For there a robed and sately crowd "What hath he said? With frowning face, Courage, thou Genoese! Old Time Bold streams untamed by helm or prow, And rocks of gold and diamonds there Courage, World-finder! Thou hast need! Dark woes, and ingrate wrongs I read, On! On! Creation's secrets probe, Sleep like that master of the globe, All glorious, yet forlorn.' The only faults we feel disposed to find with these poems, are their brevity and a degree of carelessness in respect to the measure, which last defect, however, is but occasionally observable. It is to be regretted that Mrs. Sigourney has not found time or inclination to task her powers in the composition of a poem of sufficient dignity and extent to bring them all into full development. Her mind is richly stored with beautiful images and lofty conceptions; her imagination is vigorous, but well disciplined; her powers of diction are of no ordinary character; and her moral sensibilities are such as to insure the sympathy of every enlightened and philanthropic mind. Would it not be well for her to abandon the too prevalent fashion of short effusions-choose a subject with her best judgment, exert upon it her best energies, and found upon one rich and finished poem her claims to that immortality to which the highest and purest minds have not deemed it unworthy their ambition to aspire? The Princess: or the Beguine. By Lady Morgan, author of "O'Donnell," &c. Philadelphia: 1835. FEMALE writers are supposed to have a claim on the peculiar indulgence of critics. In most cases this claim may have some foundation in justice. But if ever lady has placed herself beyond the reach of this indulgence, it is undoubtedly Lady Morgan. Her subjects, style, and tone, are masculine. She enters the arena properly reserved for the contests of men, and challenges the opposition of the most active combatants. She abandons, to a very great extent, that delicate reserve which belongs to other writers of her sex, and scarcely ever presents herself in a character which can properly be denominated feminine. In the book before us, for example, she appears as a violent party politician. One of its leading objects is to vilify the high tory party of Britain, and it must be confessed that she succeeds in making them appear almost as heartless and unprincipled as-herself. One thing in her present attempt we are ready to commend-she has not thought proper to call her book, on the title page, a novel. It certainly is no novel. It may be termed a guide book to the city of Brussels—or a series of dialogues on politics —or a series of portraits of living characters in Brussels-or a history of the revolution in Belgium-or a happy mixture of all these in an ill compacted frame-work of fiction-but neither in structure nor character has it any claims sufficient to entitle it to a place among works of pure fiction, or even among historical novels. The fictitious characters of the work, taken collectively, are distinguished from those of any other story we at present recollect, by one remarkable feature which they possess in common, and this is utter heartlessness and want of virtue. There is scarcely a character in the whole set that is not grossly immoral—and the only variety among them consists in their different manners. All the subjects discussed in their conversations are treated with nearly the same degree of trifling heartlessness; and the only warmth or enthusiasm which appears in the work has its origin in party feeling, and breaks forth in the discussion of political and historical topics; if we except an occasional rapture on some Flemish picture or painter, which forcibly reminds one of what Fuseli characterizes as "the frigid ecstacies of German criticism." Even the Princess, the pet character, the standard of excellence to which one is ready to believe the author would gladly aspire, is represented as a heartless coquette, who in all sorts of disguises pursues a married man wherever he goes; seeks every opportunity for interesting his feelings; and when he is finally liberated from his wife, refuses to marry him. There is a sufficient variety of manners in the different personages, from Laurence Fegan, the porter's locum tenens, to Sir Frederick Mottram, the privy counsellor and patron of arts; but in a moral point of view they all come under the same category. Lady Morgan praises the Belgians for their nationality-by which it may be presumed she means a desire to elevate and glorify their own country. What shall we say of her nationality, when we observe that every Irish character described in her book is vicious and contemptible. While she pursues such a course, whatever she may accomplish for the cause of radicalism in England, she will do little to raise the respectability of Ireland. How different has been the course of Miss Edgeworth! How much has that excellent writer done for her country! What an immense amount of favour and sympathy for the Irish has been secured by her happy and just delineations of the virtuous and noble traits which belong to their character; as well as by her clear exposition of the circumstances by which their virtues and energies are rendered so lamentably unavailable! We must be excused from examining this work of Lady Morgan in detail. Its moral deficiencies are such as to render the most cursory examination of the story an unpleasant and unprofitable task-although it must be acknowledged that this is a feature which it possesses in common with most of the English novels of high life. They are mere novels of manners—of manners too the most frigid and arti ficial that can be conceived-and therefore unworthy the pen of a delineator of human character. For the rest-the book is a fair specimen of the author's powers; being marked with her usual faults and merits. The style is vigorous and masculine, replete with wit and reflection—but too often disfigured