she could not belong to the evil spirits, since she was so familiar with the holy symbol.

The moon had now come to the full for the twelfth time since the eventful night that opened our tale, when Dame Margaret finally set about breaking the spell, as she deemed it, which had enthralled her son. By a coincidence, not perhaps very wonderful, seeing that kindred wits will jump together, Annette, the waiting-maid already mentioned, had her own plans of discovery reserved for this same evening. Having been more than once baffled by her fears, when attempting to follow the Pale Lady into the forest, she magnanimously resolved, while yet the daylight lasted, to take up a secret position near the cromlech, thus flinging herself at once upon the peril that she was afraid to meet coolly.

It was a close autumnal evening, and the thick sultry air hung heavily on the leaves and flowers, that seemed to droop despondingly beneath its weight, the gnats and water-flies swarmed upon the still face of the pools, and there was uneasiness as well as listlessness in the motions of the cattle. At times a pale flash of lightning would show itself far off in the horizon, and the thunder would mutter at distant intervals, but not a drop of rain fell, and not a blade of grass stirred. It would seem that even the Pale Lady, goblin or fairy as she was supposed to be, yet felt the influence of the hour, for, as she threaded the dingles and green alleys of the forest, there was none of the usual wild gaiety either in her subdued step or saddened features. The smile, that so seldom left her lips, was now absent; her wonted song was hushed, her looks expressed extreme anxiety, and ever and anon she would stop and lean against a broad-trunked oak, evidently not from weariness, but from reluctance to meet some dreaded object, to which she was of necessity advancing. But linger as she might, she at length reached the open glade, in the middle of which stood the cromlech, with a flood of yellow light poured down upon it, as if the Druid stone had some secret power of attraction, that drew the moonbeams to itself, while the sward about it lay in shadow. The heart of the fairy-wanderer, if fairy she was, beat fast as she neared the rugged pile, and her colourless cheek was tinted with that passing flush which hope lends when strug

gling for the mastery with fear. Again she paused, apparently to muster up resolution for the fated task, and then slowly resumed her onward march towards the cromlech. Annette, who saw every thing from her hiding-place behind a clump of trees, always vowed, in telling the tale, that she neither ran nor walked, but skimmed over the grass that waved beneath her feet as if it had been swept by the passing wind-"It was a strange sight," she would say, "to see the grass rippling in one narrow stripe, just like the sea when a squall walks over it, darkening and agitating its surface while all beyond the immediate influence of the fitful breeze remains unruffled."

No sooner had the Pale Lady reached the cromlech than she became sensible of a branch of misletoe lying on the horizontal, or upper stone. If not a subject of surprize, it was evidently unwelcome to her, for in the moment of perceiving it she uttered a faint scream, and sank against the monument, trembling and exhausted, like one who has received a sudden shock. With reluctant hand, after a brief pause, she took up the branch, her tears dropping fast upon it, hesitated awhile, then broke the stem in two and flung it from her as if it had been a serpent to sting and poison. It would seem that the storm, which had been so long gathering, had reserved itself to this particular moment; a loud peal of thunder, rolling from one end of the heavens to the other, gave the signal, when down it came in all its fury, the rain pouring, the blast howling, and the lightning wrapping the earth for many seconds together in one continued blaze. Then followed a longer, sharper crash, like the groan of convulsed nature, and in the next instant a thunder-bolt flew hurtling through the air, and shivered the cromlech into a thousand pieces. Annette stopt to see no

more.

With a speed proportioned to her terror, she ran back to Ivy Hall, dashed by the astonished household, and hurried into the presence of her mistress for protection. But Dame Margaret had in the mean time met with her own proper causes of alarm, and to all appearance was as much in need of comfort as her terrified dependent. She stood gazing on the broken lute, her usually pale face yet paler from the workings of fear, her eyes dilated, and her aged limbs shaking in every joint. The ejaculations of Annette, neither low nor few, failed for a

time to withdraw her attention from the ruins of the supposed talisman, and, when she did become sensible of the handmaiden's presence, it was only to give way to those feelings which had hitherto held her speechless.

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"Dreadful!" was her first exclamation ; surely it was the going out of the fiend himself! Beata Maria, ora pro nobis ora pro nobis!"—And she crossed herself repeatedly and fervently.

66 Now, all the saints be good unto us!" re-echoed Annette, her own previous terror visibly augmented by the fears of her mistress, though she was unable to guess the precise cause of them.-"The saints be good unto us!"

