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 Mr. Bulwer says, "goes to the deuce." The expression is as charming
as the morality, and appears amidst a quantity of the very finest
writing about the good and the beautiful, youth, love, passion, nature
and so forth. It is curious how rapidly one turns from good to bad in
this book. How clever the descriptions are! how neatly some of the minor
events and personalities are hit off! and yet, how astonishingly vile
and contemptible the chief part of it is!--that part, we mean, which
contains the adventures of the hero, and, of course, the choice
reflections of the author.

The declamations about virtue are endless, as soon as Maltravers appears
upon the scene; and yet we find him committing the agreeable little
_faux pas_ of which we have just spoken. In one place, we have him
making violent love to another man's wife; in another place, raging for
blood like a tiger and swearing for revenge....

It is curious and painful to read Mr. Bulwer's [philosophy], and to mark
the easy vanity with which virtue is assumed here, self-knowledge
arrogated, and a number of windy sentences, which really possess no
meaning, are gravely delivered with all the emphasis of truth and the
air of profound conviction.

"I have learned," cries our precious philosopher, "to lean on my own
soul, and not look eleswhere [Transcriber's note: sic] for the reeds
that a wind can break!" And what has he learned by leaning on his own
soul? Is it to be happier than others? or to be better? Not he!--he is
as wretched and wicked a dog as any unhung. He "leans on his own soul,"
and makes love to the Countess and seduces Alice Darvell. A ploughboy is
a better philosopher and moralist than this mouthing Maltravers, with
his boasted love of mankind (which reduces itself to a very coarse love
of _woman_kind), and his scorn of "the false gods and miserable creeds"
of the world, and his soul "lifting its crest to heaven!" A Catholic
whipping himself before a stone-image, a Brahmin dangling on a hook, or
standing on one leg for a year, has a higher notion of God than this
ranting fool, who is always prating about his own perfections and his
divine nature; the one is humble, at least, though blind; the other is
prou