to great fluctuation, occasional check, and possible destruction; and at all events, it has a tendency to produce a greater popula tion than it can permanently support in comfort or prosperity. The average rate of wages, for the last forty years, has been insufficient to maintain a labourer with a tolerably large family ;and yet such have been the occasional fluctuations, and such the sanguine calculations of persons incapable of taking a comprehensive view of the whole, that the manufacturing population has been prodigiously increased in the same period. It is the interest of the manufacturer to keep this population in excess, as the only sure means of keeping wages low; and wherever the means of subsistence are uncertain, and liable to variation, it seems to be the general law of our nature, that the population should be adapted to the highest, and not to the average rate of supply. In India, where a dry season used to produce a failure of the crop once in every ten or twelve years, the population was always up to the measure of the greatest abundance; and in manufacturing countries, the miscalculation is still more sanguine and erroneous. Such countries, therefore, are always overpeopled; and it seems to be the necessary effect of increasing talent and refinement, to convert all countries into this denomination. China, the oldest manufacturing nation in the world, and by far the greatest that ever existed with the use of little machinery, has always suffered from a redundant population, and has always kept the largest part of its inhabitants in a state of the greatest poverty. The effect, then, which is produced on the lower orders of society, by that increase of industry and refinement, and that multiplication of conveniences which are commonly looked upon as the surest tests of increasing prosperity, is to convert the peasants into manufacturers, and the manufacturers into paupers ; while the chance of their ever emerging from this condition becomes constantly less, the more complete and mature the system is which had originally produced it. When manufactures are long established, and thoroughly understood, it will always be found, that persons possessed of a large capital, can carry them on upon lower profits than persons of any other description; and the natural tendency of this system, therefore, is to throw the whole business into the hands of great capitalists: and thus not only to render it next to impossible for a common workman to advance himself into the condition of a master, but to drive from the competition the greater part of those moderate dealers, by whose prosperity alone the general happiness of the nation can be promoted. The state of the operative manufacturers, therefore, seems every day more hopelessly stationary; and that great body of the people, it appears to us, is likely to grow into a fixed and degraded caste, out of which no person can hope to escape, who has once been enrolled among its members. They cannot look up to the rank of master manufacturers; because, without capital, it will every day be more impossible to engage in that occupation-and back they cannot go to the labours of agriculture, because there is no demand for their services. The improved system of farming, furnishes an increased produce with many fewer hands than were formerly employed in procuring a much smaller return; and besides all this, the lower population has actually increased to a far greater amount than ever was at any time employed in the cultivation of the ground. To remedy all these evils, which are likely, as we conceive, to be aggravated, rather than relieved, by the general progress of refinement and intelligence we have little to look to but the beneficial effects of this increasing intelligence upon the lower orders themselves-and we are far from undervaluing this influence. By the universal adoption of a good system of education, habits of foresight, and self control, and rigid economy, may in time no doubt be pretty generally introduced, instead of the improvidence and profligacy which too commonly characterize the larger assemblages of our manufacturing population; and if these lead, as they are likely to do, to the general institution of friendly societies among the workmen, a great palliative will have been provided for the disadvantages of a situation, which must always be considered as one of the least fortunate which providence has assigned to any of the human race. There is no end, however, we find, to these speculations; and we must here close our remarks on perfectibility, without touching upon the political changes which are likely to be produced by a long course of progressive refinements and scientific improvement -though we are afraid that an enlightened anticipation would not be much more cheering in this view, than in any of those we have hitherto considered. Luxury and refinement have a tendency undoubtedly to make men sensual and selfish; and in that state, increased talent and intelligence is apt only to render them more mercenary and servile. Among the prejudices which this kind of philosophy roots out, that of patriotism is among the first to be surmounted;-and then a dangerous opposition to power, and a sacrifice of interest to affection, speedily come to be considered as romantic. Arts are discovered to palliate the encroachments of arbitrary power; and a luxurious, patronizing, and vitious monarchy, is firmly established amidst the adulations of a corrupt nation. 200 Ballad Romances, and other Poems. Porter. By Miss Anna Maria [From the Scotish Review.] THE human mind is not more remarkable for minute variations of capacity, than for the distinctness with which its minutest shades are marked out to the eye of the observer. Oratory and poetry, for example, might appear to be kindred attainments, yet Sheridan is, perhaps, the only author in modern times who is entitled to rank with the eminent professors of both. The greatest orators have been miserable poets, and almost all poets are miserable orators. In like manner, the man who is the soul of the social circle, often appears, when speaking from paper, the very paragon of gravity; and he whose pages teem with wit and humour, is not unfrequently the most vacant and inane in conversation. To point out a distinction still more nice, and almost unaccountable, Akenside is an instance that a poet may be admirably skilled in didactic strains, and yet scarcely exhibit a single spark of the true spirit of poetry in compositions of a lyrical nature. We have been led to these