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and Bucklaw and his Captain, though excel- | productions of which we have been prevented lently drawn, take up rather too much room from speaking in detail, we proceed, without for subordinate agents.-There are splendid further preface, to give an account of the things, however, in this work also.-The pic- work before us. ture of old Ailie is exquisite-and beyond the reach of any other living writer.-The hags that convene in the churchyard, have all the terror and sublimity, and more than the nature of Macbeth's witches; and the courtship at the Mermaiden's well, as well as some of the immediately preceding scenes, are full of dignity and beauty. There is a deep pathos indeed, and a genuine tragic interest in the whole story of the ill-omened loves of the two victims. The final catastrophe of the Bride, however, though it may be founded on fact, is too horrible for fiction.-But that of Ravenswood is magnificent-and, taken along with the prediction which it was doomed to fulfil, and the mourning and death of Balderstone, is one of the finest combinations of superstition and sadness which the gloomy genius of our fiction has ever put together.

The story, as we have already stated, is entirely English; and consequently no longer possesses the charm of that sweet Doric dialect, of which even strangers have been made of late to feel the force and the beauty. But our Southern neighbours will be no great gainers, after all, in point of familiarity with the personages, by this transference of the scene of action-For the time is laid as far back as the reign of Richard I.—and we suspect that the Saxons and Normans of that age are rather less known to them than even the Highlanders and Cameronians of the present. This was the great difficulty the author had to contend with, and the great disadvantage of the subject with which he had to deal. Nobody now alive can have a very clear or complete conception of the actual way of life and manière d'etre of our ancestors in the year 1194. Some of the more prominent outlines of their chivalry, their priesthood, and their villenage, may be known to antiquaries, or even to general readers; but all the filling up, and details, which alone could give body and life to the picture, have been long since effaced by time. We have scarcely any notion, in short, of the private life and conversation of any class of persons in that remote period; and, in fact, know less how the men and women occupied or amused themselves-what they talked about-how they looked-or what they habitually thought or felt, at that time in England, than we know of what they did or thought at Rome in the time of Augustus, or

"The Legend of Montrose" is also of the nature of a sketch or fragment, and is still more vigorous than its companion.-There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty-or, rather, he engrosses too great a proportion of the work, -for, in himself, we think he is uniformly entertaining; and the author has nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every time in scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Rittmaster. The general idea of the charac-at Athens in the time of Pericles. The meter is familiar to our comic dramatists after the Restoration-and may be said in some measure to be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;-but the ludicrous combination of the soldado with the Divinity student of Marischal college, is entirely original; and the mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily exemplified. Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that is not characteristic and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous. Annot Lyle, and the Children of the Mist, are in a very different manner-and, though extravagant, are full of genius and poetry. The whole scenes at Argyle's Castle, and in the escape from it-though trespassing too far beyond the bounds of probability-are given with great spirit and effect; and the mixture of romantic incident and situation, with the tone of actual business and the real transactions of a camp, give a life and interest to the warlike part of the story, which belong to the fictions of no other hand. There is but little made of Montrose himself; and the wager about the Candlesticks-though said to be founded in fact, and borrowed from a very well known and entertaining book, is one of the few things in the writings of this author, to which we are constrained to apply the epithets of stupid and silly.

Having thus hastily set our mark on those

morials and relics of those earlier ages and
remoter nations are greatly more abundant
and more familiar to us, than those of our an-
cestors at the distance of seven centuries.
Besides ample histories and copious orations,
we have plays, poems, and familiar letters of
the former periods; while of the latter we
have only some vague chronicles, some su-
perstitious legends, and a few fragments of
foreign romance. We scarcely know, indeed,
what language was then either spoken or
written. Yet, with all these helps, how cold
and conjectural a thing would a novel be, of
which the scene was laid in ancient Rome!
The author might talk with perfect propriety
of the business of the Forum, and the amuse-
ments of the Circus-of the baths and the
suppers, and the canvass for office-and the
sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies. He
might be quite correct as to the dress, furni-
ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention;
and might even engross in his work various
anecdotes and sayings preserved in contem-
porary authors.
But when he came to repre-
sent the details of individual character and
feeling, and to delineate the daily conduct,
and report the ordinary conversation of his
persons, he would find himself either frozen
in among naked and barren generalities, or
engaged with modern Englishmen in the mas-
querade habits of antiquity.

us.

