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futurity for humanity. Even that most harrowing scene in Melmoth, the struggle between Love and the last agonies of Hunger, has nothing revolting; like the Prometheus of Eschylus, or the Ugolino of Dante, it overwhelms, but it does not disgust.

Maturin and Victor Hugo have been reviled unceasingly for their portraitures of physical suffering; we should like to ask those critics in what other way does Fate exercise its mastery over the will? Was mental agony the chief torture of Ugolino in his dungeon, or was it the means of his horrible revenge ? Was the Promethean vulture a less gross and palpable engine of torture than the brodequin applied to Esmeralda, or the convent vault in which Maturin's lovers were enclosed. But to be sure these worshipful critics could find no parallel for such passages in Sir Walter Scott; it never occurred to them that the great Scottish novelist had a far different object from Maturin or Hugo; he was limited to the outward and the visible; they grappled with the inward and the spiritual; they showed that though mind exercises a supremacy over matter, there are conditions of the problem under which matter becomes the master of mind.

The evening before the publication of Pelham, Bulwer was known only as a clever man of fashion; before another sun had set he was the founder of a new school of romance. In his first essay, Falkland, he had shewn a desire to unite the passionate imaginative style with the personal philosophic, more after the fashion of Godwin than of Fielding. In Pelham he discovered that his true vocation was an analysis of the philosophy of aristocratic life. Like Fielding, he brought to his task the experience of feeling and of thought, in addition to a keenness and closeness of observation, such as Molière shews in his satiric comedies. The last quality procured for the novel the designation of the manual of dandyism; it was quoted by a herd as Mussulmans quote the Koran, or Popes the decrees of the Council of Trent. What was rather more provoking was, that the great bulk of readers resolved to regard this picture of the aristocracy, not as such a portraiture as Juvenal or Molière would have drawn, but as a very serious code of laws for obtaining that state of exclusiveness and indifference which court poets and philosophers from the days of Augustus to those of William

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To make men happy, and to keep them so. Such readers have condemned the episode of Sir Reginald Glanville as an impertinence, and, sooth to say, the adventures with which he is connected seem to us inconsistent with the proper object of the work. Its design was to show the means by which "exclusive elegance" might be attained, with a philosophic appreciation of the worth of such a state. When first the work was projected, it was on the cards that Pelham should have been to dandyism what Don Quixote is to chivalry-but the author changed his hand and checked his pride," and has left to Mrs. Gore the office of Cervantes to the aristocracy.

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There are those who regard Pelham as a national rather than a fashionable portraiture; but England has no national school of romance, such as is possessed by the Scotch, but more especially by the Irish. It is usual to attribute this to the more poetic temperament of our brethren in "the land of the west," but it arises from extrinsic circumstances. There is in Ireland a perfect separation of parties and castes, which permits the peculiarities of each to be developed; feudalism is not yet extinct, the serf and the suzerain may still be seen in broad contrast; the very best of the vassals display some portion of the cunning that belongs to slavery, and the very worst retains some of the lightsome gaiety ever manifested by those who have nothing to lose; among the lords, too, there is none so good as not to let the pride of ascendancy peep out at some time in an offensive shape, and none so bad as to forget that it is occasionally necessary to mollify the haughtiness of caste.

Rory O'More is as faithful a delineation as any portrait that Mr. Lover has ever painted; and Somerset House contains striking proofs of his fidelity, not only to the outward forms of life, but "to the mind and music breathing from a face." Under the humorous features of Rory there lurks a mass of good sense and sound philosophy worthy the attention of the philanthropist and the legislator. There is a lurking wisdom in the blunders of the hero, there is a deep meaning in his wildest jests. The Spectator judiciously observes that the novel has a political tendency, but this

arises simply from its perfect truth and strict adherence to nature. We need not quote from a book now in every body's hands, but we shall try to shew how far this publication has enlarged the sphere of fiction and what suggestions it affords for further progress.

The first reflection naturally suggested by the perusal of Rory O'More, is that "the annals of the poor" are neither so short nor so simple as Gray imagined. Passion finds its way into the cottage as well as the palace; faction distracts the village not less than the metropolis; circumstances-and what are circumstances but destiny?-circumstances control the actions of the peasant with the same force that Fate bound Prometheus to submit to the will of Jupiter. It may be observed as a shrewd instance of Lover's skill in moral analysis, that he detects familypride in the elements that constitute the noblest part of his hero's character; the peasant toiling for his daily bread does not forget that he is sprung from ancestors over whose tombs monsters have been builded. And this trait, resting if you please on a prejudice, works out a philosophic truth, not the less forcible for being indistinctly stated, that to increase self-respect is the best means of raising the character of an individual, a class, or a nation. Throughout the entire work, Rory's chief claim to our sympathy is his constant exhibition of respect for himself.