reflections by the perusal of the volume before us-a volume so much inferior to the other writings of the ingenious author, that had it been published anonymously, no one, we are positive, would have ever thought of ascribing it to the pen of Miss Maria Porter. With the name and merits of this ornament of her sex, we presume our readers are sufficiently familiar to save us the trouble of a formal introduction-a circumstance of which we are rather glad, as it would not have been easy, upon such a subject, to do justice to our own feelings, or duly apprize them of the value of their new acquaintance. We have just remarked some very natural affinities of talent, and it may, perhaps, with greater justice be added, that the talent of a romance writer, and that of a poet, seem most intimately allied. Romances and poems (especially such poems as Miss Porter's) are almost exclusively works of imagination; and it appears to be of no importance whether the authors of such compositions cut and square their effusions into lines and verses, or arrange them into periods and paragraphs. Versification is the mechanical part of the tuneful art, and may be acquired by any person of moderate invention. Nor is it for any great deficiency in this respect that we are disposed to quarrel with this recreant romancer. It is not the harshness of her numbers, but the poverty of her ideas, and far-fetched allegorical expression of them, which imparts a languor to her pages, and evinces that she is no favourite of the nine. She has brought into this most delightful of literary recreations all the extravagance, exaggeration, and incongruity of the romance, without almost any of that delicacy of sentiment, and happiness of expression, or that apposite illustration and bewitching simplicity, which impart a charm to the genuine productions of the muse. Without pretending to decide whether Miss Porter mistakes the true bent of her genius, we must say she has fallen, in the present instance, into the common misfortune of those who do. It must at the same time be allowed that it was an ambition natural and excusable enough in a lady, who has deservedly attained so much fame in the department of romance, to seek also distinction in the poetical. Mrs. Opie has favoured the world with beautiful tales both in prose and verse; and Miss P. having accomplished the one, probably saw no difficulty in performing the other. There is at least pleasure, if no profit, in variety; and one tires, it would seem, of treading the same dull round even in the field of literary fame. The volume whose contents we are now about to examine, is made up of five "Ballad Romances ;" "Youth," an allegorical poem of forty-three stanzas, in the measure of Spenser, "Yarico to Inkle," an epistle, and about thirty short occasional pieces. To give a general account of these poems is a task of some difficulty; for they have nothing strikingly characteristic, save romantic and allegorical extravagance. It would be miraculous did not a writer of Miss Porter's character and experience sometimes rise above mediocrity, but she falls at the same time so often below it, that if the mean degree of her merit be taken, it will be found to fall greatly below the medium. Her praise must therefore be entirely negative; many of her pieces contain pretty couplets and good stanzas; but the most that can be said of them as a whole is, that they are not absolutely bad. Of the "Ballad Romances," which occupy the first place in the volume, it is almost impossible to give the reader any adequate idea by partial extracts, and our limits prevent us from transcribing any of them at length. The stories of two or three of them are more unnatural and extravagant than any thing we ever remember to have seen; and though, in the rest, there may be more nature, there is, if possible, still less interest. In one the narrative is intentionally broken, and those convenient apologists called asterisks, shining like stars in the dark, significantly remind us that something is wanting. Affectation is the source of a thousand corruptions. A fragment was originally given when the whole could not be found; but writers have now arisen, who, wishing to make a merit of a defect, feign a want in the connexion of their narratives, which really proceeds from the poverty and barrenness of their own imaginations. As we cannot insert any of the ballads themselves, that the reader may have an opportunity of judging of the justice of our strictures, we shall give an outline of the incidents of one or two of them in the ungarnished form of prose. But if any of our readers have a tremulous respect for apparitions, we must previously warn them against consulting either the original or version, as supernatural agency is the invisible pivot upon which all the tales are made to turn. We shall commence with the "Maid of Erin," as it affords, upon the whole, the best specimen of Miss Porter's poetry, notwithstanding the ridiculous extravagance of the story. Oscar, the hero of this piece, a highland chieftain-as we learn at the end instead of the beginning-when perambulating his mountains one evening, felt "his form by unseen arms embraced," and, borne with the speed of lightning, "above the dreadful sea," is at last, to his terror and astonishment, let down in a remote corner of an island, "plac'd far amid the melancholy main." Scarcely has he landed from Porter's patent balloon, if we may so express ourselves, than "a spirit, gigantic as the tallest oak," after addressing him in the following dreadful words, "Behold the pow'rful fiend In beauty's pomp who woo'd thee late, Thus she repays thy scornful hate," extends "her blackening wings," and discharges full in his face such a blast of sulphureous vapour, as would inevitably have enabled his better part to vanish without the assistance of the said balloon, did not the "Maid of Erin," at this critical juncture, come to counteract the influence of the demon. As we are not informed how this valuable virgin became possessed of the virtue of breaking spells, we must either suppose her breath to have been so amazingly pure and salubrious that it neutralized the sulphuric gas that was suffocating poor Oscar, or her beauty so transcendent that the angel of darkness, mistaking her for an angel of light, found it necessary to leave her victim, and wing her way to her caverned home. Then we are told that, at the sound of Roscrana's voice -"the hov'ring soul Back to its former mansion came; Where angels err, it is surely pardonable for mortals to step aside. |