of the thing having once been known, or supposed to be known, we continue to act upon that reason, without insisting that it should be submitted to an examination per petually to be repeated. But when Mr. Bradford, no longer seated in the chair of the pedagogue, issued his imperious mandates of Go there, or Do this, whenever what he required related not to my abstract advantage, but to the common usefulness of life, my spirit refused to submit ; I felt convinced that I was treated in a manner unbecoming and unjust; and, my neck never having been bowed to the condition of a slave, my whole soul revolted at the usurpation. Hilkiah saw something, but imperfectly, of the state of my mind on these occasions; but, instead of modifying and adapting his proceedings to my tone of feel ing, he took the contrary course. He held it for "stuff of the conscience," that he should subdue my refractoriness, and bring down a stubbornness of soul, so opposite, as he imagined, to the temper of a true Christian. Alas, good man, he little understood the tendency and nature of the task he had undertaken! My pride was not perhaps so great, that it would not have yielded to severe calamity, or to ferocious and unmitigated tyranny; I cannot tell. But there was no power that could be exercised by Hilkiah, who was a man substantially of a gentle temper, and under the roof of my nearest relation, that had any chance of rendering him victorious in this contest. I submitted indeed outwardly, for my nature did not prompt me to scenes of violence; but I retained the principle of rebellion entire, shut up in the chamber of my thoughts. If at any time I manifested tardiness, (and how could it be otherwise, when the soul was averse?) this called down from my preceptor a bitterness of remark, or a dryness of irony, that filled my bosom with tumults, and was calculated to make me understand something of the temper of a fiend. Hilkiah, as I have said, felt disposed to multiply his experiments in proportion as he found me restive. And it grieves me to confess, that this ill-contrived and senseless proceeding at length drove me into a rooted aversion of heart from this good man, to whose industry and care, I owed so much, and the purity and zeal of whose intentions entitled him still more to my regard. It was Hilkiah, that first made me acquainted with the unsavouriness of an embittered soul From time to time he filled all my thoughts with malignity. I can scarcely describe the frame of my temper towards him. I would not have hurt him; but I muttered harsh resentment against him in sounds scarcely articulate; and I came to regard him as my evil genius, poisoning my cup of life, thwarting

my most innocent sallies, watching with jaundiced eye for faults in me which my heart did not recognise, and blasting that sweet complacency, in which a virtuous mind is delighted to plunge itself and to play.

"I know there are rugged and brutal natures, who would interrupt me here, and cry out, that there is an easy remedy for all this. The boy whose thoughts are here described, was too much indulged; an effusion of wholesome severity would soon have dispersed these clouds of the mind, and have caused him to know, that there was nothing but ground for congratulation, where he found so much occasion for complaint. And let these brutal natures go on in the exercise of their favourite discipline! There will always be crosses and opposition, and mortifications enough in the march of human life, from the very principles upon which society is built, and from the impatience our imperfect nature is too apt to conceive, of the imputed untowardness, and absurd judgments, of those that are placed under our control. But let those of happier spirit know, that this imperious discipline is not the wholesome element of the expanding mind, and that the attempt to correct the mistaken judgments of the young by violent and summary dealing, can never be the true method of fostering generous nature; in a word, that to make the child a forlorn and pitiable slave, can never be the way to make the man worthy of freedom, and capable of drawing the noblest

use from it."

Mr. Godwin has given credit to our countryman C. B. Brown for the hint of this novel, which he derived from his Wieland. We should never have detected the plagiarism; or, if we had, should never have thought of censuring Mr. Godwin for borrowing a thought from one who had borrowed his style from him. Of the merits of Mr. Brown we hope to find some opportunity to speak which Mr. Godwin has bestowed, in at large. He is well entitled to the praise terming him a man certainly of distinguished genius."

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We have neither leisure nor disposition to point out the verbal errors and grammatical inaccuracies of which Mr. Godwin has been guilty in this performance. He is generally an incorrect, though an eloquent writer. Our juvenile readers must beware that the glitter of his periods, his piquancy of epithet and gorgeousness of expression, do not blind them to his faults.

E.

DEFERRED expectation has at last been gratified, and we have been permitted to regale ourselves with the perusal of Rob Roy. After the time appointed for its appearance had gone by without bringing the promised gratification, with what eager impatience did the city renew her daily inquiries, and how were the doors of the publishers thronged as soon as the anticipated pleasure was known to be lying in boards upon their stalls! What is it in the productions of this writer that has so charmed the world, and that, spreading its influence over every description of readers, has given society a fine impulse, and filled every hand with garlands to heap upon his temples, the moment he shall step forth from the shade that conceals him? We feel, indeed, that a superior nature has descended near us, but, while he remains enveloped in his cloud we shall not know how to choose an appropriate offering, nor with what peculiar rites to testify our homage. When he departs, however, the veil will doubtless dissipate, and we shall catch a glance of his immortal visage, and hear the rattling of his polished quiver.

