invisible chains, and placed in ridiculous and unnatural attitudes, till the sleeping beauty should be awakened to life and a husband.

But if the other persons are fixtures, the Wanderer herself becomes, after a little practice, a most moveable person; she flies to London, about London, and from London-to Salisbury, through Hampshire, loses herself among smugglers and poachers in the New Forest-not a soul can guess why :-at last, however, it appears that in this good realm of England, this young woman at first concealed her name, and her quality, and fled like a criminal from place to place, because she was afraid of being taken and delivered up to one of Robespierre's emissaries, who pretended to be married to her. Nay, what is best of all, this emissary of Robespierre arrives in England during the war, pursues his alleged wife, asserts his right to her, and actually forces her from her friends and lovers, (for of course she had abundance of friends and lovers,) in order to convey her back to France. These, our readers will see, are proceedings as natural and well imagined as the rest; and they will conclude that her long residence in France has given Madame D'Arblay a very novel and surprising view of the state of religion, manners, and society in England.

After all this comes the denouement, which is really worthy of the plot.

The Wanderer is (like Evelina) the child of a secret marriage, denied or neglected by her father, and the whole mystery of her story is occasioned by her having, to save the life of a French bishop, married, according to the ceremonies of Robespierre's time, one of his emissaries, who had taken a great fancy to 60007. which was to be paid to the Wanderer on condition of her not asserting her birth. She, as we have seen, escapes, but the poor bishop being still in France, she does not dare to declare hername, and appeal to her family-she does not dare to protest against the forced and illegal contract of marriage she had entered into, lest the bishop should suffer for it. Nay, she is ready to accompany back to France this soi-disant husband, though it is quite apparent to the most ordinary common sense, that to claim her birthright and obtain her whole splendid fortune would be the most likely way of establishing some check upon her avaricious husband, and enabling her to tempt him to the preservation of the worthy prelate; whereas her flight and her concealment, if quite successful, would have left this ruffian without any motive of interest in keeping measures with his victim. At last, however, the bishop escapes, and then the Wanderer turns out to be the Lady Juliet Granville. She divorces her revolutionary spouse, finds a sister in one of her Brighton acquaintance, a brother in one of her former lovers, and a husband in one Mr. Har

leigh, a very odd sort of person, with whom she has been on very odd sort of terms during her English peregrinations.

Violent as the incongruities of this chief plot of the drama must appear to our readers, we venture to assure them that they are tame and common-place, compared with the monstrous absurdities of the under-plot and of the inferior characters; particularly-if, where all is monstrous, we should select any individual instance-of a certain Miss Elinor Joddrell, who after appearing as a gay trifling pleasant sort of young gentlewoman, breaks out, of a sudden, as a Jacobin, philosopher and atheist, runs away from her family, disguises herself as a man, wears a mask and dagger, and in this costume comes into a concert room at Brighton, where she magnanimously stabs herself with the said dagger because Mr. Harleigh is one of the company at a public concert in which the Wanderer is to play on the harp. To complete the nice discrimination and accurate nature of this picture, we need only add, that when Miss Joddrell, much against her will, recovers of her wound, and long before she bas regained her senses, the Wanderer felicitates herself on obtaining, as a barrier against calumny and persecution, the protection and countenance of this sober and well conducted young lady.

Our readers will think that these characters are maintained, as Horace directs, with perfect consistency to the end, when they are informed that a solemn and pitched discussion is held, in an advanced stage of the novel, between the Wanderer, Miss Joddrell, and their common lover Mr. Harleigh, in which free-will, the origin of evil, the right of suicide, and divers other knotty points of religion and morals are so well handled by the aforesaid Mr. Harleigh, that Miss Joddrell is persuaded to abandon her mask and dagger, and to give over the practice, to which she was greatly addicted, of cutting her own throat.

We have now done with this novel, on which we should not have been justified in saying so much, but that we conceived ourselves in duty bound to attend the lifeless remains of our old and dear friends Evelina and Cecilia to their last abode: but of Madame D'Arblay herself we have a word or two to say.

We learn from the preface, (from which, indeed-so tortuous is its construction and so involved its expression-we can gather scarcely any thing else,) that these volumes were written between the years 1802 and 1812, in Paris, where she enjoyed, as she informs us, under the mild and beneficent government of Napoleon the Great, 'ten unbroken years:'--' neither startled by any species of investigation, nor distressed through any difficulties of conduct, by a precious fire-side, or in select society, a stranger to all personal disturbance.'

VOL. XI. NO. XXI.

Now really we should have expected, if Madame D'Arblay were restrained by her feelings, whatever they might be, from expressing her detestation of the gigantic despotism, the ferocious cruelty, the restless and desolating tyranny of Buonaparte, that, at least, she should not have sought for opportunities of insinuating her gratitude for the blessings, the tender mercies which France enjoyed under the dominion of that tyger.

Though the whole scene is laid in the time of Robespierre, and though she, in her text, takes very carefully the Buonapartian tone of abuse of the republican revolution, yet whenever she has occasion to allude to any of the horrors of that period, she does not fail to subjoin, with a loyal accuracy, a note to testify that she alludes to the tyranny of Robespierre-she did not see, good lady, that this disclaiming note was the most severe satire against her imperial protector, as it leads the reader to suppose, that without its assistance, it would be doubtful to which of these monsters she alluded. We cannot bear these base condescensions -Madame D'Arblay might have been silent, but she ought not, as an Englishwoman, as a writer, to have debased herself to the little annotatory flatteries of the scourge of the human race.

