to which, in their combination, the world have agreed to give the name of Romance. But never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution. In the tragedy, the catastrophe is immediate and terrible; in real life it might come in some other shape, or it might come later, but it would come-of that there is no doubt. "The accusation which has been frequently made against Goëthe, that notwithstanding his passionate admiration for women, he has throughout his works wilfully and systematically depreciated womanhood, is not just, in my opinion. No doubt he is not so universal as Shakspeare, nor so ideal as Schiller; but though he might have taken a more elevated and a more enlarged view of the sex, his portraits of individual women are true as truth itself. His idea of women generally was like that entertained by Lord Byron, rather oriental and sultanish; he is a little of the bashaw persuasion. Goëthe,' said a friend of mine who knew him intihad no notion of heroic women' (Heldenfrauen ;) in poetry, he mately, thought them unnatural-in history, false. For such delineations as Schiller's Joan of Arc, and Stauffacher's wife (in Wilhelm Tell), he had neither faith nor sympathy.' "His only heroic and ideal creation is the Iphigenia, and she is as perfect and as pure as a piece of Greek sculpture. I think it a proof that if he did not understand or like the active heroism of Amazonian ladies, he had a very sublime idea of the passive heroism of female nature. The basis of the character is truth. The drama is the very triumph of unsullied, unflinching truth. It has been said, that Goethe intended this character as a portrait of the Grand Duchess Louise of Weimar. The intention of the poet remains doubtful; but it should seem that from the first moment the resemblance was generally admitted; and what a glorious compliment to the Duchess was this acknowledgment! It was through this true-heartedness, this immutable integrity in word and deed, and through no shining qualities of mind, or blandishments of manner, that she prevailed over the angry passions, and commanded the respect of Napoleon, a man who openly contemned women, but whose instructions to his ambassadors and ministers always ended with 'Soignez les femmes,' a comment of deep import on our false position and fearful power." In the volumes before us there is a great deal more beautiful writing of this kind: but we must turn to other matter. There is so much variety, and each several part is so good, that it is difficult to choose, or to make such a selection as will convey to the reader a fair notion of this curious and delightful work. The things next following have been chosen almost at random. "I have had a visit this morning from a man I must introduce to you more particularly. My friend Col. F. would have pleased me anywhere, but here he is really invaluable. "Do you remember that lyric of Wordsworth, The Reverie of Poor Susan,' in which he describes the emotions of a poor servant-girl from the country, whose steps are arrested in Cheapside by the song of a caged bird? ''Tis a note of enchantment-what ails her? she sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees, "And how near are human hearts allied in all natural instincts and sympathies, and what an unfailing, universal fount of poetry are these even in their homeliest forms! F. told me to-day, that once, as he was turning down a by-street in this little town, he heard somewhere near him the song of the lark. (Now, you must observe, there are no larks in Canada but those which are brought from the old country.) F. shall speak in his own words :—' So, maʼam, when I heard the voice of the bird in the air, I looked, by the natural instinct, up to the heavens, though I knew it could not be there, and then on this side, and then on that, and sure enough at last I saw the little creature perched on its sod of turf in a little cage, and there it kept trilling and warbling away, and there I stood stock-still-listening with my heart. Well, I don't know what it was at all that came over me, but everything seemed to change before my eyes, and it was in poor Ireland I was again, and my home all about me, and I was again a wild slip of a boy, lying on my back on the hill-side above my mother's cabin, and watching, as I used to do, the lark soaring over my head, and I straining my eye to follow her, till she melted into the blue sky,—and there, maʼam—would you believe it?—I stood like an old fool listening to the bird's song, lost as in a dream, and there I think I could have stood till this day.' And the eyes of the rough soldier filled with tears, even while he laughed at himself, as perfectly unconscious that he was talking poetry, as Mons. Jourdain could be that he was talking prose. "Colonel F. is a soldier of fortune-which phrase means, in his case at least, that he owes nothing whatever to fortune, but everything to his own good heart, his own good sense, and his own good sword. He was the son, and glories in it, of an Irish cotter, on the estate of the Knight of Glyn. At the age of fifteen he shouldered a musket, and joined a regiment which was ordered to Holland at the time the Duke of York was opposed to Dumourier. His only reading up to this time had been The Seven Champions of Christendom,' and 'The Seven Wise Masters.' With his head full of these examples of chivalry, he marched to his first battlefield, vowing to himself, that if there were a dragon to be fought, or a giant to be defied, he would be their man!