gress of the story, only to rise, and show some new and brilliant change of form and scene. To the graver reader, they were a welcome relief from the perpetual effort of pursuing the wild flights and keen flashes of Sterne's imagination. To the critic, they administered the delight that criticism is said especially to love, the discovery that the brilliant author had his moments of eclipse; and that, as Homer slept, the worship was given to a mere man after all.

Sterne's course was rapidly run. From his first effort to his last was but eight years. The ninth volume of Tristram Shandy was published in 1767; the Sentimental Journey appeared in 1768. The author was then upon his death-bed; and in March of the same year he died-leaving a name which the world still pronounces with unfeigned admiration of his genius, and deep regret at its perversion.

Sterne has been strongly charged with plagiarism; and there can be no question, that where he found materials to his purpose, he took them without reserve. From Rabelais, who seems to have been trebly mad with monkish legends, monkish impurity, and monkish humor; and Burton, who was as palpably mad with learning of every age, observation of every kind of life, and natural eccentricity of every faculty of the mind; the author of Tristram Shandy amassed all the ornaments of style or story that he could seize.

But he amassed them, as Palladio amassed the broken sculptures and columns of the Roman ruins, for his amphitheatre of Vicenza. It was the activity of genius that found beauty, where thousands and tens of thousands had passed by, for year on year, and seen nothing but weedy luxuriance, and weather-stained decay. The triumph of genius was in the discovery and the use-in detecting the value of that which, to all other eyes, had been valueless-and in erecting a fabric which, with all its sins against art, will stand among the enduring evidences of mind. That such a wri

ter as Sterne ever existed, we must regret: for grossness admits no defence in the ability of the offender; though in estimating the moral demerit, we may justly take into consideration the habits of the time. But this palliative of the celebrated writers of Romance and the Drama, from the days of Charles the Second to the middle of the last century, can be but feebly advanced for Sterne. Public manners had undergone a sudden and fortunate change, even within the ten years before. Above all, his sacred function should have preserved him pure in the most licentious days of literature. His cup is poison; and the crime of ministering it is augmented by its being ministered from the altar.

But in the trial of genius, Sterne has established the most ample claim. The first unanswerable evidence of superiority is, to create imitators; the next is, to extinguish them. A multitude of imitations started up on the fame of Tristram Shandy; and the public were suddenly inundated with the quaintnesses of invalid corporals and captains. But they speedily sank: for they were fed with no fire from within; the breath of life was not in their nostrils; and the figures of clay mouldered on the spot, from which the living man marched away with the vividness and vigor that were to bear him through the world.

The long interval of twenty years passed by; and the Novel was proclaimed to be no more. English genius was habitually mourned over by the whole tribe of Dilettanti ; and the Vicar of Wakefield, and Rasselas, beautiful and brief, were welcomed less as the promise of a richer growth, than as the chance flowers springing from the grave where Romance was hopelessly buried. But, in England at least, despair of the power and activity of the human intellect, is scarcely to be justified by experience. The coldest hour is often but the sign that dawn and sunshine are at hand. while the mourners over our literature were in the most incurable dismay at the exhaustion of English genius, an

And

extraordinary female arose to put the scorners to shame, and bring a change of singular loveliness and interest on our whole romantic literature. The Sicilian Romance-the Romance of the Forest-and the Mysteries of Udolpho, raised Mrs. Radcliffe to the summit of popular admiration for the time; threw into the shade all past excellence, and instantly revived the slumbering passion for the wild, the magnificent, and the unearthly. Yet there are few instances of this rapid and universal seizure of popularity, which have not been followed by as rapid a remission. The fever of admiration flies, and the public, once recovered, feel the full weariness of the paroxysm. Mrs. Radcliffe's course of authorship was brief. The Italian, in 1797, closed the career which had begun, in 1789, with the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, the fated cycle of eight years, which had been run by her distinguished prede

cessors.

With the cessation of her pen, her popularity sank; but she had already achieved the unequivocal proof of genius, in her mastery over the general mind, in the utter exclusion of all competitorship, and in the new and potent spirit which she infused into the Romance of her country.

