actually fascinate and delight us in them- friend in the favour of the honest Udaller. selves,just as the draperies and still-life in The charm of the book is in the picture of a grand historical picture often divide our ad- his family. Nothing can be more beautiful miration with the pathetic effect of the story than the description of the two sisters, and told by the principal figures. The catastro- the gentle and innocent affection that conphe of the unfortunate Amy herself is too tinues to unite them, even after love has come Fickening and full of pity to be endured; and to divide their interests and wishes. The visit we shrink from the recollection of it, as we paid them by Norna, and the tale she tells would from that of a recent calamity of our them at midnight, lead to a fine display of own. The part of Tressilian is unfortunate on the perfect purity of their young hearts, and the whole, though it contains touches of in- the native gentleness and dignity of their terest and beauty. The sketch of young Ra- character. There is, perhaps, still more geleigh is splendid, and in excellent keeping nius in the development and full exhibition of with every thing beside it. More, we think, their father's character; who is first introduced might have been made of the desolate age to us as little else than a jovial, thoughtless, and broken-hearted anguish of Sir Hugh Rob- hospitable housekeeper, but gradually dissart; though there are one or two little traits closes the most captivating traits, not only of of his paternal love and crushed affection, kindness and courage, but of substantial genethat are inimitably sweet and pathetic, and rosity and delicacy of feeling, without ever which might have lost their effect, perhaps, departing, for an instant, from the frank homeif the scene had been extended. We do not liness of his habitual demeanour. Norna is a care much about the goblin dwarf, nor the host, new incarnation of Meg Merrilees, and palpanor the mercer, nor any of the other charac-bly the same in the spirit. Less degraded in ters. They are all too fantastical and affected. They seem copied rather from the quaintness of old plays, than the reality of past and present nature; and serve better to show what manner of personages were to be met with in the Masks and Pageants of the age, than what were actually to be found in the living population of the land. her habits and associates, and less lofty and pathetic in her denunciations, she reconciles fewer contradictions, and is, on the whole, inferior perhaps to her prototype; but is far above the rank of a mere imitated or borrowed character. The Udaller's visit to her dwelling on the Fitful-head is admirably managed, and highly characteristic of both parties. Of the humorous characters, Yellowlees is the best. Few things, indeed, are better than the description of his equestrian progression to the feast of the Udaller. Claud Halcro is too fantastical; and peculiarly out of place, we should think, in such a region. A man who talks in quotations from common plays, and proses eternally about glorious John Dryden, luckily is not often to be met with anywhere, but least of all in the Orkney Islands. Bunce is liable to the same objection,-though there are parts of his character, as well as that of Fletcher and the rest of the crew, given with infinite spirit and effect. The denouement of the story is strained and improbable, and the conclusion rather unsatisfactory: But the work, on the whole, opens up a new world to our curiosity, and affords another proof of the extraordinary pliability, as well as vigour, of the author's genius. "The Pirates" is a bold attempt to furnish out a long and eventful story, from a very narrow circle of society, and a scene so circumscribed as scarcely to admit of any great scope or variety of action; and its failure, in so far as it may be thought to have failed, should, in fairness, be ascribed chiefly to this scantiness and defect of the materials. The author, accordingly, has been obliged to borrow pretty argely from other regions. The character and story of Mertoun (which is at once common-place and extravagant)-that of the Pirate himself, and that of Halcro the poet, have no connection with the localities of Shetland, or the peculiarities of an insular life. Mr. Yellowlees, though he gives occasion to some strong contrasts, is in the same situation. The great blemish, however, of the work, is the inconsistency in Cleveland's character, or rather the way in which he disappoints us, by turning out so much better We come now to the work which has althan we had expected-and yet substantially forded us a pretext for this long retrospection, so ill. So great, indeed, is this disappoint- and which we have approached, as befitteth ment, and so strong the grounds of it, that we a royal presence, through this long vista of cannot help suspecting that the author him- preparatory splendour. Considering that it self must have altered his design in the course has now been three months in the hands of of the work; and, finding himself at a loss the public-and must be about as well known how to make either a demon or a hero of the to most of our readers as the older works to personage whom he had introduced with a which we have just alluded-we do not very view to one or other of these characters, be- well see why we should not deal with it as ook himself to the expedient of leaving him summarily as we have done with them; and, in that neutral or mixed state, which, after sparing our dutiful readers the fatigue of toilall, suits the least with his conduct and situa- ing through a detail with which they are altion, or with the effects which he is supposed ready familiar, content ourselves with marking to produce. All that we see of him is a dar- our opinion of it in the same general and ing, underbred, forward, heartless fellow-comprehensive manner that we have ventured very unlikely, we should suppose, to