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ing him now and then in the pauses of his brilliant career, and casting, when we do meet, a hurried glance over the wide field he has traversed since we met before.

valued file" of his productions. The trial and condemnation of Effie Deans are pathetic and beautiful in the very highest degree; and the scenes with the Duke of Argyle are equally We gave it formerly, we think, as our reason full of spirit; and strangely compounded of for thus passing over, without special notice, perfect knowledge of life and of strong and some of the most remarkable productions of deep feeling. But the great boast of the the age, that they were in fact too remarkable piece, and the great exploit of the authorto need any notice of ours-that they were as perhaps the greatest of all his exploits-is the soon, and as extensively read, as we could character and history of Jeanie Deans, from hope our account of them to be-and that in the time she first reproves her sister's flirtareality all the world thought just what we tions at St. Leonard's, till she settles in the were inclined to say of them. These reasons manse in Argyleshire. The singular talent certainly remain in full force; and we may with which he has engrafted on the humble now venture to mention another, which had and somewhat coarse stock of a quiet unasin secret, perhaps, as much weight with us as suming peasant girl, the heroic affection, the all the rest put together. We mean simply, strong sense, and lofty purposes, which disthat when we began with one of those works, tinguish this heroine-or rather, the art with we were conscious that we never knew how which he has so tempered and modified those to leave off; but, finding the author's words great qualities, as to make them appear noso much more agreeable than our own, went ways unsuitable to the station or ordinary on in the most unreasonable manner copying bearing of such a person, and so ordered and out description after description, and dialogue disposed the incidents by which they are after dialogue, till we were abused, not alto- called out, that they seem throughout adapted, gether without reason, for selling our readers and native as it were, to her condition,-is in small letter what they had already in large, superior to any thing we can recollect in the ---and for the abominable nationality of filling history of invention; and must appear, to any up our pages with praises of a Scottish author, one who attentively considers it, as a remark and specimens of Scottish pleasantry and pa- able triumph over the greatest of all difficulthos. While we contritely admit the justice ties in the conduct of a fictitious narrative. of these imputations, we humbly trust that Jeanie Deans, in the course of her adventurous our Southern readers will now be of opinion undertaking, excites our admiration and symthat the offence has been in some degree ex-pathy a great deal more powerfully than most piated, both by our late forbearance, and our heroines, and is in the highest degree both present proceeding: For while we have done pathetic and sublime; and yet she never violence to our strongest propensities, in pass- says or does any one thing that the daughter ing over in silence two very tempting publi- of a Scotch cowfeeder might not be supposed cations of this author, on Scottish subjects and to say-and scarcely any thing indeed that is in the Scottish dialect, we have at last recur- not characteristic of her rank and habitual red to him for the purpose of noticing the only occupations. She is never sentimental, nor work he has produced on a subject entirely refined, nor elegant; and though acting alEnglish; and one which is nowhere graced ways, and in very difficult situations, with either with a trait of our national character, or the greatest judgment and propriety, never a (voluntary) sample of our national speech. seems to exert more than that downright and Before entering upon this task, however, we obvious good sense which is so often found to must be permitted, just for the sake of keep-rule the conduct of persons of her condition. ing our chronology in order, to say a word or This is the great ornament and charm of the two on those neglected works, of which we work. Dumbiedykes, however, is an admir constrained ourselves to say nothing, at the able sketch in the grotesque way;-and the time when they formed the subject of all other Captain of Knockdunder is a very spirited, disceptation. and, though our Saxon readers will scarcely believe it, a very accurate representation of a Celtic deputy. There is less description of scenery, and less sympathy with external nature, in this, than in any of the other tales.

