Shortly after the action was over, Captain Weatherport of the Halcyon sent an officer and a party of marines to the house of Stennis, to demand of them the pirate seamen who were their prisoners, and, in particular, Cleveland and Bunce, who acted as Captain and Lientenant of the gang.'-vol. iii. pp. 308-311.

The catastrophe is now at hand. It begins by a series of discoveries ; that the real name of Norna is Troil, and that of Basil Mertoun and Cleveland, Vaughan; that Basil was the early seducer of Norna, and that Cleveland is their son; that Cleveland and his father, while they both exercised piracy in the West Indies about eight years before, had at about the same time received an account of each other's death, and had been prevented from detecting its falsehood by each chauging, at about the same time, his name. It appears too that Basil Vaughan, having also heard a report of his mistress's death, had never inquired into the particulars of her fate when he returned to Zetland; and, though Norna was the most marked person in the island, and the especial protectress of his son Mordaunt, had never heard, what must have been notorious to every body else in the island, and was so even to the provost of Kirkwall, that she had borne the name of Troil. The effect of all this is, to drive Basil into a foreign couvent, and make Norna abdicate her elemental kingdom and die penitent and devout. Cleveland, in return for some acts of generosity while a pirate, is pardoned, received into the British navy, and falls in action. Minna dies an old maid; Brenda and Mordaunt are married, and Magnus Troil enjoys a jovial old age.

Such is the fable-full of interest, activity, confusion, negligence, and improbability. The gentlest, the most confiding reader must be startled at the triple recognition, at the recurrence, in three distinct instances, of the same combination of events, a combination as unusual in real life, as it is trite in fiction. And he must be gentler still who can believe in the probability of Cleveland's pardon, or in the possibility of his reception into the British, service.

Among the characters, our favourite is Magnus Troil. He is drawn with such vigour and consistency; the broad features of his natural disposition are so well marked, and the peculiarities which modify them are so well accounted for, they smack so much of his soil and culture, and are so incapable of being transferred to any other person, or any other situation, that he dwells in our recollection as more than an imaginary acquaintance. We are sure that at some indefinite period of our lives, we must have visited the sturdy Udaller, been greeted with his honest and hearty burst of hilarity, dined at his groaning table, danced in his rigging loft, and drank from the mighty Mariner of Canton.' His hereditary rank and

wealth,

wealth, and his neglected education among inferiors or dependents, exclude both the virtues and the vices which a more varied social intercourse, a collision with equals, and rivals and superiors, must have produced. His disposition has not been soured by neglect or injustice, his vanity stimulated by contest, his liberality confined by the necessity of saving, his selfishness rendered intense by the pursuit of personal aggrandizement, or his feelings blunted by habits of frequently subduing, and, still more frequently, concealing them; while the same circumstances have deprived him of controul over his temper, have left his prejudices unenlightened, and driven him for amusement to sensual excitement or promiscuous hospitality. He is, as we observed when he first was mentioned, a Zetlandish variation of Cedric, though with more shrewdness and practical sense, and less exaggeration, than our author chose to infuse into that worthy, but somewhat absurd, Thane. We wish, however, that his rupture with Mordaunt had been better accounted for. Our author himself has made the slightness of its grounds more striking, by so long delaying to explain them, a delay which we are inclined to attribute, either to his not having decided what they should be, or to his feeling ashamed of their inadequacy. The honest frankhearted Udaller would never have cast off his 'good young friend' in sulky silence, on the reports of the pedlar, a liar by profession, even aided by the tattle of Lady Glowrowrum. Their reconciliation is effected as clumsily, and slurred over as sneakingly.

Minna and Brenda are the sisters of Flora Mac Ivor and Rose Bradwardine, with the

facies non una,

Nec diversa tamen'

which has long been appropriated to that relationship. Minna has all Flora's high-blooded courage, and enthusiasm, and generosity, unchecked and uninformed by her experience and literature, by her knowledge of books and of the world. Brenda differs less from Rose, in accidental features, and more iu natural ones. Her education has been nearly the same, but her spirits are higher, her talents weaker, and her feelings less susceptible. She defends her lover boldly and vehemently, but she required strong circumstances to direct her attachment to him, and she is ready to sacrifice him, even while undertaking his defence, if Minna will give up Cleveland. When Flora ridicules Waverley, Rose is silent-but she had given him her affection, she had gone through fatigue and danger to protect him, while he was the avowed lover of another. An alteration in external circumstances alone, would have identified the two former: if Flora had been a Zetlander she would have been Minna. But an alteration in mind would be necessary to make Brenda coincide with Rose. We do not recollect a stronger instance of

our author's talents, of the clearness with which his characters are conceived, and the consistency with which they are developed, thau the points of resemblance and dissimilarity in these four exquisite portraits. In ordinary hands they would have been exact imitations of each other, or totally unlike.

Norna is a more palpable copy than any of the preceding characters. She is not, like them, the representative of a class whose existence we might have conjectured a priori, but belongs to a race of beings common, enough and more than enough, in our author's pages, but who probably never were, and never will be, found any where else. They are all tall, mysterious females, addicted to declamation and gifted with ubiquity, with strong talents and passions, and disordered imaginations, and without the hopes, or fears, or sympathies of ordinary mortals; who forward the catastrophe by totally different means, and on totally different motives, from those of the other agents in the fable. The first and the best (if we must exclude the Lady of Branxolm Tower) was Meg Merrilies: and even she touched the borders of nature; and all her successors, down to Magdalen Græme, have gone farther and farther in transgressing them. But hitherto they have had a method in their madness-their features have been exaggerated, but they have been imposing and consistent. Norna is a perfect busy-body, and wastes her energy in restlessness and an affectation of activity as undignified and fidgetty as that of the Wierd Sister. She seems continually exclaiming

'I'll do, and I'll do, and I'll do.'

