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the poor man almost out of his wits. However, after convincing him that he is still of this world, Riordon sends him with a letter to his beloved Esther, and from him, at their next meeting, learns her fatal catastrophe. The forlorn lover, like a second Romeo, resolves to visit all that remains of his mistress in the tomb; and, accompanied by Lenigan, he repairs to the lonely church-yard, breaks open the vault, forces the lid of the coffin, and takes from it his buried love. In the delirium of the moment, he madly determines to bear the corse thence to an abandoned hut, in the mountains; but, exhausted in body and mind, he feels unable to prosecute his intention, till, opportunely finding, outside the wall of the cemetry, a man with a horse and car, (who, it afterwards turns out, was waiting there for some body-snatcher), he tricks the carman into a belief that he is the person who employed him; and, throwing himself and his inanimate load into the vehicle, they are borne to the hut. Here, in the course of the night, the lover and his companion are overwhelmed with wonder and thankfulness at the miracle of Esther's resuscitation. Like Juliet, she is brought forth from the tomb to live again; but more fortunate than the daughter of Capulet, Esther revives in the arms of a living and healthy lover. The transition from a grave to the bridal couch, is the necessary destiny of the heroine. Some time after this, Riordon, in one of his evening walks, meets his rival, Lacy, who, having some scent of his being in the country, is in pursuit of him; a fierce personal struggle ensues, which ends by Riordon flinging his enemy over a precipice. An hour or so afterwards, Lacy is brought, wounded, and apparently dying, to the cottage of Riordan, where he is accommodated with a room; and the owner, to avoid the instigation of his own murderous thoughts, leaves home, and wanders about the hills. In his absence, Esther, who had before enacted, so unexceptionably according to nature, the part of a corpse, now undertakes that of a ghost, and converses with Lacy in good set terms, and in her quality of supernatural visitor, during what the French would call, and with reason, un bon quart d'heure, which, in plain English, is equivalent to a full half hour. This scene is out of all bearing and probability, and cannot be swallowed by the most credulous and open-mouthed of romancereaders. To pursue the story any further in detail, would be irksome; suffice it to say, that Lacy leaves the cottage; is cured of his wound; is baffled, in his personal as well as political projects, by Riordon, and at length retires from public life, with broken spirits and crushed hopes. After an interview with Esther, on a summer evening, in which she gives him a world of good advice, Lacy retires home; and, instead of adopting (which is seldom the case) this wholesome counsel, he becomes moody, morose, and melancholy, and, before the end of the year, sets out for the world to come. It will be evident to our readers, from this brief, but not unfaithful, outline, that the merit of this tale is not in the plot. Upon this there is a great deal to say, and much of that so obvious,

that it could not have escaped the author; and we are, therefore, the more surprised that he should not have eschewed the temptation. The merits of this composition,-and great they are, we take a pleasure in acknowledging,-are to be found in the detached scenes of Irish low life. Here our author is pre-eminent, and shows the hand and mind of a master. Like the giant of mythology, he is strongest when nearest his parent earth; his peasant scenes are inimitable; their dress, manners, and deportment are fac similes from reality; their feelings and emotions are warm transcripts from life; and their conversation, eloquence, wit, and humour as faithfully reported, as if they had been taken down in short hand, from the lips of the speakers. In the delineation of the classes above the peasantry and those of middle life, the author, though often successful, is not so invariably excellent. In the description of these, there are, no doubt, many strong and vigorous touches, and much of individual and local colouring; but there is, also, observable a lamentable want of keeping, or consistency of character, We proceed to the second tale, entitled Tracy's Ambition.' Into the details of this story we cannot at present enter, nor, indeed, would it be either edifiying or amusing, and it has little or nothing of continuity of interest, and by no means an intelligible succession of events. It is like what the French call une piece à tiroir, that is, like a curious cabinet; it contains, in separate drawers, many things that are rare and precious, but there is wanting that general symmetry, that fusion of parts, and uniform harmony of proportion, without which, as a whole, it must want charm. and interest. The tale is given in shape of an auto-biography of the hero Tracy, a comfortable, but not very wealthy farmer, in one of the western counties of Ireland. Poor Tracy sacrifices the unostentatious, but heartfelt happiness of his family, the affection of his dependents, and of the surrounding peasantry, together with his own self-respect and contentment, to the delusive hopes of advancement and influence, held out to him by a crafty, ambitious, and designing neighbour, a Mr. Dalton. This latter is a more largely-developed and vigorously traced portrait of the same noxious animal as that exhibited in the Lacy of the former tale. For the ability with which he has described, and the strong and glowing colours in which he has painted this prototype of that deadly and loathsome species of reptile which so long fattened and flourished in the festering life-blood of Ireland, the author deserves the most unqualified eulogy. The portraits of his subaltern friends,-the informers, swearers, decoy-men, and betrayers of the deluded peasantry, are given with true and frightful energy. We can pursue the details of this story no farther than to state, that Tracy is cheated out of a sum of money, the loss of which is sufficient to ruin him, by his false friend, Dalton; his wife falls a victim to the fury of the insurgent peasantry, in an attack directed against himself; and he sinks down into an almost broken-hearted man. the concluding pages, however, he is relieved from his difficulties