A second important lesson is, that respect for the law, and respect for law, are things of a very different nature; Lord Redesdale used to say that in Ireland there were two laws, one for the rich and one for the poor, both equally bad in their nature and worse in their administration; Rory adds to his lordship's account the more important fact, that under such circumstances the peasants formed a code for themselves, and submitted to it with an implicit obedience, such as could scarcely be found in any other quarter of the globe. It is this law of opinion that arms the priest with his cudgel and sends him to disperse faction-fights; it is this law of opinion that has made the Catholic clergy an efficient police force; but it is also this law of opinion that renders the law an inoperative mockery. In every page of this work, there is a distinct exhibition of the fact, which Sir John Davies published two centuries ago, that no nation loved impar

tial justice better than the Irish. It is only because the law does not fulfil its duties, that a nation devises a wild law of its own. This portion of Rory's history is eminently suggestive; it is applicable to more countries than Ireland, to more eras than 1798; Cade's mob hanged the clerk of Chatham for the same reason that Rockites card a process-server; learning in one case and law in the other became instruments of oppression.

These views may be regarded as political, but they have no connection with party; they belong to that class of truths which only need to be stated to meet ready assent, and which, perhaps, for that very reason are the most neglected.

In a more literary point of view Lover has given a new form to humorous delineation; he has shown that even in the broadest farce philosophic truth may be insinuated, and, like Hood, he puts a strong argument in the shape of a merry jest: even the extravaganza of the two gridirons while it tests the strength of the sides furnishes matter for reflection; the mistakes of Rory are made subservient to exhibiting the national character of the Irish peasant, and the moral circumstances by which it is formed. You feel that it is the portraiture of generous impulse, capable of being successfully directed to the noblest objects; and every sentence, however comic, directly suggests one of the moral causes by which Rory's noble propensities are nurtured, restrained, or perverted.

We envy not those whose hearts remain untouched by the domestic pictures of More's humble cottage and Kathleen's quiet hearth. The scene in which the widow Regan extracts from her daughter the secret of her love for Rory, is one of the most beautiful pictures of purity of affection that has ever been drawn. It lingers in the mind like a reminiscence of early innocence, a light of other days;” there is a delicate softness in every touch that whispers to the soul in those low but distinct tones which breathe from the Eolian harp, when the almost imperceptible breeze sweeps its strings.

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Lover has added the purely natural to the national school of Irish romance, and has thus enlarged the domain of fiction; his peasants are simply peasants; they neither think nor speak above their station.

There is some difficulty in assigning

Rory O'More to any fixed class; it is historical in time, national in place, costume, and manner; sentimental as well as comic in its style. We, however, think that its essential characteristic is life-portraiture, and this fixes it to the same rank in romance that Crabbe holds in poetry.

America has recently sent a fair quota to the stock of life-portraiture, both in the national and historical novels. It is singular to speculate on the causes that have made some of these eminently successful, and some total failures, at our side of the water. Major Jack Downing, Colonel Crocket, and Slick the Watch-maker, are too local in their political allusions, and even in their wit, to enjoy extensive fame, for some jokes are like wines of very delicate flavour, they can only be relished in the place where they have been manufactured. But Miriam Coffin is a fiction depicting so faithfully a state of society wholly new to readers in Europe, and so clearly showing the circumstances which led to its formation, that we are surprised to find it so little known. In every case where we find a novel portraying any peculiar phrase of humanity popular, we shall find that the chief element of its success is the skill with which the writer points out the circumstances by which that phase of character was moulded. The predestination of circumstances is, and ever will be, an insuperable difficulty to metaphysicians, for its complete investigation is impossible; but to a certain extent it forms part of our every-day experience, and the novelist has, therefore, to take his stand somewhere between the philosopher and the man of ordinary reflection. Brockedon Brown took, perhaps, too deep a view of the philosophy, though he is far less metaphysical than Godwin; and on that account his novels are less known on this side of the water, than Cooper's or Miss Sedgewick's. But he was among the first who laboured to give America a national novel, and it will be far from creditable to his countrymen if his name be permitted to fall into oblivion.

