horror? Yet if we are convinced that we have not in that time been advancing, we may assure ourselves we have been growing worse; for, as before observed, there is nothing upon earth stationary; and though our propensity to self-flattery may lead us to rest in supposing the tenor of our lives in both these years to be very much the same, what appears so to us is mere selfdeception. If such a thing were possible, and that we could the last year, without adding or diminishing, repeat every thought and action of the former, still the last would be worst, because every added year is in itself a benefit calling for additional gratitude, bringing new mercies to excite our thankfulness, new warnings to deter from vice or folly, and new incitements to amendment of life. Besides the awful consideration, that of the "few and evil" years allowed us here to prepare for a higher state of existence, the departure of another has brought us so much nearer the solemn account we have to render for the application of our time and talents. Let us then make this revolution of the season actually "hallowed and gracious." Let us then, with the poet of Night, ask of the Source of all true Wisdom, to Teach our best reason, reason, our best will Teach rectitude, and fix our firm resolve, Wisdom to wed and pay her long arrear. Those who treasure up in their hearts the memory of departed friends, and can say from experience, "Sweet are the uses of adversity," will find a tender solemnity, not unpleasant to the subdued mind, in these eras, that While they time elapsed recall From pensive sorrow strain the gall, and soothe the mind by a kind of vi sionary intercourse with the inhabi tants of a higher sphere. Those whom adversity of a different kind has sunk from their original station in society, to whom all have become estranged, but those who sought them not from worldly motives, and who see only a barren waste between them and the grave here, if such, I say, have cherished that better hope which faileth not, the return of this anniversary cheers them with a nearer approach to that land where they have long since laid up their treasure, It is to the wealthy, the prosper ous, and the gay, that this period should carry most apprehension. Others have tasted of the bitter cup which is in perpetual circulation, and many, it is to be hoped, with devout acquiescence in the divine inflictions. But those who are strangers to sor row have, of all others, most reason to dread it, and should, of all others, be most earnest in their petitions, to be enabled to bear it as they ought, for in one shape or other it must and will come, and this, for ought they know, may be the appointed year. The vain and hopeless petition that should solicit an exemption from this common lot, would only prove that prosperity had done its worst, by hardening the heart, and leading an immortal soul to centre its hopes and wishes amongst things transient and perishing. In vain do they flatter themselves that to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. Such persons ought to cherish a salutary apprehension of the vicissitudes of life, that they may not be inebriated by its enjoyment. Thus, even in cases the most unlikely, is the balance held between those who innocently suffer, and those who, to our short-sighted view, seem born to enjoy. The darkest gloom of the former is cheered by hope. They have already bent under not in vain, and to them change may the chastening hand which chastens bring something better, while, to the latter, change for the better is beyondexpectation, and the most likely change, that for the worse, must be terrible indeed, and, without heart-searching reflection, and a due preparation of mind, intolerable. G. KENILWORTH, A ROMANCE; BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY, &C. WE congratulate our readers that it is in our power to offer them, as our first gift for the new year, a rapid view of the splendid romance which has just added fresh laurels to the wreath of the greatest genius, undoubtedly, of the age. It is, too, our proudest boast that this unrivalled inventor is our own; and it has been with a deep sentiment of patriotic gratitude that we have long followed him through those beau tiful and pathetic narratives, in which he has recalled to us all the noblest feelings of our country, shed a glory over its most homely scenes and most rustic characters, and made "all Eu horror? Yet if we are convinced that we have not in that time been advancing, we may assure ourselves we have been growing worse; for, as before observed, there is nothing upon earth stationary; and though our propensity to self-flattery may lead us to rest in supposing the tenor of our lives in both these years to be very much the same, what appcars so to us is mere selfdeception. If such a thing were possible, and that we could the last year, without adding or diminishing, repeat every thought and action of the former, still the last would be worst, because every added year is in itself a benefit calling for additional gratitude, bringing new mercies to excite our thankfulness, new warnings to deter from vice or folly, and new incitements to amendment of life. Besides the awful consideration, that of the "few and evil" years allowed us here to prepare for a higher state of exist. ence, the departure of another has brought us so much nearer the solemn account we have to render for the application of our time and talents. Let us then make this revolution of the season actually "hallowed and gracious." Let us then, with the poet of Night, ask of the Source of all true Wisdom, to Teach our best reason, reason, our best will Teach rectitude, and