66 They have been," cried Dame Margaret; "they have been. But reach me a chair; this shock has rudely shaken my old limbs, and I can stand no longer. The holy Virgin―blessed be her name !-was with me, or I must have died on the spot. Awful times, Annette-awful times. The world grows worse as it grows older, and heaven alone knows what it all will end in; but whatever it may be, thank God I shall not live to see it. I shall be safe in that home where the wicked cease to trouble."

"In the name of all that's terrible, what has happened?" exclaimed Annette.

"What indeed, girl! Oh, it was an awful moment when I dashed the accursed lute to pieces, and, with uplifted cross and counted beads, adjured him to fly-him, the unholy one, who had so long housed within it. Wot you, child, who it was that lent the strings their melody, witching all ears and hearts, that we none of us were the masters of our own will?Apollyon, child-Apollyon! Ah! it is a wonder that my brain and sight still hold, and that my tongue can tell it to you."

Dame Margaret placed her hands to her forehead, as if she thought to still the inward pain by their pressure. The sympathizing Annette, forgetting at the moment her own immediate cause of terror in anxiety for her mistress, burst into

This last exclamation was provoked by the loud yell of many voices from the rooms below, announcing some general cause of terror.

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Run, girl," continued the old lady; "learn what new mischance has happened to excite this fearful outcry."

But Annette had no occasion to leave the room to gain this knowledge. A single glance through the window, which opened on the fields between the house and the Severn, was sufficient to show the cause of the uproar.

"Merciful powers!" she said, or rather shrieked. "See! see!-how the sparkles fly from his hoofs! how the flames stream from the creature's red nostrils!" "Who?

lady.

What?" exclaimed the old

"How they fly!—and the lightning flies after them, flash upon flash-it's aimed at them-only at them-and passes over the trees without scorching a single leaf."

"Who? What?" reiterated Dame Margaret in the very agony of fear. 66 Speak out, girl; tell me all-tell me at once, for I feel my senses are fast leaving me."

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Apollyon! the great fiend!-he rides off with the Pale Lady-there's not a speck of white on the black horse that carries them."

With that irresistible impulse, which often compels our attention to objects of dread or loathing, Dame Margaret tottered forward to the window, and beheld the Pale Lady flying, or carried off, her clothes drenched with rain, and her loose hair streaming to the tempest. The speed of the coal-black horse outstripped the wind, and the rider, who bestrode him, appeared in the uncertain light to be of colossal stature. Their course lay for a few seconds along the banks of the Severn, but suddenly, amidst the renewed rattling of thunder and the howling of wind, one long continued flash of the broadest and reddest lightning blazed about them, and in the next moment the horse was seen with his riders in the midst of the boiling waters. Then came a loud shriek of agony from the maiden, followed by a yell so fierce and unearthly, that both the watchers instinctively closed their eyes in terror. It was an instant-only an instant-and, when they again looked out, nothing was visible on the river but the white foam of the angry billows.

Such is the accredited tradition of the Pale Lady, as I received it from the old servants of the family, and as it had been handed down to them from father to son through many generations. I must not, however, conceal the fact of there having been another version of the story, less allied to the marvellous, yet, perhaps, not a whit more real. According to this gloss, Sir Robert Lonsdale was the midnight visitor, who, being compelled to fly from England by the tyranny of Queen Mary, could find no better way of disposing of his daughter than by entrusting her to the care of his young friend, Sir Hugh Trevor. That this gentleman professed the Roman Catholic faith was rather an advantage than otherwise, inasmuch as it ensured the sanctity of the asylum, while his well-known spirit of toleration gave promise of his being a warm and efficient protector. The little damsel, thus unceremoniously introduced into Ivy Hall, was of a lively, if not a wayward, temper, and from the habits of a spoiled childhood, as well as from natural inclination, apt to indulge in whatever might happen to be the caprice of the moment. With such a disposition, the general belief of the household in her supernatural qualities delighted her beyond measure, as affording ample

scope for the enacting of those wild pranks, in which she ever found too much gratification. As to her lute and song, there was indeed a magic in them, but it was the natural magic belonging to matchless skill, and a voice of such extraordinary sweetness as rarely to have been equalled. Hermonthly visits to the cromlech were, if this version might be believed, the result of a previous compact with her father, who, when he had taken the requisite order abroad for her commodious abode there, was to signify his return by depositing a branch of misletoe on the Druid stone. The circumstance of the black horse plunging into the Severn, in which both steed and riders were lost, might be sufficiently accounted for by supposing that the sudden fury of the storm had startled the animal from his course, and urged him towards the Severn, which was at the time rendered as wild as any sea by a sudden hygre, or eagre, a name given in that county to designate the meeting of the sea-tide with the freshwater current.