capti- to adopt as to those earlier productions. This vate the affections of the high-minded, ro- accordingly is the course which, in the main, mantic Minna, or even to supplant an old we propose to follow; though, for the sake of our distant readers, as well as to give more force and direct application to our general remarks, we must somewhat enlarge the scale of our critical notice. This work, though dealing abundantly in invention, is, in substance, like Old Mortality and Kenilworth, of an historical character, and may be correctly represented as an attempt to describe and illustrate, by examples, the manners of the court, and generally speaking, of the age, of James I. of England. And this, on the whole, is the most favourable aspect under which it can be considered; for, while it certainly presents us with a very brilliant, and, we believe, a very faithful sketch of the manners and habits of the time, we cannot say that it either embodies them in a very interesting story, or supplies us with any rich variety of particular characters. Except King James himself, and Richie Moniplies, there is but little individuality in the personages represented. We should perhaps add Master George Heriot; except that he is too staid and prudent a person to engage very much of our interest. The story is of a very simple structure, and may soon be told. Lord Glenvarloch, a young Scottish nobleman, whose fortunes had been ruined by his father's profusion, and chiefly by large loans to the Crown, comes to London about the middle of James' reign, to try what part of this debt may be recovered from the justice of his now opulent sovereign. From want of patronage and experience, he is unsuccessful in his first application; and is about to withdraw in despair, when his serving man, Richard Moniplies, falling accidentally in the way of George Heriot, the favourite jeweller and occasional banker of the King, that benevolent person (to whom, it may not be known to our Southern readers, Edinburgh is indebted for the most flourishing and best conducted of her founded schools or charities) is pleased to take an interest in his affairs, and not only represents his case in a favourable way to the Sovereign, but is the means of introducing him to another nobleman, with whose son, Lord Dalgarno, he speedily forms a rather inauspicious intimacy. By this youth he is initiated into all the gaieties of the town; of which, as well of the manners and bearing of the men of fashion of the time, a very lively picture is drawn. Among other things, he is encouraged to try his fortune at play; but, being poor and prudent, he plays but for small sums, and, rather unhandsomely we must own, makes it a practice to come away after a moderate winning. On this account he is slighted by Lord Dalgarno and his more adventurous associates; and, having learned that they talked contemptuously of him, and that Lord D. had prejudiced the King and the Prince against him, he challenges him for his perfidy in the Park, and actually draws on him, in the precincts of the royal abode. This was, in those days, a very serious offence; and, to avoid its immediate consequences, he is advised to take refuge in Whitefriars, then known by the cant name of Alsatia, and understood to possess the privileges of a sanctuary against ordinary ar rests. A propos of this retirement, we hava a very striking and animated picture of the bullies and bankrupts, and swindlers and petty felons by whom this city of refuge was chiefly inhabited-and among whom the young Lord has the good luck to witness a murder, committed on the person of his miserly host. He then bethinks himself of repairing to Green wich, where the court was, throwing himself upon the clemency of the King, and insisung on being confronted with his accusers; but happening unfortunately to meet with his Majesty in a retired part of the Park to which he had pursued the stag, ahead of all his attendants, his sudden appearance so startles and alarms that pacific monarch, that he ac cuses him of a treasonable design on his lite, and has him committed to the Tower, under that weighty accusation. In the mean time, however, a certain Margaret Ramsey, a daugh ter of the celebrated watchmaker of that name, who had privately fallen in love with him at the table of George Heriot her god-father, and had, ever since, kept watch over his proceed. ings, and aided him in his difficulties by rarious stratagems and suggestions, had repaired to Greenwich in male attire, with the roman tic design of interesting and undeceiving the King with regard to him. By a lucky acci dent, she does obtain an opportunity of making her statement to James; who, in order to put her veracity to the test, sends her, disguised as she was, to Glenvarloch's prison in the Tower, and also looses upon him in the same place, first his faithful Heriot, and afterwards a sarcastic courtier, while he himself plays the eavesdropper to their conversation, from an adjoining apartment constructed for that purpose. The result of this Dionysian experi ment is, to satisfy the sagacious monarch both of the innocence of his young countryman, and the malignity of his accusers; who are speedily brought to shame by his acquittal and admittance to favour. There is an underplot of a more extravagant and less happy structure, about a sad and mysterious lady who inhabits an inaccessible apartment in Heriot's house, and turns out to be the deserted wife of Lord Dalgarno, and a near relation of Lord Glenvarloch. The former is compelled to acknowledge her by the Kurg very much against his will; though he is con siderably comforted when he finds that, by this alliance, he acquires right to an ancient mortgage over the lands of the latter, which nothing but immediate payment of a large sum can prevent him from foreclosing. The is accomplished by the new-raised credit and consequential agency of Richie Moniphes, though not without a scene of pettifogging