are still extremely vivid.  D’Israeli’s chief literary, and perhaps also his chief political characteristic, was a constant endeavor to make striking effects.  The reader may be sure to find nothing commonplace in his writings.  Every scene and every character is painted in the brightest of colors.  If the background be sombre, it will simply throw out more brilliantly the figures in the foreground.  It is said that most men have a favorite word.  That of d’Israeli was “wondrous.”  He took his reader into wondrous baronial halls, filled with wondrous gems, with wondrous tapestries, with wondrous paintings, and introduced him to wondrous dukes and duchesses, looking out from wondrous dark orbs, and breathing through almond-shaped nostrils.  He loved to bring the royal family on the scene, and to trace the awe-inspiring effect of their august presence.  When we open a novel of d’Israeli’s we are certain of moving in a brilliant society, although one belonging to a yet undiscovered world.  Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe, irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and professional toad-eaters.  And over every thing is cast, by d’Israeli’s Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless coronets, and of soaring ambitions.  The political career of the Earl of Beaconsfield is one of the most remarkable in history, and even his opponents cannot withhold admiration from the great abilities and undaunted resolution which brought that career to its triumphant close.  But the novels of the Earl of Beaconsfield have little value beyond their reflection of his dreams and his ambition.

Among the most famous writers of fiction of the nineteenth century will always be mentioned the name of Sir Bulwer Lytton.  More than any other writer, he studied and developed the novel as a form of literature.  Almost every novelist has taken some special field and has confined himself to that.  Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray made occasional incursions on historic ground, but still their chief work was expended upon the novel of life and manners.  Lytton attempted, and successfully, every department of fiction.  In “Zanoni,” he gave to the world a novel of fancy; in “Pelham” and “The Disowned,” fashionable novels:  in “Paul Clifford,” a criminal novel; in “Rienzi,” “Harold,” “The Last of the Barons,” historical novels; in “What Will He Do With It?” a novel of familiar life.  And he brought to each variety of fiction the same artistic sense, the same knowledge of the world, and keen observation.  To describe English life in all its phases, he was particularly fitted.  Born in a high rank, he was perfectly at home in his descriptions of the upper classes, and never slow in exposing their vices.  His studies of men took so universal a form that he became familiar even with the slang terms of pickpockets and house-breakers.  “What Will He Do With It?” combines examples of the heroic, the humorous, the pathetic, and the