are occasions when it would be an indulgence to use them; but what we do make a stand at is the affectionate demonstrations of his elderly gentlemen, which in no region of the English fancy are ever welcome-those aged brothers who throw themselves on each other's breasts-those open arms embracing all the world, find no response anywhere; we recoil as they advance towards us. We are glad we do not know Mr. Waife: even Mr. Caxton's bosom is too general a refuge: Mr. Darrell's stalwart form is a support we do not envy his friends. We cannot feel with those young men who sob out their ingenuous hearts at one another's feet, or on each other's necks, or on the shoulders and on the breasts of sagacious counsellors. We are glad that in the circle of our own acquaintance men of ripe age are content to show their good will by a cool shake of the hand. We greatly prefer our actual to the author's ideal, and hastily consign such visions to the Sarcophagus and the Urn,' and that Genius of the extinguished torch' who occupies so large a space in his musings.

But to return from a digression suggested by the peculiarly demonstrative manners of the Caxton family.-As a whole this work is marked by a moderation foreign to the author's general style. We see judgment and self-restraint at work, and come upon passages of gentle humour and bland common sense, which contrast most agreeably with the mere riot of the pen in which he so often expatiates. After familiarising our ears with colossal fortunes and lavish expense, it is quite refreshing, for instance, to come upon the following testimony to the merits and pretensions of sixpence, which appeals to all our hearts:

'Now my mother, true woman as she was, had a womanly love of show in her quiet way—of making "a genteel figure" in the neighbourhood-of seeing that sixpence not only went as far as sixpence ought to go, but that, in the going, it should emit a mild but imposing splendournot, indeed, a gaudy flash-a startling Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely within the modest and placid idiosyncracies of sixpence-but a gleam of gentle and benign light, just to show where a sixpence had been, and allow you time to say "Behold!" before

"The jaws of darkness did devour it up!"

-'The Caxtons,' vol. ii. p. 277.

My Novel,' which followed and is connected with The Caxtons,' has shared its favour with the public. It is marked by many of the author's most felicitous characteristics: knowledge of men conveyed in graceful, epigrammatic language, variety of character, play of incident, and that business, and action, and perfect mastery of the machinery of his art, in which no one surpasses him, and which gives the experienced novelist such advantage over younger efforts. But it is prolix to weari

ness; the characters, many of them well conceived, and some of them most ably worked out (we would adduce especially, as an original conception, Dr. Riccabocca), are brought into impossible combinations; the villainy is both tedious and out of all nature; the virtue is extravagant, the sentiment maudlin. And yet the author has thrown into the story some real feeling. The picture of his young poet must have some personal touches, and especially we are sure that the history of his great poem, which failed because the world was not in the humour for it, must, as we think, pathetically convey the author's disappointment at the cold reception of his own poem-his epic, King Arthur,' which he no doubt regarded as his consummate effort, his greatest work, and the surest foundation of his fame.

We have reached our limits with little more than an occasional mention of the author's last work, with the whimsical title of What will he do with it?' which might be expected to engage our largest attention. But we own we consider it a fact rather to be contemplated and accounted for than to be deliberately, piece by piece, criticised. Not that the story is wholly without spirit or interest; but as a delineation of life, character, and manners, how can we enter seriously upon it? how can we analyse the large, pompous impossibility? how grapple with the turbid feeling and inflated expression? Which of the personages are actuated by any of the motives which would govern men in their circumstances? who is guided by a glimpse of reason? how can quiet sense deal with such a flourish of sentimentalism? All these defects are so patent, so open to the eyes of all men, so prodigious, that readers who approve as they read do it in spite of them. They are deliberately satisfied with a picture of life that contradicts all their experience; and if people are willing to do without truth and nature, we do not deny to the story many of the minor merits of fiction. It is marked, too, by a recantation, perhaps not designed, of the author's earlier view of the power of Fate' and Circumstance,' and is written with a facility in the mere execution which convinces us that he will soon attain the power of writing novels in his dreams.

The whole series of Sir E. B. Lytton's works may be regarded as a homage to society, as a sort of apotheosis of the class and of the man whom society agrees to honour-of a Man gifted by every distinction of nature and of fortune, and set up as a mark above his fellows. The appreciation of personal beauty, espe cially its manly type, and the enthusiasm which the subject inspires, is something quite beyond the usual licence of novelists. The author arrests the narrative continually to apostrophise the personal graces of his heroes, and pauses to sun himself in their lustre. It seems as if we were always being ushered

into the awful presence of the Apollo. And fain would he invest his heroes with a touch of the god's immortality. Those qualities, personal and intellectual, which fill the eye and rule the fancy, he would willingly endow with a perpetual youth. And in his own sphere this accomplished artist feels the power to baffle time, to retard the hated ravages of years: he wreathes his favourites with an amaranthine garland. With him the gifts which charm, which dazzle, which inspire passion are not transient, as the sage defines them, but last through generations. Years only teach our author the fallacies of moralists. As a youth he was content to represent youth as beautiful and charming. As manhood advanced he realised the superior nobleness of fruition, its stronger grasp, its more potent spell over passionate emotions, over man's homage, woman's love. Now, time waits on his idols only to add dignity to the form, majesty to the crest,' grace and power to the address, till his latest ideal is forced, near upon his grand climacteric, to retreat from a fair society where his fascinations wake emotions not in his power to return. Perhaps we are many of us not unfamiliar with such illusions: it is hard to believe in the effect of years on ourselves; that we are actually day by day losing something which we would fain keep: but these demurs hold a shy and unacknowledged place in common minds. But the author learns to trust himself, and to have confidence in his doubts as well as his impulses: he has a world where he can rule things as he pleases, where he is among the potentates. So, as the tyrant lashed the waves into submission, as our great Elizabeth shivered the mirror which gave back a false image, so Sir E. B. Lytton holds Time in check and forbids his changes.

