however, much as we may deplore the fact, that the novelists of the day no more hold themselves bound to preserve integrity of incident in their writings, than the dramatists do to regard the unities of time and place in the productions which they submit to the stage; and that the examples of Ariosto, and Cervantes, and Scott, are as much at hand to justify the one, as that of Shakspeare is to vindicate the other of these bands of licensed transgressors of literary decorum. It should be insisted, nevertheless, where the writer of fiction exempts himself from the trammels of these salutary restraints upon his fancy, that he should give his readers the benefit of his prescriptive privilege in the variety, and spirit, and strength of his separate incidents-in the power with which he prepares each crisis in his story-in energy of dialogue-in vividness of description-in a display of all the graces for which his faculties are left free by this convenient enfranchisement. Our author has undoubtedly purchased his exemption from the laws of the severer school of writers of his class, by a conformity in the main with this fair condition; and we are not disposed to quarrel with his deviations, although they are certainly, in some cases, unusually wide, when no great loss is actually sustained, and when most of the purposes of pleasure and profit for which we undertook our voyage together, are perhaps by that very means more speedily, if not more completely fulfilled.

A number of minor inconsistencies in the circumstances may be detected by any reader who is not too completely absorbed in the general current of the narrative to remark the impossibilities in nature, that are scattered over different parts of it. A moon appears to be "shining on, shining on" with exemplary constancy, through almost every scene, quite superior to the caprices that are usually attributed to that changeable satellite. A disease which is known to be rather deliberate in its communication, is gifted with the power of almost instantaneous infection; and in its most nauseating period, leaves the patient open to the solicitations of a singularly uncalculating appetite. A wounded officer, with a ball remaining in his body, is kept for upwards of seven months in alternate states of torpor and delirium, by anodynes administered at the discretion of his valet; and then, when the ball is extracted, and the effects of the opiate have ceased, awakes suddenly, in a condition to enter instantly upon the arduous duties of a lover, and the important responsibilities of a husband; and even to perform, in the worst of weather, a pedestrian excursion of some length,

in the course of which he is engaged in at least one scuffle, sufficient to form rather a serious trial for strength that could not be supposed to be yet perfectly re-established. But the incongruity that has most incomprehensibly escaped the vigilance of the author, is the momentary apparition of the snow-storm at the wedding; which seems to be "just shown" for the purpose of exaggerating the fearful features of the scene; and then to be "put up again," lest the handling of it should freeze his invention. However this may be, no more is heard of it. It opposes no obstacle, either to Lionel's expedition or to Cecil's pursuit ; and on the next evening, or at furthest the next but one, she prosecutes her path over "faded herbage ;" they hear the clatter of feet on the frozen ground; they ride in wagons, of which the wheels are unimpeded; and to crown all, they discover a spot in the church-yard from which the shroud of nature had not been withdrawn, and sit upon grave stones which must have been covered with the most comfortless of cushions. Now, may it not be asked without captiousness, whether all such blemishes cannot easily be avoided? And if they can, ought they to be allowed to escape? When they are perceived, and some of them could hardly be overlooked by the most cursory of readers, what is their effect? The charm of that part of the story which they are permitted to disfigure, is, for the moment, destroyed. Our attention becomes fastened upon some particular fact which is not in the order of things possible, and our temporary illusion with respect to the whole vanishes at once. We are affected (to illustrate the greater by the less) as by the occurrence of some tame phrase of common life, in the dialogue of intense passion, and cannot forgive the inadvertence that has dispelled our delightful dream. It is, in short, as essential to our interest, that the descriptive writer should show us that he sees what he paints, as it is to our emotion, that the eloquent speaker should convince us that he feels what he utters.

The characters introduced into this story, are, with a few exceptions, strikingly drawn and spiritedly sustained. The standard parts of the lady and the lover are respectably filled by Lionel and Cecil; and the declaration scene on Lionel's recovery, is certainly not without tenderness. Miss Danforth, although she seems to contribute little to the conduct of the narrative, is quite a fair specimen of the spirit of our countrywomen in the days when patriotism was of no sex. Mrs. Lechmere is decidedly overstrained. Ralph has too much method in his madness, to be allowed all the privileges of that condition, and there appears to be no sufficient cause for all the effects which he is made to

produce. The Flibbertigibbet of the tale, Job Pray, is a happy attempt at one of those beings endowed with ubiquity, omniscience, and fatuity, which the practice of modern novelists has made almost as essential to a regularly constructed production of this class, as the Arlecchino is to the Italian Opera Buffa. His shrewdness, however, would frequently make us forget the light in which the author intends us to consider him, were we not repeatedly recalled to the remembrance of it by the epithets of 'simpleton,' 'fool,' 'idiot,' and 'changeling,' which he applies so unceremoniously, and sometimes we cannot help thinking so unfairly, to this boy of twenty-seven. But, in spite of this little incongruity, Job is interesting throughout. His courage, his fidelity, his constant exultation in being "a Boston boy," his unshaken confidence, that "the people will show the grannies the law," the delight with which he dwells upon the idea of "a stir in Old Funnel," and many other happily imagined and ably developed traits, make him, altogether, a successful delineation of a character the most difficult to draw, because, as a whole, it is without a model in nature. Abigail Pray is the only other leading personage, and she appears to be of little use but to explain, in the catastrophe, some of the mysteries of the story, which might, perhaps, have been explained as well without her.