The errors of her style were many and palpable. The length and labor of her descriptions first retarded and finally repelled curiosity. Her love of the marvellous was not sustained by sufficient judgment to give it that semblance of reality, without which the phantom degenerates into the play of clowns and children; and her living characters, her chivalric lovers, and maidens saturated with every charm under heaven, perpetually sweet and suffering, innocent and unlucky as a dove strayed from its cage, and walking with their eyes open into every trap of the thousands that all the world was busied in laying for their angelic feet, fatigued the imagination; that after all must be fed on truth and nature, or it refuses to follow. But no author since Shakspeare, ex

hibited such deep knowledge of the sources of human fear; from the common and level alarms of violence and rapine, down to the ultimate darkness where guilt reigns in its native region; where to the spirits of evil are almost visibly seen mingle the compounds of passion and death for the hands of man; and where the traitor and the murderer, moving in the conscious grasp of punishment and the grave, seem to be divested of all powers but those of enjoying and perpetrating crime.

But the

A long interval again followed, to be, like the former, the theme of many a melancholy comparison of the past energy with the existing lassitude, and of many a decisive anticipation of a course of inevitable decay. prophecy was fortunately once more found failing. The Waverley Novels showed the hazard of dogmatism, and the public welcomed with willing delight so admirable an evidence that the old treasures of English ability were still inexhaustible.

The true charm is originality; and the Waverley Novels exhibited originality in its most striking forms. They neither modelled their force of character on the strong but hazardous conceptions of Tom Jones and Roderick Random, nor borrowed their interest and incidents from the school of Udolpho. They were justly confident in their own power of discovery, and they went forth into a new world of their own.

The Historic Romance is among the oldest inventions of Europe. But it had perished: the few attempts that were made for its revival seemed only to prove that the effort was without hope; and even the Castle of Otranto had scarcely entitled its noble author to more than the honors of a writer for the nursery. The Waverley Novels have substantiated all the claim that can be given by the complete possession of a ground, that had been abandoned by all footsteps, till the trace of the human tread was worn out of the soil,-by covering its barrenness with new and rich fertility; and

as though the young urchin were mocking us; but, on inquiry, it seemed that he could not comprehend why the top should spin when he whipped it; and, when he ceased flogging, make its escape, by running off like a live thing, into some corner, as it were, for repose.

Having read Emerson on this thaumatropical proceeding, and, moreover, conned some of the modern juvenile Encyclopædias, which account for many unaccountable things, we did seriously incline to expound the said mystery unto the youth, who listened attentively for at least a minute and a half, and then evinced strong symptoms of a preference in favor of practice versus theory, and flogged away. We had spoken of a centrifugal power or impetus, and our oral lecture being suspended, proceeded mentally to solve unto ourselves, or recall to memory, the arcana of those wondrous laws, by which tops, balls, and the great globe itself, are kept spinning. In five minutes, that globe and the system to which it belongs, were behind us, at an immeasurable distance -beyond-beyond-and far away were other systems-it was too much. "Reason reeled." So, selecting a comet, we began to ponder upon its eccentric course. With some degree of humility be it confessed, that it hath been unto us a delight occasionally to disport ourselves, as a Triton among the minnows, in the shallows of this world; and we have reaped the usual advantages, a fair proportion of self-confidence, or modest assurance. So we wrestled manfully awhile with the difficulties to which we had presumptuously elevated ourselves, and consequently soon became enveloped in a most especially fuliginous maze of mystery. We began to apprehend that, in a few years, or mayhap centuries, one of the said comets might come down, tail on end, with dire intent, upon this globe, and -just at this moment the parlor door opened gently, and the gentle lady of the house entered. "It's very odd," said she, after the usual "good morning,"

"It's very odd, my dear Robert. There is the long gravel walk, and the yard, and the barn, and the nursery, which are all much better places for spinning your top than here, upon a carpet; yet this is the third morning I have found you-There! it has tumbled down again !"—" It is very odd," said the boy." Not at all, my dear," replied his mamma; "it becomes entangled in the carpet-it would spin very well upon the plain boards.”"Ah! but, mamma," quoth young Hopeful," the centrifugallic force operates above the carpet." At these words, the good lady looked in our corner, with a glance of mild reproach, which seemed to say,—" So, you have been swimming my poor child out of his depth again? It's very odd !"-" Don't be alarmed, dear madam," said we, "Robert was too intent upon his play, or the whole should have been explained to him. Now, however, he understands that the top is kept spinning, upon the same principle, as this world revolves upon its axis."

