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Sr eee 4 i I; Hee La ae i ay | 4 i | ii it hi ye "i aan ememnen Seen Senneenrnnnenvosarerenmemneo a ia ai eee ‘ | Le ie iy! | Tw ha ity lly ‘ y ' j ' a 1} 7 ' ; i es == siete aald PoP iipags ) tLe de ome) afer Mbeneranal fe fein wt opti atin actboncranseral Sipe eons ——— f ween eee eS SS to — a F ete SS {SSS} ear ee 0 nde MMNSM coe iis Cone London Magazine. "URE WINE-COECUAR@. deal). Yc. Fell te Re biel cies ask, Berens New Monthly Magazine. DeEsTRUCTION OF THE BruNswiIcK THEATRE BY FIRE .... - New Monthly Magazine. First APPEARANCE OF Miss Fanny KemptE . .. e« © « e« « New Monthly Magazine. Tue Meio-DrRaMAs AGAINST GAMBLING . . « «© «© © © © e« e New Monthly Magazine. On THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE LATE WixtiAM HazuittT The Examiner. Toe tate Dowager Lapy Horuanp «>. . welts) % aime. we Morning Chronicle. ADDRESS AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MANCHESTER ATHENEUM . Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1845. Lorp Expon anp Lorp STowEtn . . ... eRe eyeviews. Quarterly Review. SPEECH FOR THE DEFENDANT IN THE PROSECUTION OF THE QUEEN Uv. Moxon, FOR THE PUBLICATION OF SHELLEY’s WorKS. ... . Delivered in the Court of Queen’s Bench, June 23, 1841. Speecu oN THE MorTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO AMEND THE IGM LOE OPV RIGHT) WC pote c. i Veh cuaine aii aw) Lore. cia hic hi earns Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, May 18, 1837. Sprecu on THE Motion For THE Seconp READING OF THE BILL TO AMEND: THE LiAW OF COPYRIGHT) 980%. U0 Alle 6 ee eee Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, April 25, 1838. SpeecH oN Movine THE Seconp Reapine or A BILL TO AMEND THE Law oF CopygicuyT. . Winwwaene he vis vortera Al week uatee ye Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, February 28, 1839. iat WESTMINSTER LAY ook) occ ¢ bac Biipaliot) carck ee December 1845. Page 101 104 113 116 117 119 121 131 132 137 148 159 165 171 176 a a TALFOURD’S MISCELLANIES,. ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES, INTRODUCTORY TO A SERIES OF CRITICISMS ON THE LIVING NOVELISTS. (New Montuty Macazine.] We regard the authors of the best novels and romances as among the truest benefactors of theirspecies. Their works have often con- veyed, in the most attractive form, lessons of the most genial wisdom. But we do not prize them so much in reference to their immediate aim, or any individual traits of nobleness with which they may inform the thoughts, as for their general tendency to break up that cold and debasing selfishness with which the souls of so largea portion of mankind are encrusted. They give to a vast class, who by no means would be carried beyond the most contracted range of emotion, an interest in things out of themselves, and a perception of grandeur and of beauty, of which otherwise they might ever have lived unconscious. Pity for fictitious suf- ferings is, indeed, very inferior to that sympa- thy with the universal heart of man which inspires real self-sacrifice ; but it is better even to be moved by its tenderness, than wholly to be ignorant of the joy of natural tears. How many are there for whom poesy has nocharm, and who have derived only from romances those glimpses of disinterested heroism and ideal beauty, which alone “ make them less for- lorn,” in their busy career! The good house- wife, who is employed all her life in the seve- rest drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of a state and dignity above her station and age, and some dim vision of meek, angelic suffer- ing, when she thinks of the well-thumbed vo- lume of Clarissa Harlowe, which she found, when a girl, in some Old recess, and read, with breathless eagerness, at stolen times and mo- ments of hasty joy. The careworn lawyer or politician, encircled with all kinds of petty anxieties, thinks of the Arabian Nights Enter- tainments, which he devoured in his joyful school-days, and is once more young, and in- nocent, and happy. If the sternest puritan were acquainted with Parson Adams, or with Dr. Primrose, he could not hate the clergy. If novels are not the deepest teachers of hu- manity, they have, at least, the widest range. They lend to genius “lighter wings to fly.” They are read where Milton and Shakspeare are only talked of, and where even their names are never heard. They nestle gently beneath the covers of unconscious sofas, are read by fair and glistening eyes in moments snatched from repose, and beneath counters and shop- boards minister delights “secret, sweet, and precious.” It is possible that, in particular instances, their effects may be baneful; but, on the whole, we are persuaded they are good. The world is not in danger of becoming too romantic. The golden threads of poesy are not too thickly or too closely interwoven with the ordinary web of existence. Sympathy is the first great lesson which man should learn. It will be ill for him if he proceeds no farther; if his emotions are but excited to roll back on his heart, and to be fostered in luxurious quiet. But unless he learns