THIS novel is but half finished. At the conclusion of the second volume, Mr. Bulwer remarks: 'Here ends the first portion of this work; it ends with what, though rare in novels, is common in human life; the affliction of the good, the triumph of the unprincipled. Ernest Maltravers, a lonely wanderer, disgusted with the world, blighted prematurely in a useful and glorious ambition; 'remote, unfriendly, melancholy;' Lumley Ferrers, prosperous and elated; life smiling before him; rising in the councils of the proudest and perhaps the wisest of the European nations, and wrapped in a hardy stoicism of levity and selfishness, that not only defied grief, but silenced conscience. If the reader be interested in what remains--if he desire to know more of the various characters which have breathed and moved throughout this history--he soon will be enabled to gratify his curiosity, and complete what the author believes to be a faithful survey of the Philosophy of Human Life.' Such is the author's apology for one of the most dangerous and seductive books which it has ever been our fortune to read. Let us examine its plan. Alice Darvil, a beautiful child of nature, wholly uneducated and perfectly innocent, saves the life of Ernest Maltravers, an English graduate of a German university, who had sought shelter at her father's cottage. The murderous and revengeful barbarity of the father compels the daughter to desert him, and she is immediately thrown in the way of the student. Impelled by gratitude and pity, Maltravers shelters the destitute beauty, takes her to a country-seat, which he purchases on purpose, teaches her music, elevates her benighted and earthward mind to heaven, falls in love with, and seduces her! The father of Alice goes on from crime to crime, till his burglaries extend to the cottage of Maltravers' mistress, and his own child, who, in the temporary absence of her lover, is carried away beyond his protection. Maltravers returns, misses his Alice, grows melancholy, visits Paris in company with an impertinent and selfish acquaintance, Lumley Ferrers, falls in love with another man's wife, is rejected by her, quits Paris in disgust, goes to Italy, forms an affectionate, platonic attachment for another married lady, and then returns to London. In the meanwhile, Alice flies from her father a second time, with Maltravers' child at her breast. She seeks the cottage-scene of her early and unsophisticated enjoyments, finds it occupied by other tenants, and is finally thrown on the fostering protection of a saint-like banker, who makes her Mrs. Templeton.