caneers, who went out to seize Spanish gold, and cut Spanish throats, after their own sweet will and pleasure. The temptation, no doubt, was irresistible, but we cannot bring ourselves to commend the practice.

We shall not attempt to give any sketch of the story, which, indeed, is confused and ill-arranged. The hero is Amyas Leigh, a Devonshire lad, of good family, who becomes a noted seaman. He and his brother Frank, and some half-dozen other youths of their kin and neighbourhood, fall desperately in love with a certain Rose Salterne, daughter of the mayor of Bideford, who is simply a pretty girl, without any other recommendation. Miss Rose does not seem to care for any of them, so the young dunderheads resolve themselves into what they call the Noble Brotherhood of the Rose. We may observe that Mr Kingsley has a vast admiration for the fantastic affectation of chivalry which was in vogue in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and not only defends that most tiresome, pedantic, and interminable of all romances, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney, but extends his protection to a book which we thought had long since been condemned as the ne plus ultra of coxcombry, viz. Lyly's Euphues and his England. Even Drayton, who lived in Elizabeth's time, was fully sensible of the absurdities of Lyly, as may be gathered from the following lines:"The noble Sydney, with this last arose, That heroe for numbers and for prose. That thoroughly pac'd our language as to show

The plenteous English hand in hand might go
With Greek and Latin; and did first reduce
Our tongue from LYLY's writing then in use;
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similies,
As th' English apes and very zanies be
Of every thing that they do hear and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
They speak and write all like mere lunaticks."

And certainly Mr Kingsley does make his favourite Euphuistic character, Frank Leigh, talk excessively like a lunatic. This gentleman, be it understood, is one of the most accomplished scholars of the age, and is high in favour with the Queen. He discourseth in this wise: "Had either, madam, of that cynosural triad been within call of my most

humble importunities, your ears had been delectate with far nobler melody." And when he maketh an oration, this is his style:-"Be sure that not without reason did the ancients feign Eros to be the eldest of the gods, by whom the jarring elements of Chaos were attuned into harmony and order. How, then, shall lovers make him Shall Psyche the father of strife? wed with Cupid, to bring forth a cockatrice's egg? or the soul be filled with love, the likeness of the immortals, to burn with envy and jealousy, division and distrust? True, the rose has its thorn; but it leaves poison and stings to the nettle. Cupid has his arrow, but he hurls no scorpions. Venus is awful when despised, as the daughters of Protus found; but her handmaids are the Graces, not the Furies. Surely he who loves aright will not only find love lovely, but become himself lovely also." This is such lovely nonsense, that we are tempted to quote Mr Kingsley's sketch of the utterer. We leave it in the judgment of the reader whether the portrait most resembles an accomplished cavalier or a haberdasher's shopman.

"The speaker was a tall and slim young man, some five-and-twenty years old, of so rare and delicate a beauty, that

it seemed that some Greek statue, or rather one of those pensive and pious knights whom the old German artists took delight to paint, had condescended to tread awhile this work day earth in living flesh and blood. The forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered that something at least of their curve was due to art, as was also the exceeding smoothness of those delicate cheeks). The face was somewhat long and thin; the nose aquiline; and the languid mouth showed, perhaps, too much of the ivory upper teeth; but the most striking point of the speaker's appearance was, the extraordinary brilliancy of his complexion, which shamed with its whiteness that of all fair ladies round, save where open on each cheek a bright red spot gave warning, as did the long thin neck and the taper hands, of sad possibilities, perhaps not far off; possibilities which all saw with an inward sigh, except she whose doting glances, as well as her resemblance to the fair youth, proclaimed her at once his mother, Mrs Leigh herself.

bank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where its outline cut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be distinguished by the eye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues quivering in the ascending streams of azure mist, until they seemed to melt and mingle with the very heavens.