to feel for things in which he has no personal interest, he can achieve nothing generous or noble. This lesson is in reality the universal moral of all excellent ro- mances. How mistaken are those miserable reasoners who object to them as giving “ false pictures of life—of purity too glossy and ethe- real—of friendship too deep and confiding—of love which does not shrink at the approach of ill, but looks on tempests and is never shaken,” because with these the world too rarely blos- soms! Were these things visionary and un- real, who would break the spell, and bid the de- licious enchantment vanish? The soul will not be the worse for thinking too well of its kind, or believing that the highest excellence is within the reach of its exertions. But these things are not unreal; they are shadows, in- deed, in themselves; but they are shadows cast from objects stately and eternal. Man can never imagine that which has no foundation in his nature. ‘The virtues he conceives are not the mere pageantry of his thought. We feel their truth—not their historic or individual truth—but their universal truth, as reflexes of human energy and power. It would be enough for us to prove that the imaginative glories which are shed around our being, are far brighter than “the light of common day,” which mere vulgar experience in the course of the world diffuses. But, in truth, that radiance is not merely of the fancy, nor are its influences lost when it ceases immediately to shine on our path. It is holy and prophetic. The best joys of childhood—its boundless aspirations and gorgeous dreams, are the sure indications Az 5 6 TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. of the nobleness of its final heritage. All the softenings of evil to the moral vision by the gentleness of fancy, are proofs that evil itself shall perish. Our yearnings after ideal beauty show that the home of the soul which feels them, is in a lovelier world. And when man describes high virtues, and instances of no- bleness, which rarely light on earth; so sub- lime that they expand our imaginations beyond their former compass, yet so human that they make our hearts gush with delight; he disco- vers feelings in his own breast, and awakens sympathies in ours, which shall assuredly one day have real and stable objects to rest on! The early times of England—unlike those of Spain—were not rich in chivalrous romances. The imagination seems to have been chilled by the manners of the Norman conquerors. The domestic contests for the disputed throne, with their intrigues, battles, and executions, have none of that rich, poetical interest, which attended the struggles for the Holy Sepulchre. Nor, in the golden age of English genius, were there any very remarkable works of pure fic- tion. Since that period to the present day, however, there has been a rich succession of novels and romances, each increasing the stores of innocent delight, and shedding on hu- man life some new tint of tender colouring. The novels of Richardson are at once among the grandest and the most singular crea- tions of human genius. They combine an ac- curate acquaintance with the freest libertinism, and the sternest professions of virtue—a sport- ing with vicious casuistry, and the deepest horror of free-thinking—the most stately ideas of paternal authority, and the most elaborate display of its abuses. Prim and stiff, almost without parallel, the author perpetually treads on the very borders of indecorum, but with a solemn and assured step, as if certain that he could never fall. “The precise, strait-laced Richardson,” says Mr. Lamb in one of the pro- found and beautiful notes to his specimens, “has strengthened vice from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries, and ab- struse pleas against her adversary virtue, which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of libertinism sufficient to have invent- ed.” He had, in fact, the power of making any set of notions, however fantastical, appear as “truths of holy writ,” to his readers. ‘This he did by the authority with which he disposed of all things, and by the infinite minuteness of his details. His gradations are so gentle, that we do not at any one point hesitate to follow him, and should descend with him to any depth before we perceived that our path had been unequal. By the means of this strange magic, we become anxious for the marriage of Pa- mela with her base master ; because the author has so imperceptibly wrought on us the belief of an awful distance between the rights of an esquire and his servant, that our imaginations regard it in the place of all moral distinctions. After all, the general impression made on us by his works is virtuous. Clementina is to the soul a new and majestic image, inspired by virtue and by love, which raises and refines its conceptions. She has all the depth and in- tensity of the Italian character, with all the . alone is above her. purity of an angel. She is at the same time one of the grandest of tragic heroines, and the divinest of religious enthusiasts. Clarissa Clementina steps statelily in her very madness, amidst “the pride, pomp, and circumstance” of Italian nobility ; Clarissa is trlumphant, though violated, deserted, and encompassed by vice and infamy. Never can we forget that amazing scene, in which, on the effort of her mean seducer to renew his out- rages, she appears in all the radiance of men- tal purity, among the wretches assembled to witness his triumph, where she startles them by her first appearance, as by a vision from above; and holding the penknife to her breast, with her eyes lifted to heaven, prepares to die, if her craven destroyer advances, striking the vilest with deep awe of goodness, and walk- ing placidly, at last, from the circle of her foes, none of them daring to harm her! How pa- thetic, above all other pathos in the world, are those snatches of meditation which she com- mits to the paper, in the first delirium of her wo! How delicately imagined are her prepa- rations for that grave in which alone she can find repose! Cold must be the hearts of those who can conceive them as too elaborate, or who can venture to criticise them. In this novel all appears most real; we feel enve- loped, like Don Quixote, by a_ thousand threads; and like him, would we rather re- main so for ever, than break one of their silken fibres. Clarissa Harlowe is one of the books which leave us different beings from those which they find us. “Sadder and wiser’ do we arise from its perusal. Yet when we read Fielding’s novels after those of Richardson, we feel as if a stupen- dous pressure were removed from our souls. We seem suddenly to have left a palace of enchantment, where we have past through long galleries filled with the most gorgeous images, and illumined by a light not quite human nor yet quite divine, into the fresh air, and the common ways of this “bright and breathing world.’ We travel on the high road of humanity, yet meet in it pleasanter companions, and catch more delicious snatches of refreshment, than ever we can hope else- where to enjoy. The mock heroic of Field- ing, when he condescends to that ambiguous style, is scarcely less pleasing than its stately prototype. It is a sort of spirited defiance to fiction, on the behalf of reality, by one who knew full well all the strongholds of that nature which he was defending. There is not in Fielding much of that which can properly be called ideal—if we except the character of Parson Adams; but his works represent life as more delightful than it seems to common experience, by disclosing those of its dear im- munities, which we little think of, even when we enjoy them. How delicious are all his re- freshments at all his inns! How vivid are the transient joys of his heroes, in their checkered course—how full and overflowing are their final raptures! His Tom Jones is quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be rivalled only in his own works for felicitous deline- ation of character. The little which we have told us of Allworthy, especially that which re- . 7 ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES. 7 lates to his feelings respecting his deceased wife, makes us feel for him, as for one of the best and most revered friends of our child- hood. Was ever the “soul of goodness in, things evil” better disclosed, than in‘ the scruples and the dishonesty of Black George, that tenderest of gamekeepers, and truest of thieves? Did ever health, good-humour, frank- heartedness, and animal spirits hold out so freshly against vice and fortune as in the hero? Was ever so plausible a hypocrite as Blifil, who buys a Bible of Tom Jones so de- lightfully, and who, by his admirable imitation of virtue, leaves it almost in doubt, whether, by a counterfeit so dexterous, he did not merit some share of her rewards? Who shall gain- say the cherry lips of Sophia Western? The story of Lady Bellaston we confess to be a blemish. But if there be any vice left in the work, the fresh atmosphere diffused over all its scenes, will render it innoxious. Joseph Andrews has far less merit as a story—but it depicts Parson Adams, whom it does the heart good to think on. He who drew this cha- racter, if he had done nothing else, would not have lived in vain. We fancy we can see him with his torn cassock, (in honour of his high profession,) his volumes of sermons, which we really wish had been printed, and his A’schylus, the best of all the editions of that sublime tragedian! Whether he longs after his own sermons against vanity—or is absorbed in the romantic tale of the fair Leo- nora—or uses his ox-like fists in defence of the fairer Fanny, he equally imbodies in his person, “the homely beauty of the good old cause,” of high thoughts, pure imaginations, and manners unspotted by the world. Smollet seems to have had more touch of romance than Fielding, but not so profound and intuitive a knowledge of humanity’s hid- den treasures. There is nothing in his works comparable to Parson Adams; but then, on the other hand, Fielding has not any thing of the kind equal to Strap. Partridge is dry, and hard, compared with this poor barber-boy, with his generous overflowings of affection. Roderick Random, indeed, with