ted No. 90,* which was avowed by Mr. Newman, was pointedly condemned by many of the Bishops, and a note of censure passed on it by the Hebdomadal Board. Books, sermons, reviews, charges, memoirs from the Puseyite party, have since manifested their determination to continue to be heard through the press.

The excitement was increased by the charge of the Bishop of London in 1842, in which he touched on some points of ritual observance, apparently favouring the Puseyites. A professor of poetry, who never published a single poetical work, has been elected at Oxford, "because he was not a Puseyite." Mr. Gladstone's two works, "On the Relation of the Church to the State," and "Church Principles," were attacked as Puseyite, and Mr. Christmas's treatise on the "Discipline of the Anglican Church," though touching on no disputed point of doctrine, afforded matter of criticism for six weeks to a Presbyterian journal on the same ground. Old Divinity was now remembered with affection. Societies for the publication of neglected old divinity have been established, and, also, rival societies of Anglo-Catholic theology. As a good influence, may be noticed the impulse to correct Gothic Architecture, to the employment of art in the embellishment of churches, and the improvement of the musical part of the service. As evidences of dissension, we observe, one rector advertising for a curate, with-" No Puseyite need apply;”—another, "No Oxford man will be accepted ;" on the other hand, a vicar "wants an assistant of sound Anglican views, who is untainted with Erastianism, and entertains no objection to the daily service, the weekly offertory, and to preaching in a surplice!" Thus, are the very bowels of Mother Church inflamed and convulsed.

The last public act of Dr. Pusey was the delivery of a sermon before the University, in which he was accused of advancing the doctrine of transubstantiation. Judges appointed by the University have censured him; passed a sentence of suspension on him, and condemned the sermon as heretical; but his friends maintain, that by not specifying their grounds, the judges have laid themselves open to the charges of unfairness and severity. It is much to be feared that these doings closely resemble many things which may

*The tract called "One Tract More," printed subsequently to No. 90, was written by a well-known poet, and M. P.

be discovered as far back as the times of Abailard and St. Bernard.

It is said that Dr. Pusey is about to quit Oxford, and to take up his residence at Leeds, where a superb church is in process of erection for his ministry.

G. P. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE,-CAPTAIN.

MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE.

"And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout about ?" STERNE.

"How delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the printer, to launch out into regions of thought and invention, (never trod till now,) and to explore characters, (that never met a human eye before,) this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessaries after the fact."-HAZLITT.

"No sooner did the Housekeeper see them than she ran out of the room in great haste, and immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch of hyssop, and said, 'Signor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest some enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us, in revenge for what we intend to do in banishing them out of the world!' The Priest smiled at the Housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the Barber to reach him the books, one by one, that they might see what they treated of; for, perhaps they might find some that did not deserve to be chastised by fire."-DON QUIXOTE.

PROSE fiction has acquired a more respectable status within the last half century than it held at any previous period in English literature. Very grave people, who set up to be thought wiser than their neighbours, are no longer ashamed to be caught reading a novel. The reason of this is plain enough. It is not that your conventional reader has abated a jot of his dignity, or relaxed a single prejudice in favour of "light reading," but that the novel itself has undergone a complete revolution. It is no longer a mere fantasy of the imagination, a dreamy pageant of unintelligible sentiments and impossible incidents; but a sensible book, insinu-` ating in an exceedingly agreeable form-just as cunning physicians insinuate nauseous drugs in sweet disguises-a great deal of useful knowledge, historical, social, and moral. Most people are too lazy to go to the spring-head, and are well content to drink from any of the numerous little rills that happen to ripple close at hand; and thus, by degrees, the whole surface becomes fertilized after a fashion, and by

a remarkably easy and unconscious process. Formerly a novel was a laborious pretext for saying a wonderful variety of fine silly things; now, it is really a channel for conveying actual information, the direct result of observation and research, put together with more or less artistic ingenuity, but always keeping in view the responsibility due to the living humanity from which it professes to be drawn. Genteel amenities aud pathetic bombast are gone out; and even the most exquisite universalities of the old school have been long since shot with the immense mass of rubbish under which they were buried. Crebillon himself slumbers in the dust of the well-stocked library, while there is no end to the new editions of Scott.

This elevation of prose fiction to a higher rank, and the extension of the sphere of its popularity, may be at once referred to the practical nature of the materials with which it deals, and the sagacity with which they are selected and employed. What Aristotle says of poetry in general may be applied with peculiar force to this particular form of narrative-that it is more philosophical than history; for while the latter is engaged with literal details of particular facts, which often outrage general probability and never illustrate general principles, the former generalizes throughout, and by tracing in natural sequence a course of causes and effects which would, in all probability, have succeeded each other in the same order, under similar circumstances, in real life, it exhibits a more comprehensive picture of human nature, and conducts us upon the whole to a profounder moral. If the flippant observation be true, that History is Philosophy teaching by example, then it must be admitted that she sometimes teaches by very bad examples; but when she condescends to teach through the medium of fiction, she certainly has no excuse for not selecting the best.

The attempt to establish a sort of junction between history and romance-the Amandas and the Marguerites of Valois, the half-fabulous Rolands and the veritable Richards, was a lucky conception. We have not the least notion to whom the honour of having originated the historical novel fairly belongs. Certainly not to Scott, to whom it is so commonly attributed. Miss Lee was beforehand with him, and Miss Porter, and twenty others-to say nothing of De Foe, who seems to have given a broad hint of the practica

bility of such a project in two or three of his inimitable factfiction memoirs. We suspect that the idea of the historical novel grew up slowly, that nobody had the courage to make so free with history all at once, and that it became developed at last only by the sheer necessity of devising something new, consequent upon the exhaustion of every existing mode of fiction. The germ of this brave conception, if we were disposed to pursue the inquiry in a learned spirit, might, perhaps, be found in the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, which dates so far back as the fourth century, and which is in some sort historical, since it presents an accurate and curious picture of the customs of ancient Egypt.* But we have no occasion to travel into such remote paths of investigation.With Froissart and Monstrelet before us, the "Helden Buch," the "Nibelungen Lied," the "Chronicles of the Cid," and the old Spanish and French romances, we can be at no loss to discover how the historical novel gradually put forth its strength and enlarged its stature, until in course of time it grew to its present height and importance. The poetical spirit in which the chronicle writers treat the best established historical reputations, the atmosphere of imagination they throw round the most ordinary facts, and the skill with which they relate their narratives, mingling the dramatic tact of the raconteur with the sobriety of the historian, may be regarded as having accomplished the first grand advance towards the disputed boundary. The subsequent progress was easy enough; nor can it be a matter of much surprise, when once the invasion was fairly effected, to find the two hitherto distinct races, mixed and confounded together on the frontier of the two hitherto hostile territories. If there be romance writers who have taken upon themselves the functions of history, it cannot be denied, on the other hand, that there are historians who have not hesitated to appear in the masquerade of romance.

Of all historical novelists, Scott justly occupies the first place. If he did not create that kind of composition, he was the first who brought it into general favour. The secret was no sooner unfolded, by which the annals of nations could thus be rendered tributary to the most fascinating

The "Cyropædia" of Xenophon has a still earlier claim; but either of these derivations makes the historical fiction coincident with the origin of prose romance. Madame de Genlis, in her " Memoires," claims precedence of Scott, who she says was her imitator.-ED.