Sic orsus Apollo, Mortales medio aspectus sermone reliquit.

Agnovere Deum proceres divinaque tela Dardanidæ, pharetramque fugâ sensere sonantem. Virg. Æ. lib. 9th. ver. 656.

The concealment of an author's name, when sending forth his first production to the world, is an every day occurrence; but when effort, after effort, has been crowned with applause, and the anticipation of yet further offerings from the same hand, is hailed with delight, the continued suppression of the name for which so many honours wait, argues a strength of resolution in resisting the enticement of self-complacency, or a peculiarity in the mode of gratifying it, very rarely to be found. But whether it be that the author of Waverly is prone to hoard his praises in secret, or that he is too proud to be flattered, or that, with a self-denial unusual with the prosperous in any undertaking, he would try the experiment how far talent can be rewarded for its own sake-whatever may be his motive for concealment-certain it is that no writer of this, or any former age, has more reason to be satisfied with his reception by the public. His works are so familiar to the reading world, and

their merits have been so often as well as

so ably discussed, that an elaborate analysis of them at this time would be superfluous. We shall only, therefore, on this occasion, briefly recount such of their qualities as we conceive to be character istic, and hasten to the consideration of Rob Roy. In the first place, then, we think the productions of this very admirable writer are distinguished from all other works that bear the name of novels, inasmuch as we do not find in them any particular passion, proposed to be unfolded, and on which the story is to hinge, nor any particular system of opinions to be attacked or defended, with a series of incidents invented to illustrate their nature and exhibit their tendencies. Doubtless a variety of passions are brought into exercise, in the course of the several performances, and the practical results of many modes of thinking and many systems of opinion are exhibited, furnishing a variety of instructive lessons in human nature, as well as numerous and accurate tests of divers principles of conduct; but these occur by the way, in the progress of the narrative, and do not constitute the specific objects of the writer in undertaking his task. The works of our author are styled historical novels,---and so are Miss Porter's, for example. But the resemblance is found in little else than the name. For, without considering the immeasurable distance between the talents of the two writers, Miss Porter has uniformly selected a hero and a heroine for her scenes, who are swayed by some master passion or principle, which it is her main design to exalt, and round these prominent personages all the others move in subordinate spheres. All the incidents introduced into her plots are designed to contribute principally to the interest to be excited toward her leading characters; and when their individual fortunes are decided, the scene closes---the chain of events has come to an end-the machine has completely run down. But in the series of works under survey, no hero, strictly speaking, is chosen; the fate of no single individual is proposed as the leading object of the narration, to whose weal or woe every thing that takes place is to be conducive, and who is to be conveyed along on the current of events, and extricated from his difficulties for the express purpose of bringing him to some prede

termined and stipulated end. The persons, from whose names these books either derive their titles, or, who are spoken of, in common parlance, as the heroes, are in fact rather spectators than actors, in the technical use of language; they are invented characters, of little or no necessity to the progress of the action, but introduced for the purpose of enabling the writer to relate, with ease and propriety, what was transacted in the region where the scene is laid. So slight is their intrinsic connexion with the scenes into which they are conducted, that the action could as well proceed without them as with them; for, at whatever period either of them might be removed, it would merely be omitting to speak of one, who, when he first made his appearance, only came among a number of people already engaged in an important enterprise. The work was begun, the actors were fervent at their labour, before he arrived, and he mixes with them that he may gratify the feelings excited by the new circumstances in which he finds himself, and relieve that irksomeness which would be the consequence of inactivity in a place where all are busy. No-Waverly is not the hero, nor Morton, nor young Osbaldistone, but Scotland. The situation of the country-its manners, customs,-its religious and political opinions, the fierce contests of its sects and clans, and all the varying accidents of its civil and social condition, form the subjects on which this writer has exercised his fine talents, and around which he has caused the light of his genius to stream. His object is to furnish a supplement to the history of Scotland-and a supplement he has furnished more delightful in the perusal than the general record, and at least as profitable to the reader. If invention has come in, on any occasion, with a number of feigned incidents, it has been for the purpose of giving symmetry to the work, and more fully illustrating the internal, domestic condition of the people. Those incidents, moreover, are all of a kind so level with probability-so near akin in their nature and complexion to the authenticated truth, as to leave the reader without excuse if he fail of acquiring an accurate knowledge of the Caledonian character; and the whole work claims the attentive examination of all who are curious to know how other times and other people differ from their own, or whose business it is to estimate the influence of opinion upon a nation's welfare.

