has aggravated the discontents of the country, and thrown the most serious obstacles in the way of an improved system of cultivation. The consequence of this error is the certain loss of all that future source of rent to the landlord, and wealth to the country, which arises from increase of produce. "The second error to which the landlord is liable, is that of mistaking a mere temporary rise of prices, for a rise of sufficient duration to warrant an increase of rents. It frequently happens, that a scarcity of one or two years, or an unusual demand arising from any other cause, may raise the price of raw produce to a height, at which it cannot be maintained. And the farmers, who take land under the influence of such prices, will, in the return of a mere natural state of things, probably break, and leave their farms in a ruined and exhausted state. These short periods of high price are of great importance in generating capital upon the Jand, if the farmers are allowed to have the advantage of them; but, if they are grasped at prematurely by the landlord, capital is destroyed, instead of being accumulated; and both the landlord and the country incur a loss, instead of gaining a benefit. "A similar caution is necessary in raising rents, even when the rise of prices seems as if it would be permanent. In the progress of prices and rents, rent ought always to be a little behind; not only to afford the means of ascertaining whether the rise be temporary or permanent, but even in the latter case, to give a little time for the accumulation of capital on the land, of which the landholder is sure to feel the full benefit of in the end. "Among the temporary causes of high price, which may sometimes mislead the landlord, it is necessary to notice irregularities in the currency. When they are likely to be of short duration, they must be treated by the landlord in the same manner as years of unusual demand. But when they continue so long as they have done in this country, it is impossible for the landlord to do otherwise than proportion his rent accordingly, and take the chance of being obliged to lessen it again, on the return of the currency to its natural state. "With the cautions here noticed in letting farms, the landlord may fairly look forward to a gradual and permanent increase of rents; and, in general, not only to an increase proportioned to the rise in the price of produce, but to a still further increase, arising from an increase in the quantity of produce." P. 55. We certainly esteem Mr. Malthus one of the wisest and most rational political economists of the present age, and are proud to say, that his opinions are ours on the most important subjects which he has discussed in his various writings; we must however confess, that this Essay on Rent has fallen far short of our expectation both as to richness of material, and perspicuity of arrangement. 6 ART. ART. IV. Guy Mannering; or, the Astrologer. By the Author of Waverley. 3 vols. 12mo. 11. 1s. Longman and Co. 1815. IT is neither within our purpose nor our limits to follow the course of all those minor satellites, which derive a momentary existence from the borrowed rays of successful genius. Indeed the popularity of a publication cannot be measured by a surer effect, than by the number of trifling imitations, which obtrude themselves upon the world under some faint semblance of the original, and at an humble distance" pursue the triumph and partake the gale." Upon one imitation alone in this long train of satellites we shall never congratulate a successful author, that is, upon an imitation of himself. When a man is ambitious so far to live upon his divided fame, as to draw from the portion of his first offspring, sufficient to maintain the credit of the second, he will too soon discover that there is a sort of unity as essential to reputation as to consciousness-divide it and it is lost. The bril liancy of the original is merged in the dullness of the imitation, and the success of the first effort is destroyed, without being transferred in any proportion to the second. There is not a surer sign of intellectual poverty than an author stealing from his own ideas, or like the miser in the tale, picking his own pocket. To preserve literary reputation whole and entire, is at all times more difficult than to acquire it. If no man therefore by imitation ever became great, much less can he expect by this same art to continue so. There are few spectacles in the literary world more lamentable, than to view a successful author in his second ap pearance before the public limping lamely after himself, and treading tediously and awkwardly in the very same round, which in his first effort he had traced with vivacity and applause. We would not be harsh enough to say that the author of Waverley is in this predicament, but we are most unwillingly compelled to assert that the second effort falls far below the standard of the first. In Waverley there was brilliancy of genius, strength of observation, sustainment of character, and liveliness of expression: In Guy Mannering there is little else beyond the wild sallies of an original genius, the bold and irregular efforts of a powerful but an exhausted mind. Time enough has not been allowed him to recruit his resources, both of anecdote and wit; but encouraged by the credit so justly bestowed upon one of the most finished portraits ever presented to the world, he has followed up the exhibition with a careless and hurried sketch, which betrays at once the weakness and the strength of its author. Of the story, such as it is, the following is the outline. Guy Guy Mannering, a young Oxford student, from whom the tale derives its name, is travelling about the end of the American war in the county of Dumfries, and being bewildered in a strange country, takes refuge in the house of Mr. Bertram, Laird of Ellangowan, by whom he is hospitably received. During his visit, the Lady of the Laird is safely delivered of a son and heir, whose future destiny is calculated by Mannering, according to the laws of judicial astrology. The result of his calculation was, that at these several periods of his life the child would be exposed to peculiar hazard in his fifth, his tenth, and his twenty-first year. Mannering had before indulged himself in these astrological pursuits, and had discovered, that the young lady to whom he was attached, was threatened by the influence of the planets with death or imprisonment in the same year, which would prove young Bertram's twenty-first. A gipsey belonging to a clan who inhabited by a sort of prescriptive connivance, a wood belonging