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have been kept under Christian influences, had more re spect for the realities of our being been mingled with our exposition of the abstract doctrines of theology. The poetry of the religious sentiment and of the religious life so richly dispersed through the Scriptures, had it been wisely and faithfully applied to the unchanging principles of our nature, might yet have filled up with the sweetness of devotional feeling, the aching void which arid controversy and parching doubt have left behind them in many a noble soul. Everywhere the movement now is after the realities of the present world. Hundreds of years ago earnest men tried to reduce the practice of the world to the standard of Scripture. Now there are leaders of the multitude, who urge them to cast Scripture aside as a book of the past, and to apply all their thought and energy to the cultivation of the world. One extreme has begotten another. Blind Scripturalism is followed by one-sided secularity. That such a result has become possible, we ascribe in great measure to the insincerity and cowardice of the clergy in every Church.

We cannot but feel, therefore, that the difference between the age of Frà Dolcino and our own is immense ; that we have to deal now with conditions of existence and materials of thought which were not even suspected then ; and that the endeavour to take back our modern European world to the point of view adopted by the Novarese Reformer, would be neither more nor less than a sheer impossibility. Men, we have just said, are now in quest of realities. Let them go. If they are only guided by a spirit of truthfulness and rectitude, in the pursuit of material realities, they will stumble sooner or later on spiritual realities. They will find, that they need something more for the completion of their being, than what fills the pocket and satisfies the sense. That experience will bring them back with a genuine conviction to religion. Not that we desire this spiritual interregnum. We had rather, there should be no break in the religious development of our race. But we have shown, who are the parties to blame for occasioning it. It is possible we may live to see the world nearly divided between fanatics and unbelievers, between some who would take Dolcino's method of reforming the world, and some who would

throw Scripture and all that it offers us, contemptuously aside; while those who perceive that there is a truth in Scripture, and a truth in the world, both of which run up into a common and a grander truth, will form a small and uninfluential minority. We deprecate such a division of parties, though we think it possible. But we desire to say most emphatically in conclusion, that such a prospect does not in the least shake our trust in the final prevalence of that Divine Word which God has at once deposited in Scripture and committed to the ever-living custody of the human soul.

ART. IV. RECENT WORKS OF FICTION.

Ruth. By the Author of Mary Barton.

THE novel has been styled the modern Epos, but if, in ancient times, Calliope was represented as holding in her hand the three great Epics of antiquity, her modern representative ought rather to be typified as a female Briareus, furnished with fifty heads, and a hundred hands, and might even then not unreasonably complain of the fatigue to which she is subjected in the service of her numerous votaries. The avidity with which works of fiction are perused, aspiring, as they do, to delineate emotions and experiences in which all human beings are equally interested, cannot excite surprise. "Man is dear to Man," and the desire for sympathy is one of the deepest instincts of his nature; yet his inner mind is shrouded in a veil of mystery; his emotions, whether of joy or of sorrow, lurk often unsuspected in the recesses of his heart, and his most cherished thoughts shrink from exposure, except when conveyed in an imaginative form. All genuine fiction, however, is the idealized transcript of actual experience; and as the architects of old built their souls into the stately minsters, whose storied aisles embody the aspirations of a by-gone age, so the heart of humanity has enshrined itself in the glowing pages of romance, where stand revealed those hidden passages of experience, which in actual life are witnessed only by the eye of Him who seeth in secret; and as we listen to the wail of sorrow or the tones of joy, uttered, it may be, in a foreign language, and coming to us from a distant time, our heart responds to the sympathetic touch, and we recognise the deep truth of the poet's words, "that we have all of us one human heart."

It is not merely as the record of past emotion, as the silent witness through each succeeding generation to the great doctrine of Human Brotherhood, that we value fiction; we regard it as fulfilling a high and a holy mission in the present; it conjures up an ideal world in the midst of our prosaic realities, and men, absorbed in selfish

interests, are awakened to more generous sympathies, and their hearts, severed in the turmoil of the world, find a bond of fellowship and reunion in the affections and antipathies inspired by the creations of the poet :

"For books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good;

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow."

Fiction has yet another claim to our regard as a vehicle for the transmission of opinion; the results of speculative inquiry, when presented in an abstract form, wear, to the ordinary mind, an aspect so severe and uninviting, that we joyfully hail the imaginative faculty which invests dead principles in the living hues of experience, and thus brings them home to the conscience and apprehension of humanity. We accordingly find that as society awakens to a consideration of its vital interests, the province of fiction expands; it becomes the chosen medium for the discussion of the vexed and difficult questions, moral, religious, social and political, which agitate the minds of men; and the various theories adopted for their solution endeavour to obtain a hearing, by assuming an imaginative expression, and embodying themselves in a concrete form.

The vast influence thus acquired by works of fiction, and the prominence which they assume as an element of modern civilization, renders it important to determine the laws of taste by which they should be regulated;-a consideration the more worthy of regard when we reflect how closely interwoven are the various lines of thought, and that by the law of reciprocation, a wrong bias impressed upon any one of its manifestations has a tendency to spread beyond its immediate sphere; and hence literature, while it reflects the character of the age in which it is produced, becomes, in its turn, one of the most powerful agencies by which that character is modified.

The highest function of the critic is to act as the interpreter of genius, which, working under the impulse of its creative instincts, may be, and we believe frequently is, unconscious of the deep truths embodied in its own productions; the critic's eye, "made quiet by the power of harmony," sees into the life of a work of art, penetrates

its hidden meaning, and detects the subtle beauties which escape the notice of the superficial observer.

His subordinate function is to determine the laws of taste in harmony with which genius itself must consent to work, if it would remain within the sphere of beauty, and send forth its creations, "unmixt with baser matter," to charm and elevate the minds of contemporaries, and to live for ever in the thought of humanity.

It would be impossible within the compass of an article to dwell individually upon the numerous works of fiction, with which our imaginative literature has recently been enriched, and from the perusal of which we have derived both instruction and pleasure. From the ample field outspread before us, we shall therefore select "Ruth," not only from its high merit as a work of art, but from the deep interest attached to the moral questions which it involves. Before proceeding to our pleasant task of hearty appreciation, we shall take this opportunity of pointing out what appear to us some false tendencies, manifested in the imaginative literature of the day; "Ruth" being reserved for after consideration, is not included in the following strictures, which are offered in no irreverent or depreciating spirit, but rather from an earnest desire that an agency so replete with power and blessing as fiction, should be wielded with full efficiency, and enlisted heartily in the sacred cause of truth and goodness.

Novels may be divided into two classes, the epic, and the dramatic; the former, proposing as their aim a comprehensive survey of life, are necessarily slow in their development; we cannot accelerate the march of Providence, nor with impatient hand gather prematurely its slowly-ripening fruits; ample scope is thus allowed for digression and disquisition; and the readers, like travellers through a pleasant country, instead of hurrying to the goal, are contented to linger by the way, and to enjoy the rich prospects which open round them as they advance. Other novels on the contrary, by the rapidity of their action, the small number of characters introduced, and the limitation of the field of view, bear more affinity to the drama, which exhibits the concentrated essence of life, rather than life itself. Now it would seem reasonable that the extent of canvas should bear some proportion to the

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