EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON.

EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON, Earl Lytton, pseudonym Owen Meredith, an English poet, only son of the novelist, born at London, Nov. 8, 1831; died at Paris, Nov. 24, 1891. He was educated at Harrow and at Bonn. In 1849 he became attaché at Washington under his uncle, Sir Henry Bulwer. He rose finally to the rank of ambassador at Lisbon in 1874, after a service at Florence, Paris, The Hague, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Vienna, Athens, Madrid. He also ruled India, as Viceroy (1876-1880). He succeeded to his father's title of Baron Lytton in 1873, and in 1880 was made Earl of Lytton and Viscount Knebworth. In 1887 he was appointed Ambassador to France.

His earlier volumes were published under the name of "Owen Meredith:" "Clytemnestra and Other Poems" (1855); "The Wanderer, A Collection of Poems in many Lands" (1857); "Lucile" (1860); "Tannhäuser, or the Battle of the Bards," appeared anonymously in 1861; "Serbski Pesme" (1861) was a translation of Servian songs. His later poems are "Chronicles and Characters" (1868); "Orval, or the Fool of Time" (1869); "Fables in Song" (1874); and "Glenaveril" (1885). He has published in prose an Egyptian Romance, "The Ring of Amasis" (1863); "Julian Fane, a Memoir" (1871); his father's "Speeches and Political Writings" (1874); "The Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton" (1883); "After Paradise, or Legends of Exile" (1887); "Marah," poems, and "King Poppy," posthumously (1892).

THE STORM ON THE MOUNTAIN.

(From "Lucile.")

LETTER FROM COUSIN JOHN TO COUSIN ALFRED.

"BIGORRE, Thursday.

"TIME up, you rascal! Come back, or be hang'd.
Matilda grows peevish. Her mother harangued
For a whole hour this morning about you. The deuce!
What on earth can I say to you? - nothing's of use.

And the blame of the whole of your shocking behavior

Falls on me, sir! Come back,
Affairs, and abjure you forever.

do you hear? — or I leave your Come back

To your anxious betroth'd; and perplex'd

"COUSIN JACK."

Alfred needed, in truth, no entreaties from John
To increase his impatience to fly from Luchon.
All the place was now fraught with sensations of pain
Which, whilst in it, he strove to escape from in vain.
A wild instinct warn'd him to fly from a place
Where he felt that some fatal event, swift of pace,
Was approaching his life. In despite his endeavor
To think of Matilda, her image forever

Was effaced from his fancy by that of Lucile.

From the ground which he stood on he felt himself reel.
Scared, alarm'd by those feelings to which, on the day
Just before, all his heart had so soon given way,

When he caught, with a strange sense of fear, for assistance
At what was, till then, the great fact in existence,

"Twas a phantom he grasp❜d.

Having sent for his guide,

He order'd his horse, and determin'd to ride
Back forthwith to Bigorre.

Then, the guide, who well knew

Every haunt of those hills, said the wild lake of Oo
Lay a league from Luchon; and suggested a track
By the lake to Bigorre, which, transversing the back

Of the mountain, avoided a circuit between

Two long valleys; and thinking, "Perchance change of scene May create change of thought," Alfred Vargrave agreed, Mounted horse, and set forth to Bigorre at full speed.

His guide rode beside him.

The king of the guides!

The gallant Bernard! ever boldly he rides,

Ever gayly he sings! For to him, from of old,
The hills have confided their secrets, and told

Where the white partridge lies, and the cock o' the woods;
Where the izard flits fine through the cold solitudes;
Where the bear lurks perdu; and the lynx on his prey
At nightfall descends, when the mountains are gray;
Where the sassafras blooms, and the blue-bell is born,
And the wild rhododendron first reddens at morn;
Where the source of the waters is fine as a thread;
How the storm on the wild Maladetta is spread;

Where the thunder is hoarded, the snows lie asleep,
Whence the torrents are fed, and the cataracts leap;
And, familiarly known in the hamlets, the vales

Have whisper'd to him all their thousand love-tales;
He has laugh'd with the girls, he has leap'd with the boys;
Ever blithe, ever bold, ever boon, he enjoys

An existence untroubled by envy or strife,

While he feeds on the dews and the juices of life.

And so lightly he sings, and so gayly he rides,

For BERNARD LE SAUTEUR is the king of all guides!

But Bernard found, that day, neither song nor love-tale,
Nor adventure, nor laughter, nor legend avail

To arouse from his deep and profound revery
Him that silent beside him rode fast as could be.

Ascending the mountain they slacken'd their pace,

And the marvelous prospect each moment changed face.
The breezy and pure inspirations of morn

Breathed about them. The scarp'd ravaged mountains, all

worn

By the torrents, whose course they watch'd faintly meander,
Were alive with the diamonded shy salamander.
They paused o'er the bosom of purple abysses,
And wound through a region of green wildernesses;
The waters went wirbling above and around,
The forests hung heap'd in their shadows profound.
Here the Larboust, and there Aventin, Castellon,
Which the Demon of Tempest, descending upon,
Had wasted with fire, and the peaceful Cazeaux
They mark'd; and far down in the sunshine below,
Half dipp'd in a valley of airiest blue,

The white happy homes of the village of Oo,
Where the age is yet golden.

And high overhead

The wrecks of the combat of Titans were spread.
Red granite and quartz, in the alchemic sun,
Fused their splendors of crimson and crystal in one;
And deep in the moss gleam'd the delicate shells,
And the dew linger'd fresh in the heavy harebells;
The large violet burn'd; the campanula blue;
And Autumn's own flower, the saffron, peer'd through
The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras ;

And fragrant with thyme was the delicate grass,
And high up, and higher, and highest of all,
The secular phantom of snow!