The sentimental school of romance was always an exotic in England; Sterne exhausted all the patience that it could claim. It is rare to find any person who reads the Man of Feeling, or Julia de Roubigne; and this arises from the mode in which he viewed the moral problem, which in our estimation must be regarded as the main

object of a romance that is destined to produce any permanent effect. The predestination of circumstances resisted by the energy of will is the real subject of the drama of human existence, whether regarded in fact or fiction. Mackenzie constantly preferred viewing this struggle in the mysterious workings of the conscience to the burning spectacle of external life; he clings to the minute and delicate traits suggested by reflection, and he would not suppress one of these to make room for the palpable and tangible exhibitions which the spectacle of mankind on the great theatre of existence brings before us. His drama of The Spanish Father reveals the secret of the weakness of his novels, the characters are mere ideal abstractions, which should never have been clothed in flesh and blood. Had Mackenzie obeyed the advice of his friends, and written the literary history of the last century, he would have bequeathed to posterity probably the finest specimen of social criticism; but psychology, so useful to the critic, is dangerous to the writer of romance; it gives a fixity to his conceptions which deprives them of all suggestive tendency.

We have gone back to Mackenzie because we see that many modern writers have tried to unite the purely Sentimental romance with the Historical and the National. They are surprised at their own failure, we should be astonished at their success: there are few whose memory registers the minor struggles of motive and feeling, consequently when exclusive prominence is given to these they strike us as absurd or ridiculous. Strictly speaking they are not unnatural, because the finer shades of feeling are as real as those more definitely marked, but they are unnatural when assigned as prominent motives of action; at best they can only be the germ of motive, the first spring to impulse, but it requires a strong exertion of feeling to produce a portion of reminiscence, and no man will recognize motive in an unre→ membered impulse.

We have gone lightly over a variety of schools and styles of romance, because any induction to be valuable must be copious. In our rapid survey, we have intimated that the error of criticism has been the application of special standards to romance, and that our first duty must be to determine what is the general principle on which

romance is, founded. It seems to us that this principle is the exposition of a metaphysical problem, the struggle between the predestination of circumstances, and the energy of the will. The historical novelist regulates his circumstances by time, the national novelist by place; the consistency of the romance depends upon the author's adherence to the form in which he has stated the question; his depth results from the greater or less abstraction of the elements with which he works-finally his school is determined by the form, not by the nature of his subject, and his success will be proportioned to the clearness of his perception of the problem, and his adherence to the mathematical laws of its development. If this principle be established, it follows that there is a philosophy of romance as well as a philosophy of history, and that fiction is as subject to fixed laws as fact. If this should appear a strange assertion, we beg the reader to remember that fiction after all is but a generalisation of fact, and that if there be laws to regulate the individual instances, there must also be laws to regulate the generalities.

In stating the result of our analysis we have preferred a general view of the question to close logical reasoning, because we have felt that the subject is one within every body's grasp, and that it would be injuring the simplicity of truth to invest it with pedantic forms; but the philosophy of romance, embracing the establishing of

our principles and their application to sound criticism, will require a more definite investigation, and for this purpose we intend to take up some of the best of our modern novels both foreign and native, and shew by direct analysis that they are in their excellencies conformable to the principles we have enunciated, and in their defects departures from that standard.

The duty of criticism being in our view to suggest advancement as well as report progress, we have turned our attention to romance, because it is in that path literature advances most steadily in the present day. We have opened a path for ourselves; we cannot hide from ourselves that it is one of no ordinary difficulty, and that many impediments remain to be removed. But we began this paper by saying, that in condemning schools of criticism we blame the circumstances that led to their formation, not the individuals by whom they were founded. We claim the same indulgence for ourselves; if weary of the uncertainty and unsteadiness of modern criticism we have sought out fixed principle; if tired of seeing one review praise and another condemn without reference to any intelligible rule for the praise or the censure, we have sought to discover a standard, let us be allowed the merit of honest purpose in our research; if we succeed we shall have erected a land-mark to guide-if we fail we shall have kindled a beacon to warn future navigators on the ocean of criticism.

THE RECTOR'S FAMILY IN LONDON.