There is an advantage in the perusal of works like "Waverly," not found in ordiVOL. II.-NO. VI.

nary history, however ably written. History for the most part relates only the affairs of government-the acts and the policy of the few who bear the rule, and how full soever may be its record of public transactions, and how profound soever may be the sagacity with which it traces the connexion between events affecting the condition of the state; still, it can convey little more than a general idea, leaving the mind occupied with vague impressions of the extent, population, wealth and grandeur of the nation, without giving any definite conceptions of the domestie condition of the families and individuals of which the great community is composed. But in works like "Waverly" we see how the public acts affect the private citizen-we learn how the members of the community think and feel and act toward cach other and toward their government; in the perusal of them, we insensibly identify ourselves with the people of whom we read-we sympathise with them,-with them we rise against the smiting of the tyrant, or rally round the standard of loyalty and independence-and are enabled accurately to judge of governments by the only useful test, the happiness or misery of the people, not the extent and splendour of the sovereignty. Which of the accounts of our own war of independence is half so well calculated to give the present generation, and posterity, adequate conceptions of the state of things, at that great juncture of the peculiar character of those "times that tried men's souls"-as would be a narrative constructed on the plan of "Old Mortality," one of the "Tales of my Landlord ?" In such a work, the writer would not give us mere dry details of what befel, in that epoch of grand excitement; but, earnestly contemplating the sublime posture which the American world then exhibited, inhaling the influences of the period, and catching the temper of the people, what warm and breathing pictures would his rapid pencil execute of the actors in that day of decisive conflict! What a gallery would he furnish of the portraits of our American fathers! Unfolding, with impartial fidelity, the grievances of which the colonies complained; and tracing, with a just discernment of the character of the colonists, as well as of their political institutions and civil habits-the effects produced upon the mind of the country, from the beginning of remonstrance to the coming on of the memorable crisis, when the banners of independence were first uplifted and the patriot buckled on his sword, with what

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clearness of delineation and power of eloquence would he bring out the grand result! If some one of our native sons-some lineal disciple of that old school of heroes, could be found, equal to such a work, the execution of it would constitute the fairest monument he could erect to his own fame, and the richest legacy he could leave his countrymen.

Another circumstance, by which the works of this admirable writer are distinguished, is a variety, both of matter and manner, almost boundless, and unequalled since the days of Shakspeare. Indeed, in the perusal of no productions, with which we are acquainted, are we so constantly reminded of the great dramatist. There is the same wonderful accuracy of observation evinced by both, in all their notices of the habits of life and modes of thinking, in every social system and every class of society upon which they touch. Both manifest the same surprising facility of identifying themselves with every description of character-of entering into men's bosoms and looking out, as it were, through the medium of the senses and perceptions of others, upon the whole scheme of things, and the varying incidents of life, so as never to forget the situations in which they have placed their personages, but always to maintain, with entire and minute propriety, the consistency of their representations; and though no writers have filled their scenes with such a number and diversity of actors, all strongly drawn and standing out in high relief, they are, at the same time, shaded with so nice a discernment of what is congruous, that each individual is preserved undeviatingly steadfast in his individuality. There is a comprehensiveness, also, in their views of men and things, and an extent in their representations, peculiar to these kindred spirits. With all their variety, there is no confusion; they take for the subject of their pens, not individuals here and there culled from the mass of the community, nor merely a single walk of life, but the whole society-all ranks and professions-a whole nation is arrayed before you, animated by all its jostling interests and warm with action. The ease and freedom of manner, the fullness of knowledge, and the fine enjoyment of the social principle, with which they represent the multifarious pursuits of peace and the comforts and cares of domestic life, are not more conspicuous than the fervour of language and the genuine martial enthusiasm with which they detail the operations of armies, and describe the onset of

battle.

The dramatic talents of the author of "Waverly," are, likewise, singularly great. His dialogues are managed with a skill not surpassed by any of the great writers for the stage. The language, which he puts into the mouths of his interlocutors, is adapted, with the nicest perception of fitness, to their various characters, and all along maintains the same admirable consistency that distinguishes their conduct. Nor is it suitable merely to the general character of the actors; while, in this respect, it preserves the strictest propriety, it does not tire the reader with its sameness, but is varied, with happy facility, to suit the change of scene and the difference of occasion. It flows on, like a clear stream, hastening or delaying its current with every alteration of its bed, and visiting, in its continued course, every variety of landscape ; now moving with gentle strength through the plains and vallies, reflecting from its glassy surface each bordering object, and now roughening its waters as it pours with noble energy down the declivities. The manner in which the prominent personages in these works are introduced is also in the finest style of dramatic effect; and the precision with which their persons and characters are described-the perfect definiteness of each portraitureplaces the individual right before the reader's eyes, with full knowledge of his talents and propensities and principles of action, leaving no painful uncertainty in the mind as to his general conduct, or what may be expected from him in any emergency.