difficulties. The conclusion is something tra gical and sudden. Lord Dalgarno, travelling to Scotland with the redemption-money in 2 portmanteau, challenges Glenvarloch to meet and fight him, one stage from town; and while he is waiting on the common, is hum self shot dead by one of the Alsatian bullies, who had heard of the precious cargo with which he was making the journey. Hie an tagonist comes up soon enough to revenge num; and, soon after, is married to Miss Ram- | wits as think the commer.iators on Shakesey, for whom the King finds a suitable pedi- speare the greatest men in the world, and here gree, and at whose marriage-dinner he conde- find their little archeological persons made scends to preside; while Richard Moniplies something less inconceivable than usual, they inarries the heroic daughter of the Alsatian cannot fail to offend and disappoint all those miser, and is knighted in a very characteristic who hold that nature alone must be the source manner by the good-natured monarch. of all natural interest. The best things in the book, as we have already intimated, are the pictures of King James and of Richard Moniplies-though my Lord Dalgarno is very lively and witty, and well represents the gallantry and profligacy of the time; while the worthy Earl, his father, is very successfully brought forward as the type of the ruder and more uncorrupted age that preceded. We are sorely tempted to produce a sample of Jin Vin the smart apprentice, and of the mixed childishness and heroism of Margaret Ramsay, and the native loftiness and austere candour of Martha Trapbois, and the humour of Dame Suddlechops, and divers other inferior persons. But the rule we have laid down to ourselves, of abstaining from citations from well-known books, must not be farther broken, in the very hour of its enactment; and we shall therefore conclude, with a few such general remarks on the work before us as we have already bestowed on some other performances, probably no longer so familiar to most of our readers. Finally, we object to this work, as compared with those to which we have alluded, that the interest is more that of situation, and less of character or action, than in any of the former. The hero is not so much an actor or a sufferer, in most of the events represented, as a spectator. With comparatively little to do in the business of the scene, he is merely placed in the front of it, to look on with the reader as it passes. He has an ordinary and slow-moving suit at court-and, a propos of this-all the humours and oddities of the sovereign are exhibited in rich and splendid detail. He is obliged to take refuge for a day in Whitefriars-and all the horrors and atrocities of the Sanctuary are spread out before us through the greater part of a volume. Two or three murders are committed, in which he has no interest, and no other part than that of being accidentally present. His own scanty part, in short, is performed in the vicinity of a number of other separate transactions; and this mere juxtaposition is made an apology for stringing them all up together into one historical romance. We should not care very much if this only destroyed the unity of the piece-but it also sensibly weakens its interest and reduces it from the rank of a comprehensive and engaging narrative, in which every event gives and receives importance from its connection with the rest, to that of a mere collection of sketches, relating to the same period and state of society. The character of the hero, we also think, is more than usually a failure. He is not only a reasonable and discreet person, for whose prosperity we need feel no great apprehen sion, but he is gratuitously debased by certain infirmities of a mean and somewhat sordid description, which suit remarkably ill with the heroic character. His prudent deportment at the gaming table, and his repeated borrowings of money, have been already hinted at; and we may add, that when interrogated by Heriot about the disguised damsal who is found with him in the Tower, he makes up a false story for the occasion, with a cool promptitude of invention, which reminds us more of Joseph Surface and his French milliner, than of the high-minded son of a stern puritanical Baron of Scotland. We do not think, then, that it is a work either of so much genius or so much interest as Kenilworth or Ivanhoe, or the earlier historical novels of the same author-and yet there be readers who will in all likelihood prefer it to those books, and that for the very reasons which induce us to place it beneath them. These reasons are,-First, that the scene is all in London-and that the piece is consequently deprived of the interest and variety derived from the beautiful descriptions of natural scenery, and the still more beautiful combination of its features and expression, with the feelings of the living agents, which abound in those other works; and next, that the characters are more entirely borrowed from the written memorials of the age to which they refer, and less from that eternal and universal nature which is of all ages, than in any of his former works. The plays of that great dramatic era, and the letters and memoirs which have been preserved in such abundance, have made all diligent readers familiar with the peculiarities by which it was marked. But unluckily the taste of the writers of that age was quaint and fantastical; and though their representations necessarily give us a true enough picture of its fashions and follies, it is obviously a distorted and exagge These are the chief faults of the work, and rated picture-and their characters plainly they are not slight ones. Its merits do not both speak and act as no living men ever require to be specified. They embrace all did speak or act. Now, this style of carica- to which we have not specially objected. The ture is too palpably copied in the work before general brilliancy and force of the colouring, us, and, though somewhat softened