"The Heart of Mid-Lothian" is remarkable for containing fewer characters, and less variety of incident, than any of the author's former productions:-and it is accordingly, in some places, comparatively languid. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described; and the whole part of George Robertson, or Stanton, is extravagant and unpleasing. The final catastrophe, too, is needlessly improbable and startling; and both Saddletrees and Davie Deans become at last somewhat tedious and unreasonable; while we miss, throughout, the character of the generous and kindhearted rustic, which, in one form or another, gives such spirit and interest to most of the other stories. But with all these defects, the work has both beauty and power enough to vindicate its title to a legitimate descent from its mighty father-and even to a place in "the

"The Bride of Lammermoor" is more sketchy and romantic than the usual vein of the author-and loses, perhaps, in the exag geration that is incident to that style, some of the deep and heartfelt interest that belongs to more familiar situations. The humours of Caleb Balderstone, too, are to our taste the least successful of this author's attempts at pleasantry-and belong rather to the school of French or Italian buffoonery, than to that of English humour; and yet, to give scope to these farcical exhibitions, the poverty of the Master of Ravenswood is exaggerated be yond all credibility, and to the injury even of his personal dignity. Sir W. Ashton is tedious

and Bucklaw and his Captain, though excel- | productions of which we have been prevented lently drawn, take up rather too much room from speaking in detail, we proceed, without for subordinate agents.-There are splendid further preface, to give an account of the things, however, in this work also.-The pic- work before us. ture of old Ailie is exquisite-and beyond the reach of any other living writer.-The hags that convene in the churchyard, have all the terror and sublimity, and more than the nature of Macbeth's witches; and the courtship at the Mermaiden's well, as well as some of the immediately preceding scenes, are full of dignity and beauty. There is a deep pathos indeed, and a genuine tragic interest in the whole story of the ill-omened loves of the two victims. The final catastrophe of the Bride, however, though it may be founded on fact, is too horrible for fiction. But that of Ravenswood is magnificent—and, taken along with the prediction which it was doomed to fulfil, and the mourning and death of Balderstone, is one of the finest combinations of superstition and sadness which the gloomy genius of our fiction has ever put together.

"The Legend of Montrose" is also of the nature of a sketch or fragment, and is still more vigorous than its companion.-There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty-or, rather, he engrosses too great a proportion of the work, -for, in himself, we think he is uniformly entertaining; and the author has nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every time in scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Rittmaster. The general idea of the character is familiar to our comic dramatists after the Restoration-and may be said in some measure to be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;-but the ludicrous combination of the soldado with the Divinity student of Marischal college, is entirely original; and the mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily exemplified. Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that is not characteristic and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous. Annot Lyle, and the Children of the Mist, are in a very different manner-and, though extravagant, are full of genius and poetry. The whole scenes at Argyle's Castle, and in the escape from it-though trespassing too far beyond the bounds of probability-are given with great spirit and effect; and the mixture of romantic incident and situation, with the tone of actual business and the real transactions of a camp, give a life and interest to the warlike part of the story, which belong to the fictions of no other hand. There is but little made of Montrose himself; and the wager about the Candlesticks-though said to be founded in fact, and borrowed from a very well known and entertaining book, is one of the few things in the writings of this author, to which we are constrained to apply the epithets of stupid and silly.