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by the return of a wealthy brother-in-law from India, and poetical justice is done upon Dalton, the arch villain of the plot. Before closing these remarks, we shall give some instances of that want of sustained consistency, or keeping of character, sometimes observable in these volumes. Tracy, a simple-minded, and but ordinarily educated farmer, in one passage of his auto-biography, with most preposterous magniloquence, thus expresses himself: Ambition is said to be the passion of advanced years. But when it does: awake, it acts upon the soul like the waters of the fabled fountain of Bimini, re-kindling faded energies and aspirations, and renewing the old man's youth like the eagle's.' Now, we would venture a temperate wager, that no farmer, "great or small," in all Ireland, and the Isle of Man to boot, ever heard of the fountain of Bimini, and its youth-renewing waters. Indeed, we doubt that, even amongst the country gentlemen of the sister island, (perhaps we might go farther,) there could be found one to whom a question relative to the said fountain of Bimini! would not prove a downright poser. The other example is, where Tracy, meaning to say that, on a certain fast day, he put neither milk in his tea, nor butter on his bread, thus expresses himself in the following ludicrously affected phraseology, worthy alone of a third or fourth-rate pretender to literature, in the polished meridian of the Minories or of Whitechapel :- I joined in observing the abstinences of the vigil, by forbearing to qualify the acerbity of the narcotic with a spoonful of cream, or to increase the pinguifying influence of the bread by the addition of butter!!!' Apollo, in his mercy, deliver us from such declamatory farmers as these!

Such are the vices into which negligence betrays the ablest pen. It is not in anger, so much as in sorrow, that we note these hallucinations of a man of genius and great promise, who, if he remain only stationary in the ranks of literature, and do not attain a place in its most eminent class, has only himself to blame.

We hardly remember through what it was, except through the gin and beer smelling criticisms of old Blackwood's Magazine, that Mr. John Galt ever became known on this side of the Tweed. His language can only be understood amongst the wildest Covenanters of Scotland, and if they can be pleased with the peculiarly lethargic current of his ideas, they, of course, are at liberty to please themselves. But we, who are not Covenanters, do hereby sincerely declare, that with the exception of Blackwood's last double number of childish reviews and drowsy tales, and ideotic politics, we have not recently seen any thing so utterly and totally stupid, as Laurie Todd. The very name' is prosy and empty. The apparent object of the tale is to attract settlers to Canada, where it seems the author has been engaged for some time, in superintending some public work. But the effect of the narrative, if it were much read, of which there is little chance, would be to deter emigrants from directing their prows towards a quarter of the globe, where they might be likely to meet with such a horrible bore as Laurie Todd.

Eheu quantum mutatus ab illo! Is the "Subaltern" really transormed into a Country Curate'? Has the well-disciplined soldier urrendered all his military propensities, and exchanged the tent or the pulpit? And the slayer of men, has he become a teacher of peace? has he-the roving bachelor-at last settled down in some hill-encircled village, married a rural maid, and taken a greenlatticed cottage, by the side of a murmuring stream, with little pebbles shining in it, and ducks and geese gabbling upon its fair bosom? Alas! great are the changes indeed, to which a soldier's life is subject. The "Subaltern" is not the same man whom we knew some three or four years ago. These two volumes bear no more resemblance to his former graphic sketches, than an old shovel hat bears to a smart foraging cap, or a half-washed surplice to a red jacket sparkling with a pair of epaulets.