its varied de- lineation of life, is almost a romance. Its hero is worthy of his name. He is the sport of fortune rolled about through the “many ways of wretchedness,’ almost without re- sistance, but ever catching those tastes of joy which are everywhere to be relished by those who are willing to receive them. We seem to roll on with him, and get delectably giddy in his company. The humanity of the Vicar of Wakefield is less deep than that of Roderick Random, but sweeter tinges of fancy are cast over it. The sphere in which Goldsmith’s powers moved was never very extensive, but within it he discovered all that was good, and shed on it the tenderest lights of his sympathizing ge- nius. No one ever excelled so much as he in depicting amiable follies and endearing weak- nesses. His satire makes us at once smile at and love all that he so tenderly ridicules. The good Vicar’s trust in Monogamy, his son’s purchase of the spectacles, his own sale of his horse to his solemn admirer at the fair; the blameless vanities of his daughters, and his resignation under his accumulated sorrows, are among the best treasures of me- ‘mory. ‘The pastoral scenes in this exquisite. tale are the sweetest in the world. The scents of the hay-field, and of the blossoming hedge- rows, seem to come freshly to our senses. The whole romance is a tenderly-coloured picture, in little, of human nature’s most genial qualities. De Foe is one of the most extraordinary of English authors. His Robinson Crusoe is deservedly one of the most popular of novels. It is usually the first read, and always among the last forgotten. ‘The interest of its scenes in the uninhabited island is altogether pe- | culiar; since there is nothing to develope the character but deep solitude. Man, there, is alone in the world, and can hold communion only with nature, and nature’s God. There is nearly the same situation in Philoctetes, that sweetest of the Greek tragedies; but there we only see the poor exile as he is about to leave his sad abode, to which he has become at- tached, even with a child-like cleaving. In Robinson Crusoe, life is stripped of all its social joys, yet we feel how worthy of cherish- ing it is, with nothing but silent nature to cheer it. Thus are nature and the soul, left with no other solace, represented in their native grandeur and intense communion. With how fond an interest do we dwell on all the exertions of our fellow-man, cut off from his kind; watch his growing plantations as they rise, and seem to water them with our tears! The exceeding vividness of all the descriptions are more delightful when com- bined with the loneliness and distance of the scene “placed far amid the melancholy main” in which we become dwellers. We have grown so familiar with the solitude, that the print of man’s foot seen in the sand seems to appal us as an awful thing !—The Family In- structor of this author, in which he inculcates weightily his own notions of puritanical de- meanour and parental authority, is very curious. It is a strange mixture of narrative and dialogue, fanaticism and nature; but all done with such earnestness that the sense of its reality never quits us. Nothing, however, can be more harsh and unpleasing than the impression which it leaves. It does injustice both to religion and the world. It represents the innocent pleasures of the latter as deadly sins, and the former as most gloomy, austere, and exclusive. One lady resolves on poison- ing her husband, and another determines to go to the play, and the author treats both offences with a severity nearly equal! Far different from this ascetic novel is that best of religious romances, the Fool of Quality. The piety there is at once most deep and most benign. ‘There is much, indeed, of eloquent mysticism, but all evidently most heartfelt and sincere. The yearnings of the soul after universal good and intimate communion with the divine nature were never more nobly shown. The author is most prodigal of his intellectual wealth—“his bounty is as bound- less as the sea, his love as deep.” He gives to his chief characters riches endless as the > 8 TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. spiritual stores of his own heart. It is, indeed, only the last which gives value to the first in his writings. It is easy to endow men with millions on paper, and to make them willing to scatter them among the wretched ; but it is the corresponding bounty and exuberance of the author’s soul, which here makes the mo- ney sterling, and the charity divine. The hero of this romance always appears to our imagination like a radiant vision epcircled with celestial glories. The stories introduced in it are delightful exceptions to the usual rule by which such incidental tales are properly regarded as impertinent intrvsions. That of David Doubtful is of the most romantic in- terest, and at the same tim steeped in feeling the most profound. But that of Clement and his wife is perhaps the finest. The scene in which they are discovered, having placidly lain down to die of hunger together, in gentle submission to Heaven, depicts a quiescence