and interest of mankind, have infected the moral tone of all societies. We think they may be made a very important instrument in this respect, and we therefore think that the moral spirit of every novelist should be severely criticised. There are some evil effects resulting from the too great use of novels, particularly to young people; but they are transient, while the writings of such authors as Scott generally, and Miss Edgeworth always, we cannot doubt, have the effect of permanently elevating the tone of morality in society.

The bad effects of novel reading arise first, from their enervation of the faculty of hard study, and intense thinking; and, secondly, from the circumstance of our conceptions of moral, not being so definite and precise as those of physical things. The mischief does not arise from our acquiring romantic ideas of the perfectability of human nature. These are the beau ideals of moral beauty which all ought to study, but which should be considered rather as the models by which to form our own taste, than the standard by which to measure other men. The study of the Apollo and the Venus does not make us the less ready to be enamoured where we cannot find the majestic grace of the one, or the exquisite symmetry of the other; and it is because our perceptions of physical beauty are so accurately and early formed, that we know how much to expect, and our expectations are graduated to the scale of nature. We have not always either the sagacity or the opportunity to make an equally right estimate of the standard of moral perfection. The first opening of manhood is the period when, if at all, the acetous fermentation succeeds to the sweets of the romantic visions of our youth. But we soon learn that all women are not angels and all clever youths are not heroes. We ere long discover that that amiability which once seemed so unmingled, is sometimes mingled with a paramount kindness to its possessors themselves; that all profusion is not generosity; that although human nature is the highest and most elaborate and delicate specimen of the fitness and goodness which everything of our Maker's creating possesses, we must be content to pass it current with its full portion of alloy. A little commerce with the world necessarily and forcibly, though often painfully expels the delusion into which we are led with respect to others, while our own minds have grown up under a moulding conception of noble principles, which may be encrusted and polished over by our intercourse with the world, but which can seldom be inwardly changed.

The story of Mordaunt is in rather bad taste. It requires great discretion to select well the circumstances of distress. A story which addresses itself to our pity and sympathy, while it tortures, should likewise excite. The heavy, passive, unredeemable oppression of poverty, must always be a bad subject for a story, because it contains all the bitterness of the bitter cup, without any of its life and vivacity. The distress which gives pleasure is the agony of the passions; it is not the oppression of weight but the torture of sharpness, not the motionless, lifeless suffering of the night-mare, but the thrilling agony of struggling life and motion.

Another fault of the story of Mordaunt is that his situation is the consequence of his own folly, we might almost say crime, and that it leaves him no choice but to do exactly as he did, and consequently no merit. In fact we can consider Mordaunt as nothing else, either than a madman, or an overwrought picture of romantic morality for the purpose of making morality ridiculous. A man who had searched all Europe to find the objects of a carefully concealed charity; who had followed the loftiest flights of the ancient sages, to obtain the noblest conceptions of the sublimest virtues; and the most deeply penetrating researches of modern

philosophers into the fundamental principles of society, to become acquainted with the rules of utility and social happiness; and who had, at the same time, so matured these abstract studies as to be able to give practical lessons to one brought up in the courts of princes, leads away from her natural guardians an inexperienced young woman, who trusted entirely to him, to inevitable poverty. In this situation he supports himself only by making profitable his ancient studies; and he has the brutality to aggravate the distress of this devoted woman by peevishness, glossed over by a romantic rhodomontade of morality, and a deal of fustian upon the delights of science and philanthropy.

The story of Isabel's eloping with Mordaunt without exactly perceiving the nature of her trust in him, and insisting upon making the sacrifice she designed,' while she opposed her marriage to him, is extremely improbable. Such a notion would be natural enough to a whimsical, learned, and philosophical woman like Heloise, of strong and romantic passions, in a romantic age, and one which had not very precise notions of morality; but, that a woman of any common sense and in the eighteenth century, should desire to make such a sacrifice, without any motive and in entire innocence of heart, is extremely improbable. To draw a distinction between the real delicacy of the act, and the appearance it would have in the eyes of the world, tends to unsettle the foundation and truth of moral perceptions.

The conversations of Mordaunt are very overstrained, unnatural, and bombastic. They are such rhapsodies as few men of sense would dream of in their wildest, and most fantastic moments, much less utter. His conversations with Clarence are a great bore on both sides. They are neither good essays, nor natural conversations, and moreover in the same bad style which characterizes some of the rhapsodies which the author has appropriated to himself. We tried very hard to read some of them, but without success, although they contain a great many brilliant, and a great many sensible remarks, and much knowledge of character and of the world.