THE Reverend Matthew Padstow, at the termination of the fiftieth year of his age, was hearty, healthy, round and rosy. Perfectly contented was he with his little rectory and the proceeds thereof, with his good dame Catherine, their daughters Catherine and Anna Maria, and their son Matthew. With his parishioners he was always on the best of terms, and ever was he a welcome guest at the tables of the neighbouring gentry. Thus, as he remarked with becoming gratitude, "the lines had fallen to him in pleasant places." But it had not been always thus, for, in the earlier part of his clerical career, his duties were exercised within the limits of wooden walls, and, as a chaplain in the royal navy, he saw many strange scenes

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and wonderful sights upon the face of the mighty deep, and went ashore and gaped about various strange places in various parts of the world.

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Thus it came to pass that when the war was at an end, he felt perfectly convinced (as many others are with much less reason) that he knew the world ;" and so, on the attainment of preferment, he cast anchor in the haven prepared for him, and, with a contented mind, resolved to do his duty and live in peace and good will with all mankind. Consequently he married, and, in due course, became the father of two daughters and a son; and time glided smoothly along for the term of twenty years without any other remarkable events in the even tenour of his way.

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Then, in his fifty-first year, "a change came o'er the spirit of his dream quietude. His dear Catherine, ever before so placid, so affectionately assiduous for his comfort, even as though she had no other will or wishes but his-she, the wife of his bosom, hinted what appeared to him strange matters concerning her daughters, then on the verge of womanhood. And the sum and substance of her hints, which soon assumed the form of lectures, was, that "the dear girls were buried alive in the retirement of a village, and, like flowers, "breathing their fragrance in the desert air.

The reverend Matthew sometimes listened patiently, and parried and endeavoured to postpone the question "sine die;" and at other times, according to the locality of the debate or lecture, affected sleep; but, as some quaint old author has it,

If woman wills, she will, you may depend on't;
And if she wont, she wont, and there's an end on't.

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So, to cut the matter short, the lady carried her point, and, after some months' preparation, the little family came London, where the young folks "had the advantage" of masters of various professions, and went about to see the lions, under the care of papa and mamma. Then, as the town began to fill, the worthy rector "fell in" with several old nautical and other friends, some of whom had, like himself, "got spliced" since they last met; and of course their wives and daughters became acquainted with his wife and daughters, who consequently found themselves far from being alone in the midst of gaiety. Small family dinners and evening parties out and at home succeeded; but the fond mother did not consider Catherine and Anna Maria to have been completely "brought out" till after a splendid ball and supper at the mansion of a noble admiral, with whom their father had formerly sailed. They were of the numerous class commonly called "pretty girls," and had come to town with minds unsuspicious and devoid of guile. A little tremulousness was not perhaps unbecoming, or without its effect, at the commencement of this memorable night, but new faces ever attract, and their noble host and his lady showed them marked attention, so they were not neglected by "the dancing men." Perfect in the recent lessons of the finishing professor, they acquitted them

selves admirably; and, frequently changing partners, of course each occasionally had to her lot some vain or frivolous beáu, striving to entertain her by complimentary exaggeration, to which, almost of course, she, at the moment, listened with unsophisticated simplicity, dreaming of "meanings never meant."

"They are the daughters of a very old and highly respected friend of his lordship," said the lady of the mansion to a noble inquirer. "It is long since I have seen him so delighted as when he took up the Reverend's card. It seemed to recal pleasant recollections of past and more active days, which I suppose they have since talked over with some of their 'messmates,' who were forthwith summoned to meet him at dinner in what we call the admiral's cabin."

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"I like the demeanour of the family," observed an influential "lady patroness' of the day, "unobtrusive, quiet-not awkward though. I will send them cards."

So the little family, though "creating no sensation," and without dreaming themselves to be lions, were soon fairly launched into fashionable life; and then the good easy rector often left his "womankind" to the care of their thousand new friends, and dined out about five times in the week with his own old friends, and enjoyed himself exceedingly.

Perhaps few persons would be induced to try the experiment; but, in his case, it was evident that twenty years of retirement had given a new zest for the pleasures of society. Smiling and old familiar faces met him at every turn, but none more hilarious than his own, insomuch that his beloved Catherine affirmed he appeared ten years younger than when they left home. She likewise was happy, for each passing day revealed to her eye some unfolding grace or accomplishment in the minds or persons of her daughters, which, mayhap, others could not so clearly perceive. That a very material change had been wrought in their manners, wishes, and wants was, however, evident to all; and certainly if the "lady patroness before mentioned had seen them four months after she pronounced them to be "unobtrusive and quiet," she would have omitted those epithets. They were, the fond mother said, "so much improved, so full of life and spirit, so perfectly at home wherever they went, that it was quite de

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