This fault, however, if the work should come to another edition-Madame D'Arblay will probably correct; because, since the publication of the last, Buonaparte has been overthrown and exiled; and we think we may assume, from the style of the passages to which we allude, that Madame D'Arblay is not likely to continue to flatter, when her flattery can no longer conduce to her personal convenience. Hereafter, therefore, we shall be prepared to find, instead of this alludes to the days of Robespierre,' this alludes to the days of Buonaparte;' and instead of acknowledgments for the ten happy years spent under his reign, to hear of the ten happy years which she proposes to pass under the patental government of Louis the Eighteenth.

ART. X. Sermons, by the late Rev. Walter Blake Kirwan, Dean of Killala. With a Sketch of bis Life. 8vo. Dublin and London. 1814.

PROFU

ROFUSE admiration can hardly be allowed as a criterion of the real merits of popular preaching. An energetic manner, and an eloquent expression on subjects of prevailing interest, while they seldom fail to captivate the imagination, too easily elude the

scrutiny of severer judgment. In the irritation which disputed opinions necessarily create, the mind, biassed by passion, is less equal to the exercise of discretion; a favourite doctrine is of itself a sufficient title to our regard, and positive defects are countenanced by congenial feelings. But independent of this illusion, even in common topics that pass without controversy, we cannot always decide with accuracy; the flowing phrase and the balanced period assail the judgment through the ear, and it is only in the perusal that we can divest ourselves of partiality, and that taste and sober reason become the final arbiters.

That this liability to imposition should be wrought upon in the common concerns of life, and that we should be deceived into opinions prejudicial to our temporary welfare, is, doubtless, a consequence of our infirmity; it is an attempt, however, unworthy of a Christian minister; in the cause of truth artifice is unnecessary, and when applied to the diffusion of heretical opinions, it is no light offence. But, supposing the pulpit to be confined to its proper uses the interests of religion-we must still object to the modern qualifications of popular preaching. If faith should be the growth of our unprejudiced judgment, if religious practice should originate from the knowledge of our duty, from a conviction of its necessity to our happiness, there is no farther requisite than a close adherence to the Gospel. Let the truth be soberly demonstrated, let the obligation of scripture morality be simply expounded, and, while the preacher instructs with earnestness, let him temper his zeal with humility, and every effect will follow which should form the object of sermons. It is true that this path conducts not to that admiration which the candidate for popular favour proposes to himself. If his voice is mellifluous to the ear, if his gesture is graceful to the eye, if, in short, he can attract to himself the idolatry of his audience, his purpose is accomplished; his morality recommended by pomp of language, and aspiring to the flights of fancy, scarcely wishes to reform the mind; it surprizes, it delights, it rivets the attention, not to the lesson it inculcates, but to its adventitious attractions, and it is remembered, not to strengthen virtue in its retirement, but to charm in the display of conversation. It is fortunate for thethinking part of the world that this admiration does not always correspond with the cravings of its votary, and that present praise ministers to the ambition of posthumous celebrity :-the press dissolves the spell, and the senses are left to the operation of natural agency. The imposing confidence that supplies the deficiency of knowledge, the graceful utterance that imparts to languor the air of beauty, and, above all, the reputation of a name, which, to the generality, is the criterion of every excellence, cease to influence beyond the title-page; the public grows ashamed of a

partiality which it cannot justify, and the author returns to that obscurity which is the ultimate destiny of all empiricism.

Amidst this censure, however, it is far from our wish to see theology stripped of its ornaments, or morality without the allurements of studied composition. We well know that the close reasoning of Hooker comes recommended by the chastised richness of his language, and we acknowledge in Sherlock and Atterbury the highest powers of the mind, and the most unaffected eloquence from the study of such models in our own time we have borne testimony to the success of Horsley; and some are still living of whom we may boast as the followers of such masters. If we have been led into these remarks by the volume before us, it is because we are of opinion that it is composed in a vitiated style, with attractions to induce, and with inducements from extraordinary success to recommend the same path of perishable renown; we are farther apprehensive of the same captivating eloquence with other views and on other subjects, when Christian benevolence may be the least distinguished of an author's principles, and the passions of a generous people be inflamed to enthusiasm with a far different purpose than the establishment of a national charity.

From the memoir which is prefixed to this volume, and which is as scanty in matter as overloaded in expression, we learn that the late Dean Kirwan was born in 1754, became a convert from the Roman Catholic to the Established Church in 1787, and was successively preferred by the Archbishop of Dublin to the prebend of Howth in 1788, and to the parish of St. Nicholas Without in 1789, of which the joint income amounted to £400 a year, and, lastly by Lord Cornwallis, in 1800, to the Deanery of Killala, worth about the same sum; at which time he resigned the prebend of Howth. He was married in 1798, and died in 1805, leaving (besides sons) a widow and two daughters without any adequate maintenance. A pension of £300 a year was granted to the mother, with a reversion to the daughters; but for the sons no provision has been made beyond the profits of the present volume.

Such a conversion from a faith so bigotted to its tenets, and at an age when the mind is in full possession of its faculties, necessarily forces itself on our attention. To rise superior to those prejudices which have been engrafted on our infancy, and nurtured by subsequent education, discovers a most dispassionate exercise of reason; but to break from the grasp of a superstition of which the reverential observance has been associated with our eternal salvation, must belong to the intrepidity of truth: farther, to renounce a profession, and, as a consequence, to estrange from us the endearments of relative affection, is a sacrifice which nature can make only to princi~