Those, who like this explanation, may adopt it. For my part I stick to my old nurse's legend, and am ready to die upon it, that the Pale Lady was either a sylph or a fairy.

In a former article we surveyed the present state of contemporary criticism in its application to the department of literature now most sedulously cultivated; we gladly turn from the subject to search for "fair fields and pastures new," leaving others to cultivate their own lands according to their pleasure or convenience. Indeed there is nothing so unpleasant or so hazardous as to criticise criticism; the surgeon fears the dissecting knife, the inquisitor dreads the rack, the hangman shudders at the rope, but the fears of all put together faintly exemplify the repugnance with which a critic regards the possibility of his becoming the subject of his own art. This nervous apprehension leads him to discover inuendos where none were designed, personal satire in the widest generalities, and a secret purpose where all the intentions are on the surface. The madman who

on

believed that a battery was opened upon him when the soldiers fired blank cartridge a rejoicing day, the smuggler who thought that Rowland Hill personally insulted him by preaching against breaches of the revenue law, the voter in a small borough who runs away when the words "bribery" and "corruption" are mentioned, scarcely exceed in this diseased state of apprehensiveness those who have wielded the literary knout or applied the cautery. This is the monomania of criticism, and we gladly turn away from topics that may excite manifestations of the insanity.

We have more than once called attention to the aphorism that "the perfection of fiction is truth." In other words, “fiction is the general, and fact the individual, truth." When a statistician tells us that three and one fourth marriages take place annually in a particular district, he speaks a fiction,

because no fractional marriages take place there, or any where else; but he at the same time announces an abstract truth, because the fraction disappears when the law is applied to the mass of the population. Now, in a less exclusive sense, all fictions are subject to statistical laws; there are very wide limits of error, but still there are limits; the calculus of probabilities is applied to the measure and effects of action, of feeling, and even of emotion, as well as to the duration of life. The forms of fiction seem to vary in a fixed succession, but its order has never been investigated. Ballads, odes, epics, the drama, imaginative fictions, and fictions of real, life follow each other in the same order in almost every country. This seems to have been strongly felt by Jules Janin, whose article on French literature is a specimen of the kind of criticism we should gladly see naturalized in this country*. It is not merely a report of progress, but a guide to advancement, and this result has followed from the critic's directing his attention to species rather than individuals, and establishing principles by a judicious and copious induction.

The historical romance has scarcely yet been brought fairly within the grasp of criticism; we know the laws of the epic, of the drama, of the ode, and even the sonnet; all parties in these instances can appeal to the law and to the testimony-hath not Aristotle written the law of such tenures on Parnassus? Is not Longinus the poet's Blackstone? Have not both been followed by compilers of commentaries and reports that would more than rival a lawyer's library? But where are we to search for the code of novel-writing? In what exchequer, save that of a publisher, is the standard preserved for the measurement of romance? Nay, have we yet determined whether there should be one standard or many? Is it quite sure that Attila and Jack Brag should appear in the same category, and that Lady Morgan's Princess should bear company with the Adventures of a Donkey? To be sure a whimsical analogy may be found between the Hun aspiring to rule the Roman empire, and the Goth to lead the world of fashion, and the exuberant fancy of James may be matched by the rich fun of Hook; but the classification of the Princess with the Donkey would excite shouts of laughter from Caithness to Cornwall, and the literary Linnæus

* See Athenæum, 495 and 497. VOL. X.-NO. VI.-JUND, 1837.

would be more ridiculed than his illustrious prototype when he ranged man with the ape, the macoco, and the bat. Again, is Mrs. Gore a fit companion for Harriet Martineau, or Salathiel any relation to Rory O'More? The mere juxtaposition of the names precludes the necessity of argument; it is manifest that there are several distinct species of romance, and that the laws of one are wholly unsuited to the other. Fielding, who had a higher sense of his vocation than any of his successors, insisted that the novel should adhere strictly to epic laws, for that it was the legitimate successor of heroic poetry. His romance has, what we rarely find in works of the kind, a beginning, a middle, and an end, linked together by a logical deduction of adventure, and so far it adheres to an epic law. But Tom Jones is infinitely more a philosophic than a poetic romance, it is the condensation and summary of long personal experience; it is the logical statement of reflections made in years of passion and vicissitude. Doctor Blair and Monsieur Laharpe have attempted to deduce the laws of the novel from Tom Jones, as Aristotle did those of the epic from the Iliad, but they were assuming one of the rarest specimens as a type of the class, and their rules, if observed, would confine fiction to limits which would soon have been exhausted. Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Tom Jones, belong not to the historical but to the philosophical class of fictions; they are representations of manners at once in the shape of an apology and a satire, and when Sir Walter Scott referred to Fielding as his prototype, he assuredly erred most egregiously.