Among the striking beauties of our author, moreover, are his descriptions of natural scenery. So definite and complete are his pictures of this kind, that a landscape painter might fill a port-folio with sketches from his pages; and the man who should travel into Scotland to ascertain the different localities of the narrative, might take them for his guide with almost as much confidence as he would a map.

Our author has been some times charg ed with deficiency of skill in the cpnstruction of his plots. It should be remembered, however, that it was not his object to put forth" cunningly devised fables," filled with artificial and ingenious difficulties and marvellous extrications; his objects are of a far higher kind. He seeks to represent a people as they actu ally existed, in certain periods of their history; and if he can succeed in making his reader as well acquainted with their condition, character, customs, pursuits,

and manners, as if he had been an eyewitness of every fact recorded, (and be has succeeded in making his reader even better acquainted with all these things than a man of ordinary capacity could become, if left to his own observation,) he cares little about the rules of plot and episode. Shakspeare has been often railed at for the same thing, and most unmercifully reprehended for neglecting the unities, as they are called. But the unities of time and place are idle things, and in regard to unity of action, the charge is for the most part groundless. For ourselves, indeed, although we would not speak scorningly of any thing that has been advocated by erudite men, and corroborated by long time, yet we must say that we would not exchange any one of the fine scenes of Shakspeare, for which, we are indebted to his neglect of narrow rules, nor give up one of the noble excursions of his muse, for a legion of unities;-" It was my turquoise, I would not have parted with it for a wilderness of monkies."

If the author of "Waverly" had undertaken to construct stories of pure invention, with the specific purpose of analysing some particular passion-or of unfolding some particular moral principle, for the regulation of individual conduct-or of tracing, by strong catenation of cause and effect, the miserable consequences of some particular vice, to serve as warning beacons along the paths of private lifethen, the charge of unskilful management of his plots might be made with more propriety, and we should feel more inclined to aquiesce in it as just. But it was not his part nor office to devise a series of incidents, and make them conclude in a well-adapted catastrophe of his own contrivance, exhibiting the consequences of every instance of good or ill conduct set forth in the narrative. His business was to give a faithful transcript of what he had seen, or read of, in the character and history of the people and country which he selected for his subject. He was obliged to speak of things as he found them, and if there does appear to be any incongruities among them, it is the fault, not of the author, but of contrarient influences acting upon the persons and events of which he treats. He could not warp recorded truth to suit the requirements of captious rules, but, taking his station on the margin of the great current of events that swept over Scotland, during the periods to which his narrative refers, he has described all that he saw, as it was born past him by the mighty lapse.

In making our remarks we have chief

ly had in view "Waverly," "The Tales of my Landlord," (for we cannot but believe that works so much alike in all their distinguishing traits, must have been written by the same hand, notwithstanding the implied negation of this supposition in the preface to Rob Roy,) and "Rob Roy ;" though, if some qualification be made on account of the nominal subjects, and heroes of the stories, they will apply in all other respects to "Guy Mannering," and “The Antiquary."

In regard to "Rob Roy," the celebrated outlaw of that name gives title to the work, and is the principal actor in the story, though young Francis Osbaldistone appears to be the hero, according to the common mode of estimating a technical hero; inasmuch as all that is done, though he achieves but little of it comparatively, is made to operate upon his fortunes as the individual in whose ultimate fate we are to be chiefly interested.

The story is related by Osbaldistone in person, after he has arrived at an advanced age, to Will Tresham, who, though considerably younger than himself, was the friend and companion of the latter part of his life.

Osbaldistone, the narrator, is the son of an eminent merchant of the house of Osbaldistone and Tresham, and Will Tresham is the son of the other partner of the house. The narrative commences with the return of young Osbaldistone, at the age of 20 years, to London from Bordeaux, where he had been living in the counting-house of a wealthy correspondent of the firm of Osbaldistone and Tresham, by the name of Dubourg, for the purpose of being initiated into all the arcana of trade and commercial negotiation, in order that he might be prepared to enter as a partner into the house in London. But it seems that the young gentleman had but little inclination to engage in the toils and cares of commerce; and having written to his father an elaborate letter for the purpose of softening the refusal of his father's proposal to become a partner with him in trade, which he determined to give and persevere in, he received a summons from his father to hasten home. Upon his arrival the proposal was renewed and again declined, notwithstanding the persuasions of the headclerk, Mr. Owen, who was strongly attached to "Mr. Frank," and who backed his exhortations by golden accounts of the prosperity of the firm. His father deeply chagrined at his son's conduct, but inflexible in his purposes, determined on dismissing him from his home, and