to Ellangowan, is discovered in her style also calculating the fortunes of the child. As this lady is of much importance in the future history, and as the description is a fine one, we shali present it to our readers. She sat upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment, part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam, through a lofty and narrow window, fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for her occupation the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with something of an eastern costume, she spun a thread, drawn from wool of three different colours, black, white, and grey, by assistance of those ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm. Mannering after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact words of her song, afterwards attempted the following paraphrase of what, from a few intelligible phrases, he concluded was its purport: Doubt, and jealousy, and fear, In the magic dance appear. "Now they wax, and now they dwindle, Mingle human bliss and woe. "Ere our translator, or rather our free imitator, had arranged these stanzas in his head, and while he was yet hammering out a rhyme for spindle, the task of the sybil was accomplished, or her wool was expended. She took the spindle, now charged with her labours, and, undoing the thread gradually, measured it, by casting it over her elbow, and bringing each loop round between her fore finger and thumb. When she had measured it out, she muttered to herself" A hank, but not a haill ane-the full years o' the three score and ten, but thrice broken, and thrice to oop, (i. e. unite); he'll be a lucky lad an he win through wi't.' "Our hero was about to speak to the prophetess, when a voice, hoarse as the waves with which it mingled, halloo'd twice, and with increasing impatience Meg, Meg Merrilies!-Gypsy-hagtousand deyvils!' "I am coming, I am coming, captain,' answered Meg, and in a moment or two the impatient Commander whom she addressed made his appearance from the broken part of the ruins. "He was apparently a seafaring man, rather under the middle size, and with a countenance bronzed by a thousand conflicts with the north-east wind. His frame was prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set; so that it seemed as if a man of much greater height would have been an inadequate match in any close personal conflict. He was hard-favoured, and, which was worse, his face bore nothing of the insouciance, the careless frolicsome jollity and vacant curiosity of a sailor on shore. These qualities, perhaps, as much as any others, contribute to the high popularity of our seamen, and the general good inclination which our society expresses towards them. Their gallantry, courage, and hardihood are qualities which excite reverence, and perhaps rather humble pacific landsmen in their presence; and neither respect, nor a sense of humiliation, are feelings easily combined with a familiar. fondness towards those who inspire them. But the boyish frolics, the exulting high spirits, the unreflecting mirth of a sailor when enjoying himself on shore, temper the more formidable points of his character. There was nothing like these in this man's face; on the contrary, a surly and even savage scowl appeared to darken features which would have been harsh and unpleasant under any expression or modification. Where are you, Mother Deyvilson?" said he, with somewhat of a foreign accent, though speaking perfectly good English. Donner and blitzen! we have been staying this half hour-Come, bless the good ship and the voyage, and be cursed to ye, for a hag of Satan!'" Vol. I. P. 63. VOL. III, APRIL, 1815. Dd Mannering, Mannering, having, delivered his calculations sealed up, with a strict injunction not to open them till after the fifth year, departs, and is for the present heard of no more. Mr. Bertram, who was before an easy good humoured man, and much beloved by the whole country, particularly by the gipseys and smugglers, by whom it was to an enormous extent infested, is, by a sudden turn in political affairs, created a justice of peace: this sudden elevation produces no less extraordinary (and we must think unnatural) change in his disposition and manners. He is converted into a most strict and active magistrate, and in that capacity he dispossesses the gipsey colony, which from time immemorial had stationed themselves in the wood of Ellangowan. The following extract will present a faithful picture of this extraordinary tribe of beings, and of the services which they rendered to the Laird in return for his connivance and protection: "A tribe of these itinerants, to whom Meg Merrilies appertained, had long been as stationary as their habits permitted, in a glen upon the estate of Ellangowan. They had there erected a few huts, which they denominated their "city of refuge," and where, when not absent on excursions, they harboured unmolested as the crows that roosted in the old ash-trees around them. They had been such long occupants, that they were considered in some degree as proprietors of the wretched sheelings which they inhabited. This protection they were said anciently to have repaid, by service to the laird in war, or, more frequently, by infesting and plundering the lands of those neighbouring barons with whom he chanced to be at feud. Latterly, their services were of a more pacific nature. The women spun mittens for the lady, and knitted boot-hose for the laird, which were annually presented at Christmas with great form. The aged sybils blessed the bridal bed of the larrd when he married, and the cradle of the heir when born. The men repaired her ladyship's cracked china, and assisted the laird in his sporting parties, wormed his dogs, and cut the ears of his terrier puppies. The children gathered nuts in the woods, and crane-berries in the moss, and mushrooms upon the pastures, for tribute to the Place. These acts of voluntary service, and acknowledgments of dependence, were rewarded by protection on some occasions, connivance upon others, and broken victuals, ale, and brandy, when circumstances called for a display of generosity and this mutual intercourse of good offices, which had taken place for at least two centuries, rendered the inhabitants of Derncleugh a kind of privileged retainers upon the estate of Ellangowan. The knaves were the Laird's exceeding good friends;' and he would have deemed himself very ill used, if his countenance could not now and then have borne them out against the law of the country and the local magistrate. But this friendly union was soon to be dissolved." Vol. 1. P. 104. A quarrel |