"Yes!" replied Master Robert, "and I've been thinking about it, while you thought I was only playing, and I've made it all out-there's the pole it spins upon that Captain Parry went to find the end of: but, my stars! what a big whip it must be !" Our worthy host the Rector entered at this moment; and young spes gregis" and his top were removed to their proper gymnastic arena.

"I am convinced," said the good man, when our previous conversation was related to him, "that it is vain to endeavor to teach a child the nature of those mysteries, which the intellects we call mature can scarcely comprehend a tithe of. What we know is absolutely nothing; and we content ourselves, and look big when we have exchanged one word for another. We then fancy that we have discovered a secret. It's very oddvery odd, that we should delight to practise a double deceit, upon ourselves and the world."

returned from a mental excursion, compared with which a voyage to the moon was as a "hop, step, and jump;" and what had we brought back? "Words, words, words," Confusion worse confounded. But it was evident that something was expected-it was our turn-so we ventured to remark, that when man attempted to dive into the mysteries of creation, and to comprehend the wondrous works of Him who meteth the waters in the hollow of his hand, all he could expect was to catch a glimpse of the leading principles.

"Rather say, the leading effects," observed the Rector; "truly, we know not the cause of anything: yet we boast of our reason. Nine times out of ten, instinct, brute instinct, is a more unerring guide; for that is ever upon the alert, while reason sleeps or dreams. It's very odd !" And, truly, the Rector said right. It is very odd, that those, whose spirits seem compounded of ethereal matter, whose intellects far surpass the excellency of the multitude; that those on whom reason hath shed her brightest beam, should yet, notwithstanding,- -if the reader have a spark of genius, let him fill up the blank, and mourn over the frail wanderings of those whose endowments have made them as beacons for good or evil.

The Rector's wife is a good, quiet, amiable woman, kind-hearted withal, and spareth neither her time, her cookery, her advice, nor her medicine chest, when the poor are in need. Her children she loveth; and her husband she almost worshippeth. But "it's very odd," we have, with our own proper optics, seen her dark eyes glisten, with an almost wicked delight, when one of those tales, for which (we feel especially thankful) the tea party is more notorious than the breakfast table, has been poured into her ears. Verily do we believe that she would walk miles, through rain and dirty lanes, at the risk of spoiling her best bonnet, could she, by such an effort, alleviate the distress and anxiety caused by events, of which,

under the name of "news," she delighteth to hear. "It is very odd !" why-why is it, that so many ladies (Heaven bless them! We know their hearts are good and kind) should so greedily devour long and particular accounts of murders, crim cons, and other abominable what nots? And yet more odd is it, considering the mean and despicable nature of the employment, that scarcely a village or hamlet in the United Kingdom is without one of those busy bodies, whose delight is to convey from house to house, the story of guilt or misfortune, and the illiberal or malignant whisper of "envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness."

Yet

"It is very odd," that these creatures should meet with encouragement in any family that hath not declared war against the human race. There indeed, in such a circle, one might expect that the treason would be sweet, though the traitor could not be respected. But that, to so calm a fireside as the worthy Rector's, and to thine, gentle reader, a warm and friendly welcome should be given to one of these scavengers of society, is, in truth, "very odd indeed." there came such an one in upon us, even at the breakfast hour, the sacred "meal of friendship." Slowly the door opened there was a rustling of silk and a "hem ;" and then a lean unblessed figure advanced, making mouths of apology for such early intrusion, simpering, sideling, and apparently casting her eyes about as if, by possibility, something not correct might be discovered even in our sober party. We wished, for certain reasons as thereunto and then mightily moving, that it had been a man :but such reptiles are of no sex-the creature had been out the day before, creeping from its hole, "Talpa domi, argus foris," foraging for a supply of slander, or "materiel" for its construction. Scarcely was it seated, ere a furtive glance, and "knowing" smile, announced privily to our good hostess that there was "news." A look of intelligence was exchanged