greater proportion of the work is accordingly made up of splendid descriptions of arms and dresses-moated and massive castles-tournaments of mailed champions-solemn feasts— formal courtesies, and other matters of external and visible presentment, that are only entitled to such distinction as connected with the olden time, and new only by virtue of their antiquity

far more by surprising adventures and extraordinary situations, the startling effect of exaggerated sentiments, and the strong contrast of exaggerated characters, than by the sober charms of truth and reality, the exquisite representation of scenes with which we are familiar, or the skilful development of affec

In stating these difficulties, however, we really mean less to account for the defects, than to enhance the merits of the work before For though the author has not worked impossibilities, he has done wonders with his subject; and though we do sometimes miss those fresh and living pictures of the characters which we know, and the nature with which we are familiar-and that high and while the interest of the story is maintained, deep interest which the home scenes of our own times, and our own people could alone generate or sustain, it is impossible to deny that he has made marvellous good use of the scanty materials at his disposal-and eked them out both by the greatest skill and dexterity in their arrangement, and by all the resources that original genius could render sub-tions which we have often experienced. servient to such a design. For this purpose he has laid his scene in a period when the rivalry of the victorious Norman and the conquered Saxon, had not been finally composed; and when the courtly petulance, and chivalrous and military pride of the one race, might yet be set in splendid opposition to the manly steadiness, and honest but homely simplicity of the other: And has, at the same time, given an air both of dignity and of reality to his story, by bringing in the personal prowess of Cœur de Lion himself, and other personages of historical fame, to assist in its development. Though reduced, in a great measure, to the vulgar staple of armed knights, and jolly friars or woodsmen, imprisoned damsels, lawless barons, collared serfs, and household fools he has made such admirable use of his great talents for description, and invested those traditional and theatrical persons with so much of the feelings and humours that are of all ages and all countries, that we frequently cease to regard 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 panoply in the lists, and the foresters who shoot deer with arrows, and plunder travellers in the woods, as real individuals, with hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms like our own-actual existences, in short, into whose views we may still 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 lofty, and sweet, and superhuman characters for which, though evidently fictitious, and unnatural in any stage of society, the remoteness of the scene on which they are introduced, may serve as an apology-if they could need any other than what they bring along with them in their own sublimity and beauty.

In comparing this work then with the former productions of the same master-hand, it is impossible not to feel that we are passing in a good degree from the reign of nature and reality, to that of fancy and romance; and exchanging for scenes of wonder and curiosity, those more homefelt sympathies and deeper touches of delight that can only be excited by the people among whom we live, and the objects that are constantly around us. A far

These bright lights and deep shadows-this succession of brilliant pictures, addressed as often to the eye as to the imagination, and oftener to the imagination than the heart-this preference of striking generalities to homely details, all belong more properly to the province of Poetry than of Prose; and Ivanhoe accordingly seems to us much more akin to the most splendid of modern poems, than the most interesting of modern novels; and savours more of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, than of Waverley, or Old Mortality. For our part we prefer, and we care not who knows it, the prose to the poetry-whether in metre or out of it; and would willingly exchange, if the proud alternative were in our choice, even the great fame of Mr. Scott, for that which awaits the mighty unknown who has here raised his standard of rivalry, within the ancient limits of his reign. We cannot now, however, give even an abstract of the story; and shall venture, but on a brief citation, from the most striking of its concluding scenes. The majestic Rebecca, our readers will recol lect, had been convicted before the grand master of the Templars, and sentenced to die, unless a champion appeared to do battle with her accuser, before an appointed day. The appointed day at last arrives. Rebecca is led out to the scaffold-faggots are prepared by the side of the lists-and in the lists appears the relentless Templar, mounted and armed for the encounter. No champion appears for Rebecca; and the heralds ask her if she yields herself as justly condemned.

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that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me Say to the Grand Master,' replied Rebecca, as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mine own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is passed, may his Holy will be done!' The herald retired to carry this answer to the Grand Master.God forbid,' said Lucas Beaumanoir, that Jew or Pagan should impeach us of injustice.-Until the shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will we wait to see if a champion will appear for this unfortunate woman.'

The hours pass away-and the shadows begin to pass to the eastward. The assembled multitudes murmur with impatience and compassion-and the Judges whisper to each other, that it is time to proceed to doom.

