main, the history of England, both early and recent, sufficiently proves that she cannot always resist the same temptation. An assault from her fleet of line of battle ships and steamers upon our own defenceless ports, without one note of warning, would not be more iniquitous than the capture of the Spanish treasure ships in time of peace, accompanied by such well-remembered circumstances of horror; or than the destruction of the Danish navy, also in time of peace, with the slaughter of several thousands of its brave defenders. We repeat, that we do not think a war with England probable; but we believe that immediate and ample preparation to meet it would be our surest guarantee against its occurrence; and such ample preparation we devoutly trust that congress before its adjournment will see fit to provide. ART. VI.-Ten Thousand a Year. A Novel. Originally published in Blackwood's Magazine. By the Author of Passages from the Diary of a late Physician." Philadelphia: 1841. Carey & Hart. 5 vols. 12mo. (Unfinished.) 66 WHEN Halleck told us, twenty years ago, that "Trumbull's Independence" and "Mr. Allen's lottery sign" should both "endure for ever," he pointed with his careless finger to a great truth, which, as one meditates, seems ever greater and truer. Ninety-nine hundredths of mankind like a bad picture just as well as a good one, provided only that they can see what the artist is aiming at, and that the object be something agreeable. The picture is a suggestion, not a thing the figures it conjures up in the mind are not its own, nor reflections of its own, but creatures of the excited imagination, which works upon its hints. The lottery sign now, without Halleck, "sine vate sacro," would have been forgotten; yet if on some pretence it could have been smuggled into the Rotunda, it would have got its share of admiration, a faith in its praises would have sprung up with repetition, and grown to an immortality. Blackwood's Magazine is a sort of momentary Rotunda for a certain kind of stories; and narratives and pictures are subject to many of the same deficiencies, and require the aid of our imagination to be enjoyed to much the same extent. NO. XVII. VOL. IX. 22 Taste may be said to be the power of supplying this aid; people of taste, therefore, relish works of imagination, because, entering as it were into the thoughts of the artist, they see in his work not what he effected, but the high ideal of his fancy, the beauties he endeavored to produce. The wretchedest daub of a painter that ever lived can see this in his own pictures; they recall the scene and circumstance of his daydreams to him, as a knot in a pocket-handkerchief brings back the train of thought which was passing when it was tied, though perhaps the picture, to all other eyes but its author's, may be equally unsuggestive. But let the picture once get a reputation, let the man who cannot see its merit be once well persuaded that there are people who can, and you shall see him go off into fudge ecstasies and tell a thousand falsehoods to get your good opinion of his taste, when perhaps he would be utterly incapable of telling you a single one to get your money. This is provoking, for it obscures judgment, and darkens instruction for a time as to the merits of any thing new. Time sets it all right again. The "Passages from the Diary of a late Physician" are far advanced on their journey to total oblivion, for which bourne "Ten Thousand a Year" is likely to set out as soon as all its baggage is packed up. Consider, after all, what a picture is at the very best and highest. Outline and color, one fixed expression, one instant's posture, one single point of view. But the variety of life, its warmth, its fulness, its energy, its action; the rich commentary that one instant supplies upon another; the comprehensiveness of many-sided view; all these are lostthey cannot be given, and it is the utmost stretch of the artist's power if he can hint at them. You take the hint, and create for yourself; you weep over his woes, if his scene be sad, with an inly self-congratulation; you praise him with compliments à ricochet-you have calculated their recoil upon yourself, "O, lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros Pectore te, pia nympha, sensit." The suggestions of a narrative, like those of a picture, and especially in a work of fiction, must always be deficient in realizing points of view; must always lack what Rahel calls the "infinite presuppositions" of real life. All these are therefore to be supplied, or some substitutes for them, from the stores in the memory, or powers of imagination of the reader. In doing this probably is a great part of his pleasure, and if you do not shock or derange his ideas with any palpable falsehood or inconsistency, he will take an interest in almost any series of scenes through which you may choose to lead him. Some art of combination and scenic effect must no doubt be exerted, and some regard had to the previous knowledge of those to whom you address yourself, as one great point is to bring this into play by association. But only avoid gross faults, and you shall have gentle critics; display average talent, and you shall gain an average success; and this with the same certainty in novel writing, as in merchandise, or medicine, or law. We say not this satirically; on the contrary it is a blessing that our pleasures are not strictly limited by the number of works by great masters; and that when Shakspeare's fictions and Walter Scott's have ceased to amuse us, Tom, Dick, and Harry are all capable of doing it, and Mr. Bulwer and Mr. Warren are actively engaged in the task. But the man who reads Ten Thousand a Year with much pleasure may rely on it he furnishes a large portion of his own enjoyment from his own stores, partly from his ignorance, partly from his negligence, and partly from his knowledge and fancy. It is his ignorance which prevents his being shocked with certain solecisms in manners and