

Extremes are bad things, (it is generally allowed,) and those placed in them are the worst judges in the world of relative merit. Thus the solid man thinks the gay companion a mere trifler; while the latter esteems the former a very dull fellow. Imaginative persons cannot endure judicious people, nor can the man of method be captivated by flights of fancy.

Truth is like medicine: we can take neither without something sweet to remove its unpleasant taste.

Grave men see no difference between a buffoon and a man of genuine wit. They laugh with similar relish at absurd antics or delicate repartees.

Maxims contain the pure essence of truth.

Rules are the result of experience.

Melancholy passes for sulkiness, merriment for frivolity, honesty for rudeness, and courtesy for cunning; self-denial for ostentation, decision for obstinacy; pity is called weakness, while justice is called severity. The world is governed by names.

Want of sympathy, and deficiency in the power of expression, contribute to render a highly sensitive being wretched.

The traveller wonders why all the world is not travelling.

It is a singular thing to remark how differently a man is affected by the same passions and sentiments at different periods.

The most eccentric man is often the most reasonable-following nature

What are called paradoxes are frequently old truths in a new dress or disguise.

The malice of our enemies often conduces to our benefit and to their harm.

With the great mass of mankind, delicacy and refinement in wit, humor, sentiment and criticism constitute affectation. Quaint fancies and brilliant conceits pass under the same name.

The blackest man is a white person painted to resemble a negro : so the fairest saint, when he plays the hypocrite, (no uncommon thing,) makes the vilest sinner in the world.

We gain the respect of mankind by expressing their vices. We are rewarded with their contempt by dwelling on their good qualities. Swift is feared, hated and admired; Mackenzie is liked, pitied and despised.

Satire is the most useful of all forms of writing. Sentiment is literally wasted upon nineteen readers out of twenty.

We must expect to make enemies if we will tell the truth : therefore we cease.

No contemporary writer surpasses Mr. Bulwer, either in pretension or popularity. The admirable successor of Smollet and Fielding, Mr. Dickens, equals him in the last respect, but is, withal, a very modest man-for an author. The first named gentleman is the most successful of literary imposters, having palmed off more absurdity and nonsense on the public than any other writer of the present day. Possessing one quality alone in perfection, he has obtained from a skilful exercise of it, the credit of possessing all others. Were we weak enough to be deluded by the baits he holds out in his prefaces, we should have considered him the most original of writers, as well as the profoundest of philosophers. He speaks of analyzing certain passions and painting characters, as if no one Lad

* 1838--9.

ever succeeded before in similar attempts. He will show how faulty other writers have been, to infer his own superiority-building his own reputation on the ruins and fragments of other writers, like those modern architects who would erect edifices of stone from the defaced statues of antiquity.

As a writer of fiction, Mr. Bulwer has attempted much : let us see what he has really accomplished. In what has he succeeded, or in what failed? His failures, in our estimate, predominate so greatly, that we will begin with them.

His chief characters are, lovers, students, fine gentlemen, men of the world, and public personages. The first are anything but true and sincere; they are, rather, elegant libertines. His studentsintended, as we supposed, as representatives of their author under different phases-are good critics enough, and shrewd observers, but feverish in their aspirations, and misanthropic. His fine gentle. men and men of the world, are well drawn; this is his forte, and he executes it con amore. He is strongest in delineating heartlessness and worldly folly. Of late, since he has been elevated into public life, he has conceived a great passion for describing public men. An intense egotism pervades all his characters. He draws from himself, we suspect, for most of his material; and from the singleness of his own character, there results a great sameness in all his works. His egotism, too, is not of the frank, relying nature of the great old writers, but it is an uneasy composition of artificial modesty and irritable vanity. All of the dramatis personæ are cut after the same pattern, and made from the same block; each one of a class resembles all the others of the same class. Their sentiments are provided for the occasion-second-hand, not of spontaneous growth; they set awkwardly on them.

