Wells; find ourselves seated among the jovial groups; make acquaintance with a capital friar; and quaff ale of centuries ago with a true relish. Soon the great scene opens; and we visit, by turns, the King of the Hills, Sir Lionel Fitzmaurice, and the blameless Abbot, called "The King of the Valley." Sir Lionel is a kind of Sir Giles Overreach, of even darker dye; a crafty and terrible soldier, who has usurped the inheritance of Sir Giles Hungerford's son, and attempted to confirm his title by scaring the sensitive youth into madness-an adept in craft and half a magician-scoffing at all that is holy, and suspected of an alliance with the powers of darkness. Opposed to him, in strong relief, is his victim; a youth of the finest sensibilities and tastes, who shuns military prowess, and, being violently kept from human society, wastes the kindness of his heart on inanimate nature; and who, in the issue, is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Protestant faith, which he has eagerly embraced. Each of these persons is picturesque of his kind, but neither is sufficiently real. Sir Lionel is too melodramatic, from his first introduction on his terrace directing the lightning with his rod, through all his shocking exploits, to excite much emotion. Cecil Hungerford, again, is too effeminate and too conscious; his own theories of humanity, mingled with self-congratulation that he is "crazy Cecil," are fantastical, though eloquent; and his expression of joy on hearing of his father's death, because he has a general notion that the dead are happiest, is not in keeping or in nature. The machinery, too, by which his inhuman guardian seeks to destroy his wits, scaring him with phantoms, and subjecting him to gratuitous cruelties, is altogether revolting. One's mind turns from such a spectacle of oppression exercised on weakness, and seeks relief from the atrocity of the circumstances in their want of truth. Far more pathetic is the character of Lady Fitzmaurice, a notable housewife, taking pleasure in the minutest economies of her household, but devotedly attached to her estranged and insulting husband-waiting on him with love, which nothing can weary, in the fond hope of saving him from destruction; and, at last, sacrificing reputation, and even conscience, to avert his fate.

The guitar scene, in which this amiable creature acts the principal part, strikes us as being as fine as any thing we recollect in prose fiction. Shakspeare himself might have read it with emotion: there is a combination in it of simplicity, pathos, and even of something ludicrous (for these qualities do not unfrequently lend strength to each other, even in real life,) which altogether are irresistible, and which sink deep into the heart, there to remain like an undying portion of its very experience. Sir Lionel's daughter Beatrice is a grand and commanding beauty, somewhat repulsive at first, but softening as the tale proceeds; and drawn throughout with great vigour. There is also a fine graphic picture of a family governed after the old-fashioned model of regularity and severity -made out with almost the apparent truth of Crabbe's poetry. But the most pleasing scenes, after all, are those in the domains of the Abbey, in which the feelings of antiquity, and of the bounteous exuberance of nature, are so felicitously blended.

Although the author of this novel possesses considerable dramatic power, it is easy to trace in this work the peculiar tastes and sentiments which he cherishes. It is obvious that he has little admiration for that which is usually considered as heroic; and an almost Quaker

like love of the peaceful and lowly virtues. Hence, he seldom sustains a martial tone for any duration; and hardly invests his soldiers with the noble qualities which an habitual disregard of danger and pain is calculated to engender. Nor does he excel in depicting any species of excellence which may be termed manly; but delights to dwell on meekness, patience, and long-suffering; to show the placid triumphs of resignation and constancy; and to make us feel (if we may so speak) all the mighty strength of weakness. His chief fault (a glorious fault) is, to hold women not only in highest, but almost in exclusive honour. His regular heroes are only (to use a term of Mr. Wyndham's) " pretty rascals" witness his Jocelyn, in Brambletye House, polluted with debauchery without the slightest reason; and his Dudley, in the work before us, a mere brave coxcomb, who actually conveys an infamous proposal from the King to the woman whom he loves. In these particulars, however, our novelist is kept in countenance by Fielding. In Cecil, the author has attempted to draw a perfectly amiable youth; but there is something too feminine in the delineation. This reverence for female excellence gives, on the other hand, a peculiar charm to all his women, who are as delicate, fervid, and true-hearted, as his lighter male characters are frivolous and worthless.

We ought not to omit to mention that prince of heartless rattlers, Sir John Dudley, whose love of court promotion and foreign dainties is exceeded by nothing but his passionate admiration of the excellencies of his own indivisible self, whom he affectionately calls "his friend Jack Dudley." This worthy becomes afterwards the Duke of Northumberland, father-in-law to the unfortunate girl, Lady Jane Grey; and his manoeuvring in that fatal plot, which first crowned and then beheaded its innocent victim, is only the final developement of the sordid and meanly ambitious character, of which the early manifestation is so cleverly unfolded by the present writer.