"And as the sun rose higher and higher, a great stillness fell upon the forest. The jaguars and the monkeys had hidden themselves in the darkest depths of the woods. The birds' notes died out one by one; the very butterflies ceased their flitting over the tree-tops, and slept with outspread wings upon the glossy leaves, undistinguishable from the flowers around them. Now and then a colibri whirred downward toward the water, hummed for a moment around some pendent flower, and then the living gem was lost in the deep blackness of the inner wood, among treetrunks as huge and dark as the pillars of some Hindoo shrine; or a parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhang ing bough; or a thirsty monkey slid lazily down a liana to the surface of the stream, dipped up the water in his tiny hand, and started chattering back, as his eyes met those of some foul alligator peering upward through the clear depths below. In shaded nooks beneath the boughs, the capibaras, rabbits as large as sheep, went paddling sleepily round and round, thrusting up their unwieldy heads among the blooms of the blue water-lilies; while black and purple water-hens ran up and

down upon the rafts of floating leaves. The shining snout of a fresh-water dolphin rose slowly to the surface; a jet of spray whirred up; a rainbow hung upon it for a moment; and the black snout sank lazily again. Here and there, too, upon some shallow pebbly shore, scarlet flamingoes stood dreaming knee-deep on one leg; crested cranes pranced up and down, admiring their own finery; and ibises and egrets dipped their bills under water in search of prey; but before noon even those had slipped away, and there reigned a stillness which might be heard such a stillness (to compare small things with great) as broods beneath the rich shadows of Amyas's own Devon woods, or among the lonely sweeps of Exmoor, when the heather is in flower-a stillness in which, as Humboldt says,' If beyond the silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled, continuous hum of insects which

crowd the air close to the earth; a con

fused swarming murmur which hangs round every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, in the soil undermined by lizards, millepedes, and bees; a voice proclaiming to us that all Nature breathes, that under

a thousand different forms life swarms in the gaping and dusty earth, as much as in the bosom of the waters, and the air which breathes around.'

"At last a soft and distant murmur, increasing gradually to a heavy roar, announced that they were nearing some cataract; till turning a point, where the deep alluvial soil rose into a low cliff fringed with delicate ferns, they came full in sight of a scene at which all paused: not with astonishment, but with something very like disgust."

We could quote several other descriptive passages, not less beautiful, as illustrative of Mr Kingsley's remarkable graphic power; and we only abstain from doing so because we are warned that our space is limited. In this inland journey, Amyas meets with an Indian girl, or rather a girl whom the Indians had found straying in the woods, and brought up as a kind of female Cacique. She turns out afterwards to be the daughter of an earlier European adventurer; but the story is too long to be unravelled. This child of the forest forms an unrequited passion for Amyas, accompanies him in his wanderings; and is brought home by him to England, and intrusted, for the necessary process of civilisation, to the care of his lady mother. The gradual reclaiming of the savage girl is dwelt upon at considerable length, but to our mind it is forced and unnatural.

Then comes the period of the Armada, in depicting which Mr Kingsley has put forth his whole historical strength, and he makes a botch of it. The scenes preliminary to the appearance of that extraordinary armament, though Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher are brought into view, resemble rather a boozing match of Greenwich pensioners than a serious preparation to meet the greatest danger to which England was ever exposed. It is in scenes of this kind that the incapacity of Mr Kingsley as a vivid and truthful writer is principally displayed. In the hands of Scott, the preparation for receiving the Armada would have resolved itself into a most noble and animat

ed picture; in the hands of Mr Kingsley, it is a stupid Dutch daubing, suggestive of sack, tobacco, and bowls. Howbeit, they all get on board, one way or another, and there is plenty of powder expended, and

Amyas Leigh, having ascertained that Don Guzman is in command of one of the Spanish vessels, determines to tackle to it only; and by the slaughter of the Don, who really had done him no harm, to get rid of his accumulated bile. So he follows him clear round Scotland and the Northern Islands, and down again to Devonshire, like a greyhound coursing a hare, until, in a storm of thunder and lightning, the Spanish vessel strikes against the rocks, and founders; and Amyas, uttering words of blasphemy, is stricken blind by a flash. As a matter of course, to satisfy romantic requirements, he takes Ayacanora to his bosom, with the sanction of the respectable Mrs Leigh.