with frivolous quotations, ambitious flights, and epigrammatic conceits. The information about Belgium, its people, scenery, institutions, historical characters, and revolutions, is copious, and to one who is curious in such matters, interesting-and the political doctrines are very good, quite unexceptionable for her own party-though the abuse which she thinks proper to heap upon the English aristocracy is to be received with a very liberal allowance for her own feelings of envy and animosity. Lady Morgan is no common writer. She possesses talents of a high order; with habits of opinion and composition which render them worse than useless. But she has been so often told in vain of her faults, that there is little hope of her amendment at this time of life. She might have been a philosophical teacher and moral benefactress of her race; but she "gave to party what was meant for mankind," and she will probably be a politician, a pedant, and a mannerist, to the end of the chapter. Trials and Triumphs; comprising the Convict's Daughter and the Convert's Daughter. 12mo. Philadelphia: 1834. It is pleasant to read a well constructed story-one in which the parts are happily adjusted, the plot regularly developed, and the characters justly drawn and consistently supported. It is more especially pleasant at the present period when all sorts of pedantry, affectation, extravagance and vice are daily inflicted on a patient public in the shape of fiction-when tales of high life give us merely the conversations and intrigues of valets and milliners, under the titles of dukes and ladyships; and the drunken orgies of pickpockets and highwaymen are impudently displayed to the readers of polite literature, with no other apology than that they are pictures drawn from nature. Nature! Are the worst features of deformity impressed upon the human character by long continued and atrocious crimes, to be dignified with the name of natural traits? Shall the results of human vice and infirmity be confounded with the original and universal principles of the human constitution? Portraits of manners founded on the conventions of society or the refinements or arts of vice, can no more be called drawings from nature than those pictures can be so denominated which present us with the dresses and distortions of the human shape, which owe their existence solely to the caprice of fashion. Our recent novels, of very high and very low life, are equally destitute of truth and virtue; and they have nothing to do with nature but to vilify, disfigure, and caricature her fair creations. The volume referred to at the head of this article is of a different character. It is written with a proper regard to the principles of morality as well as those of art; and its scope and tendency with regard to the best and dearest interests of mankind, are as little liable to objection as its literary execution. It would seem by the dedication that the author, Mr. Richardson, has not appeared before the world, at least in this particular department of literature, until the present occasion. But these tales afford abundant evidence that he is a practised as well as an able writer. The stories are told with a simplicity, directness, and singleness of purpose, which some of our rambling writers of fiction would do well to imitate; and the author's disregard of embellishment, and sparing use of his abundant materials, evince that he had a higher object in view than the mere display of his powers as a fine writer. Indeed, he seems rather to aim at the distinction of a forcible writer and faithful moralist than that of a splendid, dashing sentimentalist. His object is truth; and he shows that the most important and effective truths may be communicated by means of fiction. From the titles of his stories one would suppose that they were of a sectarian character. But there is nothing of this sort in them. The writer occupies the elevated ground of a Christian philosopher and philanthropist; and while no sect may claim him as its own, none can find reason to cavil at the character and tendency of his views. The satire, although applied immediately to those particular forms of folly and vice which present themselves in English society, admits of very general application. The fashion of running after new and remarkable preachers, merely for the purpose of being excited or amused by their extravagance, or with a view to criticise their performances as specimens of fine acting, is capitally hit off in the second story. This fashion, although at present very prevalent among certain classes in London, is by no means confined to that metropolis or to the present age. There are too many among us whose conversation would lead one to suppose that they consider a sermon as much an object of taste and criticism as a picture or a play; and there is good reason to suppose that the elegant and accomplished wits that adorned the court of Louis XIV. used to witness the splendid displays of pulpit eloquence by Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and Fléchier, with precisely the same feeling and purpose which directed their steps to the theatre when a tragedy of Racine or Corneille was to be brought out, or Moliere was expected to play in one of his own comedies. They expressed their hope as they went to the church or the play that the preacher or the actor might be in good voice that day; and when they came away, remarked with the characteristic indifference of cognoscenti, how well the performers in both places understood effect. We have room but for one extract, which will furnish an average specimen of the author's style, and of his talent in the delineation of character. "A more honest, simple, unambitious man that Matthias Hillier never lived. He was as steady as time, as regular as clock-work, as faithful as a shadow, as firm as a rock; he knew nothing, he thought of