Having thus hastily set our mark on those

The story, as we have already stated, is entirely English; and consequently no longer possesses the charm of that sweet Doric dialect, of which even strangers have been made of late to feel the force and the beauty. But our Southern neighbours will be no great gainers, after all, in point of familiarity with the personages, by this transference of the scene of action:-For the time is laid as far back as the reign of Richard I.—and we suspect that the Saxons and Normans of that age are rather less known to them than even the Highlanders and Cameronians of the present. This was the great difficulty the author had to contend with, and the great disadvantage of the subject with which he had to deal. Nobody now alive can have a very clear or complete conception of the actual way of life and manière d'etre of our ancestors in the year 1194. Some of the more prominent outlines of their chivalry, their priesthood, and their villenage, may be known to antiquaries, or even to general readers; but all the filling up, and details, which alone could give body and life to the picture, have been long since effaced by time. We have scarcely any notion, in short, of the private life and conversation of any class of persons in that remote period; and, in fact, know less how the men and women occupied or amused themselves-what they talked about-how they looked-or what they habitually thought or felt, at that time in England, than we know of what they did or thought at Rome in the time of Augustus, or at Athens in the time of Pericles. The memorials and relics of those earlier ages and remoter nations are greatly more abundant and more familiar to us, than those of our ancestors at the distance of seven centuries. Besides ample histories and copious orations, we have plays, poems, and familiar letters of the former periods; while of the latter we have only some vague chronicles, some superstitious legends, and a few fragments of foreign romance. We scarcely know, indeed, what language was then either spoken or written. Yet, with all these helps, how cold, and conjectural a thing would a novel be, of which the scene was laid in ancient Rome' The author might talk with perfect propriety of the business of the Forum, and the amuse ments of the Circus-of the baths and the suppers, and the canvass for office-and the sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies. He might be quite correct as to the dress, furni ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention; and might even engross in his work various anecdotes and sayings preserved in contemporary authors. But when he came to represent the details of individual character and feeling, and to delineate the daily conduct, and report the ordinary conversation of his persons, he would find himself either frozer. in among naked and barren generalities, cr engaged with modern Englishmen in the mas querade habits of antiquity.

In stating these difficulties, however, we really mean less to account for the defects, than to enhance the merits of the work before us. For though the author has not worked impossibilities, he has done wonders with his subject; and though we do sometimes miss those fresh and living pictures of the characters which we know, and the nature with which we are familiar-and that high and deep interest which the home scenes of our own times, and our own people could alone generate or sustain, it is impossible to deny that he has made marvellous good use of the scanty materials at his disposal-and eked them out both by the greatest skill and dexterity in their arrangement, and by all the resources that original genius could render subservient to such a design. For this purpose he has laid his scene in a period when the rivalry of the victorious Norman and the conquered Saxon, had not been finally composed; and when the courtly petulance, and chivalrous and military pride of the one race, might yet be set in splendid opposition to the manly steadiness, and honest but homely simplicity of the other: And has, at the same time, given an air both of dignity and of reality to his story, by bringing in the personal prowess of Cœur de Lion himself, and other personages of historical fame, to assist in its development. Though reduced, in a great measure, to the vulgar staple of armed knights, and jolly friars or woodsmen, imprisoned damsels, lawless barons, collared serfs, and household fools--he has made such admirable use of his great talents for description, and invested those traditional and theatrical persons with so much of the feelings and humours that are of all ages and all countries, that we frequently cease to regard them- -as it is generally right to regard them-as parts of a fantastical pageant; and are often brought to consider the knights who joust in panoply in the lists, and the foresters who shoot deer with arrows, and plunder travellers in the woods, as real individuals, with hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms like our own-actual existences, in short, into whose views we may still reasonably enter, and with whose emotions we are bound to sympathise. To all this he has added, out of the prodigality of his high and inventive genius, the grace and the interest of some lofty, and sweet, and superhuman characters-for which, though evidently fictitious, and unnatural in any stage of society, the remoteness of the scene on which they are introduced, may serve as an apology-if they could need any other than what they bring along with them in their own sublimity and beauty.

In comparing this work then with the former productions of the same master-hand, it is impossible not to feel that we are passing in a good degree from the reign of nature and reality, to that of fancy and romance; and exchanging for scenes of wonder and curiosity, those more homefelt sympathies and deeper touches of delight that can only be excited by the people among whom we live, and the objects that are constantly around us. A far

greater proportion of the work is accordingly made up of splendid descriptions of arms and dresses-moated and massive castles-tourna ments of mailed champions-solemn feastsformal courtesies, and other matters of external and visible presentment, that are only entitled to such distinction as connected with the olden time, and new only by virtue of their antiquity while the interest of the story is maintained, far more by surprising adventures and extraordinary situations, the startling effect of exaggerated sentiments, and the strong contrast of exaggerated characters, than by the sober charms of truth and reality,-the exquisite representation of scenes with which we are familiar, or the skilful development of affections which we have often experienced.

