tled _A Day's
Ride, a Life's Romance_, which the public did not relish, but which was
much to the taste of some good judges. He had by this time gone to
Florence, became Vice-Consul at Spezzia in 1852, whence, in 1867, he was
transferred as British Consul to Trieste, and died there in 1872.

For some years before his death he had been industrious in a third and
again different kind of novel, not merely more thoughtful and less
"rollicking," but adjusted much more closely to actual life and
character. Indeed Lever at different times of his life manifested almost
all the gifts which the novelist requires, though unfortunately he never
quite managed to exhibit them all together. His earlier works, amusing
as they are and full of dash and a certain kind of life, sin not only by
superficiality but by a reckless disregard of the simplest requirements
of story-telling, of the most rudimentary attention to chronology,
probability, and general keeping. His later, vastly amended in this
respect, and exhibiting, moreover, a deeper comprehension of human
character as distinguished from mere outward "humours," almost
necessarily present the blunted and blurred strokes which come from the
loss of youth and the frequent repetition of literary production. Indeed
Lever, with Bulwer, was the first to exemplify the evil effects of the
great demand for novels, and the facilities for producing them given by
the spread of periodicals.

To descend to the third, or even the lower second class in fiction is
almost more dangerous here than a similar laxity in any other
department; and we can no more admit Lord John Russell because he wrote
a story called _The Nun of Arrouca_, than we can exhume any equally
forgotten production of writers less known in non-literary respects. It
can hardly, however, be improper to mention in connection with Marryat,
the greatest of them all, some other members of the interesting school
of naval writers who not unnaturally arose after the peace had turned
large numbers of officers adrift, and the rise of the demand for essays,
novels, and miscellaneous articles had offered temptation to writing.
The chief of these were, in order of rising excellence, Captains
Glascock, Chamier, and Basil Hall, and Michael Scott, a civilian, but by
far the greatest writer of the four. Glascock, an officer of
distinction, was the author of the _Naval Sketch Book_, a curious
olla-podrida of "galley" stories, criticisms on naval books