and re- the ease and spirit of the design, and the laxed by the good sense of the author, is still strong touches of character, are all such as so prevalent, that most of his characters strike we have have long admired in the best works ns rather as whimsical humourists or affected of the author. Besides the King and Richie maskers, than as faithful copies of the actual Moniplies, at whose merits we have already Society of any historical period; and though hinted, it would be unjust to pass over the they may afford great delight to such slender prodigious strength of writing that distin guishes the part of Mrs. Martha Trapbois, and the inimitable scenes, though of a coarse and revolting complexion, with Duke Hildebrod and the miser of Alsatia. The Templar Lowestoffe, and Jin Vin, the aspiring apprentice, are excellent sketches of their kind. So are John Christie and his frail dame. Lord Dalgarno is more questionable. There are passages of extraordinary spirit and ability in this part; but he turns out too atrocious. Sir Mungo Malagrowther wearies us from the beginning, and so does the horologist Ramsay -because they are both exaggerated and unnatural characters. We scarcely see enough of Margaret Ramsay to forgive her all her irregularities, and her high fortune; but a great deal certainly of what we do see is charmingly executed. Dame Ursula is something between the vulgar gossipping of Mrs Quickly in the merry Wives of Windsor, and the atrocities of Mrs. Turner and Lady Suffolk, and it is rather a contamination of Margaret's purity to have used such counsel. We have named them all now, or nearlyand must at length conclude. Indeed, nothing but the fascination of this author's pen, and the difficulty of getting away from him, could have induced us to be so particular in our notices of a story, the details of which will so soon be driven out of our heads by other de tails as interesting-and as little fated to be re membered. There are other two books coming, we hear, in the course of the winter; and by the time there are four or five, that is, in about eighteen months hence, we must hold ourselves prepared to give some account of them. (October, 1823.) 1. Annals of the Parish, or the Chronicle of Dalmailing, during the Ministry of the Rev Micah Balwhidder. Written by Himself. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 400. Blackwood. Edin.: 1819 2. The Ayrshire Legatees, or the Pringle Family. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish,' &c. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 395. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 3. The Provost. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "Ayrshire Legatees," &e 1 vol. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 4. Sir Andrew Wyllie of that Ilk. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 3 vols 12mo. Blackwood. Edin.: 1822. 5. The Steam Boat. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. Black wood. Edinburgh: 1822. 6. The Entail, or the Lairds of Grippy. Andrew Wyllie," &c. 3 vols. 18mo. 7. Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "S By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &6. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823. 8. Valerius, a Roman Story. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 9. Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822 10. Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Merkre 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822. 11. The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. By the Author of "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823. 12. Reginald Dalton. By the Author of "Valerius," and "Adam Blair." 3 vols. 8To Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823.* WE have been sometimes accused, we observe, of partiality to the writers of our own country, and reproached with helping middling Scotch works into notice, while far more meritorious publications in England and Ireland have been treated with neglect. We take leave to say, that there could not possibly be a more unjust accusation: and the list of books which we have prefixed to this articie, affords of itself, we now conceive, the most triumphant refutation of it. Here is a I have retained most of the citations in this article-the books from which they are taken not being so universally known as those of Sir Walter Scott and yet deserving, I think, of being thus recalled to the attention of general readers. The whole seem to have been originally put out anonymously-But the authorship has been long ago acknowledged; so that it is scarcely necessary for me to mention that the first seven in the list are the set of lively and popular works, that have attracted, and very deservedly, a large share of attention in every part of the empire-issuing from the press, successively for four or five years, in this very city, and under our eyes and not hitherto honoured by us with any indication of our being even conscious of ther existence. The causes of this long neglect can now be of no importance to explain. Be sure we are, that our ingenious countrymen have far greater reason to complain of it, then any aliens can have to impute this tardy repe ration to national partiality. The works themselves are evidently to numerous to admit of our now giving more than a very general account of them-ani indeed, some of their authors emulate their great prototype so successfully in the rapid succession of their performances, that, evea if they had not been so far ahead of us at the works of the late Mr. Galt, Valerius and Adam Blair of Mr. Lockhart-and the Lights and Sha- starting, we must soon have been reduced te dows, and Margaret Lindsay, of Professor Wilson. I deal with them as we have done with him, casm, and a more distinct moral, or unity of didactic purpose, in most of his writings, than it would be easy to discover in the playful, ca pricious, and fanciful sketches of his great