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There are here about nine or ten different tales, after the fashion of Miss Mitford, but possessing just as much of her inimitable spirit as cider has of champagne. They are called 'The Pastor,' The Poacher,' The Schoolmistress,' The Shipwreck,' 'The Fatalist,' 'The Smugglers,' The Suicide,' The Miser,' 'The Rose of East Kent,' and 'The Parish Apprentice.' The reader can easily imagine the sort of stories which are told under these very novel titles; the pastor all benevolence and attention to his duties; the poacher an innocent rustic, who lays down with great force the law of nature against the laws of game; the schoolmistress a type of misfortune, and a pattern of patience; the horrors of a shipwreck, and a romance thereunto appended; a fatalist who is going as fast as he can to the devil, and smugglers who are running after him in the same delightful road. We would fain help the gentle reader's imagination to a further acquaintance with the lucubrations of the worthy curate, were we not afraid of the yawns which we fancy we already see crying out to us for mercy.

If the volumes which contain the tales of a "Briefless Barrister," have really emanated from a professional man, then do we join most cordially in the hostility of the Attornies to his precious person, and almost wish, unless he give up writing novels, that he may remain with that comfortable epithet attached to his gown during the remainder of his life. His three volumes are filled with two stories called 'Secret Thoughts are Best' and 'New Neighbours.' In the former he gives a new edition of " Wild Oats," shewing as how a young foolish fellow runs away from his home, gets into all the vices of London, becomes acquainted with a gang of gypsies, is taken up for a burglary, and then repents and becomes a philosopher and a gentleman. From New Neighbours,' we learn the art of becoming acquainted with those who live next door to us, an art, by-the-bye, very little known in London, where we lived for years between a Mahomedan and a Jew, without ever knowing of our happy lot until a Police report brought the matter within our cognizance. The "Briefless" author is a regular special pleader, using for the expression of a single idea the greatest num

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ber of words. His inventive faculty does not appear at all to be allied with imagination; it is a sort of volition, which being disposed to produce a tale, runs on with every kind of stuff which can help to fill up a page, such as, he then sat down and wrote a letter: he knocked at the door and asked if Mr. B. was at home, and being answered in the negative, he turned his face towards the street again and walked away:' he took off his hat, which having held in his hand for some time, he put on again, and wished Mr. C. a good morning.' But here is at hand a literal specimen:

Conjecture after conjecture endeavoured to solve the difficulty, but no solution of a satisfactory nature could be found.'-vol. iii. p. 101.

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Although in the baronet's manners and feelings there was something of littleness and circuitousness, in spite of his great politeness and high descent, yet in his son there was a remarkable up-and-down-rightness, and a hearty, wholesome straightforwardness. When his father, therefore, began in a roundabout way to interrogate him concerning the long visit which Lord Summerfield had made at Mr. Franklin's, the young man presently and promptly replied, "I have heard nothing about it, and I know nothing of it; but if you wish to know, I will ask Maria; I have no doubt that she will tell me."'-vol. iii. pp. 101, 102.

We feel a pang of remorse for having put at the tail of these precious productions one, which in point of energy and of dramatic interest, is worth them all. We do really think, that there is more of that description of talent, which may be called the story-telling faculty, in The Lost Heir,' than in all the novels put together, which have been published this season. The scene shifts from America to France at the time of the Revolution, and the action is full of the bustle and interest of that dreadful period. The Prediction' is also a finely wrought tale, and, like its companion, is clothed in bold, and often very beautiful diction. They are both, we understand, from the pen of Mr. Power, the actor, whose representations of Irish character have made him a great favourite on the stage. It is with unfeigned gratification that we see a person in his profession devoting his leisure hours to the muses. We wish him all imaginable success.

NOTICES.

ART. XIII.-An Enquiry into the Natural Grounds of Right to Vendible Property or Wealth. By Samuel Read. 8vo. Edinburgh. 1829. DR. JOHNSON, in one of his conversational paradoxes, asserted that no professed cook could write a good book on cookery, and no practical merchant a good book on trade; for this plain reason, that a cook seldom thinks of any thing besides his culinary processes, or a merchant of any thing besides his own trade. But, to write a good book, it is necessary to have extensive and philosophical views; to look beyond the narrow details of practical affairs; and to make comparisons, and draw inferences from things which fall not within the confined sphere of practical men. This, though it sounds paradoxical, appears to apply not unjustly to the subject

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