The picturesque power displayed in this novel, is almost always of a high order; and the style is generally idiomatic and elegant. Some of the passages put into the mouth of Cecil Hungerford, and the account of his progress when incited by religion and love, border on poetry, without any intermixture of bombast; and (not to mention the great amusement to be derived from the scenes and characters) the whole moral spirit of the work bespeaks a sympathy with all that is honourable and of good report, and with all generous aspirations for the advancement and happiness of mankind.

CHEAP CELEBRITY: BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE ACKERSTONE BOWERSCOURT FIP.

THERE is not a remote village in the empire which has not, time immemorial, possessed an eighth wonder of the world, either in its curate or its apothecary. This fact is amply attested by any one of what may now be termed the old-fashioned Magazines. Together with the charade, the tale interminably "continued," the song "set by an eminent hand," the never-failing view of a country church, so scratchy and wiry that it sets one's teeth on edge to look at it; its arithmetical puzzles, queries from ignorant correspondents, and new patterns for ruffles; each succeeding month inflicted a contribution, by

Nov. VOL. XVII. NO. LXXI.

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some Constant Reader, or Sincere Admirer, of "a Biographical Sketch of the late Rev. - ," or "A Life of the late ingenious Mr. —' (a favourite epithet in those days,) persons whose very existence was till then a profound secret to all that unfortunate portion of the world not immediately within hearing of those celebrated persons' parish bells. For a long series of years, so regular was the appearance of a monthly record of the extinction of some village prodigy, that at length it amounted to an absolute certainty; and, together with a solo on the oboe by Mr. Parke in every new overture, and an event of too solemn a nature to be more than alluded to in these pages, formed a triad of the only circumstances of which it could be positively predicated-"That must occur." Then was celebrity acquired upon very moderate terms; and a month's immortality in the columns of any one of the periodicals might be had for asking. Great geniuses were so abundant that they regularly died at the rate of twelve a year for each of the magazines; and it is not a little to the glory of that time, that each of these geniuses respectively was the greatest genius in Europe. The curate was the biographer of the apothecary, or the apothecary of the curate; and it is not to be wondered at, that the most eminent man of his village should be considered, by the little world around him, as the most eminent man in the universe; nor that they, in the simplicity of their hearts, should deem the history of his life and achievements worthy of being handed down to posterity. Let us substitute a city or a kingdom for the village, and transform our curate into a poet, a painter, or a general, and we shall find that the same error, upon a larger scale, is committed every day. But when we consider the present improved state of our periodical literature, and the exorbitant demands made by the public upon their purveyors of intellectual recreation, it cannot but be a motive of astonishment to us to remember that, for nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, that most enlightened of all possible centuries, there existed in the metropolis itself a numerous class of readers, who were content with such materials as those provided for them, and desired nothing better or more interesting than a memoir of some supereminently unknown-even for their "leading article!"

But however beneficial, in all essential respects, may be the vast improvement, which has been so rapidly accomplished, in both the matter and manner of the periodicals, it has, nevertheless, like most improvements, inflicted a serious injury upon a considerable number of considerable men: the "ingenious writers," "intelligent correspondents," and "amusing querists," who figured with great éclat in the magazines of twenty or thirty years ago. These it has degraded from their "high estate.' It has dimmed the brightness of those stars, which were wont to enlighten the hemisphere of the "Polite Miscellany," and the "Town and Country." The mental appetite of readers has been so strongly excited by high relishes, that it has lost its taste for such plain homely food as " Description of the Parish Church of Little Winklebury in Somersetshire." Even so piquant a treat as

My first is a fruit-tree, my seconda bird;

Pray put these together, and tell me my third ;"

even that might fail to stimulate the sense of a fastidious epicure of 1826; and, indeed, it may admit of doubt whether he would be inte

rested in the information that "The answer to the charade in our last is Frying-pan;" or would take the slightest pains to inform that able correspondent" Inquirer," whether Shooter's Hill ought to be written with a double o or with u; he having ascertained, that about forty years ago a robber of the name of Shuter was taken on the very spot!! Ah! those were the days for the easy acquirement of literary fame! Every one must remember Dick Dunderpate, who used to swagger about town (ay, and was pointed at too,) as the celebrated note of interrogation, the ? of the "Town and Country." Dick, by dint of sheer ignorance, was a fortune to that interesting work; for he half filled its pages with his supplications for information. As he knew nothing, and was anxious to learn, his queries one month, and the showers of answers to them the next, were of themselves nearly sufficient to fill a number. But Dick's "Cheval de bataille," the query by which his reputation was fully established, and upon which it ever after rested, was the following:-"To the Editor, &c. Sir,-As the natives of Holland are called Dutchmen, I shall be obliged to any of your numerous and ingenious readers to inform me whether, through the medium of your highly-interesting, deeply-instructive, widely-circulated, and long-established Magazine, it would be proper to call the natives of New Holland New Dutchmen, and remain, Sir, your admiring correspondent, ?"

