miration for one whose talents have disdained repose, and whose pages have ever advocated the cause of right. Sophocles, in the days of old, could dream away his summer midnight on the reeds by the Ilyssus, listening to the moonlight music of the nightingales. Mr. Bulwer early felt that a modern writer had nothing in common with this literary luxury, and his genius has ever seemed held by him as a trust rather than an enjoyment. We should think the great success of his writings in other countries must be very gratifying.* [1] Praise from afar comes the nearest to fame. Mr. Bulwer has already produced four standard novels, works replete with thought and mind, and he yet wants some years of thirty. A still more active career, that of public life, now lies before him. If first-rate talents, enlarged and liberal views, strong and noble principles, can make one man's future an object and benefit to his country, we are justified in the high anticipations with which we look forward to Mr. Bulwer's future. Last year, he was eagerly solicited, by a large body of its most respectable in habitants, to stand for Southwark. Reluctance to oppose Mr. Calvert made him decline the honour; but we cannot conclude this article better than by part of his first declaration of public faith—"I should have founded my pretensions, had I addressed myself to your notice, upon that warm and hearty sympathy in the great interests of the people, which, even as in my case, without the claim of a long experience or the guarantee of a public name, you have so often, and I must add, so laudably, esteemed the surest and the highest recommendation to your favour. And, gentlemen, to the eager wish, I will not hesitate to avow that I should have added the determined resolution to extend and widen, in all their channels, those pure and living truths which can alone circulate through the vast mass of the community that political happiness so long obstructed from the many, and so long adulterated even for the few.
- ↑ * Besides being translated into the French and German languages, numerous editions have been published in America.