The scenes in which Crawford plays a principal part, we think the most powerful parts of the book, though not at all true to nature. The formation of his character and morals is described with great force and ingenuity. But his has the same faults with the rest of the author's imagined characters, a want of keeping in spite of strong proofs of accurate observation, and an entire failure in the description of particular passions and situations. The character too is very much overdrawn, and there is the same fault of indistinctness in his story, of which we have before complained.

one.

The character of Wolfe shows considerable power, but is a very disagreeable We confess we do not see the least probability in any part of it. His story, occupation and plans too, are not at all related. This is certainly a great fault. It destroys very much the feeling of reality, which it is a great part of the art to sustain. This character too is exceedingly exaggerated.

The same may be said of that of the painter in the first volume, whose story is entirely distinct from all the others. It is an extremely painful and unnatural one. It has all the faults of the others, which we are now tired of repeating, and is redeemed by few of their excellencies.

Mr. Brown and Mr. and Mrs. Copperas can hardly be said to be characters, but they are described with a great deal of humor, and although rather caricatured, they bear it very well.

The Disowned on the whole contains more fine thoughts, and deeper reflections, and in some parts displays more power than Pelham. It is just such a book as an author is apt to pride himself upon, and a reader to disagree with him about. But it is composed with much less spirit and vivacity, is very much inferior in action, story, and, as we think, character, and contains a great deal more bad writing. The author's assuming the bold, careless, indifferent character of Pelham, saved him in a great degree from the false taste, affected brilliancy, and exaggerated style of the Disowned. The highest style of fine writing in English is one extremely dangerous to be imitated by men of inferior talent, and much more apt to become ridiculous and tawdry in their hands than any other model we know of. The peculiarity of it as shown in Milton, Burke, Bacon, and Jeremy Taylor, consists of a thick inweaving of massive embroidery of images and illustrations, drawn from every part of the widely extended domain which the imagination has appropriated to itself. The consequence is that with those whose imagination and study have not supplied them with the material, and who have neither the taste, nor the skill to inweave it harmoniously and neatly, it is very apt to become the robe of frieze trimmed with the copper lace :

Purpureus late qui splendeat unus et alter assinitur pannus.'

The style of which we speak is more peculiarly the English style, as distinguished from that of the French and of the ancients. It began with the rich quaintness of Chaucer and Spenser. It was brought to perfection by the splendid imagination and exquisite wit of the age of Bacon and Shakspeare, the latter of whom contrived to make the natural shape of his characters visible through all its rich drapery. The style of Milton, stiff with gorgeous embroidery as it has been well described, is a rich specimen of it. It was more closely shorn by the fastidious and nicely tutored wits, as they called themselves, of Queen Anne's time, and worn with more richness and taste by the writers of the school of Goldsmith and Johnson. The splendid genius of Burke again introduced it in its gaudiest manner. Still, whether more or less in vogue, its greater richness and splendor of coloring has always been more or less the characteristic of the English style. Of foreign writers, some of the Latins have approached more nearly to it, particularly Cicero, and his imitators, as for instance Quinctilian. It is not the language of passion but of imagination; not of that part of our nature which fills with fury, wraps, inspires, but of that faculty which combines, compares, illustrates and adorns whatever we think or feel. It does not therefore belong to a passionate, so much as to a reflective people. It is a mistake to suppose imagination to be more proper to southern climates. It is a good saying of Coleridge that the French' are too volatile and passionate a people to have much imagination.' Their passion expends itself in starts, and exclamations. That of the English secretes itself within the mind's own thoughts, and diffuses itself by a 'musing contemplation' through all its pleasant places, and loves to give its tone to, and see everything affected by the color of its own feelings. The passion of the French is like the insanity of Lear, which frets itself away in violent ravings and gesticulations; that of the English like the beautiful madness of Ophelia which adorns itself with flowers.

The style of the Greeks is like their whole genius, character, and history, a perfect phenomenon-inimitable-unaccountable. It is much more contemplative, severe, regular, and magical, I must call it, in its effects. The elaborate

splendor and ambitious profusion of the English writers, particularly the oldest, resembles the luxuriant tracery, and delicately poised height of their own Gothic architecture; that of the Greek has all the polished and substantial simplicity, the dignified repose and the quiet grandeur of their majestic temples. The texture of the latter is beautiful for its fine material and delicate but plain finishthat of the former, for an ingeniously and richly wrought embroidery of all colors and all materials. And therefore the latter is the more dangerous to the inferior artist. For, in imitating the former, all his labor can hardly do any thing worse than make smooth a coarse fabric; in the latter he makes himself ridiculous by a flutter of purple rays, entangles his style in all the mazes of bad grammar, and produces a confusion of figures and colors, which can be compared to nothing better than those notable screens of satin and silk, which, by the kindness of our grandmothers, adorn so many corners of our front drawing rooms.