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There is no philosophic purpose in any of the Waverley Novels, and little of logical sequence in the stories. Scott looked at his chronicle as the prophet viewed the skeletons in the valley of Jehoshaphat, asking himself, Can these dry bones live?" He resuscitated them that they should repeat the exploits of their lives, he brought them before us in gorgeous pageants; but we were invited to gaze, not to imitate. Janin (Athenæum, No. 497) says, "Romance erects itself into a legislator-into a politician-into an historian-sways men and rebukes them→ instructs them-moralizes to them-corrupts them." In this goodly array of departments, Scott can only claim the part of the historian; but this is by no means one

N N

of the least influence and importance-the picturesque history must precede the philosophic, just as perception goes before reflection. When we survey a gallery of portraits, we often feel that one painting is a poetic likeness and another philosophic, though we may find it very difficult to point out where are the peculiar traits that determine either character. In comparing Scott's characters with those depicted by Miss Edgeworth, the writer whom he most nearly resembles, we have just the difficulty that would occur in the picture gallery; Scott fixes our attention to the facts of the portrait, Miss Edgeworth suggests the inferences. It is only by the comparison of writers nearly approaching to each other that we can definitely fix upon the peculiarities of each, especially as the domain of romance is so extensive, and as those who cultivate it do not restrict themselves to the limits of schools. Janin justly says, "Romance meddles at once with the past, present, and future; busies itself about all things, lawful and unlawful; marches by land and voyages by sea, and explores every tract beaten and unbeaten." This renders the task of classification one of no ordinary difficulty, and, as in some of the botanical and zoological systems, we run the risk of putting forward mere accidents as essential differences.

Fielding, Cervantes, and Le Sage, founded the personally-philosophic romance; we shall subsequently see that in all that constitutes his strength, Bulwer essentially belongs to their school. Scott is the head of the chronicle romance, which bears about the same relation to the former that Froissart does to Tacitus. James, Grattan, Fraser, and many others, belong also to the chronicle-school, they give us the poetry and not the philosophy of history, and rivet our attention to action rather than thought. Now it would be a very useless waste of time to determine the relative merits of these two departments, because that question will ever be decided by the taste, or, if you please, the caprice of the reader; all that we mean to contend for is, that the rules of one should not be made a standard for the other.

A strange, anomalous form of romance has long hovered between admiration and dislike; critics have surveyed it as the prophet Balaam did the camp of Israel, and just as they were about to pronounce a curse, "have blessed it altogether." It is

to this school that the following description of romance, by Janin, is most justly applicable: "where are the subjects that romance has not handled? The Middle Age, the Sixteenth century, Louis XIV., Louis XV., philanthropy and philosophy too, have been introduced into the romance, and domestic economy, and the gospel, and politics, and heaven and earth, the sea, and the infernal regions." The passionatelyimaginative school has done all this and more; Maturin in Ireland, D'Israeli in England, and Victor Hugo in France, have tried to fathom every abyss in the dark ocean of human feeling, and, at the same time, to soar up to every celestial influence that regulates its ebb and its flow. The mighty question of Destiny, the mysterious bearing of Fate upon Free Will, is as present to their eyes as it was to those of the early Greek dramatists, but they have complicated the problem by the disturbing forces of impulse and emotion. Melmoth is now rarely read; some critic, fonder of the jingle of words than of common sense, called it “ a mastery and a mystery," and as nobody could understand the criticism, it was inferred that nobody could understand the book. To this was added all the feeling of sentimental criticism, raising its petty outcry against intermixing the Humble with the Beautiful, and the Ludicrous with the Terrific, as since has been done by the reviewers of Hoffman's Devil's Elixir, and Victor Hugo's Notre Dame. But in that very mysterious agency which we all feel, in the appearance of unbidden spirits "from the vasty deep" of the soul, the passions and their objects come thus perpetually blended, and the fairest phantom aroused by the spell of Destiny, when embraced, turns to a skeleton in our arms. If there be minds in which the deeply contemplative is united with the highly imaginative character, the problem of Fate and Free Will, either as it affects the individual or as it affects the mass, is present to them as a chaos of incongruities and inconsistencies. There are brute Strength and Force, nailing a suffering Deity to the Caucasus, and indomitable will rising superior to suffering; there are the daughters of ocean, the most lovely creations that ever poetry called into life, and the vulture eternally preying on the vitals. There are, as in Notre Dame, the tyrant indulging the rabid cruelties of freakish despotism, and the burgher looking forward to a glorious