These bright lights and deep shadows-this succession of brilliant pictures, addressed as often to the eye as to the imagination, and oftener to the imagination than the heart-this preference of striking generalities to homely details, all belong more properly to the province of Poetry than of Prose; and Ivanhoe accordingly seems to us much more akin to the most splendid of modern poems, than the most interesting of modern novels; and savours more of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, than of Waverley, or Old Mortality. For our part we prefer, and we care not who knows it, the prose to the poetry—whether in metre or out of it; and would willingly exchange, if the proud alternative were in our choice, even the great fame of Mr. Scott, for that which awaits the mighty unknown who has here raised his standard of rivalry, within the ancient limits of his reign. We cannot now, however, give even an abstract of the story; and shall venture, but on a brief citation, from the most striking of its concluding scenes. The majestic Rebecca, our readers will recollect, had been convicted before the grand master of the Templars, and sentenced to die, unless a champion appeared to do battle with her accuser, before an appointed day. The appointed day at last arrives. Rebecca is led out to the scaffold-faggots are prepared by the side of the lists-and in the lists appears the relentless Templar, mounted and armed for the encounter. No champion appears for Rebecca; and the heralds ask her if she yields herself as justly condemned.

466 Say to the Grand Master,' replied Rebecca, 'that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mie own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is passed, may his Holy will be done!' The herald retired to carry this answer to the Grand Master.

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God forbid,' said Lucas Beaumanoir, that Jew or Pagan should impeach us of injustice.-Until the shadows be cast from the west to the east ward, will we wait to see if a champion will appear for this unfortunate woman.' 9

The hours pass away-and the shadows begin to pass to the eastward. The assembled multitudes murmur with impatience and com passion-and the Judges whisper to each other, that it is time to proceed to doom.

alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling steps, than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, her fair visitant kneeled suddenly on one knee, pressed her hands to her forehead, and, bending her head to the ground, in spite of Rowena's resistance, kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic.-' What means this?' said the surprised bride; or why do you offer to me a deference so unusual?'-Because to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,' said Rebecca, rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity of her manner, 'I may lawfully, and without rebuke, pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to Wilfred of Ivanhoe. 1 am-forgive the boldness which has offered to you the homage of my country-I am the unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded his life against such fearful odds in the tilt-yard of Templestowe.- Damsel,' said Rowena, Wilfred of Ivanhoe on that day rendered back but in a slight measure your unceasing charity towards him in his wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught remains in which he and I can serve thee?'-'Noth

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"At this instant a knight, urging his horse to speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the lists. An hundred voices exclaimed, A champion! a champion! And, despite the prepossession and prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unanimously as the knight rode rapidly into the tilt-yard. To the summons of the herald, who demanded his rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight answered readily and boldly, 'I am a good knight and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York; to uphold the doom pronounced against her to be false and truthless; and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as a traitor, murtherer, and liar.' The stranger must first show,' said Malvoisin, that he is a good Knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple sendeth not forth her champions against nameless men. My name,' said the Knight, raising his helmet, is better known, my lineage more pure, Malvoisin, than thine own. I am Wilfred of Ivanhoe.'-'I will not fight with thee,' said the Templar,ing,' said Rebecca, calmly, unless you will transin a changed and hollow voice. Get thy wounds healed, and purvey thee a better horse, and it may be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of thee this boyish spirit of bravade.'' Ha! proud Templar,' said Ivanhoe, hast thou forgotten that twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember the lists at Acro-remember the Passage of Arms at Ashby-remember thy proud vaunt in the halls of Rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle with Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and recover the honour thou hadst lost! By that reliquary, and the holy relique it contains, I will proclaim thee, Templar, a coward in every court in Europe-in every Preceptory of thine Order-unless thou do battle with out farther delay.'-Bois-Guilbert turned his countenance irresolutely towards Rebecca, and then exclaimed, looking fiercely at Ivanhoe, Dog of a Saxon, take thy lance, and prepare for the death thou hast drawn upon thee!'- Does the Grand Master allow me the combat?' said Ivanhoe.-'Itinued, rising with enthusiasm she can have nothmay not deny what you have challenged,' said the ing to fear in England, where Saxon and Norman Grand Master. yet I would thou wert in better will contend who shall most do her honour.'-' Thy plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast speech is fair, lady,' said Rebecca, and thy purthou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably pose fairer; but it may not be there is a gulf ben.at with Thus thus as I am, and not other-twixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either wise,' said Ivanhoe; it is the judgment of God!-to pass over it. Farewell!-yet, ere I go, indulge to his keeping I commend myself."