6

And yet if here he exceeds his powers, there is a dominion over time which we will not dispute with him. He has possessed a spell, if not to retard time, yet to make the hours fly lightly, which might else have brooded heavy and sad over the careworn and the weary. His fancy, his genius, his varied resource have many a time lifted a load of trouble from heart and brow, and lapped the spirit in dreams till it was refreshed and strengthened to bear the inevitable burden. Such is the province of fiction-its mission in this work-day world; and none can deny our author his share in the labour and the praise-praise which may be the more frankly, unreservedly given, since the stream of invention has cleared itself from those turbid infusions which marred its earlier flow-since the love of paradox has yielded to a maturer perception, content to view moral questions not as a mere field for speculation, not as food for an excited imagination, but in the settled light of reason and experience.

IV.

THE COMMERCIAL CRISIS OF 1857 AND THE

CURRENCY.

1. Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, together with the Evidence, &c. 30th July, 1857.

2. Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, together with the Evidence, &c. 1st July, 1858.

HE two bulky folios bearing the above titles contain, it is

and valuable material for commercial history. The character of the subject will, it is to be feared, make them sealed books to the majority. The 'general reader' will shrink from the exertion of perusing them. Even of those whose life is spent in the transactions of money-dealing or commerce, probably but a small number will have the courage or the leisure to explore their contents. But to the well-braced intellect, which takes pleasure in a keen and well-sustained controversy, these volumes will prove by no means unattractive. If the subject of the currency has become somewhat of a bugbear to the public, it is owing to the folly and presumption of those shallow persons who have chosen it for the display of their perverse conceit and intolerable tediousness. In truth, the principles of monetary science form a study peculiarly well adapted to exercise the powers of a well-trained and logical mind. Such readers may derive not only interest but delight from the keen encounter of intellect here exhibited-a great parliamentary discussion, in which, setting aside the accidental distinction of member and witness, such men as Lord Overstone, Sir George Lewis, Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Norman, and Mr. John Stuart Mill are the disputants.

The original Committee on the Bank Acts was appointed early in the session of 1857, Sir George Cornewall Lewis being then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The inquiry then intended to be made was as to the operation of the Bank Act, passed in 1844 under the auspices of Sir Robert Peel. Nine years had elapsed since the preceding inquiry into this subject, which originated in the commercial crisis of 1847. The floating murmurs and desultory criticisms on the currency laws, which, amidst the fluctuations of trade, are ever and anon breaking forth in public journals and speeches, had, in the course of this

interval, swelled to an amount, not indeed very large or formidable, but which constituted, in the judgment of the ministers of the day, a sufficient ground for the renewal of a parliamentary investigation. The Committee was first nominated in February; but their proceedings being abruptly terminated by the dissolution of parliament, another Committee, consisting, with but a few exceptions, of the same individual members, was appointed after the reassembling of Parliament in May, 1857. The tribunal to which this important task was delegated consisted of the members on either side of the house nost noted for their knowledge of financial and monetary affairs; and it was presided over, except during a short period, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The examination was directed solely to the principles of the existing currency laws. The Committee examined the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, Lord Overstone, Mr. Norman, Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Mill, Mr. Newmarch, Mr. D. B. Chapman, and some other members of the banking and trading community. The termination of the session having arrived, the Committee agreed merely to report the evidence to the house, unaccompanied by any judgment or comment of their own; but their investigation being still incomplete, they recommended that it should be resumed in the ensuing session. Little did the Committee, or, indeed, any person at that moment anticipate the catastrophe which was then impending. In the autumn of 1857 the storm burst over the commercial world with terrific suddenness and severity. The fabric of mercantile credit was shaken to its centre. The crisis of 1847 was surpassed in its worst features of disaster and panic by this new convulsion. Once more, with a view to avert still worse consequences, the statute of 1844 was suspended by the act of the government. The transgression of the law required an indemnity from Parliament, which was accordingly convened for that express purpose in December. The indemnity was granted; but at the same time the committee of inquiry of the preceding session was reappointed, and, in addition to the duty of reporting on the Bank Acts, was instructed to inquire into the causes of the recent commercial distress, and to investigate how far it had been affected by the laws regulating the

currency.

The chair of the Committee, during the session of 1858, through the whole period of which the inquiry lasted, was occupied by Mr. Cardwell, The causes of the late convulsion of trade now formed the primary and the effect of the banking laws the secondary object of investigation. The currency discussion assumed more of a practical and less of a theoretical