fix our firm resolve, Wisdom to wed and pay her long arrear. Those who treasure up in their hearts the memory of departed friends, and can say from experience, "Sweet are the uses of adversity," will find a tender solemnity, not unpleasant to the subdued mind, in these eras, that While they time elapsed recall From pensive sorrow strain the gall, and soothe the mind by a kind of visionary intercourse with the inhabi tants of a higher sphere. Those whom adversity of a different kind has sunk from their original station in society, to whom all have become estranged, but those who sought them not from worldly motives, and who see only a barren waste between them and the grave here, if such, I say, have cherished that better hope which faileth not, the return of this anniversary cheers them with a nearer approach to that land where they have long since laid up their treasure, It is to the wealthy, the prosper ous, and the gay, that this period should carry most apprehension. Others have tasted of the bitter cup which is in perpetual circulation, and many, it is to be hoped, with devout acquiescence in the divine inflictions. But those who are strangers to sorrow have, of all others, most reason to dread it, and should, of all others, be most earnest in their petitions, to be enabled to bear it as they ought, for in one shape or other it must and will come, and this, for ought they know, may be the appointed year. The vain and hopeless petition that should solicit an exemption from this common lot, would only prove that prosperity had done its worst, by hardening the heart, and leading an immortal soul to centre its hopes and wishes amongst things transient and perishing. In vain do they flatter themselves that to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant, Such persons ought to cherish a salutary apprehension of the vicissitudes of life, that they may not be inebriated by its enjoyment. Thus, even in cases the most unlikely, is the balance held between those who innocently suffer, and those who, to our short-sighted view, seem born to enjoy. The darkest gloom of the former is cheered by hope. They have already bent under not in vain, and to them change may the chastening hand which chastens bring something better, while, to the latter, change for the better is beyondexpectation, and the most likely change, that for the worse, must be terrible indeed, and, without heart-searching reflection, and a due preparation of mind, intolerable. G. KENILWORTH, A ROMANCE; BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY, &c. WE congratulate our readers that it is in our power to offer them, as our first gift for the new year, a rapid view of the splendid romance which has just added fresh laurels to the wreath of the greatest genius, undoubtedly, of the age. It is, too, our proudest boast that this unrivalled inventor is our own; and it has been with a deep sentiment of patriotic gratitude that we have long followed him through those beau tiful and pathetic narratives, in which he has recalled to us all the noblest feelings of our country, shed a glory over its most homely scenes and most rustic characters, and made “all Eu rope ring from side to side" with the name of our poor but ever honoured Scotland. He has already paid to the full all the debt to his country which her most devoted children could require, and we do not now repine that he is spreading his sails in a wider and a more adventurous sea;we permit him, at last, to say, in the words, though not in the temper, of Childe Harold, "My native land, good night;" and we speed him on his way, in the cheering strain of the Roman poet, I decus, I nostrum. On the appearance of Ivanhoe, we were, indeed, sensible that the field which our great romancer had hitherto so delightfully trode was too confined for the extent of his genius; we then saw him break into the circle of Shakespeare, and rise up at once the only worthy successor of that most observant Poet of Nature and of Man. We hailed him on his entrance into it, nor did we wish to recal him to our rocks and glens, however sweet and refreshing the wild flowers had been which he had so profusely scattered over them. He was no longer to be the poet of Scotland merely, but of England and of the World. The grand picture of English manners and English history was now unrolled before him, and his magical eye had at one glance caught the living tints, to transfuse them upon his own canvas. We felt that he was henceforth to be carried away from the rude embraces of his first love; he had tasted blood, like the tiger, and he could now only roam for prey in the unbounded forest. Like many a good Scotchman, he became Anglified in England; yet we will adopt the old pun of Pope Gregory, since transferred by Manso to Milton, rather Angelus than Anglus. His back, however, was now turned upon us, and we were not again very anxious for his restoration;-he has since visited us, indeed, but it has been somewhat coldly and constrainedly. He first treated us like children with a fairy tale, and ended by almost making, in some instances, a farcical caricature of the most beautiful and romantic female personage in our history, at whose name a thou sand claymores are yet ready to leap from their scabbards. No, let him remain with her English rival-he has played his part infinitely better in the splendid court of Elizabeth. A congenial Spirit with the author of these romances seemed, in the same way, though by no means with a like reversion of glory, to lose amid English scenery and manners his Scottish mantle. The poet of Floddenfield and of Loch Katrine never recovered his visit to Rokeby. When he afterwards