of ages, he has withstood temptation, he is destined at last to yield to it. He meets with and loves a beautiful Italian girl. He thus endangers his earthly immortality; for the moment he yields to earthly passion, however pure, his intellect becomes clouded, and he loses the prophetic faculty as well as others of his high attributes. Conscious of this, and knowing that he will bring peril and sorrow around the path of Viola by linking her fate with his, he struggles long against his passion, and even after yielding to it, endeavors to avert from her head the dangers which, as consequences of his conduct, thicken around her. In this Titanic conflict betwixt the intellect and the heart—in the alternation of the aspirations of the one and the agonizing throes of the other, lies the _burden_—as the old writers would call it—of the novel. The idea, as thus stated, is simply grand. It has a unity that overpowers us. Had the author contented himself with merely developing this idea, omitting every thing which had no necessary bearing on the _dénouement_, he would have produced an almost faultless story. But he has, in a great measure, failed in carrying out his conception. He has weakened the effect by diverging from the _burden_ of the story. As the novel has been circulated in various cheap forms throughout the country, we shall take it for granted that our readers have perused the book. This will save us the necessity of recapitulating the plot as the basis of our remarks. The plot is grossly defective in several important particulars. Many even of the leading incidents have no bearing on the _dénouement_. The compact betwixt Zanoni and the Evil Eye, at Venice, is of this character. The author’s original intention was to make the condition exacted from the husband play a prominent part at the crisis; but he subsequently changed his mind, and brought about the _dénouement_ by other means, forgetting, however, to rewrite this scene, so as to adapt it to the altered aspect of the story. The Evil Eye, when he comes to assert his rights, is cavalierly dismissed, in a very inartistical manner. It would have contributed far more to the unity of effect of which we have spoken, if the author had pursued his original design, and made the condition exacted from Zanoni, the sacrifice of his own life, when, at any future period, he should wish again to preserve the life of Viola. By following out this plan, Bulwer would have been saved the necessity of introducing the sanguinary scenes of the French Revolution; and the crisis would have been brought about in a far more natural manner than it is at present. The introduction of Robespierre and his associates is _forced_; it renders involved an otherwise simple and effective plot. We are astonished that an adept in Art, such as Bulwer professes to be, should have committed a blunder for which, if he had been a schoolboy, he should have been soundly whipped. If he intended to