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"At this instant a knight, urging his horse to alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the steps, than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, lists. An hundred voices exclaimed, A champion! her fair visitant kneeled suddenly on one knee, a champion! And, despite the prepossession and pressed her hands to her forehead, and, bending her prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unani-head to the ground, in spite of Rowena's resistance, mously as the knight rode rapidly into the tilt-yard. kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic. What To the summons of the herald, who demanded his means this?' said the surprised bride; or why do rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight you offer to me a deference so unusual?'-Beanswered readily and boldly, 'I am a good knight cause to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,' said Rebecca, and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity of sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, her manner, I may lawfully, and without rebuke, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York; to uphold the pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to Wilfred of doom pronounced against her to be false and truth-Ivanhoe. I am-forgive the boldness which has less; and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as a offered to you the homage of my country-I am the traitor, murtherer, and liar.' The stranger must unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded first show,' said Malvoisin, that he is a good his life against such fearful odds in the tilt-yard of Knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple Templestowe.- Damsel,' said Rowena, Wilfred sendeth not forth her champions against nameless of Ivanhoe on that day rendered back but in a slight men. My name,' said the Knight, raising his measure your unceasing charity towards him in his helmet, is better known, my lineage more pure, wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught Malvoisin, than thine own. I am Wilfred of Ivan- remains in which he and I can serve thee?'- Nothhoe.'-'I will not fight with thee,' said the Templar, ing,' said Rebecca, calmly, unless you will transin a changed and hollow voice. Get thy wounds mit to him my grateful farewell.'-'You leave Enghealed, and purvey thee a better horse, and it may land, then,' said Rowena, scarce recovering the sur be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of prise of this extraordinary visit.-I leave it, lady, thee this boyish spirit of bravade.'-'Ha! proud ere this moon again changes. My father hath a Templar,' said Ivanhoe, hast thou forgotten that brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember King of Grenada-thither we go, secure of peace the lists at Acro-remember the Passage of Arms and protection, for the payment of such ransom as at Ashby-remember thy proud vaunt in the halls the Moslem exact from our people. And are you of Rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain not then as well protected in England?' said Roweagainst my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle na. My husband has favour with the King-the with Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and recover the honour King himself is just and generous. Lady,' said thou hadst lost! By that reliquary, and the holy Rebecca, 'I doubt it not-but England is no safe relique it contains, I will proclaim thee, Templar, abode for the children of my people. Ephraim is an a coward in every court in Europe-in every Pre-heartless dove-Issachar an over-laboured drudge, ceptory of thine Order-unless thou do battle with- which stoops between two burthens. Not in a land out farther delay.'-Bois-Guilbert turned his coun- of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, tenance irresolutely towards Rebecca, and then ex- and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope claimed, looking fiercely at Ivanhoe, Dog of a to rest during her wanderings.'-' But you, maiden,' Saxon, take thy lance, and prepare for the death said Rowena- you surely can have nothing to fear. thou hast drawn upon thee! Does the Grand She who nursed the sick-bed of Ivanhoe,' she conMaster allow me the combat?' said Ivanhoe.-Itinued, rising with enthusiasm-' she can have noth. may not deny what you have challenged,' said the ing to fear in England, where Saxon and Norman Grand Master, yet I would thou wert in better will contend who shall most do her honour.'-'Thy plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast speech is fair, lady,' said Rebecca, and thy purthou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably pose fairer; but it may not be there is a gulf be n.et with.' Thus thus as I am, and not other-twixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either wise,' said Ivanhoe; it is the judgment of God! to pass over it. Farewell!-yet, ere I go, indulge to his keeping I commend myself." me one request. The bridal veil hangs over thy face; raise it, and let me see the features of which fame speaks so highly.' They are scarce worthy of being looked upon,' said Rowena; but, expecting the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.'She took it off accordingly, and partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mastered by higher emotions, passed slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon. deigned to show me will long dwell in my remem"Lady, she said, the countenance you have brance. There reigns in it gentleness and goodness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities may mix with an expression so lovely, how may we chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its original? Long, long shall I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble deliverer united with'-She stopped short-her eyes filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious inquiries of Rowena-' I am well, lady-well. But my heart swells when I think of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe !Farewell! One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. Accept this casket-startle not at its contents.-Rowena opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or necklace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were visibly of immense value. It is impossible,' she said, tendering back the casket, 'I dare not accept

We cannot make room for the whole of this catastrophe. The overtired horse of Ivanhoe falls in the shock; but the Templar, though scarcely touched by the lance of his adversary, reels, and falls also ;-and when they seek to raise him, is found to be utterly dead! a victim to his own contending passions.