She sends intelligence to the Halcyon of Cleveland's movements, and then warns him of his danger-hides money under Yellowley's hearth, that she may hoax him with imaginary wealth, of which her pet dwarf is to deprive him; intrudes into his house to frighten him and show off her power over the winds, breaks in upon the convivial party, and deranges their game of conjuration, in order to alarm them by her prophecies, conceals Mordaunt's safety from his friends, that they may stare at his reappearance, and plays fifty such charlatan tricks, with no adequate purpose. All this would have done if the character had been avowedly burlesque, but it is intended to be lofty and dignified. She may please our transatlantic brethren, for they have an expression which seems made for her : she is awfully smart,' but we fear she will be understood by no one to whom the combination of ideas contained in that singular phrase, is not familiar.

Cleveland appears to have won prodigiously on our author during the progress of the story, and we do not recollect a stronger instance of the ill effects of parental fondness. His feelings and his conduct on his first appearance are perfectly consistent with his

previous

previous history. His miraculous escape impresses him with no awe, the loss of his companions and friends with no regret or compassion. The dogs had their pay, and I can afford to pardon them. The boats swamped in the current-all were lost-and here am I,' is his only remark. If he feels any gratitude towards his preserver, it turns, as in a heart of the very worst description it naturally would, to malignant aversion the instant he thinks that he stands in his way. The obligation is a bridle to his resentment against his unconscious rival; but in his impatience of the restraint, ' he could gnaw the curb until his lips were bloody.' His hatred is so vehement that it survives its cause, and he is forced to attribute it to natural dislike, to a principle of instinctive antipathy. The instant that he has in some measure requited his services, he challenges his benefactor, though he knows he has nothing to fear from him as a rival in Minna's heart, insults him the next evening, and soon after stabs him when unarmed and defenceless. He repays the frank hospitality of Magnus Troil, and the unsuspicious confidence of his daughter, by endeavouring to persuade Minna to elope with him to his piratical haunts in the West Indies. Until he quite Burgh Westra, he is what we know a pirate must be,-hard-hearted, selfish, ungrateful and ferocious. And we cannot but suspect that, up to this period, our author had reserved for him a pirate's fate : that he had intended him to adorn the yard arm, or to display in a court of justice, the audacity of his prototype Gow, or to succeed in his threat of snapping a pistol in the powder room. That he should live honourably and die gallantly must, we think, have been an afterthought, for it is only by such a sudden alteration of his destiny, that we can account for his sudden alteration in disposition and conduct. He now feels that 'to avail himself of the enthusiastic error of Minna, would outglare and outweigh all his former sins, were they doubled in weight and in dye.' He feels remorse for having 'turned Bunce from a stroller by land to a rover by sea;' resolves to turn an honest man and use his criminal life no longer,' assumes the temporary command of the piratical sloop from mere disinterested generosity, surrenders to Mordaunt, instead of making his escape, with no apparent motive but to atone for his crimes, forgives Bunce, with Quakerlike placability, the ruin he has brought upon him, and bids farewell to Minna, with an acknowledgment of the honour and mercy of his judges, and the hope of being useful to his country. Such are the inconsistencies, the lame and impotent conclusions, into which a writer, with even our author's powers, may be betrayed by haste.

We need add little to the remarks which we have incidently applied to the remaining characters. Mordaunt is as insipid, and Yellowley and Halcro are as tiresome, as might be anticipated from

their respective parts of hero and bore. The last is our peculiar aversion: perhaps from his resemblance to some of the tolerated small wits whom we have had the misfortune to encounter in blue society: the TETTIYEσGIY EDIXOTES of Homer, clamorous, squeaking, and frisking in the full enjoyment of a green old age of emptiness. The pirates are bold and vigorous sketches, and the chain of bullying by which Cleveland secures the affection of Bunce, and Bunce that of Fletcher, is happily imagined, and so is the adherence of the younger part of the crew to Cleveland, and of the weatherbeaten veterans to Goff, notwithstanding his propensity to be damned funny,' and run the ship ashore, or shoot his friends under the table, by way of frolic.

The poetry is below our author's standard: Halcro's address to Bet Stimbister, and the song of the Pirates as they bear off Cleveland, Fire on the main-top,' &c. are perhaps the best specimens. The latter, short as it is, has infinite spirit. You fancy you hear its triumphant chorus as they gallantly bend to their oars. It is a spark of fire carelessly struck out by a powerful hand-the same perhaps that gave words to the bold Pibroch of Donuil Dhu.

When we think over the work, of which we have given this very inadequate sketch, we must confess that its scenes do not recur to our memory as readily, or as agreeably, as those of most of its predecessors. It is superior, in its characters, to the 'Monastery,' and in its fable to the Legend of Montrose,' and, as a whole, perhaps to the Antiquary,' and inferior in almost all parts to the others. It would have raised high the fame of an untried author, and has rather lowered that of the author of Waverley.'

1821.

ART. XIII-A Second Dissertation prefixed to the Supplemental Volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica, exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Moral and Political Philosophy in Europe, from the Revival of Letters. By Dugald Stewart, F.R.S. &c. THE present is the third occasion, on which we have had an opportunity of delivering our opinions respecting the merits of those views in metaphysical science, which have been embraced by Mr. Stewart. In the execution of this task, which we have never gone out of our way to seek, but which our office naturally imposed upon us, we certainly did not compliment Mr. Stewart with any foolish expressions of unbounded admiration; nor did we affect to approve those principles in speculative philosophy, which belong to that particular school of which he is generally considered as the ostensible head; but we spoke of his talents without disrespect, and urged our reasons for differing from him in opinion, with cour

tesy