and his palled taste is captivated by the fresh beauty and hoyden gaiety of the simple-minded daughter of a retired Colonel. There are few extremes that are less likely to meet advantageously than the roué who has seen too much of the world, and the unfashioned girl who knows nothing of society. The sickly fastidiousness of the one is perpetually shocked by the ignorance of the other; and the growth of confidence is unavoidably checked by a state of chronic misunderstanding of the wishes and motives by which each is actuated. Lucy discovers that luxury is not always comfort, nor wealth independence; and the mutual disappointment produced by this ill-assorted marriage, is depicted with much delicacy and truth. Lord Mulgrave bas, in his novel entitled The Contrast,' written a story similar in purport, but inferior in execution. In that story we are reminded of the stage -in 'Milly and Lucy,' of real life. In 'The Contrast' there is too much exaggeration-too great a sacrifice of probability, both in character and incidents, to the great object of effect. In Milly and Lucy,' rusticity has not descended into vulgarity, nor humour degenerated into farce. In this tale, too, the ill-assorted union is rendered more probable than it is in 'The Contrast' the disparity of condition is less glaring-and greater address is both required and displayed in pointing out the unsuccessful results of the matrimonial experiment.

• Ellen Wareham' is incomparably the best of these tales. It is a striking piece of domestic tragedy, told with more than ordinary force-simple in its construction, yet of deep interest, sustained unbroken to the end. The main incident on which it turns is similar to that which forms the groundwork of the tragedy of Isabella,'-the reappearance of a husband supposed dead, when his wife is married to another. Ellen Wareham, the ill-fated wife, is the meek and amiable daughter of a poor, proud, and testy half-pay captain, the interior of whose ménage is described with a pleasant mixture of liveliness and pathos. She is hurried into marriage with an ardent and selfwilled suitor of large fortune, but uncongenial temper, who, after a few years of questionable felicity, often embittered by the jealous vehemence of his affection, goes over to France alone on business, during the short peace of 1802, and becomes a détenu at Verdun. Time rolled on, when one morning Ellen 'read in the papers an official return from the depot at Verdun, ' and among the deaths she saw the name of Charles Cresford, Esq.' her husband.

She expected to receive some parting word, some last injunctions, from one who had been so fervently devoted to her. But nothing of the kind ever reached her. She had no friends among the détenus to whom she could write, and she was obliged to rest contented with no

farther details of the melancholy event, than the report of Colonel Eversham, who had been one of those who followed his remains to the grave, and who had soon afterwards effected his own return to England. He told her that Cresford had made various and desperate attempts to escape, which had all failed, and that his friends attributed his illness to mental agitation, as he did not seem to labour under any particular or positive complaint.

'She heard with some satisfaction, that his remains had been decently deposited in the Protestant burying-ground without the town, and that a considerable number of the most respectable of his fellow-prisoners had attended his funeral.'

After a while she becomes attached to a man far superior to Cresford, and in every respect suited to her, and is married to him at the expiration of her second year of widowhood. Nearly two years of happiness ensue, when one morning, at break'fast, Ellen received a letter from her brother, enclosing one 'directed to her as Mrs Cresford, and addressed to the house ' in London which she had formerly inhabited.'

The post-mark was foreign, and there was something in a letter addressed to her by that name, which struck her as being so strange that she did not open it; but, folding it again in her brother's envelope, she waited till she could retire to peruse its contents. She continued to perform her part of hostess at the breakfast-table, and told herself it must be a begging letter,-from some one, perhaps, who had known Mr Cresford at Verdun.

Still the letter haunted her, and she could scarcely smile at the gay jests which passed round the breakfast-table, or listen to the news and gossip contained in the correspondence of the other members of the society. The outside was so covered with post-marks, and various directions, that she had not remarked in what sort of hand the name was written; and she quietly took it out of the envelope, just to see if it did look like a begging letter. Her former name always made her shudder, she could not tell why; and she had often reproached herself for the feeling as an unkind and ungrateful one towards the memory of him who was gone. It was that strange instinct which had made her so quickly put this letter aside, and it was with an unaccountable trepidation that she again drew it forth to examine the handwriting. She looked and looked again, till her eyes swam. was very like the writing which was only too familiar to her. It was, -it must be his writing, she could not be mistaken; only it was impossible,-quite impossible. Yet it might contain his last behests, which had, from some cause, never been delivered before. She could not open it. She hastily concealed it, and turning deadly pale, she sat, scarcely conscious of what passed around her, till the last person had been helped to his last cup of tea.

