ers are invested. With all its intensity, there is more air of the highest station in this novel, more ease in its delineations of the most brilliant manners and the gayest circles, than in any other work of modern times. The author has evidently not only witnessed the elevated society which she truly yet care thickest of its radiance. Her discovery, in such a sphere, of affections so overflowing, and of wretchedness so fearful, is far more surprising than the detection, by others, of lofty thought and high emprise in cottages and in hovels. Calantba-the fascinated and spell-stricken Calantha-is doubtless the most profound of the author's creations. Next to her is Lady Margaret Buchanan, the majestic murderess, shining heroically in the world of fashion, with a heart torn by unutterable agonies, who, to our imaginations, seems not without some distant kindred to Lady Macbeth in awful grandeur. Lord Glenarvon himself is an almost inexplicable person admirably drawn in particular scenes scenes. Its very awful passions and crimes are tinctured with the intensity of the female character; its hate is deep-rooted in old love; its deadliest vemon is distilled from perverted yet deep affections. Its chief merit perhaps consists in its profound developement of the passion of love, unhallowed and baneful indeed, yet most fervid, engross-lessly describes, but moved in the very ing, and changeless. The passion of which Calantha is the victim, is not, indeed, that fresh and joyous emotion which associates itself with all the purities of the universe, and "hath in heaven its perfect rest.' Yet hath it a spell of resistless potency, which fascinates while it withers. It occupies the whole being, to the exclusion of all else, creeps into the current of the blood, and bids it pause or mantle. It has a kind of natural witchery which annihilates all moral feeling, and not only makes every hope and fear revolve round one centre, but imparts to it one fearful colouring. In the state of mind which it induces, horrors do not appal, injuries do not provoke, scorn does not irritate; disclosures of villainy do but increase the charm; and every new atrocity is a link in the chain which binds the mistress closer to the god of her idolatry. The effect of this is painful, like a weight on the spirit. Yet is there "some soul of goodness" in the delineation; for it makes us feel most intensely how profound the human affections are, how awful a thing is the nature of which we are partakers, and how, when we look into ourselves, we ought to revere and tremble. From all these terrific pictures of deep yet erring humanity, we learn how anxiously we ought to guard a heart out of which are such issues of life and death; how tenderly we should watch over passions and powers capable of weal or woe beyond the accidents of the mortal frame, and with what deep-thoughted pity we should regard those very aberrations which we fear. The high and tragical emotions which struggle within the bosoms of the chief persons are rendered even more terrific by the contrast which they present to the glittering costume of fashion and rank with which the suffer but without, we think, much consistency as a whole. While we regard the author of this work as of most high and original genius, and think that, even in this wild production, there are traces of a moral dignity of thought, we cannot refrain from expressing a hope that her powers will be exerted hereafter on purer and gentler themes-that she will make us feel that there is more depth in holy love than in the most stormy and perturbed passion-and that imagination finds its fittest range among the eternal sanctities of our nature. MISS PORTER. The genius of Miss Porter is nearly as opposite as possible to that which Glenarvon exhibits. Her predominant feeling is not of passion but of beauty her pictures are of forms rather than of souls-her imagination does not cast its beams on the lone recesses of the profoundest natures, but sheds a sweet and golden light on the loveliest scenes and the gentlest characters. She introduces us to a goodly world of romance --where bright ladies keep their state, and heroes most brave, most self-deny- en us such rich asssociations—we bad almost said recollections-as these? MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER. Anna Maria Porter shares, in a considerable degree, the exquisite faculties of her sister. Her pictures are even more glittering; but they are less true, less harmonious, less in unison with ordinary sympathies. Her Don Sebastian abounds in highly wrought scenes and gorgeous descriptions, but the general effect is, partly from the number of years through which the story is protracted, rather cheerless. The portrait of Sebastian himself is one of the most spirited ever drawn. Nothing can be more beautiful in their kind, than the stolen interviews of the King with Gonsalva; but the charm is too rudely broken by her heartless and disgusting perfidy. The romance of the Hungarian Brothers has more of harmony; but the virtue which it exhibits is almost of too glossy a texture for the soul heartily to grasp it. The Recluse of Norway approaches more nearly in equable interest, and tender beauty, to the works of Miss Jane Porter, than any other of its author's romances. MRS. INCHBALD. Mrs. Inchbald's tales-the Simple Story, and Nature and Art-do not, like the novels of Miss Porter and ber sister, exhibit to us the bright and goodly in human nature, but the extremes of injury and of suffering. She is the most heart-rending of living novelists. But though her pathos sometimes becomes oppressive beyond endurance, it is not, like that of Mrs. Opie, merely painful. The narratives with which she awakens our tears consist not of gratuitous or fantastical sorrows; they relate not to children turning housebreakers, and murdering their parents by mistake; nor to ruffian boys, nor to mad fathers pursuing their daughters over heaths at midnight-but tell of