-- he had never violated the innermost man, but had carried
his conscience along with him." ¹

Where "Eugene Aram" had exhibited the effects of crime
rather than its immediate action, Bulwer "Lucretia, or the
Children of Night" ( 1846) dealt directly with villainy. It sought
to trace the influence of money as a corrupter of the heart, and
to support its study drew actual criminals, chief among whom
was the forger, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.

Dalibard, his son Varney, and his second wife Lucretia are the "Chil-
dren of Night", whose evil passions furnish the mainspring of the novel.
Dalibard, after giving to the guillotine Varney's mother, comes to Eng-
land to serve as secretary to a baronet. There he covets his master's
niece, the heartless Lucretia. He breaks up her match with another
and marries her himself, but the small fortune she brings fails to satisfy
him, and soon he is plotting to secure an inheritance by removing a
cousin and later by bestowing attention upon that cousin's widow.
Lucretia now stands in his way, and he attempts to poison her. She re-
taliates by handing him over to be murdered by an enemy. His own
son has enabled her to do this, and henceforth he and she are villains in
partnership. As a means to a fortune they scheme the deaths by slow
poison of Lucretia's niece and the latter's lover. Varney, in addition,
heavily insures the girl's life, hoping with the funds so secured to cover
a forgery. The catastrophe comes when Lucretia is denounced by a
crossing-sweeper, whom she slays only to find him her son. She goes
mad, and Varney is transported and figures as the most pestilent rogue
in the convict colony.

Surcharged with sentiment and high-sounding apostrophes,
unrelieved by humor, and reveling in crimes of the blackest,
"Lucretia" is pure melodrama, and at a far remove from the
typical picaresque novel. It marks, however, the final stage
in the transition from roguery to villainy.

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