—at all events, he would enact some valorous exploit, some doughty deed of arms, which should astonish the world and dub him captain on the spot. He then described with great humour and feeling his utter astonishment and mortification on finding the mechanical slaughter of a modern field of battle so widely different from the picture in his fancy ;-when he found himself one of a mass in which the individual heart and arm, however generous, however strong, went for nothing-forced to stand still, to fire only by the word of command-the chill it sent to his heart, and his emotions when he saw the comrade at his side fall a quivering corse at his feet,- all this he described with a graphic liveliness and simplicity which was very amusing. He was afterwards taken prisoner, and at the time he was so overcome by the idea of the indignity he had incurred by being captured and stripped, and of the affliction and dishonour that would fall on his mother, that he was tempted to commit suicide in the old Roman fashion; but on seeing a lieutenant of his own regiment brought in prisoner, he thought better of it: a dishonour which the lieutenant endured with philosophy might, he thought, be borne by a subaltern, for by this time, at the age of eighteen, he was already sergeant. "He was soon afterwards exchanged, and ordered out to Canada with his regiment, the Forty-ninth. He obtained his commission as lieutenant in the same regiment by mere dint of bravery and talent; but as his pay was not sufficient to enable him to live like his brother officers and purchase his accoutrements, the promotion he had earned by his good conduct became, for a long time, a source of embarrassment. During the last American war he performed a most brilliant exploit, for which he received his captain's commission on the field. Immediately after receiving it, he astonished his commander by asking leave of absence, although another battle was expected in a few days. The request was, in Dec. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.-NO. XCII. A A truth, so extraordinary that General Sheaffe hesitated, and at last refused. F. said that if his request was granted, he would be again at head-quarters within three days; if refused, he would go without leave. For,' said he, I was desperate, and the truth was, ma'am, there was a little girl that I loved, and I knew that if I could but marry her before I was killed, and I a captain, she would have the pension of a captain's widow. It was all I could leave her, and it would have been some comfort to me, though not to her, poor soul!' "Leave of absence was granted; F. mounted his horse, rode a hundred and fifty miles in an exceedingly short time, married his little girl, and returned the day following to his duties, and to fight another battle, in which, however, he was not killed, but has lived to be the father of a fine family of four brave sons and one gentle daughter. "The men who have most interested me through life were all selfeducated, and what are called originals. This dear, good F. is originalissimo." In the following eloquent passages upon music and musicians, there are several beautiful truths. The extract from Dr. Chalmers, which we have marked in italics, may help us to overcome the feeling of uneasiness, if not of disgust, with which we have occasionally listened to the conversation of artists of various kinds, but of one vanity. "In the different branches of art, each artist thinks his own the highest, and is filled with the idea of all its value and all its capabilities which he understands best, and has most largely studied and developed. But,' says Dr. Chalmers, we must take the testimony of each man to the worth of that which he does know, and reject the testimony of each to the comparative worthlessness of that which he does not know.' "For it is not, generally speaking, that he overrates his own particular walk of art from over-enthusiasm, (no art, when considered separately, as a means of human delight and improvement, can be overrated,) but such a one-sided artist underrates from ignorance the walks of others which diverge from his own. "Of all artists, musicians are most exclusive in devotion to their own art, and in the want of sympathy, if not absolute contempt, for other arts. A painter has more sympathies with a musician, than a musician with a painter. Vernet used to bring his easel into Pergolesi's room to paint beside his harpsichord, and used to say that he owed some of his finest skies to the inspired harmonies of his friend. Pergolesi never felt, perhaps, any harmonies but those of his own delicious art. 66 6 Aspasia, he who loves not music is a beast of one species, and he who overloves it is a beast of another, whose brain is smaller than a nightingale's, and his heart than that of a lizard!' I refer you for the rest to a striking passage in Landor's Pericles and Aspasia,' containing a most severe philippic, not only against the professors, but the profession, of music, and which concludes very aptly, Panenus said this: let us never believe a word of it!' It is too true that some excellent musicians have been ignorant, and sensual, and dissipated, but there are sufficient exceptions to the sweeping censure of Panenus to show that imprudence, intemperance, and gluttony,' do not always, or necessarily," open their channels into the sacred stream of music.' Musicians are not selfish, careless, sensual, ignorant, because they are musicians, but because, from a defective education, they are nothing else. The German musicians are generally more moral and more intellectual men than English or Italian musicians, and hence their music has taken a higher flight, is more intellectual than the music of other countries. Music, as an art, has not degraded them, but they have elevated music. "It is impeaching the goodness of the beneficent Creator to deem that moral evil can be inseparably connected with any of the fine arts-least of all with music-the soul of the physical, as love is of the moral uni verse. "The most accomplished and intellectual musician I ever met with is Felix Mendelsohn. I do not recollect if it were himself or some one else who told me of a letter which Carl von Weber had addressed to him, warning him that he never could attain the highest honours in his profession without cultivating the virtues and the decencies of life. 