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We cannot make room for the whole of this catastrophe. The overtired horse of Ivanhoe falls in the shock; but the Templar, though scarcely touched by the lance of his adversary, reels, and falls also;-and when they seek to raise him, is found to be utterly dead! a victim to his own contending passions.

We will give but one scene more-and it is in honour of the divine Rebecca-for the fate of all the rest may easily be divined. Richard forgives his brother; and Wilfred weds Rowena.

mit to him my grateful farewell.'-' You leave Eng land, then,' said Rowena, scarce recovering the sur prise of this extraordinary visit. I leave it, lady, ere this moon again changes. My father hath a brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, King of Grenada-thither we go, secure of peace and protection, for the payment of such ransom as the Moslem exact from our people.'-And are you not then as well protected in England?' said Rowena. My husband has favour with the King-the King himself is just and generous. - Lady,' said Rebecca, I doubt it not-but England is no safe abode for the children of my people. Ephraim is an heartless dove-Issachar an over-laboured drudge, which stoops between two burthens. Not in a land of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope to rest during her wanderings.' But you, maiden,' said Rowena- you surely can have nothing to fear. She who nursed the sick-bed of Ivanhoe,' she con

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me one request. The bridal veil hangs over thy fame speaks so highly. They are scarce worthy face; raise it, and let me see the features of which of being looked upon,' said Rowena; but, expecting the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.'— She took it off accordingly, and partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mastered by higher emotions, passed slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Lady. she said, the countenance you have deigned to show me will long dwell in my remem"It was upon the second morning after this happy brance. There reigns in it gentleness and goodbridal, that the Lady Rowena was made acquainted ness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities by her handmaid Elgitha, that a damsel desired ad- may mix with an expression so lovely, how may we mission to her presence, and solicited that their par- chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour ley might be without witness. Rowena wondered, of its original? Long, long shall I remember your hesitated, became curious, and ended by command- features, and bless God that I leave my noble deing the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants liverer united with'-She stopped short-her eyes to withdraw. She entered-a noble and command-filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and aning figure; the long white veil in which she was swered to the anxious inquiries of Rowena-'I am shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing well, lady-well. But my heart swells when I think the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her de- of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe !meanour was that of respect, unmingled by the Farewell! One, the most trifling part of my duty, east shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate remains undischarged. Accept this casket-startle favour. Rowena was ever ready to acknowledge not at its contents.-Rowena opened the small sï. the claims, and attend to the feelings of others. She ver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or arose, and would have conducted the lovely stranger necklace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were to a seat; but she looked at Elgitha, and again in-visibly of immense value. It is impossible,' she timated a wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena said, tendering back the casket, 'I dare not accept