We will give but one scene more-and it is in honour of the divine Rebecca-for the fate of all the rest may easily be divined. Richard forgives his brother; and Wilfred weds Rowena. "It was upon the second morning after this happy bridal, that the Lady Rowena was made acquainted by her handmaid Elgi ha, that a damsel desired admission to her presence, and solicited that their parley might be without witness. Rowena wondered, hesitated, became curious, and ended by commanding the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants to withdraw. She entered-a noble and commanding figure; the long white veil in which she was shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her demeanour was that of respect, unmingled by the least shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate favour. Rowena was ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend to the feelings of others. She arose, and would have conducted the lovely stranger to a seat; but she looked at Elgitha, and again intimated a wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena

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WORKS OF FICTION.

a gift of such consequence.'-" returned Rebecca. Let me not think you deem the situations-and the extremes of peril, heYet keep it, lady,' | or Cynocephali. The interest we do take is in so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I prize these sparkling frag. roism, and atrocity, in which the great latiments of stone above my liberty? or that my father tude of the fiction enables the author to invalues them in comparison to the honour of his only dulge. Even with this advantage, we soon child? Accept them, lady-to me they are valueless. feel, not only that the characters he brings beI will never wear jewels more. You are then fore us are contrary to our experience, but that unhappy, said Rowena, struck with the manner in they are actually impossible. There could in which Rebecca uttered the last words. O, remain fact have been no such state of society as that with us the counsel of holy men will wean you of which the story before us professes to give from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to you. No, lady,' answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beau- country beset with such worthies as Front-deus but samples and ordinary results. In a tiful features, that may not be. I may not change Bœuf, Malvoisin, and the rest, Isaac the Jew the faith of my fathers, like a garment unsuited to could neither have grown rich, nor lived to old the climate in which I seek to dwell; and unhappy, age; and no Rebecca could either have aclady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will."Have you then convents, to one of which you Neither could a plump Prior Aymer have folquired her delicacy, or preserved her honour. mean to retire?' asked Rowena.-' No, lady,' said lowed venery in woods swarming with the the Jewess; but among our people, since the time merry men of Robin Hood.-Rotherwood must of Abraham downward, have been women who have been burned to the ground two or three have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the times in every year-and all the knights and sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distress-thanes of the land been killed off nearly as ed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he inquire after the fate of her whose life he saved!'--There was an involuntary tremor in Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.-- Farewell,' she said, may He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings!'

"She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena; for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved."

The work before us shows at least as much genius as any of those with which it must now be numbered-and excites, perhaps, at least on the first perusal, as strong an interest: But it does not delight so deeply-and we rather think it will not please so long. Rebecca is almost the only lovely being in the story-and she is evidently a creature of the fancy-a mere poetical personification. Next to her for Isaac is but a milder Shylock, and by no means more natural than his original-the heartiest interest is excited by the outlaws and their merry chief-because the tone and manners ascribed to them are more akin to those that prevailed among the yeomanry of later days, than those of the Knights, Priors, and Princes, are to any thing with which a more recent age has been acquainted.-Cedric the Saxon, with his thralls, and Bois-Guilbert the Templar with his Moors, are to us but theoretical or mythological persons. We know nothing about them-and never feel assured that we fully comprehend their drift, or enter rightly into their feelings. The same genius which now busies us with their concerns, might have excited an equal interest for the adventures of Oberon and Pigwiggin-or for any imaginary community of Giants, Amazons,

often. The thing, in short, when calmly con sidered, cannot be received as a reality; and, after gazing for a while on the splendid pageant which it presents, and admiring the exagger rated beings who counterfeit, in their grand style, the passions and feelings of our poor human nature, we soon find that we must turn Old Mortalities, and become acquainted with again to our Waverleys, and Antiquaries, and our neighbours and ourselves, and our duties, and dangers, and true felicities, in the exquisite pictures which our author there exhibits of the follies we daily witness or display, and of the prejudices, habits, and affections, by which we are still hourly obstructed, governed, or cheered.

ferring the home scenes, and the copies of We end, therefore, as we began-by preoriginals which we know-but admiring, in and feeling by which this more distant and the highest degree, the fancy and judgment ideal prospect is enriched. It is a splendid Poem-and contains matter enough for six good Tragedies. As it is, it will make a glorious melodrame for the end of the season.Perhaps the author does better-for us and for himself-by writing more novels: But we have an earnest wish that he would try his hand in the actual bow of Shakespeare-venture fairly within his enchanted circle-and reassert the Dramatic Sovereignty of England, by putting forth a genuine Tragedy of passion, fancy, and incident. He has all the qualifications to insure success*-except perhaps the art of compression; for we suspect it would cost him no little effort to confine his story, and the development of his characters, to some fifty or sixty small pages. But the attempt is worth making; and he may be certain that he cannot fail without glory.

tracts from "Old Plays," that are occasionally *We take it for granted, that the charming exgiven as mottoes to the chapters of this and some of his other works, are original compositions of the author whose prose they garnish :-and they show style of Dramatic versification, than of all the higher that he is not less a master of the most beautiful and more inward secrets of that forgotten art.