'ÀÂ great artist,' said Weber, ought to be a good man.' "While I am "'i' the vein,' I must give you a few more musical reminiscences before my fingers are quite frozen. "I had once some conversation with Thalberg and Felix Mendelsohn, on the unmeaning names which musicians often give to their works, as Concerto in F, Concerto in B b, First Symphony, Second Symphony, &c. Mendelsohn said, that though in almost every case the composer might have a leading idea, it would be often difficult, or even impossible, to give any title sufficiently comprehensive to convey the same idea or feeling to the mind of the hearer. "But music, except to musicians, can only give ideas, or rather raise images, by association; it can give the pleasure which the just accordance of musical sounds must give to sensitive ears, but the associated ideas or images, if any, must be quite accidental. Haydn, we are told, when he sat down to compose, used first to invent a story in his own fancy- a regular succession of imaginary incidents and feelings-to which he framed or suited the successive movements (motivi) of his concerto. Would it not have been an advantage if Haydn could have given to his composition such a title as would have pitched the imagination of the listener at once upon the same key? Mendelsohn himself has done this in the pieces which he has entitled Overture to Melusina,' ' Overture to the Hebrides,'' Meeres Stille und Glückliche Fahrt,' The Brook,' and others, which is better surely than Sonata No. 1, Sonata No. 2. Take the Melusina, for example; is there not in the sentiment of the music, all the sentiment of the beautiful old fairy tale?-first, in the flowing, intermingling harmony, we have the soft elemental delicacy of the water nymph; then, the gushing of fountains, the undulating waves; then the martial prowess of the knightly lover, and the splendour of chivalry prevailing over the softer and more ethereal nature; and then, at last, the dissolution of the charm; the ebbing, fainting, and failing away into silence of the beautiful water-spirit. You will say it might answer just as well for Ondine; but this signifies little, provided we have our fancy pitched to certain poetical associations pre-existing in the composer's mind. Thus, not only poems, but pictures and statues, might be set to music. I suggested to Thalberg, as a subject, the Aurora of Guido. It should begin with a slow, subdued, and solemn movement, to express the slumbrous softness of that dewy hour which precedes the coming of the day, and which in the picture broods over the distant landscape, still wrapt in darkness and sleep; then the stealing upwards of the gradual dawn; the brightening, the quickening of all life; the awakening of the birds, the burst of the sunlight, the rushing of the steeds of Hyperion through the sky, the aerial dance of the Hours, and the whole concluding with a magnificent choral song of triumph and rejoicing sent up from universal nature. "And then in the same spirit-no, in his own grander spirit-I would have Mendelsohn improviser the Laocoon. There would be the pomp and procession of the sacrifice on the sea-shore; the flowing in of the waves; the two serpents which come gliding on their foamy crests, wreathing, and rearing, and undulating; the horror, the lamentation, the clash of confusion, the death-struggle, and, after a deep pause, the wail of lamen tation, the funereal march ;-the whole closing with a hymn to Apollo. Can you not just imagine such a piece of music, and composed by Mendelsohn? and can you not fancy the possibility of setting to music, in the same manner, Raffaelle's Cupid and Psyche, or his Galatea, or the group of the Niobe?" From music we pass to Coleridge and Charles Lamb. "Of all our modern authors, Coleridge best understood the essential nature of women, and has said the truest and most beautiful things of our sex generally; and of all our modern authors, Hazlitt was most remarkable for his utter ignorance of women, generally and individually. "Charles Lamb, of all the men I ever talked to, had the most kindly, the most compassionate, the most reverential feelings towards woman; but he did not, like Coleridge, set forth these feelings with elaborate eloquence-they came gushing out of his heart and stammering from his tongue-clothed sometimes in the quaintest disguise of ironical abuse, and sometimes in words which made the tears spring to one's eyes. He seemed to understand us, not as a poet, nor yet as a man of the world; but by the unerring instinct of the most loving and benevolent of hearts. "When Coleridge said antithetically, that it was the beauty of a woman's character to be characterless,' I suppose it is as if he had said, "It is the beauty of the diamond to be colourless;' for he instances Ophelia and Desdemona; and though they are colourless in their pure, transparent simplicity, they are as far as possible from characterless, for in the very quality of being colourless consists the character. 6 "Speaking of Coleridge reminds me that it was from Ludwig Tieck I first learned the death of this wonderful man; and as I, too, had sat at the feet of Gamaliel and heard his words,' the news struck me with a solemn sorrow. I remember that Tieck, in announcing the death of Coleridge, said, in his impressive manner, A great spirit has passed from the world, and the world knew him not.' 22 It is, however, some consolation for us to know that if, in his own time, too high, and pure, and imaginative for the masses, Coleridge left indelible impressions in the minds of the "fit audience;" that these, his survivors, are acting upon a wider and constantly spreading circle that the world is beginning to learn to know the wondrous "old man eloquent "—that the fragments of his mighty mind (alas !* that he should have left little else than fragments!) are daily more eagerly sought after, more devoutly read. There is also another consolation much of his genius, and all his exquisite feeling, survive in his son Hartley Coleridge. It is now time to introduce our author as a traveller. Few ladies, and not many gentlemen, have had so much enterprise and courage. In the heart of the severe winter of 1836-7 she set off in a sleigh to visit the Falls of Niagara, Toronto being her starting-place. The whole of this journey is most admirably described, but we have only room for portions of it. "I think that but for this journey I never could have imagined the sublime desolation of a northern winter, and it has impressed me strongly. In the first place, the whole atmosphere appeared as if converted into snow, which fell in thick, tiny, starry flakes, till the buffalo robes and furs about us appeared like swansdown, and the harness on the horses of the same delicate material. The whole earth was a white waste: the road, on which the sleigh-track was only just perceptible, ran for miles in a straight line; on each side rose the dark, melancholy pine-forest, slumbering drearily in the hazy air. Between us and the edge of the |