The life of Lady Lytton is a book, the publication of which is an injury and offence to the world. We cannot doubt when we have read all we can of this most strange and undesirable publication that the subject of it was in many ways an ill-used woman. Her virulence, her violence, her slapdash, hurry - scurry vituperation, incline us at first entirely towards the other side of the controversy; but we fear that there is not much to be said on that other side. It is very probable that she was an intolerable person -one whom a saint could scarce

ly have lived with in peace-and her life is a record of quarrels, of friendships hastily made up and as hastily broken, of perpetual debts, struggles for money, squabbles of every kind. But with all this she must have been an ill-used woman. Public opinion has altered since that day, and the power of any husband to punish with banishment and separation from her children the woman who does not suit him as a wife

is now very much limited. But when we have said this, we must repeat that the book is an offence, and that it never ought to have been published at all. The undisciplined creature, handsome, self-willed, and altogether unscrupulous, is a figure for a novel, where she would be extremely effective, but altogether unsuited to real life. Her wandering and wild career, now the centre of a circle of friends who are supposed to adore her, now starting off at a tangent with wild plaints of disappointment and injury, always ill used and deceived, her dearest companions one day being her bitterest enemies the

next-constantly finding some one who at last is the friend and champion she looked for, and as constantly discovering that this champion has but used her for his own ends, and that she is left more desolate than ever,-is miserable to the last degree. So much wasted energy, a life so frittered away in endless kicking against the pricks, grows tragic in its utter helplessness and hopelessness at last —but the tragedy is of an exasperating kind. Human nature grows weary of the continued plaint, and the most persevering of defenders cannot but feel that a person so invariably disappointed in everybody around her, must be apt herself to be in the wrong. We need not enter into the too painful story. The marriage was a hasty one, the bridegroom being a spoiled favourite of society, the bride an Irish girl equally spoiled, and entirely without moral discipline or restraint. We cannot wonder at the interference of the present Lord Lytton to stop the publication of the letters, which, according to the specimens given by an enterprising newspaper, were little edifying on one side or the other: but the injunction furnishes a sort of posthumous grievance, of which, no doubt, the heroine would have made abundant use had she been able to know it, and which carries out all the precedents of her life.

There is this, however, to be said for her, that she never did fail to find friends, many of whom proved their friendship in the most approved way, by gifts and loans and hospitality, few or none escaping without a contribution. She had but a small income for an extravagant and luxurious woman, and she was always able to prove

triumphantly that it was not enough for her nor ever could be, without, however, convincing the only persons whose opinion on the subject could be of any avail. To have made her four hundred ayear suffice, and to have held her peace and borne her misfortunes, would have been much the more dignified mode of procedure, no doubt; but of this the passioned, reckless, uncalculating woman was quite incapable. The record of a life prolonged to the patriarchal age of eighty, which is nothing but one long, noisy, violent struggle against injuries, real or imaginary real and imaginary would perhaps be the better expressionagainst circumstance, against the infallible laws of human living, against at least every second man and woman encountered in that long career, is a very pitiful sight. To call it a vindication is nothing but a mockery. It is, on the contrary, a long, detailed, and unanswerable proof that this fantastic, unreasonable, capricious heroine was one of the women impossible to live with or satisfy, however fascinating for a time, or however much to be pitied, The modifications in the law which have so much changed the position of women during the reign of Queen Victoria have this great fact in their favour, that any such distracted and distracting figure as that of Lady Lytton, tearing her hair and cursing her husband in the sight of all the world, has become impossible. Such women, virtuous in the ordinary sense of the word and unassailable, but half mad with the excitement of a quarrel in which much harsh treatment and sharp-stinging injustice were involved, proclaiming their wrongs with the wildest cries and maledictions, never satisfied nor quieted, were not an unusual spec

VOL. CXLII.-NO. DCCCLXI.

No

tacle in the last generation. man can ever be injured by such a situation as a woman can, and it is only women who have disgusted and wearied the world by such an endless appeal to the pity of the crowd. Perhaps even the horrors of the Divorce Court are scarcely worse than the spectacle thus kept for years before the public. They, at their worst, are only for a time; the other lasted, as in this deplorable case, for about half a century, always cropping up again when half-forgotten.

