apparitions, upon which the author probably in- | of a Scotch cow-feeder might not be supposed to tended to ground some important parts of his de- say or to do-and scarcely any thing indeed that tment; but his taste luckily took fright: the is not characteristic of her rank and habitual ocunitions do not contribute to the catastrophe, cupations. She is never sentimental, nor refined, and they now appear in the work as marks ra- nor elegant; and though always acting in very ther of the author's own predilection to such difficult situations, with the greatest judgment ey, than as any assistance to him in the way of and propriety, never seems to exert more than achinery. that downright and obvious good sense, which is so often found to rule the conduct of persons of her condition. This is the great ornament and charm of the work. Dumbiedikes is, however, an admirable sketch in the grotesque way;-and the Captain of Knockdunder is not only a very spirited, but also a very accurate representation of a Celtic deputy. There is less description of scenery, and less sympathy in external nature in this, than in any of the other tales.

The HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, is remarkable for taining fewer characters, and less variety of adent, than any of Sir Walter's former products-and it is accordingly, in some places, Comparatively languid. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described; and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant or pleasing. The final catastrophe, too, is needsly improbable and startling; and both SaddleTe and Davie Deans, become at last rather te- The BRIDE OF LAMMER MOOR is more sketchy and Luts and unreasonable; while we miss, through- romantic than the usual vein of the author-and the character of the generous and kind- loses, perhaps, in the exaggeration that is inciarted rustic, which in one form or another, dent to the style, some of the deep and heart-felt 3s such spirit and interest to the former sto- interest that belongs to more familiar situations. res But with all these defects, the work has The humours of Caleb Balderstone are, to our both beauty and power enough to vindicate its taste, the least successful of this author's attempts to a legitimate descent from its mighty fa- at pleasantry,-and belong rather to the school ber-and even to a place in the valued files of French or Italian buffoonery, than to that of is productions. The trial and condemnation English humour;-and yet, to give scope to these Le Deans are pathetic and beautiful in the farcical exhibitions, the poverty of the master of y highest degree; and the scenes with the Ravenswood is exaggerated beyond all credibility, fake of Argyle are equally full of spirit; and and to the injury even of his personal diguity. gely compounded of perfect knowledge of Sir William Ashton is tedious; and Bucklaw and st, and strong and deep feeling. But the great his captain, though excellently drawn, take up mast of the piece, and the great exploit of the rather too much room for subordinate agents. air, is the character and history of Jeanie There are splendid things, however, in this work *, from the time she first reproves her sister's also. The picture of old Ailie is exquisite--and Irations at St Leonard's, till she settles in the beyond the reach of any other living writer. ee in Argyleshire. The singular talent with The hags that convene in the church-yard have h he has engrafted on the humble and some- all the terror and sublimity, and more than the at coarse stock of a quiet and unassuming pea- nature of Macbeth's witches; and the courtship girl, the powerful affection, the strong sense, at the Mermaiden's well, as well as some of the lofty purposes, which distinguish the heroine immediately preceding scenes, are full of dignity rather the art with which he has so tem- and beauty. The catastrophe of the bride, though ed and modified those great qualities, as to it may be founded on fact, is too horrible for ake them appear noways unsuitable to the station fiction. But that of Ravenswood is magnificent ordinary bearing of such a person, and so or--and, taken along with the prediction which it bred and disposed the incidents by which they are was doomed to fulfil, and the mourning and death ed out, that they seem throughout adapted, aal native, as it were, to her condition, is suto any thing we can recollect in the hisof invention; and must appear to any one, The LEGEND OF MONTROSE is also of the nature Vattentively considers it, as a remarkable of a sketch or fragment, and is still more vigourhover the greatest of all difficulties, in the ous than its companion. There is too much, "ct of a fictitions narrative. Jeanie Deans, perhaps, of Dalgetty-or, rather, he engrosses too the course of her adventurous undertaking, great a proportion of the work; for, in himself, * cur admiration and sympathy more pow- we think he is uniformly entertaining; — and the ly than most heroines, and is in the highest author has nowhere shown more affinity to that Sere both pathetic and sublime ;-- - and yet she, matchless spirit, who could bring out his Falstaffs says or does any thing that the daughter and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after

of Balderstone, is one of the finest combinations of superstition and sadness, which the gloomy genius of our fiction ever put together.