Among the subordinate characters, Polwarth is the most conspicuous, and he certainly discharges his various functions of captain, companion, caterer, and cook, with great consistency, and, sometimes, with infinite humor. The ingenuity with which he draws all his illustrations of every topic, from the savory subject on which he delights to dwell, is, in many cases, admirable; but there is often an exaggeration about him approaching to caricature. We mean, for example, where he is made to administer his uncouth and unwholesome prescription to the dying Job, and to lecture the conscience-stricken and repentant Abigail, at her last gasp, upon the excellencies and the enjoyments of eating.

To one class of individuals, whom the period and the scene of the story naturally introduce, we do not think that the author has done that justice which we had a right to expect from the subject itself, and from his own unquestioned powers. We refer to those from whom specimens might have been furnished of the yankee character and dialect. The instances of the old woman at Cambridge, the old man in the wagon, Allen, and above all, Seth Sage, although slight in themselves, are excellent as far as they go, and show what might have been done if pains had been taken to elaborate that part of the work. Why were we

not presented with one of a higher order and on a greater scale? Was it too much to demand of the inventor of that prince of whalers, the inimitable Tom Coffin, that he should extend his observations to another sphere, and not overlook the opportunity that lay so invitingly before him, of producing, at full length, a rugged yankee hero of the Stark or Putnam school?

We shall not descend to the invidious office of enumerating the oversights in mere style and the use of language, which are to be found so frequently in the pages of this work. The author, in his preface, has so contumaciously disclaimed all critical jurisdiction, that we fear it would be of little benefit to him, as it certainly would be of little interest to others, to point out his instances of baldness or mannerism in using some favorite word on subjects entirely inconsistent with each other-of mistake, in applying common words otherwise than in their common and only intelligible acceptation—of affectation and inelegance, in using his verbs in the interrogative form, invariably without auxiliaries—and of carelessness, if not clumsiness, in leaving his meaning so entangled in the web of his construction, that our struggles to free it to our own comprehension, have been sometimes entirely unsuccessful. We regret this the more, because the author's popularity is likely to carry his example into precedent; and we are unwilling that our subsequent writers should be allowed to avail themselves of the sanction of his authority for vices in style, which in spite of his candid confession of having long since forgotten the little that colleges and (some may think he might have added) that schools have taught him, must, for the most part, have been committed rather from indolence than ignorance. We do not wish, however, to dwell upon this ungrateful topic; and, resting our hopes of his farther amendment in this respect, upon the improvement which he has regularly exhibited from "Precaution" to the present work, rather than upon any expectation of furnishing him with "a single hint which his humble powers can improve," we shall proceed to those features of the latter which we have been able to contemplate with unalloyed admiration.

The writer of the religious or of the historical novel, has difficulties to contend with, peculiar to the walk of composition which he has selected; and unless the purposes of his work be blended in those nice proportions which it is the lot of few exactly to attain, the lighter reader will skim over the fiction, and throw aside the remainder with disgust, while the graver one will prefer to deduce his morality from real sermons, and to seek his knowledge in the authorized and established repositories of

facts. The composition of the historical novel is encumbered with still another and a greater embarrassment. The author is obliged to regard, in the invention of his characters and incidents, all the proprieties of reality, and of that very reality in which he has placed his scene, with far more strictness here, than in fictions where no measure is immediately at hand to detect and to estimate his extravagance. The circumstances and characters which are known, have the effect of familiar objects in a landscape, which not only enable you to judge of the general perspective, but to ascertain the magnitude of others, which the artist, in the absence of these convenient tests of nature, might with impunity exaggerate or distort. The writer of such a work, then, has stretched his imaginations upon a Procrustean bed of his own making, and must force them all to correspond to it, at whatever risk of dislocating the limbs, or mutilating the stature of these children of his brain. In surmounting all these difficulties, the author of this book has been eminently successful. He has thrown himself fearlessly into the midst of scenes, fresh in the personal experience of many who are now alive, and destined to be eternally fresh in the traditional recollections of millions who have not yet begun to live. He has transfused into his narrative the sturdy spirit of those times, when every citizen was a soldier, and every soldier a patriot. Even in the humble personages whom he has chosen to illustrate this spirit, he has exhibited with admirable consistency, the sagacity with which the colonists discovered, and the shrewdness with which they explained their rights, as well as the jealousy with which they guarded, and the stoutness with which they defended them. The pettiness and homeliness of the details of these struggles, as compared with the larger operations of European warfare, which have made them to be usually considered unfit themes for the imaginative writer, have not induced him to shrink from the battle grounds on which our freedom was born, or to pass them by as unsusceptible of the decorations, or unworthy of the gifts of genius. In the skirmish at Lexington, the retreat from Concord, and the battle of Breed's or Bunker's Hill, he has fairly transplanted us to the periods and the spots which he describes; and with that rare felicity, both of selection and coloring, which is at once the triumph and the test of talent, he has made us see, and hear, and feel all the stir of the glorious strife which has led to consequences ineffably more glorious. But it would be tame and even unfair, to estimate the value of this part of the story by the interest which it may create in the present generation of readers. It deserves to be considered with

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