If, in the course of this article, we have occasionally borne hard upon Mr Kingsley, we simply plead the provocation. We have acknowledged, with the utmost readiness, his fine talents; and the efforts which he has made to elevate the condition of the working classes, whether they be practicable or not, are most praiseworthy from their motive. But, having read his works from the beginning, with much attention, and with a sincere desire of discovering whether the views which they inculcated were calculated to promote a more genial state of feeling among the different classes of modern society, we are constrained to say that, of all possible guides, he is the most unsafe and indefinite. Indeed, he is no guide at all, because he does not know where he is going. His historical romances are untruth

ful, in so far as they purport to be accurate pictures of the age and scenes which he describes; and the author is evidently doubtful himself of the fidelity of his own representations. They interest, because he is a man of genius, and can, to a certain extent, redeem the absurdity of his positions by a display of rhetorical power, and very few writers of the present day possess a style comparable to his. Nevertheless, it appears to us that he has not yet done justice to his undeniable powers. We hope that Mr Kingsley is capable of better things, and we think so; but we cannot understand what wholesome purpose he meditated by the writing of Hypatia; or what lesson, to men of the present century, is conveyed by the publication of Westward Ho! It is not a picture, such as we might expect from the hand of an accomplished artist, but a mere caricature, which might be most triumphantly answered, were any one to construct a novel on the admitted facts contained in the History of the Bucaniers. The stone which Mr Kingsley has thrown might recoil upon himself with a vengeance. But what of that? He is free of the realms of fiction; but we are constrained to say that, in our view, except in so far as description of scenery is concerned, he has never kept within bounds. Let us add this remark for his own consideration. Mr Kingsley, with all his liberality, has a strong propensity to persecution. We would rather keep out of his reach were he armed with ecclesiastical powers.

Ar the entrance of the Gulf of Bothnia, and about midway betwixt the coasts of Sweden and Finland, covering much of the intervening space with a net-work of islands, stands the Aland group. Detached from the great thoroughfares of the world, unimportant in itself, offering few facilities for commerce, and apparently no temptation to conquest, this little spot would, it might be thought, have retained the seclusion which nature had assigned it. Man's history, however, proves that no isolation of position, no poverty, no obscurity or inoffensiveness, is security against the aims of ambition or the aggression of power. A country may lie apart from the great tracks and roadways-its people keep aloof from the great conflicting interests and great struggles, and yet attract the desires of some conqueror, as an outwork to his possessions, or a pasturage for his flocks; he wants it for an advanced post, a barrier, a citadel, or a "garden of herbs," and straightway it becomes his.

Thus has it fared with the poor Alanders. The very position which seemed to promise privacy and impunity, has brought upon them again and again the presence of war, and provoked the disturbance of their primitive state, by more than ordinary vicissitudes and transitions. Once a kingdom-so says tradition-the sovereignty, perhaps, of some northern erl or viking, whose ships found a snug refuge in its numerous coves and fiords; then, following the fortunes of its neighbour Finland, a dependency of Sweden, or rather a unit in its federation of races; then overrun by Russian soldiers, converted into a military station, and placed under the rule of a nation alien in sympathies, laws, and blood, this little island aggregation becomes at last the scene of a war in which neither its interest nor its patriotism is involved. Russia was only an invader; England and France were strangers, known only through some vague idea of power or wealth.

The rule of Sweden seems to have been mild and easy. Under it the Alanders lived their simple lives in

peace and content. The natural character of their country compelled a primitive state of society, and favoured a pastoral life. There was no inlet, no outlet for the tide of civilisation. There was not only the natural island separation, but the group was so intersected and dissected by water, and each islet was again so cut up by loch and morass, that not only it but every farm almost had an isolation of its own. Thus even the progress which arises from internal traffic and communication was checked. The land lies in a succession of meadows, with marshy pools in the midst, and edged by rocky wooded ridges, which run like headlands and promontories into the grassy plains. These meadows afford pasturage for the cattle required for draught or winter store; the plateaux and slopes offer spots for limited tillage; the pine plantations give fuel; the lakes have fish; the meres bring waterfowl; so that there is enough, and enough only, within their narrow demesnes for their own wants. There is little product for export- little demand on foreign markets.

This primitive state, this simplicity, without savagery or barbarism, has been ever a favourite topic of poets and pastoral romancists. They have fondly pictured it as a primal natural stage-a sort of stand-point, where man arrived at the height of innocence, happiness, and content, and thence emerged into all the vices, luxuries, and ambition attendant on civilisation. Delusion we know this to be; and yet there is something attractive even in the idea of a state where man pretends to no higher dignity than that of labour, and is surrounded by no artificialities of rank, ceremonies, or etiquette; where his vices and passions, though perhaps no less than in other stages, are still simple in their development; where, "For man light labour spreads her wholesome store,

Just gives what life requires, but gives no

more."

The poor Alanders possessed, perhaps, all that was ever real in such a