b

A

with their various tempers it.

ceive the full merit of t

sorations, we have plays, poems, and ers of the former period; while of the .. have only some vague chronicles, su ous legends, and a few fragments of fo omance. We scarcely know indeed wha age was then either spoken or written. Yet a all these helps, how cold and conjectural a ng would a novel be, of which the scene wa aid in ancient Rome! The author might tall with perfect propriety of the beauties of the Fo rum, and the arrangements of the circus-of th baths and the suppers, and the canvass for office and the sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies ces He might be quite correct as to the dress, furni ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention Auot and might even embody in his work various anet a a very dotes and sayings preserved in contemporary au cuas and thors. But when he came to represent the de Argyle's tails of individual character and feeling, and t ---though delineate the daily conduct, and report the ordi ads of proba-nary conversation of his persons, he would fin and effect; himself either frozen in among barren geuera dent and situa-lities, or engaged with modern Englishmen in th sasaness, and the masquerade habits of antiquity. **** lite and interwhich belong 483 mistad.

dlord we must pass omance of IVANHOE, nely English, and the e reign of Richard I., s of which age are less ghlanders and camerothis was the great diffikai to contend with, and the the subject with which he A now alive can have a very the actual way of life, and ac ancestors in the year 1194. acre prominent outlines of their a priesthood, and their villanage, gawa antiquaries, or even to genebut all the filling up and details, give body and life to the picture, since effaced by time. We have Auction, in short, of the private life cavasation of any class of persons in that ped, and, in fact, know less how the wen occupied and amused themselves they talked about how they looked-or tually thought or felt, at that time laud, than we know of what they did or At Home in the time of Augustus, or at in the time of Pericles. The memorials ays of those earlier ages and remoter nawe greatly more abundant and more famitu, than those of our ancestors at the disat apven centuries. Besides ample histories

In stating these difficulties, however, we reall mean less to account for the defects, than to er hance the merits of the work we are treating o For though the author has not worked impossi bilities, he has done wonders with his subject and though we do sometimes miss those fres and living pictures of the characters which w know, and the nature with which we are familia and that high and deep interest which the hom scenes of our own times and own people coul alone generate or sustain, it is impossible to den that he has made marvellous good use of th scanty materials he had at his disposal, and eker them out both by the greatest skill and dexterit in their arrangement, and by all the resource that original genius could ronder subservient t such a design. For this purpose he has laid hi scene in a period when the rivalry of the victo rious Normans and the conquered Saxons had no been finally composed; and when the courtl petulance and chivalrous and military pride o the one race might yet be set in splendid oppo sition to the manly steadiness and honest bu homely simplicity of the other; and has, at th same time, given an air both of dignity and reali ty to his story, by bringing in the personal prow ess of Cœur de Lion himself, and other personage of historical fame, to assist in its development Though reduced in a great measure to the vulgat staple of armed knights, and jolly friars and woodmen, imprisoned damsels, lawless barous, collared serfs, and household fools, he has made such use of his great talents for description, and invested those traditional and theatrical persons

th so much of the feelings that are of all ages and all countries, that we frequently cease to reard them (as it is generally right to regard them) as parts of a fantastical pageant, and are often brought to consider the knights who joust in paply in the lists, and the foresters who shoot er with arrows, and plunder travellers in the woods, as real individuals, with hearts and blood beating in their bosoms like our own-actual extences, in short, into whose views we may reasonably enter, and with whose emotions we are bound to sympathise. To all this he has added, out of the prodigality of his high and inventive genius, the grace and the interest of some 4y, and sweet, and superhuman characters, for which, though evidently fictitious, and unnatural any stage of society, the remoteness of the scene on which they are introduced may serve as apology, if they could need any other than what they bring along with them in their own blity and beauty.

thor of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, than of Waverley or Old Mortality.