master. The other two authors have formed themselves more upon the poetical, reflective, and pathetic parts of their common model; and have aimed at emulating such beautiful pictures as that of Mr. Peter Pattison, the blind old women in Old Mortality and the Bride of Lammermoor, the courtship at the Mermaid and only to have noticed their productions when they had grown up into groups and families-as they increased and multiplied in the land. In intimating that we regard them as imitations of the inimitable novels,-which Tre, who never presume to peep under masks, still hold to be by an author unknown,-we have already exhausted more than half their general character. They are inferior certainly (and what is not?) to their great originals. But they are the best copies which have yet been produced of them; and it is not a little creditable to the genius of our be-en's Well, and, generally, his innumerable loved country, that, even in those gay and airy walks of literature from which she had been so long estranged, an opening was no sooner made, by the splendid success of one gifted Scotsman, than many others were found ready to enter upon them, with a spirit of enterprise, and a force of invention, that promised still farther to extend their boundariesand to make these new adventurers, if not formidable rivals, at least not unworthy followers of him by whose example they were roused. There are three authors, it seems, to the works now before us;-so at least the titlepages announce; and it is a rule with us, to give implicit faith to those solemn intimations. We think, indeed, that without the help of that oracle, we should have been at no loss to ascribe all the works which are now claimed by the author of the Annals of the Parish, to one and the same hand; But we should certainly have been inclined to suppose, that there was only one author for all the rest,with the exception, perhaps, of Valerius, which has little resemblance, either in substance or manner, to any of those with which it is now associated. In the arduous task of imitating the great novelist, they have apparently found it necessary to resort to the great principle of division of labour; and yet they have not, among them, been able to equal the work of his single hand! The author of the Parish Annals seems to have sought chiefly to rival the humorous and less dignified parts of his original; by large representations of the character and manners of the middling and lower orders in Scotland, intermingled with traits of sly and sarcastic sagacity, and occasionally softened and relieved by touches of unexpected tenderness and simple pathos, all harmonised by the same truth to nature and fine sense of national peculiarity. In these delineations there is, no doubt, more vulgarity, both of style and conception, and less poetical invention, than in the corresponding passages of the works he aspires to imitate; but, on the other hand, there is more of that peculiar humour which depends on the combination of great naïveté, indolence, and occasional absurdity, with natural good sense, and taste, and kind feelings in the principal characterssuch combinations as Sir Roger de Coverley, the Vicar of Wakefield, and My Uncle Toby, have made familiar to all English readers, but of which we have not hitherto had any good Scottish representative. There is also more systema ic, though very good-humoured, sar and exquisite descriptions of the soft, simple, and sublime scenery of Scotland, as viewed in connection with the character of its better rustic population. Though far better skilled than their associate, in the art of composition, and chargeable, perhaps, with less direct imitation, we cannot but regard them as much less original, and as having performed, upon the whole, a far easier task. They have no great variety of style, and but little of actual invention, and are mannerists in the strongest sense of that term. Though unquestionably pathetic in a very powerful degree, they are pathetic, for the most part, by the common recipes, which enable any one almost, to draw tears, who will condescend to employ them. They are mighty religious too, but apparently on the same principle; and, while their laboured attacks on our sympathies are felt, at last, to be somewhat importunate and puerile, their devotional orthodoxies seem to tend, every now and then, a little towards cant. This is perhaps too harshly said; and is more, we confess, the result of the second reading than the first; and suggested rather by a com parison with their great original, than an im pression of their own independent merits. Compared with that high standard, it is impossible not to feel that they are somewhat wanting in manliness, freedom, and liberality; and, while they enlarge, in a sort of pastoral, emphatic, and melodious style, on the virtues of our cottagers, and the apostolical sanctity of our ministers and elders, the delights of pure affection, and the comforts of the Bible, are lamentably deficient in that bold and free vein of invention, that thorough knowledge of the world, and rectifying spirit of good sense, which redeem all that great author's flights from the imputation either of extravagance or affectation, and give weight, as well as truth, to his most poetical delineations of nature and of passion. But, though they can. not pretend to this rare merit, which has scarcely fallen to the share of more than one since the days of Shakespeare, there is no doubt much beautiful writing, much admirable description, and much both of tender and of lofty feeling, in the volumes of which we are now speaking; and though their infe rior and borrowed lights are dimmed in the broader blaze of the luminary, who now fills our Northern sky with his glory, they still hold their course distinctly within the orb of his at traction, and make a visible part of the splen dour which draws to that quarter of the hea vens the admiration of so many distant eyes |