This combined compendium summarizes the front matter, principal narrative developments, and concluding episodes of the extracted portions of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Ernest Maltravers, and situates them within the novel’s design and themes.

Preface and design
Bulwer frames Ernest Maltravers as a practical bildungsroman—explicitly indebted to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister—intended to trace moral and intellectual apprenticeship “in life as it is” rather than theatrical or historical spectacle. The narrative favors tonal restraint and psychological development over melodramatic excess, aiming to show character “ripening” under time and circumstance. Recurring themes include conscience, ambition, social condition, the educative power of love and friendship, the tension between private fidelity and public duty, and the moral challenge of fame.

Principal characters and formative episodes
Ernest Maltravers is introduced as a solitary, ambitious intellect whose early life is shaped by guardians and friends: the equilibrated De Montaigne, the genial mentor Cleveland, and the worldly Lumley Ferrers (later Lord Vargrave). Ernest rescues and educates Alice Darvil, a peasant girl oppressed by her brutal father Luke Darvil; their pedagogic intimacy becomes love, then separation by circumstance. Alice is kidnapped, dishonoured, and survives long hardship abroad, a tragic but humanizing counterpoint to Ernest’s public ambitions.

Public life, passion, and intrigue
After two years’ retirement Ernest attains rapid literary success, encountering the corrosive public gaze and critical hostility—an ironic contrast between authorial triumph and private dissolution. He renews ties with Valerie de Ventadour and falls into a deeper attachment to Lady Florence Lascelles, whose pride and brilliance prompt his renunciation of a ministerial post for love. Lumley Ferrers and the imprudent poet Castruccio Cesarini conspire: Ferrers falsifies a letter to make Ernest appear mercenary, aiming to break the engagement for personal advantage; Cesarini, humiliated, becomes both conspirator and later tormented penitent.

Tragedy, moral testing, and resolution
Florence’s trust shattered, she falls ill and dies in Ernest’s arms—the emotional nadir that propels him toward vengeance. He confronts Cesarini, arranges a duel with Colonel Danvers, but Providence intervenes: Cesarini descends into mania. Ernest’s intention to kill gives way to compassion; he tends the mad poet, commands humane treatment, and silently forgives. This act—forgiveness supplanting calculated revenge—constitutes the moral climax and growth of the protagonist.

Aftermath and contrasts
Lumley’s social advancement to Lord Vargrave, his political prospects, and the newspapers’ account of Ernest’s resignation and exile contrast worldly success with ruined idealism. Bulwer closes with reflective aphorisms on fate, irony, and the unequal lengths of human lives, urging temperance of ambition by humility and conscience. The excerpt thus interweaves social realism and melodramatic incident to chart the moral formation—and disillusionment—of its hero.