No sooner was this erudite question proposed, than les savans of the "Town and Country" went to work; and the result of their cogitations was a string of fifty-seven answers in the succeeding number: one of the bunch (of which, as of the above, the style is preserved) will serve as a specimen :-"To the Editor. Sir,-In answer to the ingenious question of your valuable correspondent, ?, I beg to inform him I cannot say but by parity of reasoning, in New South Wales, would it be most correct to term the natives New South Welshmen, or New South Whalers? If the latter, I should think they ought to be called New Hollanders, under correction, and I remain A CONSTANT READER."

Another of the worthies of that time was Tom Pippin, who modestly intrenched himself behind the signature of Philo-Botanico-HortiCuriosiensis. His path to fame led through all the market and flowergardens within ten miles of London; and his literary effusions were confined to descriptions of the monstrosities of the vegetable world. Peaches as large as pumpkins; a cabbage overshadowing a circumference of twenty-two feet three inches and a quarter; a green gooseberry, alike regardless of the laws of subordination and the rules of decorum, emulating a cat's-head apple in bulk, and (like a commoncouncilman at a turtle-feast) mercilessly experimenting on the elastic power of its own skin; and apple-trees detected in the fact of prematurely popping on their white wigs of blossom, were sure of an immortal record from his eloquent pen. But, compared with the contributions offered to him as tribute to the celebrity of his name, and acknowledgment of his exalted superiority in his peculiar walk, the result of his own actual researches was trifling. For every gigantic plum or pigmy pumpkin really seen by himself, he was "favoured" with accurate descriptions of fifty other wonders and curiosities in the same way, discovered by his "sincere admirers" in different parts of the kingdom; so that his monthly additions to this valuable department of

literature were, for many years, uninterrupted and unfailing. Yet, although upon the strength of this, his literary fame, Tom Pippin was considered " a very pretty fellow in his day," it may be doubted whether he would be equally admired now; the more so since the subjects upon which his talent and genius were especially occupied, are relinquished by the higher periodicals in favour of the Morning Papers, which derive considerable benefit from them during the recess of Parliament, when they serve to fill up their chinks and corners.

A third, Jack Jumble, was a truly original genius. He opened a new road to literary renown, and his noble daring was rewarded by the enrolment of his name in the same list with those of his great contemporaries. He was a perfect lion for the time. He it was who first discovered the existence of a modern Methuselah in the persons of eighteen men, all residing in the same town, whose united ages, incredible as it might appear, amounted to 1072 years! Old Parr, who lived a good hundred and sixty years to his own individual share, and who, till the period of this important discovery, had drawn large drafts upon men's wonder, was now thrown completely into shade. His hundred and sixty years were considered as the mere infancy of life, and nothing was talked of but the eighteen men of one thousand and seventy-two years of age! This sublime discovery produced amongst the magazine-readers a positive sensation. Jumble's popularity increased to such an extent, that not only was his presence at all the literary conversaziones indispensable, but he was engaged by two of the leading periodicals to prosecute his researches after similar extraordinary facts. Jack was indefatigable in his laborious task; but "the labour we delight in physics pain ;" and he has been known to furnish, in a single month, well-authenticated accounts of as many as seven of these Joint-stock Longevity Companies. But what in the world is permanent! This department of literature also is now confided to the fostering care of the Daily Papers: yet let it not be forgotten by those who, disdaining the restriction of six-score and ten, are determined to tell their ages by centuries instead of years, that it is to the genius of Jack Jumble they are indebted for the means of attaining so desirable an end. Common as is now the practice, he it was who first promulgated the secret, that by the simple exercise of the social faculty, by making common stock of their years, a friendly party might set time at defiance, and boast an age sinking the giants of old into insignificance.

But the most remarkable person of that time was the subject of the following memoir. It was originally intended for publication in that popular miscellany, "The Muses' Bower;" but its appearance therein was prevented by a calamitous event: nothing less than the sudden discontinuance of the popular miscellany itself. The fortunate circumstance of "the original MS. having recently been discovered" would of itself be a sufficient reason for committing it to the press; but it may claim such honour on more legitimate grounds: it affords a fair specimen at once of the sort of persons then destined to immortality; of the right and title to obtain it then considered to be good and sufficient; and of the biographical aid by which the important object was to be accomplished. Just premising that the most prominent merit of the biographer is an extraordinary clearness of style, resulting, from, what Mrs. Malaprop would call, a "nice derangement" of members; we proceed to