sadnesses real as they are touching, She strips humanity of all its immunities and joys, but she leaves it humanity still. She makes us "wiser" as well as "sadder." While she harrows up the soul, she renders it gentler and more fruitful. She possesses her reader with the most burning sense of all injustice, and makes the heart glow and the blood tingle to do right to the oppressed, and assert the deepest and the eldest laws of nature, which the luxuries of civilization conceal. Man, in other authors, is "sophisticated;" in her's" he is the thing itself." The "robed man of justice" who hath "within him undivulged crimes," is stripped to his poor, trembling, contracted spirit, and stands, in our imaginations, below the culprit whom he condemns. She tears all disguises from villainy and from anguish. There is little to console us for the exhibition, but its truth, and its beneficial tendencies. Her works rend asunder a thousand folds of selfishness, teach man his kindred with man, and enforce the awful lesson of Lear: "Take physic, pomp, "Expose thyself to feel, what wretches feel, So shalt thou shake the superflux to them, "And shew the heavens more just." From the New Monthly Magazine. SOME well-meaning persons will ar- members of society, we must be alarmgue that a return to those frugal ed for the condition of the multitude, habits which formed the wealth of oth- whose hopes would in a moment be er times, would produce incalculable blasted, whose prospects would be distress. The ministers of luxury must wholly closed by a change so unexpecbe thrown out of employ,-those bran- ted. We might even go further and ebes of our commerce which are con- shew the ruin which must fall on many nected with their labours must suffer, meritorious makers and powderers of and the public revenue would in conse- wigs, dealers in gowns, and letters of quence decline. These are certainly lodgings in all the assize towns, as serious considerations; but we think it well as in London, while the diminwould be no difficult task to prove be- ished consumption of parchment, as it yond all doubt, that the evil apprehend- must make sheep skin a drug in the ed would be greatly compensated by market would undoubtedly fill the landthe good produced. It is well remark- ed interest with dismay. And so if ed by Hume, that "there is no abuse Providence should be pleased to relieve so great in civil society as not to be at all the human race from bodily infirmtended with a variety of beneficial ity, it requires no great stretch of consequences." He supports this asser- mind to perceive how severely this mertion by shewing that even the suppres- ciful dispensation would press on sevsion of the monasteries in the time of eral numerous and industrious classes; the eighth Henry, was a subject of seri-how fatally it would oppose the proous complaint, though that the measure was most desirable, will not now be denied. So in the present day, if men were suddenly to become wise and honest, what extensive calamity would be the consequence! A general peace would be nothing to it! If we take into our consideration the immense crowd of judges, advocates, students, attornies, conveyancers, clerks, jailors, turnkeys, bailiffs, deputy bailiffs, police officers, executioners, and assistants, that would at once become useless gress of certain vehicles before mentioned in this article, and consequently how vast a sum of misery would arise from the total absence of affliction. But because such consequences must flow from the extinction of crime and infirmity, shall we reward a robber as a benefactor to society, instead of hanging him, and exult that we are menaced with no scarcity of disease? Surely this would not be rational! But it would not be more absurd than the arguments which we have supposed, and * See our last Number, p. 4223. which unfortunately we have heard in favour of luxury. The member of the Save-all Club, in his anomalous production, gives some very amusing lessons on this subject, which are introduced with much eccentricity. Annexed to the preface there is a string of approbations from a committee of that society of which the author professes himself a member, and the several certificates, with the signatures annexed, constitute such an imprimatur as might be expected to issue from a set of humorists of the old school. Next appears a list of the names of all this hopeful brotherhood, with the rules of the club; and here the singularity of the work begins. The rules are eight in number; but by an ingenious mode of arrangement, number viii stands first, and the series ends with number i. To justify this innovation on the practice of all legislative authorities, the writer cites a dictum of Justice Mansfield, who was accustomed to say that "in order to do well we should always be gin at the end;" and the reader, it seems may comply with this precept either by taking the numbers in their inverse order, and ascending to the head of the code, or by perusing the rules as they stand, and finishing with number one, ever bearing in mind the author's memento, that the true beginning is PRUDENCE, and the end ECONOMY. It is very obvious, even on perusing three or four of the first lessons, that the author in propounding them, has not condescended to follow any of the precedents laid down by our most distinguished lecturers on moral philosophy. He deals sparingly in definition, and very largely in illustration, indulging a Shandean license of digression upon all sorts of subjects, and pressing into the service of his cause the recorded wisdom of every age and country. After these wide excursions, he recurs at his own good pleasure, to his subject, and this he treats in a manner so dryly humorous and so seriously comic, that his effusions resemble those of a public orator, who has the faculty of convulsing his bearers with laughter, without moving a muscle himself. In fact, we were so puzzled to discover what he meant in jest and what in earnest, and