ire. The historic background of
each family was honorable, and when the marriage of William Earle Bulwer
with Elizabeth Barbara Lytton united them, it might be said that in
their offspring England found her type.

Edward, being the youngest son, had little money, but he happened to
have brains. He began existence delicate and precocious. Culture, with
him, set in almost with what he would have termed the "consciousness of
his own identity," and the process never intermitted: in fact,
appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, his spiritual and
intellectual emancipation was hindered by many obstacles; for, an ailing
child, he was petted by his mother, and such germs of intelligence
(verses at seven years old, and the like) as he betrayed were trumpeted
as prodigies. He was spoilt so long before he was ripe that it is a
marvel he ever ripened at all. Many years must pass before vanity could
be replaced in him by manly ambition; a vein of silliness is traceable
through his career almost to the end. He expatiated in the falsetto key;
almost never do we hear in his voice that hearty bass note so dear to
plain humanity. In his pilgrimage toward freedom he had to wrestle not
only with flesh-and-blood mothers, uncles, and wives, _et id genus
omne_, but with the more subtle and vital ideas, superstitions, and
prejudices appertaining to his social station. His worst foes were not
those of his household merely, but of his heart. The more arduous
achievement of such a man is to see his real self and believe in it.
There are so many misleading purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains,
superfine sentiments, and blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the
true nucleus of so much decoration becomes less accessible than the
needle in the hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck
valiantly to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ran down his game at
last. His intellectual record is one of constant progress, from
childhood to age.

Whether his advance in other respects was as uniform does not much
concern us. He was unhappy with his wife, and perhaps they even threw
things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his
matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their
severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's
shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting
conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not
whine--it creates. No o