the most sublime, yet the most affecting. No- twing can be more delightful than the sweeten- ing 1ogredients in their cup of sorrow. The heroic act of the lady to free herself from her ravisher’s grasp, her trial and her triumphant acquittal, have a grandeur above that of tragedy. The genial spirit of the author’s faith leads him to exult especially in the re- pentance of the wicked. No human writer seems ever to have hailed the contrite with so cordial a welcome. His scenes appear over- spread with a rich atmosphere of tenderness, which softens and consecrates all things. We would not pass over, without a tribute of gratitude, Mrs. Radcliffe’s wild and won- drous tales. When we read them, the world seems shut out, and we breathe only in an‘en- chanted region, where lover’s lutes tremble over placid waters, mouldering castles rise conscious of deeds of blood, and the sad voices of the past echo through deep vaults and lonely galleries. ‘There is always majesty in her ter- rors. She produces more effect by whispers and slender hints than ever was attained by the most vivid display of horrors. Her con- clusions are tame and impotent almost without example. But while her spells actually ope- rate, her power is truly magical. Who can ever forget the scene in the Romance of the Forest, where the marquis, who has long sought to make the heroine the victim of licen- tious love, after working on her protector, over whom he has a, mysterious influence, to steal at night into her chamber, and when his trem- bling listener expects only a requisition for delivering her into his hands, replies to the question of “then—to-night, my Lord!” “ Ade- laide dies” —or the allusions to the dark veil in the Mysteries of Udolpho—or the stupendous scenes in Spalatro’s cottage? Of all romance writers Mrs. Radcliffe is the most romantic. The present age has produced a singular number of authors of delightful prose fiction, on whom we intend to give a series of criti- cisms. We shall begin with Macxewnzir, whom we shall endeavour to compare with Sterne, and for this reason we have passed over the works of the latter in our present cur- sory view of the novelists of other days. MACKENZIE. (New Monturty Maeazine.] A.rnovuen our veneration for Mackenzie has induced us to commence this series of articles with an attempt to express our sense of his genius, we scarcely know how to criticise its exquisite creations, The feelings which they have awakened within us are too old and too sacred almost for expression. We scarcely dare to scrutinize with a critic’s ear, the blend- ing notes of that sad and soft music of human- ity which they breathe. We feel as if there were a kind of privacy in our sympathies with them—as though they were a part of ourselves, which strangers knew not—and as if in pub- licly expressing them, we were violating the sanctities of our own souls. We must recol- lect, however, that our readers know them as well as we do, and then to dwell with them senderly on their merits will seem like dis- toursing of the long-cherished memories of friends we had in common, and of sorrows participated in childhood. The purely sentimental style in which the tales of Mackenzie are written, though deeply felt by the people, has seldom met with due appreciation from the critics. It has its own genuine and peculiar beauties, which we love the more the longer we feel them. Its conse- crations are altogether drawn from the soul. The gentle tinges which it casts on human life are shed, not from the imagination or the fancy, but from the affections. It represents, indeed, humanity as more tender, its sorrows as more gentle, its joys as more abundant than they appear to common observers. But this is not effected by those influences of the imagination which consecrate whatever they touch, which detect the secret analogies of beauty, and bring kindred graces from all parts of nature to heighten the images which they reveal. It affects us rather by casting off from the soul those impurities and littlenesses which it con- tracts in the world, than by foreign aids. It appeals to those simple emotions which are not the high prerogatives of genius, but which are common to all who are “made of one blood,” and partake in one primal sympathy. The holiest feelings, after all, are those which would be the most common if gross selfish yt MACKENZIE. 9 ness and low ambition froze not “the genial current of the soul.’ The meanest and most ungifted have their gentle remembrances of early days. Love has tinged the life of the artisan and the cottager with something of the romantic. The course of none has been along 80 beaten a road that they remember not fondly some resting-places in their journeys; some turns of their path in which lovely prospects broke in upon them; some soft plats of green refreshing to their weary feet. Confiding love, generous friendship, disinterested humanity, require no recondite learning, no high imagi- nation, to enable an honest heart to appreciate and feel them. Too often, indeed, are the sim- plicities of nature and the native tendernesses of the soul nipped and chilled by those anxie- ties which lie on them “like an untimely frost.” “The world is too much with us.’ We be- come lawyers, politicians, merchants, and for- get that we are men, and sink in our transitory vocations that character which is to last for ever. A tale of sentiment—such as those of that honoured veteran whose works we would now particularly remember—awakens all these pulses of sympathy with our kind, of whose beatings we had become almost unconscious. It does honour to humanity by stripping off its artificial disguises. Its magic is not like that by which Arabian enchanters raised up glit- tering spires, domes, and palaces by a few ca- balistic words; but resembles their power to disclose veins of precious ore where all seemed sterile and blasted. It gently puts aside the brambles which overcast the stream of life, and lays it open to the reflections of those deli- cate clouds which he above it in the heavens. It shows to us the soft undercourses of feeling, which neither time nor circumstances can wholly stop; and the depth of affection in the soul, which nothing but sentiment itself can fathom. It disposes us to pensive thought— expands the sympathies—and makes all the half-forgotten delights of youth “come back upon our hearts again,” to soften and to cheer us. Too often has the sentiment of which we have spoken been confounded with sickly af- fectations ina common censure. But no things can be more opposite than the paradoxes of the inferior order of German sentimentalists and the works of a writer like Mackenzie. Real sentiment is the truest, the most genuine, and the most lasting thing on earth. It is more ancient as well as more certain in its opera- tions than the reasoning faculties. We know and feel before we think; we perceive before we compare; we enjoy before we believe. As the evidence of sense is stronger than that of testimony, so the light of our inward eye more truly shows to us the secrets of the heart than the most elaborate process of reason. Riches, honours, power, are transitory—the things which appear, pass away—the shadows of life alone are stable and unchanging. Of the re- collections of infancy nothing can deprive us. Love endures, even if its object perishes, and nurtures the soul of the mourner. Sentiment has a kind of divine alchymy, rendering grief itself the source of tenderest thoughts and far- as sacred treasures. The sorrows over which it sheds its influence are “ill-bartered for the garishness of joy ;” for they win us softly from life, and fit us to die smiling. It endures, not only while fortune changes, but while opinions vary, which the young enthusiast fondly hoped would never forsake him. It remains when the unsubstantial pageants of goodliest hope vanish. , It binds the veteran to the child by . ties which no fluctuations even of belief can alter. It preserves the only identity, save that of consciousness, which man with certainty retains—connecting our past with our present being by delicate ties, so subtle that they vi- brate to every breeze of feeling; yet so strong that the tempests of life have not power to break them. It assures us that what we have been we shall be, and that our human hearts shall vibrate with their first sympathies while the species shall endure. We think that, on the whole, Mackenzie is the first master of this delicious style. Sterne, doubtless, has deeper touches of humanity in some of his works. But there is no sustained feeling—no continuity of emotion—no extend- ed range of thought, over which the mind can brood in his ingenious and fantastical writings. His spirit is far too mercurial and airy to suffer him tenderly to linger over those images of sweet humanity which he discloses. His cle- verness breaks the charm which his feeling spreads, as by magic, around us. His exqui- site sensibility is ever counteracted by his per- ceptions of the ludicrous, and his ambition after the strange. No harmonious feeling breathes from any of his pieces. He sweeps “that curious instrument, the human heart,” with hurried fingers, calling forth in rapid succession its deepest and its liveliest tones, and making only marvellous discord. His pathos is, indeed, most genuine while it lasts ; but the soul is not suffered to cherish the feel- ing which it awakens. He does not shed, like Mackenzie, one mild light on the path of life; but scatters on it wild coruscations of ever- shifting brightness, which, while they some- times disclose spots of inimitable beauty, often do but fantastically play over objects dreary and revolting. All in Mackenzie is calm, gentle, harmonious. No play of mis- timed wit, no flourish of rhetoric, no train of philosophical speculation, for a moment di- verts our sympathy. Each of his best works is like one deep thought, and the impression which it leaves, soft, sweet, and undivided as the summer evening’s holiest and latest sigh. The only exception which we can make to this character, is the Man of the World. Here the attempt to obtain intricacy of plot disturbs the emotion which, in the other works of the author, is so harmoniously excited.