joined the battle of Bannockburn, he evidently forgot on which side he was fighting. But it is with perfect confidence we conclude the line which we before left unfinished, and say to our present illustrious son, who has already quite distanced Sir Walter Scott -as we bid him farewell in this his new and glorious career-" melioribus utere fatis." He has succeeded fairly to the English crown, and, like our Sixth James, may now quit Holyrood for Windsor. We think Kenilworth, on the whole, an improvement upon Ivanhoe. There is less variety, perhaps, less opposition and contrast of manners and character,-but there is a more chastened tone-an infinitely more interesting and better conducted story,-and there is the court of Elizabeth, the most gorgeous picture upon which the imagination can fix, either in history or romance. This wonderful author is quite at home in that court. He moves through it like a man who had conversed all his life with its BurIeighs, its Raleighs, its Shakespeares, and its Spencers. He seems to have watched every attitude and glance of the maiden Queen, with the same accurate eye, as if all his hopes and prospects had hung upon her favour, and as if the form which starts into life again at one wave of his wand, had not been mouldering for centuries in the dust, and all the living manners which surrounded her had not alike vanished from the book of existence. But this is the singular talent of this author, which he possesses in greater perfection certainly than any writer of the present day, and perhaps beyond any of former periods. Except in his Roman characters, Shakespeare does not any where exhibit an equal faculty of resurrection, if we may so term it. In English history, through all its periods, he commonly gives us the manners merely of his own times; and his Roman plebeians, (whatever may be said of his Brutuses and Coriolanuses,) do not materially differ from his English clowns. But here we find ourselves at once among a set of people, to all whose habits of life, and ways of thinking, we are strangers; and yet we scarcely read two pages about them, when we become quite familiar with them, sit down at the same board with them, get jolly with them over their six-hooped stoups, and enter into all their wildest jokes, and troll with them their catches and "morsels of melody." This great power is, perhaps, no where better shown, than in the two or three first chapters of this work, in which the scene is laid in a village Inn near Oxford, with all the accompaniments of the jolly landlord Giles Gosling, Master Goldthred the silk mercer from Abingdon, and the bravo, Mike Lambourne, newly arrived from the wars, and ready to cut throats for good pay at home. In the language of these personages, we do not, indeed, perhaps find the same evident truth of expression so immediately felt in the Scotch characters of this author. They are rather pictures of a picture, than of an original; but there is such vivacity in the colouring, that in a very short time it has the effect of nature upon our eye, and even the overdoing has some influence in concentrating our attention, and forc ing our sympathy. We cannot attempt to give any complete sketch of this story-a skeleton of that sort is always tedious, both to the writer and the readersuffice it to say, that from the tavern at Cumnor, and the rude and boisterous mirth of its inmates, we rise through a very beautiful gradation of subject and of interest, first into the presence of a most enchanting female, the secreted inhabitant of an old manorhouse in the neighbourhood, the wife, in truth, of the great Lord Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, though quite unknown to the world in that character-then into the familiar acquaintance of that eminent courtier, and others his associates and rivals and lastly, into the daily intercourse with Majesty itself, amidst the pomp of royal festivities, and the agitations of royal passions. The grand figure in the picture is the Queen, yet there is a deep interest attached to the story of her humble rival,-quite a new character in fictitious history-most womanish and passionate in love The most fascinating in her girlish gaiety and rusticity-but clear and open as truth itself, and with a power and ele vation of spirit, which it only required great occasions to call forth. tragic interest likewise of this story, heart-rending throughout, and ending at last in the most appalling horror, completely counterbalances the his torical splendour which encircles Elizabeth and her courtiers, and we pass from the private to the public scenes, and back again, without feeling any diminution of interest in either, or without any incongruity of sentiment. The character of Amy's virtues and beauty is fully a match for all the glories of royalty, and when we weep or shudder over her death, we should find it a profanation to cast a backward eye upon the festivities of Kenilworth. There is none of our readers, to whom the whole of this tale will not soon be familiar; we shall at present, we are sure, gratify them, rather by some selections of quotation, than by any farther remark or explanation. The following is the picture of the beautiful lady, and the gilded cage in which she was inclosed, conceived and given almost in the fairy style of oriental colouring. There were four apartments splendidly fitted up for her in an old ruinous mansion, but we mnst be satisfied with the description of the sleeping chamber. "The sleeping chamber belonging to this splendid suite of apartments, was decorated in a taste less showy, but not less rich, than had been displayed in the others. Two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil, diffused