Or, to continue in this charming vein of parable, the author of Pelham may be likened to Beau Tibbs.  Tibbs, as we all remember, would pass for a pink of fashion, and had a wife whom he presented to the world as a paragon of virtue and ton, and who was but the cast-off mistress of a lord.  Mr. Bulwer’s philosophy is his Mrs. Tibbs; he thrusts her forward into the company of her betters, as if her rank and reputation never admitted of a question.  To all his literary undertakings this goddess of his accompanies him; what a cracked, battered truly she is! with a person and morals that would suit Vinegar yard, and a chastity that would be hooted in Drury Lane.

The morality which Mr. Bulwer has acquired in his researches, political and metaphysical, is of the most extraordinary nature.  For one who is always preaching of Truth of Beauty, the dulness of his moral sense is perfectly ludicrous.  He cannot see that the hero into whose mouth he places his favourite metaphysical gabble—­his dissertations about the stars, the passions, the Greek plays, and what not—­his eternal whine about what he calls the good and the beautiful—­is a fellow as mean and paltry as can be well imagined; a man of rant, and not of action; foolishly infirm of purpose, and strong only in desire; whose beautiful is a tawdry strumpet, and whose good would be crime in the eyes of an honest man.  So much for the portrait of Ernest Maltravers:  as for the artist, we cannot conceive a man to have failed more completely.  He wishes to paint an amiable man, and he succeeds in drawing a scoundrel:  he says he will give us the likeness of a genius, and it is only the picture of a humbug.

Ernest Maltravers is an eccentric and enthusiastic young man, to whom we are introduced upon his return from a German university.  Fond of wild adventure and solitary rambles, we find him upon a heath, wandering alone, tired, and benighted.  The two first chapters of the book are in Mr. Bulwer’s very best manner; the description of the lone hut to which the lad comes—­the ruffian who inhabits it—­the designs which he has upon the life of his new guest, and the manner in which his daughter defeats them, are told with admirable liveliness and effect.  The young man escapes, and with him the girl who had prevented his murder.  Both are young, interesting, and tender hearted; she loves but him, and would die of starvation without him.  Ernest Maltravers cannot resist the claim of so unprotected a creature; he hires a cottage for her, and a writing-master.  He is a young man of genius, and generous dispositions; he is a Christian, and instructs the ignorant Alice in the awful truth of his religion; moreover he is deep in poetry, philosophy, and the German metaphysics.  How should such a Christian instruct an innocent and beautiful child, his pupil?  What should such a philosopher do?  Why seduce her, to be sure!  After a deal of namby-pamby Platonism, the girl, as