Without disputing the general verdict, which places the MONASTERY below the rest of our author's works, we shall endeavour to ascertain the grounds on which it may be supposed to be founded. We believe the principal deficiency lies in, what is usually our author's principal excellence, the female characters. In general, his men add to the boldness and animation of the scene, but his women support almost all its interest. Perhaps this must always be the case where both are equally well drawn. We sympathize more readily with simple than with compound feelings; and therefore less easily with those characters, the different ingredients of which have, by mutual subservience, been moulded into one uniform mass, than with those in which they stand unmixed and contrasted. Courage restrained by caution, and liberality by prudence, loyalty, with a view only to the ulti

in comparing this work then with the produc-mate utility of power, and love, never forgetting ons which had already proceeded from the same itself in its object, are the attributes of men. master-hand, it is impossible not to feel that we Their purposes are formed on a general balance are passing in some degree from the reign of na- of compensating motives, and pursued only while re and reality to that of fancy and romance, their means appear not totally inadequate. The and exchanging for scenes of wonder and curio- greater susceptibility, which is always the charm, ty those more homefelt sympathies, and deeper and sometimes the misfortune, of women, deches of delight, that can only be excited by prives them of the same accurate view of the the people among whom we live, and the objects proportion of different objects. The one upon at are constantly around us. A far greater which they are intent, whether it be a lover, a portion of the work is accordingly made up parent, a husband, a child, a king, a preacher, a #şlendid descriptions of arms and dresses, ball, or a bonnet, swallows up the rest. Hence ted and massive castles, tournaments of mail- the enthusiasm of their loyalty, the devotedness tarpions, solemn feasts, formal courtesies, of their affection, the abandonment of self, and and other matters of external and visible pre- the general vehemence of emotion, which, in ficwatment, that are only entitled to such distinction as well as in reality, operate contagiously dan as connected with the olden times, and novel on our feelings. But our author has, in the titae of their antiquity; while the interest Monastery, neglected the power of representing of the story is maintained far more by surprising the female character, which he possesses so emieatures and extraordinary situations, the nently, and, in general, uses so liberally. Erding effect of exaggerated sentiments, and heroine is milk and water, or any thing still more de strong contrast of overdrawn characters, than insipid. Dame Glendinning and Tibbie are the by the sober charms of truth and reality, the common furniture of a farm-house; and Mysie quite representation of scenes with which we Happer and poor Catherine, though beautiful, are familiar, or the skilful development of affec- mere sketches. bons which we have often experienced.

1

These bright lights and deep shadows-this Session of brilliant pictures, addressed as often as to the imagination, and oftener to magination than the heart-this preference darking generalities to homely details, all be

to the

eyes

love more

properly to the province of poetry prose; and Ivanhoe, accordingly, seems much more akin to the most splendid of poems, than the most interesting of moder novels; and savours much more of the au

The

But the great merit of the Monastery is, that it is a foundation for the ABBOT. This not only relieves, in a great measure, the reader from the slow detail, or the perplexing retracings and éclaircissemens which detain or interrupt him in a narrative that is purely fictitious, but is an improvement on some of the peculiar advantages of one that is historical. In the latter, the hard and meagre outline of his previous knowledge seldom contains more than the names and mutual relations of the principal personages, and what

described, or fiction invented, a character more truly tragic than Queen Mary. The most fruitful imagination could not have adorned her with more accomplishments, or exposed her to greater extremes of fortune, or alternated them with greater rapidity. And the mystery which, after all the exertions of her friends and enemies, still rests on her conduct, and which our author has most skilfully left as dark as he found it, prevents our being either shocked or unmoved by her final calamities. The former would have been the case, if her innocence could have been established. We could not have borne to see such a being

ness into such misery. The latter would have followed, if she could have been proved to be guilty. Her sufferings, bitter as they were, wen

endured a long imprisonment, but it was in a desolate climate, without the alleviations which even Elizabeth allowed to her rival, without th hope of escape, or the sympathy of devoted at tendants: such was his misery, that his reaso sunk under it. And though his sufferings wer greater than those of his accomplice, if such sh were, his crime was less. He had not to brea the same restraints of intimate connexion and c sex. But nobody could read a tragedy of whic his misfortunes formed the substance; becaus we are sure of his guilt, they will excite no in terest. While we continue to doubt hers, Mary will be intensely affecting.