customs, his negligence which skims lightly over inconsistencies in character and action; and it is by virtue of a little knowledge and a great deal of fancy, that he accepts as portraits of Lord Brougham, Sir James Scarlet, and other distinguished persons, some of the imaginary characters of this story. Leaner sketches, scantier traits, less exhibition of character in word and action, cannot well be imagined in written portraits. You take the author's word for it that Mr. Subtle was very subtle, and Mr. Quicksilver very showy and brilliant and unsound, and Mr. Crafty very cunning; but when you seek in their doings or sayings for any practical exemplification of these characteristics, nothing is to be found but failures. There is something so mawkish in this naming the characters from their parts, that a well-educated child of ten years old would be sick at it. It is the grossest and clumsiest of artifices, and resembles nothing so much as the old wood-cuts and coarse pictures in arras, where each figure is marked with a written name, and caricatured to corre spond to it. Gluttony has a vast paunch and puffy cheeks, Drunkenness a goblet and tipsy laugh, Murder a dagger and a bowl. A novelist has no right to do this. He ought to use the advantage he has, the opportunity of giving his characters progress and development, allowing them, as men's characters do in real life, to grow better or worse, and to come out, on continued acquaintance, quite other than they appeared to us at first. Here is much of the interest of a true story, and here should be much of that of a good fiction. Much study of character, much knowledge of human nature, is certainly necessary to write such fiction; it is vastly easier to represent your personages with two hues, like the black and white men on a chequer board. Some are conceived in sin, born black, and christened for devils or fools-Quirk, Snap, Bloodsuck, Tagrag, and so forth. Others come forth all honor and beauty, and get names like Aubrey and Delamere, which to a sycophantic Englishman of an inferior class are indeed but little lower than the angels. All progress, all development in the matter of character, is thus shut out. You know beforehand that there can be no hopes of Tittlebat Titmouse, nor any redemption for Oily Gammon. "Qualis ab incepto, servetur ad imum". a great precept, most slouchingly and stupidly followed. It is plain the author has conceived no shading, blending, or softening to any of his creations; the color each has, it has so deeply and so singly, that it seems like a square lump from a box of paints, rather than an effect of pencil and palette. Another instance of the utter contempt of this writer for the idea of drawing from life is to be found in the political bearing of his work. He would fain exalt the tories, and satirize the whigs, which is all well enough; but he has not the skill to do it. If he had wrought in some political events, illustrating the effects of political principles, and had contrived them so as to deduce an argument pro or con, from a plausible tissue of circumstances, he would have shown talent and given us pleasure, and might have helped to confirm or convert us. But merely to find that every man with a fine name or an indifferent one, such as Aubrey, Delamere, Parkinson, Tatham, etc., is a tory, while all the Bloodsucks and Mudflints are whigs; this cheap and easy satire only proves that the author would have been more pointed and cogent in this direction, if he had possessed the power. We shall now give a brief account of the story of this book, and then look a little more in detail at the execution of some of the scenes, and the keeping of some of the characters. There is a constant straining after effect, which makes almost every chapter a regular strong scene of some sort or other; and inasmuch as human life is not so made up in fact, the man who represents it so sacrifices probability and nature as a matter of course. He writes to be read but once a month, in Blackwood's periodical; he forgets from month to month some part of what he has written, and trusts perhaps to his readers doing the same. What laurels he has, he has earned easily; he writes therefore extemporaneously, and here and there lets you see very plainly that his ideas of his own story are uncertain from one sentence to the next. Tittlebat Titmouse is a shopkeeper's clerk in London. Quirk, Gammon and Snap, are sharp lawyers, who disinter some claim of his to an estate of ten thousand a year, held by Mr. Aubrey, a gentleman of Yorkshire. They sue for it, and recover it, and Titmouse takes possession. He marries a nobleman's daughter, and the Aubreys are reduced to distress. Mr. Aubrey and all his family are perfect, his wife is a saint, his sister an angel, he himself is both, and a hero besides. Mr. Gammon is in love with Miss Aubrey, who refuses him, being engaged to Mr. Delamere, son of Lord De la Zouch. Gammon, on this refusal, contrives to bring Aubrey's creditors upon him, and the plot thickens, up to the May number of Blackwood, with deeper and deeper distress. You see glimpses here and there, however, of a chance of Aubrey's recovering his estate, as the author lets you know that Titmouse in fact is not entitled to it. Such is the material of four volumes collected, and chapters enough not yet republished here to make another, while the end, or restoration, is still indefinitely postponed. The author keeps the results in his own hand, by binding himself to nothing for his characters, except that they shall not contradict their names. Titmouse, for instance, must always be a mean creature, but he may do some things as brave as a lion, for it is said. expressly, where Tagrag turns him out of Satin Lodge, that he did not want for mere pluck. And in one or two other cases he takes his own part boldly, as where he stands up against Tagrag in the shop, or where he threshes Huckaback; but in general he is an arrant coward, as in the scene with |