nothing, he cared for nothing but the right performance of his duty; he was so intensely and heartily satisfied with the lot in which providence had placed him, that he had no more ambition to rise in the world than a sheep has to fly in the air; he knew his place, to which he adapted himself, as completely as a Hindoo confines himself to his caste; as for casting any covetous eye on wealth, or endeavoring to enrich himself at the expense of his employer, that was as far from his thoughts as the first of August is from the foot of Westminster bridge a distance, by the way, which has never yet been ascertained; a large fortune would have been of no more use to him than a pair of spectacles to an oyster; had he inherited the Thellusson property, he might have had a large establishment, but he himself would have filled no other situation in it than that of butler; he felt himself predestined to be a butler; and he was one who meddled not with them that are given to change; he would very willingly have broken his heart when his master died-but when he saw that his mistress neither wept, nor raved, nor tore her hair, he also adopted the same placidity, though not perhaps the same depth of grief; his person and his manners were conformable to his mental and intellectual habits; he was of that happy medium of stature which neither envies the tall nor despises the short; his look was one of quietness-a mild eye-a gentle mouth--and an expression as calm as that with which the silent moon looks down upon the sleeping world; his cheeks were unused to tears, and his eyes were not habituated to smiles; he did not know what there was in the world to laugh at or to cry for-all such emotions he regarded as digressions from the right line of life; and yet he was not without expression-for all that was in his heart was in his face, though that was not much; he had no use for simulation or for dissimulation; he had nothing to conceal, and nothing to gain by pretence. He was at this time about fifty years of age, and looked as if he had been fifty years old when he was born, and as if he could never be more than fifty, if he should live a century longer; his very dress had a look of the antique-you might have imagined that he was born in it, and that it would cleave to him through life as close as feathers to a bird." We remark, by way of stricture, that the voluntary relinquishment of her property by Miss Henderson, and the refusal of the admiral's daughters to make any the least provision for their sister, are both highly improbable, though by no means unprecedented in real life. It might also be objected to the second story that the conclusion is too abrupt; and that the author has prodigally wasted materials for a whole volume of precisely the sort which he is best qualified to elaborate in the happiest manner. We might find other defects; but we are so well pleased with the general style and execution of the work, that we are by no means disposed to dwell upon its very inconsiderable faults. We would rather commend it to the notice of all who prefer nature, simplicity, and truth, to the extravagance and false taste in style, sentiment, and character, which abound in most of the recent English novels. Journal of a Residence in China and the neighbouring countries, from 1829 to 1833, by David Abeel. New York: 1834. pp. 398. THE little volume which is here given to the world, though the work of an amiable and accomplished author, will doubtless meet at many hands a cold reception, because it is the production of a missionary. At least we may infer this, from the frequency with which, even at this day, a strong disapprobation of foreign missions is expressed. Not a few among ourselves, professing a lively interest in the welfare of our race, will point to the ignorant and miserable portion of our own countrymen, to the rapid growth of our population, and to the many objects of compassion, less far beyond our boundaries, and insist on the inference that the support of distant missions is a misapplication of the means of benevolence. Such objectors are not easily convinced, though you point them, in turn, to the origin and nature of true religion, and to the example of those inspired men who were the first and chosen ministers of the gospel. It is not conclusive, with them, that religion is a heaven-descended blessing, whose tenure is "freely ye have received, freely give." It is not enough for them, that religion, as diffused by foreign missions, interferes with no citizenship, annuls no allegiance, is unchanged by time or space, and superior to all human authority. They are not satisfied that primitive Christianity recognised no exclusive claim of common country; that its field was the world; that its messengers pressed on from one centre of population to another great point of concourse, in utter disregard of political lines and geogra phical conversions. Those unerring missionaries, while they enforced every social relation and mutual duty, acted in this respect, on one command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature"-after one example-" I am among you as one that serveth." Paul, feeling himself a debtor to all men, yet left thousands unconverted at Ephesus and Corinth, and pushed on to Rome. It may be harsh to say that these modern objectors to foreign missions, are entirely unfriendly to the extension of Christianity. This may be the case with many. Others, we may suppose, are led to a conclusion adverse to such missions, by impressions of prior religious duty to countrymen and neighbours, by vague ideas of the nearer claims of citizenship and propinquity. We do not hesitate to call this conclusion erroneous, because it is not content that these claims should be regarded as valid and paramount-it would make them exclusive also. One moment's reflection, however, should be enough, in our circumstances, to re |