‘The Coming Race,’ published anonymously and never acknowledged during his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark his limitations.  It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative imagination.  It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly commonplace.  The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward.  Yet it is full of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of “vrii” has been much commended.  But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer something loftier and broader than is discoverable here.  In inventing the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental make-up, and the result could not but be dismal.  We like to believe that there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than most men have time to accumulate.

[Illustration:  Signature:]

THE AMPHITHEATRE

From ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’

On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women, their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flowerbed; it is needless to add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches appropriated to the young and the unmarried men.  On the lower seats round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors—­the magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity:  the passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants.  Strong palings at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey.  Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed.  Throughout the whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators.  The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the task of fixing the vast awning (or velaria) which covered the whole, and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves:  it was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad stripes of crimson.  Owing either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of the circumference, the task was always one of great