they had previously done, with very little of what they had previously felt. But where one fiction is founded on another, we are introduced not merely to persons who are notorious to us, but to old acquaintances and friends. The Knight of Avenel, the Abbot Ambrosius, and the Gardener Blinkhoolie, are the Halbert, and Edward, and Boniface, into whose early associations and secret feelings we had been admitted. We meet them as we meet, in real life, with those whom we have known in long-past times, and in different situations, and are interested in tracing, sometimes the resemblance, and sometimes the contrast, between what has past and what is pre-plunged, by a false accusation, from such happisent; in observing the effect of new circumstances in modifying or confirming their old feelings, or in eliciting others which before lay unperceived. We view with interest the fiery free-less unmixed than those of Bothwell. He to dom of Halbert's youth ripened into the steady and stern composure of the approved soldier and skilful politician; and when, as Knight of Avenel, he sighs for birth and name, we recognize the feelings that drove him from the obscure security of a church vassal, to seek with his sword the means of ranking with those proud men who despised his clownish poverty. And when Ambrose acknowledges that, bent as he is by affliction, he has not forgotten the effect of beauty on the heart of youth-that even in the watches of the night, broken by the thoughts of an imprisoned queen, a distracted kingdom, a church laid waste and ruinous, come other thoughts than these suggest, and other feelings that belong to an carlier and happier course of life; a single allusion sends us back through the whole intervening time, and we see him again in the deep window-recess of Glendearg, and Mary's looks of simple yet earnest anxiety, watching for his assistance in their childish studies. The allusion would have been pretty, but how inferior if Ambrose had been a new character, and we had been forced to account for it by some vague theory as to his for-historical recollections, beauty, talents, attrac mer history. The Abbot has, however, far greater tive virtues and unhappy errors, exalted ran advantages over its predecessor than those, great and deep misfortune, are accumulated in Mary as they are, that arise from their relative situa- and we want altogether that union of the loft tion. We escape from the dull tower of Glen- and the elegant, of enthusiasm and playfulnes dearg, with its narrow valley and homely inmates, which enchanted us in Catherine. Amy is to Edinburgh, and Holyrood House, and Loch-beautiful specimen of that class which long ag leven Castle, and the field of Langside, and to furnished Desdemona: the basis of whose charac high dames and mighty earls, and exchange the ter is conjugal love, whose charm consists in it obscure squabbling of the hamlet and the convent for events where the passions of individuals decided the fate of kingdoms, and, above all, we exchange unintelligible fairyism for human actors and human feelings.

It is true there is a sorceress on the stage, but one endued with powers far greater for evil or for good than the White Lady. History has never

Though KENILWORTH ranks high among ou author's works, we think it inferior, as a whole to his other tragedies, the Bride of Lammermoo the historical part of Waverley, and the Abbo both in materials and in execution.

Amy Robsart and Elizabeth occupy nearly th same space upon the canvas as Catherine Seyto aud Mary. But almost all the points of interes which are divided between Amy and Elizabetl

purity and its devotedness, whose fault spring from its undue prevalence over filial duty, and whose sufferings are occasioned by the perverted passions of him who is the object of it. Elizabeth owes almost all her interest to our early associa tions, and to her marvellous combination of the male and female dispositions, in those points in which they seem most incompatible. The re