As in the case of the book previously discussed, the thing which interests us most is not the subject of the record but the occasional lights that fall upon other figures that cross her way. One chance gleam lights up for a moment the little known individuality of a woman whose name was familiar to our youth as that of the author of many clever but vulgarish novels, but who was only revealed, and that almost accidentally, in the real heroism of her life, by her son's autobiography, published at his death a few years ago. It is doubtful even whether Mr Anthony Trollope was aware what a curious glimpse he afforded into the nobility of an unrecorded existence in his account of his mother-which he gives at little length and with the composure of one long acquainted with the tale, and too near to see its quite unusual character. Mrs Trollope was one of the many people who warmly took up Lady Lytton's cause at one period of her career; and the following letter of affectionate advice will show how the more delicate and judicious woman, even while fully believing in the wrongs of the clamorous sufferer, endeavoured, though vainly, to check and calm her down :

“What can I feel but pride and

H

ly explanatory, according to the fashion of the time. It is indeed the strangest picture, minute as a Japanese account, and in something of the same perspective, of the strangest court, combining such extremities of rudeness and ceremony, of luxury and primitive economy, as are more amazing than any fiction. The intrigues which involved as in a net all those hapless princes and princesses, the political motives which made even fathers and mothers so remorselessly indifferent to the fate of their children, the perpetual wire-pulling which decided by unseen hands, if not the fate of nations, at least the happiness and misery of those apparently born to rule them, rise before us in the close and vivid narrative with an authenticity beyond question. It is perhaps a fault of all limited societies, and especially of those which suppose themselves influential in public affairs, to imagine complicated motives for the most trifling action; but this is a matter of comparatively small importance so long as the record of facts is exact and true; and no testimony can be more trustworthy than that of Carlyle to the general truthfulness and actual power of observation of the royal annalist. The Princess Christian has already entered the field of literature in her memoir of her lamented sister Princess Alice, which called forth so much sympathy and many tears from gentle readers. This is a piece of work very appropriate to a royal hand. Happily it brings out in the clearest light the fortunate change in royal surroundings since that time. Princesses may

born in the nineteenth century, at a period when more romantic marriages are made in royal families than anywhere else, and choice is free and statesmen meddle no

more.

The little book of Poems 1 on our table owns the influence of the moment by a pretty dedication to the Queen. Her Majesty is responsible for a great deal of literature of every kind, swelling the records of the year. But there is nothing Jubilee about this small book except its dedication, which is in better taste than most of the poetical addresses which have been made to the Queen. It is brief enough to quote:

"When God enthroned You, fifty years ago,

And the grey Dukes in homage would have knelt,

You rose up to prevent them, blushing

I am your niece Victoria!'

'No,

England felt Her heart beat; England loved You! It was good

So great a Queen should be a girl so true!

Madam, these Realms praise Godand reverence You-For Fifty Years of Sovereign Womanhood."

The writer of this graceful verse has collected a number of little poems, very pleasant and melodious, and full of sense and meaning as well as music. The poem from which the book takes its name is not, we think, one of the best. It is the story of a visionary whose intention it is to write a great poem an epic of humanity-when he has completed all the preparations and gained all

song;

says the poet, with the toleration of his day. The story, he proceeds to tell, is of a sick child who, brought to the shrine of the

of dreams;

Years and the man who had thought

and wrought, too rapt

To note the years, forgot that he was old!"

We do not pretend to find a new master of song in Mr Canton, but he is evidently one whose steps will be worth watching, and whom, after he has had time to find out him

self, and become more independent of those influences which hem a young poet about, the world will probably hear more of. The echoes which it is impossible not to find, which, indeed, if a young writer is honest and loyal, must inevitably be found, in all or almost all essays in verse, are still too strong to permit a thoroughly individual note. The "Death of Anaxagoras," an epistle by that same Cleon who formerly dictated an epistle to Mr Browning, though a great deal smoother than the older poet, cannot fail to recall him, and naturally suffer by the comparison; and the same may be said of other poems, in which, however, we are bound to acquit Mr Canton of that

for the gift of health.

"Ten marbles! quoth the child. Asklepios laughed;

But on the morrow forth the lad went

The interpretation is all of our and Christian, but the whole very own time, the atmosphere modern attractive and tenderly turned. Still more true and sweet are some of the little lyrics with which the volume ends, especially in the "Poems of Childhood,' "" some of which might almost be Victor Hugo's. We will give one example:

"In praise of little children I will say

God first made man, then found a better way

For woman, but his third way was the best.

Of all created things the loveliest