His philosophy is borrowed from the French; his head is filled with maxims drawn from the moralists of that nation, and from Latin writers. He is a great admirer of Helvetius-a sensualist, a glittering, paradoxical sophist. He is a Frenchman in disguise, with nothing of the Englishman about him; without the brilliancy of the former, and certainly, destitute of the solidity of the latter. His intellect is of an intermediate quality between the two. He affects the metaphysical critic and speculatist; but is a most shallow theorist in morals, though nice in discriminating artificial characters,

and their governing motives. His morality is most dangerous in its tendency, and licentious to the core. He is thought very philosophical by those who study metaphysics in works of fiction-the last resort of "divine philosophy."

In point of style, he is mechanical, elaborate, strained, and tedious. There is no easy current or plain groundwork; everything is perked into the reader's face. He writes as one who reads everything in an emphatic tone. All his sentences out to be printed in capitals, for he tries to be startling in every phrase. He has no repose-no calm-no dignity. He has striking observations, but seems to care little about their truth. His style is partly French, partly German, and slightly English. In his epigrammatic passages, which are his best, he is French; in his rhapsodies, where he drops down plump into the region of bombast, he is German; and in his prefaces, where he aims at elegant criticism, he is a writer of most slovenly English. His familiarity is labored and heavy, his trifling ridiculous and silly. To trifle with elegance is a nice art, and Mr. Bulwer cannot acquire it; the more eagerly he pursues it, the worse he writes. He is utterly deficient in humor; and the semblance of wit he has is a certain smartness, the effect of style. He has none of Irving's fine description and nice skill in the conduct of his narratives. He is a great admirer of Tom Jones; why not study that perfect narrative?-perfect, at least, as a work of art. His story is inharmonious in the management of incident, and abrupt. He has no power of fusion in his mind, and cannot melt down his materials into a continuous whole. Everything stands out by itself-the incidents being the essence of commonplace. His high personages are inflated talkers, his low characters retailers of ribaldry and vulgarity. His essays at eloquence are lamentable instances of sheer rhapsody. What, then, has he? Why, these practical qualities, which carry everything before them. He knows the public taste well; just what it will take-how much it will bear. He has calculated all the chances of imposition, and is familiar with the art of making the most of the very meanest materials. He has tact, and great industry; a very clever compiler of romances. He is a perfect master of all the tricks of authorship and all the devices of book-making. He wants nature and genius, but he has ability and perseverance. No one can deny his general scholarship and criti

cal acumen; but then he has a Frenchman's taste, being easily caught by glitter. The high opinions he entertains of Young, and writers of his description, discovers the tone of his taste very plainly.

He is the painter of the fasionable world and of artificial life. He rules supreme in the dress-circle and the salon. He is a master of badinage and railery. Into the world of nature he has never found entrance; to natural passion, which, "masterless, sways us to the mood of what she likes or loathes," he is an utter stranger. Whenever he assumes enthusiasm-for it never has the appearance of rising out of the subject-he writes with a bastard heat, as different from genuine enthusiasm, as gold leaf is different from pure gold, or as fire painted on the canvas, is different from the real element. He wants the lofty dignity of the greatest intellects, but frets and fumes on every occasion, into something like declamation. In fine, he is a skilful literary manufacturer, but will rank with the Capulets twenty years hence. If he lives that length of time, he will outlive his own reputation; and may cry out, if wise, with goodnatured Master Betty, in the decline of life, “Oh, Memory, Memory!" &c.

XLV.

TABLE TALK.

THE SCOTCH SCHOOL.

THE Scotch are a prudent, and cautious, and logical people. They are prone to inquire into the reason, search out the cause, and deduce the effect, of everything. They are close reasoners rather than deep thinkers. They examine much better than they speculate. Philosophical invention they have none, whether in theory, argument, or illustration. They abhor paradox, but take refuge in commonplace. More attached to fact than opinion, they are oftener governed by statistics than by se timents. They are better ac