The splendor of this English style which is now in fashion, has even frequently led astray Sir Walter Scott, who is too rich in genuine jewels to set any value on such paste and beads as he sometimes condescends to wear. There are some lamentable instances of this, particularly considering the dignity of the subject, in his Life of Napoleon-and even when his figures are good enough their beauty is often rather unchastely and immodestly exposed, instead of being woven into the tissue of his style; an art which Mr. Burke possessed more highly than any one else. The effect of imagination is often greater when its light shines through the thought, than when it appears nakedly to the eye of the reader.

Such sentences as the following, are intolerable altogether, not only in one who has attained the age of discretion; but even at the age of swearing allegiance, such murder of the King's English ought to be considered high treason against the commonwealth of letters.

In volume first, we have this brilliant period:

"For the after century it was reserved to restore what may be permitted to call the spirit of our national literature, to forsake the clinquant of the French mimickers of classic gold, to exchange a thrice adulterated Hippocrene for the pure well of Shakspeare, and of nature," &c.

And again in the same page, "Thought run over its set and stationary banks, and watered even the common flowers of literature." And again,

"As faith clings the more to the cross of life, while the wastes deepen round her steps, and the adders creep forth upon her path, so love clasps," &c.

In the same volume, page 195, he talks about "Forgetfulness throwing the broken strings (of a broken tie) into her panniers, where all the loves, hatred, hopes and fears of our ancestors, lie with the things before the flood."

In the 34th page of the second volume, we have the following passage which has neither sense nor grammar :—

"The untimely death of Isabel, whom we have said he loved with that love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings, long nourished upon Romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that overflows with secreted tenderness upon the first object that can bring reality to fiction, that event had not only darkened melancholy into gloom, but had made loneliness still more dear to his habits, by all the ties of memory, and all the consecrations of regret."

These specimens are extreme cases, but it would be well if the viciousness of this disease of the author's style was concentrated into these sentences, instead of infecting, as they do, not only all the essay parts, but even the conversations of all those characters whom he represents as talkers in a grand style.

There is a great want, in the Disowned, of that ease and smoothness of style, which is so remarkable in Scott, and which is very necessary to a novelist, because the want of it has the same effect in the hurry of excited interest, as a rough road to a hasty traveller. Our author, too, has a great many of the peculiarities which are fashionable at present both among the prose writers and the poets in England at the present day. Such for instance as those comparisons with one dimension of resemblance, so common in the Wordsworth school of poets, and which to us seem to have neither the merit of beauty or illustration. Take for example, in the Disowned;- Self-love sat upon his forehead as upon a throne.' And again,His lip seemed to wear scorn as a garment.'

Among other cants, the author has a good deal of cant in describing persons. He seems to be haunted with a certain beau ideal of character, which obtrudes itself into all his portraits, and reminds one of the picture of Mathews' French Diligence, in which all the figures, from the coachman to the old lady, have the omnipresent visage of Mr. Mathews. So the "chiselled and classic features," and the "quiet aristocratic mien and simplicity of dress" are indispensable attributes of all his respectable personages, from Pelham and Mordaunt to Crawford. His manner of describing characters is very foppish, and among certain persons very much calculated to produce an affectation, of which they have not the discrimination and taste to perceive its folly. He enters too, rather too much into the details and minutiae of dress, address, and behavior, which, though very well, thought of and attended to as they should be by all, are the private decencies of a man's own thoughts, and no more to be spoken of in relation to ourselves or others, than any other of a man's personal mysteries.

There are a great many other minor offences against good taste and a just sense of dignity, which it might, perhaps, appear to be hypercriticism in us to censure. Such for instance, as the author's rhapsodies upon his own love affairs, and several things of the same sort. But we have been thus hard upon faults of this kind, as well as upon the author's morality, because both Pelham and the Disowned have been very much admired, and indeed may be said to have produced considerable effect in this country; and because it is these deficiencies in his style of writing, dignity, and morality, which have produced in our minds something, which, considering that he has been compared to the greatest masters in his art, approaches very near to contempt. The office of a novelist, we consider to be a very responsible and a very elevated one. It requires not only a great justness of moral principle and an exact degree of feeling and enthusiasm, but moreover a nice sense of delicacy and dignity; and we must confess that we have no patience that a book which is deficient in all these qualities, and, in spite of all the literary littlenesses with which it is filled, should be advanced, with a sort of profanity of public taste, to an equality with Scott and Edgeworth, and passing uncensured, even by the fair and the reverend.

L.