EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART XI., CAMPAIGNS OF AN AUSTRIAN AIDE-DE-CAMP, WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET; To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed. SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. "LIFE," said my father, in his most dogmatical tone, "is a certain quantity in time, which may be regarded in two ways-1st, as life Integral; 2d, as life Fractional. Life integral is that complete whole, expressive of a certain value, large or small, which each man possesses in himself. Life fractional is that same whole seized upon and invaded by other people, and subdivided amongst them. They who get a large slice of it say, a very valuable life this! those who get but a small handful say, 'so so, nothing very great!'those who get none of it in the scramble exclaim, Good for nothing!'" "I don't understand a word you are saying," growled Captain Roland. My father surveyed his brother with compassion-"I will make it all clear even to your understanding. When I sit down by myself in my study, having carefully locked the door on all of you, alone with my books and thoughts, I am in full possession of my integral life. I am totus, teres, atque rotundus—a whole human being-equivalent in value, we will say, for the sake of illustration, to a fixed round sum-£100, for example. But when I come forth into the common apartment, each of those VOL. LXX.-NO. CCCCXXIX. to whom I am of any worth whatsoever puts his fingers into the bag that contains me, and takes out of me what he wants. Kitty requires me to pay a bill; Pisistratus to save him the time and trouble of looking into a score or two of books; the children to tell them stories, or play at hide-andseek; the carp for bread-crumbs; and so on throughout the circle to which I have incautiously given myself up for plunder and subdivision. The £100 which I represented in my study is now parcelled out; I am worth £40 or £50 to Kitty, £20 to Pisistratus, and perhaps 30s. to the carp. This is life fractional. And I cease to be an integral till once more returning to my study, and again closing the door on all existence but my own. Meanwhile, it is perfectly clear that, to those who, whether I am in the study or whether I am in the common sitting-room, get nothing at all out of me, I am not worth a farthing. It must be wholly indifferent to a native of Kamschatka whether Austin Caxton be or be not rased out of the great account-book of human beings. "Hence," continued my father"hence it follows that the more fractional a life be-id est, the greater the number of persons among whom it can A be subdivided-why, the more there are to say, a very valuable life that!"" Thus, the leader of a political party, a conqueror, a king, an author who is amusing hundreds or thousands, or millions, has a greater number of persons whom his worth interests and affects than a Saint Simon Stylites could have when he perched himself at the top of a column; although, regarded each in himself, Saint Simon, in his grand mortification of flesh, in the idea that he thereby pleased his Divine Benefactor, might represent a larger sum of moral value per se than Bonaparte or Voltaire." PISISTRATUS. —"Perfectly clear, sir, but I don't see what it has to do with My Novel." from which ultimately sprang up his discovery. In order to keep civilisation going, and spread over the world the light of human intellect, we have certain desires within us, ever swelling beyond the ease and independence which belong to us as integrals. Cold man as Newton might be, (he once took a lady's hand in his own, Kitty, and used her fore-finger for his tobacco-stopper; great philosopher!) cold as he might be, he was yet moved into giving his discoveries to the world, and that from motives very little differing in their quality from the motives that make Dr Squills communicate articles to the Phrenological Journal upon the skulls of Bushmen and wombats. For it is MR CAXTON.-"Everything. Your the property of light to travel. When novel, if it is to be a full and com- a man has light in him, forth it must prehensive survey of the Quicquid go. But the first passage of Genius agunt homines,' (which it ought to be, from its integral state (in which it has considering the length and breadth to been reposing on its own wealth) into which I foresee, from the slow de- the fractional, is usually through a velopment of your story, you medi- hard and vulgar pathway. It leaves tate extending and expanding it,) behind it the reveries of solitude, that will embrace the two views of exist- self-contemplating rest which may be ence, the integral and the fractional. called the Visionary, and enters sudYou have shown us the former in denly into the state that may be called Leonard, when he is sitting in his the Positive and Actual. There, it sees mother's cottage, or resting from his the operations of money on the outer work by the little fount in Ricca- life-sees all the ruder and commoner bocca's garden. And in harmony springs of action-sees ambition withwith that view of his life, you have out nobleness-love without romance surrounded him with comparative in--is bustled about, and ordered, and tegrals, only subdivided by the tender hands of their immediate families and neighbours-your Squires and Parsons, your Italian Exile and his Jemima. With all these, life is more or less the life Natural, and this is always more or less the life integral. Then comes the life Artificial, which is always more or less the life fractional. In the life Natural, wherein we are swayed but by our own native impulses and desires, subservient only to the great silent law of Virtue, (which has pervaded the universe since it swung out of chaos,) a man is of worth from what he is in himself-Newton was as worthy before the apple fell from the tree as when all Europe applauded the discoverer of the Principle of Gravity. But in the life Artificial we are only of worth inasmuch as we affect others. And, relative to that life, Newton rose in value more than a million per cent when down fell the apple trampled, and cowed-in short, it passes an apprenticeship with some Richard Avenel, and does not yet detect what good and what grandeur, what addition even to the true poetry of the social universe, fractional existences like Richard Avenel's bestow; for the pillars that support society are like those of the Court of the Hebrew Tabernacle-they are of brass, it is true, but they are filleted with silver. From such intermediate state Genius is expelled and driven on in its way, and would have been so in this case had Mrs Fairfield (who is but the representative of the homely natural affections, strongest ever in true genius-for light is warm) never crushed Mr Avenel's moss-rose on her sisterly bosom. Now, forth from this passage and defile of transition into the larger world, must Genius go on, working out its natural destiny amidst things and forms the most artificial. Pas |