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a gift of such consequence.'-'Yet keep it, lady,' | or Cynocephali. The interest we do take is in returned Rebecca. Let me not think you deem the situations-and the extremes of peril, heso wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I prize these sparkling frag- roism, and atrocity, in which the great latiments of stone above my liberty? or that my father tude of the fiction enables the author to invalues them in comparison to the honour of his only dulge. Even with this advantage, we soon child? Accept them, lady-to me they are valueless. feel, not only that the characters he brings beI will never wear jewels more. You are then fore us are contrary to our experience, but that unhappy,' said Rowena, struck with the manner in they are actually impossible. There could in which Rebecca uttered the last words. O, remain fact have been no such state of society as that with us-the counsel of holy men will wean you of which the story before us professes to give from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to you. No, lady,' answered Rebecca, the same us but samples and ordinary results. In a calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beau- country beset with such worthies as Front-detiful features, that may not be. I may not change Boeuf, Malvoisin, and the rest, Isaac the Jew the faith of my fathers, like a garment unsuited to could neither have grown rich, nor lived to old the climate in which I seek to dwell; and unhappy, lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my age; and no Rebecca could either have acfuture life, will be my comforter, if I do His will."quired her delicacy, or preserved her honour. Have you then convents, to one of which you Neither could a plump Prior Aymer have folmean to retire?' asked Rowena.- No, lady,' said lowed venery in woods swarming with the the Jewess; but among our people, since the time merry men of Robin Hood.-Rotherwood must of Abraham downward, have been women who have been burned to the ground two or three have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the times in every year-and all the knights and sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distress-thanes of the land been killed off nearly as ed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he inquire after the fate of her whose life he saved!'--There was an involuntary tremor in Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.-- Farewell,' she said, may He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings!'

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She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena; for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved."

The work before us shows at least as much genius as any of those with which it must now be numbered-and excites, perhaps, at least on the first perusal, as strong an interest: But it does not delight so deeply-and we rather think it will not please so long. Rebecca is almost the only lovely being in the story-and she is evidently a creature of the fancy-a mere poetical personification. Next to herfor Isaac is but a milder Shylock, and by no means more natural than his original-the heartiest interest is excited by the outlaws and their merry chief-because the tone and manners ascribed to them are more akin to those that prevailed among the yeomanry of later days, than those of the Knights, Priors, and Princes, are to any thing with which a more recent age has been acquainted.--Cedric the Saxon, with his thralls, and Bois-Guilbert the Templar with his Moors, are to us but theoretical or mythological persons. We know nothing about them—and never feel assured that we fully comprehend their drift, or enter rightly into their feelings. The same genius which now busies us with their concerns, might have excited an equal interest for the adventures of Oberon and Pigwiggin-or for any imaginary community of Giants, Amazons,

often. The thing, in short, when calmly considered, cannot be received as a reality; and, after gazing for a while on the splendid pageant which it presents, and admiring the exagger rated beings who counterfeit, in their grand style, the passions and feelings of our poor human nature, we soon find that we must turn again to our Waverleys, and Antiquaries, and Old Mortalities, and become acquainted with our neighbours and ourselves, and our duties, and dangers, and true felicities, in the exqui site pictures which our author there exhibits of the follies we daily witness or display, and of the prejudices, habits, and affections, by which we are still hourly obstructed, governed, or cheered.

We end, therefore, as we began-by preferring the home scenes, and the copies of originals which we know-but admiring, in the highest degree, the fancy and judgment and feeling by which this more distant and ideal prospect is enriched. It is a splendid Poem-and contains matter enough for six good Tragedies. As it is, it will make a glorious melodrame for the end of the season.Perhaps the author does better-for us and for himself-by writing more novels: But we have an earnest wish that he would try his hand in the actual bow of Shakespeare-venture fairly within his enchanted circle-and reassert the Dramatic Sovereignty of England, by putting forth a genuine Tragedy of passion, fancy, and incident. He has all the qualifications to insure success*-except perhaps the art of compression; for we suspect it would cost him no little effort to confine his story, and the development of his characters, to some fifty or sixty small pages. But the attempt is worth making; and he may be certain that he cannot fail without glory.

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