at once a delicious odour and a trembling twilight-seeming shimmer through the quiet apartment. It was carpeted so thick, that the heaviest step could not have been heard, and the bed, richly heaped with down, was spread with an ample coverlet of silk and gold; from under which peeped forth cambric sheets, and blankets as white as the lambs which yielded the fleece that made them. The cur tains were of blue velvet, lined with crimson silk, deeply festooned with gold, and embroidered with the loves of Cupid and netian mirror, in a frame of silver fillagree, Psyche. On the toilet was a beautiful Veand beside it stood a gold posset-dish to contain the night-draught. A pair of pistols and a dagger, mounted with gold, were displayed near the head of the bed, being the arms for the night, which were presented to honoured guests, rather, it may be supposed, in the way of ceremony, than his Brutuses and Coriolanuses,) do not materially differ from his English clowns. But here we find ourselves at once among a set of people, to all whose habits of life, and ways of thinking, we are strangers; and yet we scarcely read two pages about them, when we become quite familiar with them, sit down at the same board with them, get jolly with them over their six-hooped stoups, and enter into all their wildest jokes, and troll with them their catches and "morsels of melody." This great power is, perhaps, no where better shown, than in the two or three first chapters of this work, in which the scene is laid in a village Inn near Oxford, with all the accompaniments of the jolly landlord Giles Gosling, Master Goldthred the silk mercer from Abingdon, and the bravo, Mike Lambourne, newly arrived from the wars, and ready to cut throats for good pay at home. In the language of these personages, we do not, indeed, perhaps find the same evident truth of expression so immediately felt in the Scotch characters of this author. They are rather pictures of a picture, than of an original; but there is such vivacity in the colouring, that in a very short time it has the effect of nature upon our eye, and even the overdoing has some influence in concentrating our attention, and forcing our sympathy. We cannot attempt to give any complete sketch of this story-a skeleton of that sort is always tedious, both to the writer and the readersuffice it to say, that from the tavern at Cumnor, and the rude and boisterous mirth of its inmates, we rise through a very beautiful gradation of subject and of interest, first into the presence of a most enchanting female, the secreted inhabitant of an old manor. house in the neighbourhood, the wife, in truth, of the great Lord Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, though quite unknown to the world in that character-then into the familiar acquaintance of that eminent courtier, and others his associates and rivals and lastly, into the daily intercourse with Majesty itself, amidst the pomp of royal festivities, and the agitations of royal passions. The grand figure in the picture is the Queen, yet there is a deep interest attached to the story of her humble rival,-quite a new character in fictitious history-most womanish and passionate in love most fascinating in her girlish gaiety and rusticity-but clear and open as truth itself, and with a power and elevation of spirit, which it only required great occasions to call forth. The tragic interest likewise of this story, heart-rending throughout, and ending at last in the most appalling horror, completely counterbalances the his torical splendour which encircles Elizabeth and her courtiers, and we pass from the private to the public scenes, and back again, without feeling any diminution of interest in either, or without any incongruity of sentiment. The character of Amy's virtues and beauty is fully a match for all the glories of royalty, and when we weep or shudder over her death, we should find it a profanation to cast a backward eye upon the festivities of Kenilworth. There is none of our readers, to whom the whole of this tale will not soon be familiar; we shall at present, we are sure, gratify them, rather by some selections of quotation, than by any farther remark or expla nation. The following is the picture of the beautiful lady, and the gilded cage in which she was inclosed, conceived and given almost in the fairy style of oriental colouring. There were four apartments splendidly fitted up for her in an old ruinous mansion, but we mnst be satisfied with the description of the sleeping chamber. "The sleeping chamber belonging to this splendid suite of apartments, was decorated in a taste less showy, but not less rich, than had been displayed in the others. Two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil, diffused at once a delicious odour and a trembling twilight-seeming shimmer peted so thick, that the heaviest step could through the quiet apartment. It was carnot have been heard, and the bed, richly heaped with down, was spread with an ample coverlet of silk and gold; from under which peeped forth cambric sheets, and blankets as white as the lambs which yielded the fleece that made them. The curtains were of blue velvet, lined with crimson silk, deeply festooned with gold, and embroidered with the loves of Cupid and Psyche. On the toilet was a beautiful Veand beside it stood a gold posset-dish to netian mirror, in a frame of silver fillagree, contain the night-draught. A pair of pistols and a dagger, mounted with gold, were displayed near the head of the bed, being the arms for the night, which were presented to honoured guests, rather, it may be supposed, in the way of ceremony, than |