(June, 1822.)

The Fortunes of Nigel. By the Author of "Waverley," "Kenilworth," &c. In 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 950. Edinburgh: Constable & Co. 1822.

It was a happy thought in us to review this author's works in groups, rather than in single pieces; for we should never otherwise have been able to keep up both with him and with our other business. Even as it is, we find we have let him run so far ahead, that we have now rather more of him on hand than we can well get through at a sitting; and are in danger of forgetting the early part of the long series of stories to which we are thus obliged to look back, or of finding it forgotten by the public or at least of having the vast assemblage of events and characters that now lie before us something jumbled and confounded, both in our own recollections, and that of our admiring readers.

Our last particular notice, we think, was of Ivanhoe, in the end of 1819; and in the two years that have since elapsed, we have had the Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, the Pirates, and Nigel,-one, two, three, four, five -large original works from the same fertile and inexhaustible pen. It is a strange manufacture! and, though depending entirely on invention and original fancy, really seems to proceed with all the steadiness and regularity of a thing that was kept in operation by industry and application alone. Our whole fraternity, for example, with all the works of all other writers to supply them with materials, are not half so sure of bringing out their two volumes in the year, as this one author, with nothing but his own genius to depend on, is of bringing out his six or seven. There is no instance of any such experiment being so long continued with success; and, according to all appearances, it is just as far from a termination now, as it was at the beginning. If it were only for the singularity of the thing, it would be worth while to chronicle the actual course and progress of this extraordinary adventure.

merely notice one or two things that still live in our remembrance.

We do not think the White Lady, and the other supernatural agencies, the worst blemish of "The Monastery." On the contrary, the first apparition of the spirit by her lonely fountain (though borrowed from Lord Byron's Witch of the Alps in Manfred), as well as the effect of the interview on the mind of the young aspirant to whom she reveals herself, have always appeared to us to be very beautifully imagined: But we must confess, that their subsequent descent into an alabaster cavern, and the seizure of a stolen Bible from an altar blazing with cold flames, is a fiction of a more ignoble stock; and looks very like an unlucky combination of a French fairy tale and a dull German romance. The Euphuist too, Sir Piercie Shafton, is a mere nuisance throughout. Nor can we remember any incident in an unsuccessful farce more utterly absurd and pitiable, than the remembrance of tailorship that is supposed to be conjured up in the mind of this chivalrous person, by the presentment of the fairy's bodkin to his eyes. There is something ineffably poor at once, and extravagant, in the idea of a solid silver implement being taken from the hair of a spiritual and shadowy being, for the sage purpose of making an earthly coxcomb angry to no end;-while our delight at this happy imagination is not a little heightened by reflecting that it is all the time utterly unintelligible, how the mere exhibition of a lady's bodkin should remind any man of a tailor in his pedigree-or be thought to import such a disclosure to the spectators.

But, notwithstanding these gross faults, and the general flatness of the monkish partsincluding that of the Sub-prior, which is a failure in spite of considerable labour-it would be absurd to rank this with common Of the two first works we have mentioned, novels, or even to exclude it from the file of the Monastery and the Abbot, we have the the author's characteristic productions. It has least to say; and we believe the public have both humour, and fancy and pathos enough, the least curiosity to know our opinion. They to maintain its title to such a distinction.are certainly the least meritorious of the whole The aspiring temper of Halbert Glendinning, series, either subsequent or preceding; and the rustic establishment of Glendearg, the while they are decidedly worse than the other picture of Christie of Clinthill, and, above all, works of the same author, we are not sure the scenes at the castle of Avenel, are all that we can say, as we have done of some of touched with the hand of a master. Julian's his other failures, that they are better than dialogue, or soliloquy rather, to his hawk, in those of any other recent writer of fiction.-presence of his paramour, with its accompaniSo conspicuous, indeed, was their inferiority, that we at one time apprehended that we should have been called upon to interfere before our time, and to admonish the author of the hazard to which he was exposing his fame. But as he has since redeemed that slip, we shall now pass it over lightly, and

ments and sequel, is as powerful as any thing the author has produced; and the tragic and historical scenes that lead to the conclusion are also, for the most part, excellent. It is a work, in short, which pleases more upon a second reading than at first-as we not only pass over the Euphuism and other dull pas

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