so be wildered in guessing at the scope of his undertaking, or, in plain English, so much at a loss to find out what he was driving at, that we were constrained to bestow on his preface a more deliberate perusal, and there we found a remark dropt in his careless way, which served to relieve our embarrassment: "There are," says he, "a thousand ways of getting money, but only one of saving it; which is not to spend it unnecessarily. This is the golden thread on which I have endeavoured to string my pearls of ancient and modern lore, of book-reading and of real life. I have read a great deal, and seen a great deal of all modes of existence; and that great poet Mr. Gray, has pronounced, that if any man would commit to paper merely what he has seen and heard, the product would infallibly prove an interesting book." The following passage exemplifies that mixture of remark and anecdote which is peculiarly characteristic of this singular writer. "Of the four cardinal virtues, our club regards Temperance as the chief; for, except in her presence, where are Justice, Prudence, Fortitude? The old kitchen inscription, waste not, want not, is an emphatic maxim of this virtue. Temperance in wine has been of late enforced by the most cogent of all arguments, the price. Barry objects to champagne, as producing spasms and other nervous diseases, and recommends old hock, as generous without being inflammatory, and a most grateful and stypic cordial in putrid diseases. In like manner, all the favorite wines of the ancients, the Falernian, kept for a hundred years, and the others, ere all white wines, and are specially des cribed by the classics as being of an amber colour. The hue of red wine is transitory, and fails in port at twelve years, as it becomes tawney at nine. The wine also loses its strength; but perhaps Madeira, or old hock might aspire to the Falernian longevity. "Some rich save-thrifts mix cider with port wine for their servants; others choose coach-horses that match with those of a gouty neighbour, so that if a horse be sick, another can be borrowed without inconvenience; for these animals are subject, if my memory serve, to one hundred and thirty diseases, and four are often necessary in reserve for a carriage drawn by two. It is a great breach of economy to have a villa near town where friends are so happy to arrive just at dinner-time. You may, however take your hat, as running out to see a neighbour taken violently ill, or fall upon the sofa yourself in a fit of the colic. If, however, you admit a friend or two, follow the maxim of Socrates to his wife, "Why increase our dinner? If the company be real friends, there is enough: if not, too much." The above extract gives a fair sample of the merits, and also of the defects of the member of the Save-all Club. Here, as in other instances, he suffers the economy of which he professes to be the advocate, to degenerate into shabbyness. We deny that meanness is economy. The man who would shuffle out, to avoid asking a friend to dine, is one of those who have brought the economist into disgrace. The true economist, while regulating his owu enjoyments by a frugal calculation of price, may with cheerfulness make an occasional sacrifice to satisfy the habits of a friend, whose real wants have been multiplied by studying in a different school; and indeed it is on such occasions that the abstemious man meets with his reward, feeling as he must how much independence grows on plain and simple babits, and at what a distance privation is removed from himself, while it is ever in the vicinity of him who sighs for luxuries. But our laughing philosopher is quite as anxious to amuse as to establish his position, and he indulges in all the pleasantries that occur to him with a careless freedom that makes us occasionally at a loss whether we should laugh at, or laugh with him. "An ingenious member has contrived, in winter, to profit by the light of his neighbour-a most innocent theft, which does harm to none. There be 2X ATHENEUM VOL. 7. ing only a thin wall, or rather partition, between his chamber and that of a tailor, often occupied to a late hour, he contrived a hole, by which he can see to read and to go to bed. This invention saves him three or four pounds a year (generally about 31. 7s. 2 d.) and is honourably mentioned in the records of the club." 66 "Franklin has, in his usual style of dry and homely humour, ridiculed the modern European infatuation of giving bread to wax-chandlers and candle makers, at a great expence to our purse, health, and reputation. A careful study of that useful publication, the almanack, would enable us to supply ourselves, at no expense, with the blessed and beneficial light of day. The wheel of fashion is however turning so fast, that the good ancient customs may surmount. Happy time for old England, neighbour," said a sulky politician to a friend of mine," when parliament met at nine in the morning. The deliberations were wise and frugal, and had the air of a grave senate and important affairs. But who ever saw a lamp in the hands of Minerva? We all know the purposes that are pursued by night and candle light. They have nothing to do with wisdom, neighhour. All the wise men are then asleep." He spoke emphatically, as he is always in bed by eight o'clock. As to his Minerva I say nothing, except what I read in my youth, that she was the goddess of wisdom, and had no mother, which seems well contrived, as wisdom has few relations on the female side." We conclude with a few other miscellaneous extracts : “An old Italian, on his deathbed, left little to his widow except a fine horse and a favourite cat; desiring, however, that the horse might be sold, and the price employed in masses for his soul. The widow sends the horse and the cat to market, with an injunc-. tion to sell the horse for a crown, but not except the purchaser also bought the cat, valued at four hundred crowns, In this way she honestly got the money for her own use." |