presentation of such a character loses much of its interest in history, and would be intolerable pare fiction. In the former, its peculiarities rt softened down by the distance, and Elizabeth appears a fine, but not an uncommon object-a pa, unamiable sovereign; and the same pecularities, shown up by the microscopic exaggeration of fiction, would, if judged only by the rules affiction, offend as unnatural; but supported by the authority of history, would be most striking. A portrait might be drawn of Elizabeth, uniting the magnanimous courage, the persevering but goverable anger, the power of weighing distant gainst immediate advantages, and the brilliant against the useful, and of subjecting all surrounding minds, even the most manly, to her aurace, with the most craving vanity, the most ritable jealousy, the meanest duplicity, and the most capricious and unrelenting spite, that ever degraded the silliest and most hateful of her sex. Sir Walter has not, we think, made the most of his opportunities. He has complied with the bas of poetical consistency, without recollecting that, in this instance, the notoriety of Elizabeth's batory warranted their violation. Instead of pushing to the utmost the opposing qualities that feed her character, he has softened even the dents that he has directly borrowed. When Lacester knelt before her at Kenilworth, ere she raised him she passed her hand over his head, so beat as almost to touch his long curled and perfamed hair, and with a movement of fondness that seemed to intimate she would, if she dared, have made the motion a slight caress. Listen to

|

The PIRATE is a bold attempt to make out a long and eventful story, from a very narrow circle of society, and a scene so circumscribed as scarcely to admit of any great scope or variety of action; and its failure, in a certain degree, must in fairness be ascribed chiefly to this scantiness and defect of the materials.

The FORTUNES OF NIGEL is of an historical cha

racter, and an attempt to describe and illustrate by examples the manners of the court, and, generally speaking, of the age of James I. of England.

Without asserting the high excellence of SAINT RONAN'S WELL, we may venture to affirm that it does not deserve the contempt with which it has been treated by some critics. The story, indeed, is not very probable, and there are various inconsistencies in the plot; the characters, though apparently intended to be completely modern, are in some instances more suitable to the last generation; the hero's portrait is feebly drawn: the moral tone of the work is less correct and legitimate than that which pervades our author's preceding productions, and the impulses of feeling and humanity are less natural and forcible; but it is still a work which bears the marks of a master's hand, the interest is well sustained, the incidents are related with spirit, many of the dialogues are lively and pleasant, and not only the characters of the heroine, but also those of the landlady of Touchwood, are drawn with a discriminating and powerful pencil.

In the historical novels of REDGAUNTLET, QUENTIN DURWARD, and WOODSTOCK, the author disJames Melvil's account of the occurrence. plays a truly graphic power in the delineation was required to stay till he was made Earl of characters, which he sketches with an ease, Leicester, which was done at Westminster, the and colours with a brilliancy, and scatters about en herself helping to put on his ceremonial, with a profusion, which but few writers, in any esitting upon his knees (kneeling) before her age, have been able to accomplish. With spells great gravity; but she could not refrain of magic potency, and with the creations of a potting her hands into his neck, smiling-rich and varied fancy, so skilfully has he stolen kling him, the French ambassador and I us from ourselves, with such exquisite cunning unding by. Then she turned, asking me how I has he extracted a kind of poetry from the comand him? Again, when she discovers Leices- mon incidents of life, with such an extent of leles conduct, in which every cause of personal gendary knowledge, he has displayed so wondertation is most skilfully accumulated, she pu- ful an aptitude in drawing from historic research shes him only by a quarter of an hour's restraint those minute traits of manners and modifications her the custody of the earl-marshal. in social life, which, by reason of the wide range When, at a later period, and under circum- which it traverses, and the rapidity with which it stances of much less aggravation, she detected moves along, are in history too general and inmarriage with Lady Essex, she actually impri- distinct; that it would be worse than affectation ed him. Our author has not ventured on the to stand aloof from the general feeling, and to vehemence of her affection or her rage. But, refuse our humble proportion of those golden ter all, his picture of the lion-hearted queen, opinions he has bought from all sorts of men,» agh it might perhaps have been improved by and which have fixed him in so high a rank in the admission of stronger contrasts, is so vivid, the literature of his country. and so magnificent, that we can hardly wish it other than it is.

The TALES OF THE CRUSADERS have not been received with that enthusiasm of delight which