It

She longed to know the contents, but there came a sickness over her heart, which made her postpone the dreaded moment. At length the company rose one by one, and straggled towards the windows. She summoned all her might and walked steadily to the door-she sought her own boudoir, and seating herself upon the sofa, she again

VOL. LVII. NO, CXVI.

2 D

unfolded the envelope,-she again gazed on the outside-she had not yet courage to break the seal.

There was something dreadful in thus receiving the dying injunctions of one husband, one who had loved her, too, so passionately,in reading the ebullitions of his vehement affection, when she was the adoring wife of another. She felt as though he were about to speak to her from the grave.

She looked at the post-marks. There were upon it, in various coloured inks, Gratz, Vienna, Dresden, Magdeburg, Hamburgh. No Verdun post-mark! How strange! Wonder, terror, conquered all other feelings-she tore open the seal-it was indeed his own handwriting the date, Gratz, June 1808.-What could it mean? She looked at the end-it was his own, very own name !—it was addressed to her! It began, "My beloved wife, my own Ellen !" She could read no more; the letter dropped from her hand, and she fainted on the floor.'

The unfortunate pair, now no longer husband and wife, instantly resolve to separate till the truth is ascertained beyond possibility of doubt, which is, ere long, entirely removed by the arrival of Cresford in England. He had escaped from Verdun by means which, though difficult, we cannot pronounce to be impossible; or even if they are incompatible with the regulations adopted at Verdun, of which we are not aware, yet as these are not generally known, we think Mrs Sullivan fairly entitled to make such alterations in them as might suit her convenience. A fellow-prisoner administers an opiate to Cresford, and, we suspect, a bribe to the garrison surgeon, (though the authoress forbears to compromise that individual,) and, accordingly, he is pronounced dead, and placed in his coffin. On the evening of the funeral, this dexterous confederate, as Cresford tells us, 'begged to be allowed to weep in private over the bier of his best friend, and took that opportunity of opening the coffin, dressing me in the clothes which he had conveyed into the room, filling the coffin with some billets of wood which had been brought to make up the fire, and of con'cealing me in an adjoining closet till the moment arrived for the procession to move on. I then mixed among the mourners, and by favour of the darkness, escaped detection. As most of the other officers were on parole, there was no diffi'culty made as to the number who passed the gates, and with a 'palpitating heart, I found myself, unfettered by any pledge of 'honour, beyond the walls of Verdun.' Attempting to escape through Germany, he is seized as a spy, and immured five years in an Austrian dungeon, his reason unsettled, and all communication rigidly interdicted, till the interposition of those about him obtains his liberation. He returns half maddened, and he and Ellen meet again. The interview is strikingly told; but we are rather doubtful whether sincerity required that Ellen should have met him with an unequivocal denial of retaining

for him the slightest particle of affection. The avowal, as delivered, would have been almost harsh towards a criminal; and Cresford is not criminal, but unfortunate. This avowal, which, for her heroine's sake, Mrs Sullivan had better have softened, serves in some degree to excuse the subsequent violence of the husband, who causes his wife to be carried before a magistrate, and bound to take her trial at the assizes for bigamy. The trial and preceding details are so related as to excite much interest, in spite of our confident anticipation of a favourable result. Ellen is necessarily found guilty, but recommended to mercy, and the judge, with becoming lenity, orders her to be fined one shilling, and discharged. She has, however, undergone more than enough of mental suffering, and she is, moreover, indissolubly the wife of Cresford. Here, then, is an occasion where that power of life and death, with which novelists are invested, and which, like all irresponsible power, is too frequently abused, may be exercised in a beneficent manner. It is essential for the happiness of two deserving persons that Cresford should die; accordingly, the authoress, without violating probability, and with a promptitude which deserves the acknowledgment of her readers, contrives to put an end to his miserable existence; and Ellen is then happily reunited to the object of her second choice. Such is the outline of a tale, the treatment of which, in order to ensure its success, required both delicacy and boldness—and both, we think, have been displayed. Its merit consists rather in its dramatic force, and in the vigorous and straightforward management of the incidents, than in the exposition of sentiments or the delineation of character. Skill in this latter department is not the quality which most attracts our attention; while, at the same time, it is but justice to say, that none of the characters are ill drawn. Before we take leave of these tales, we will add one commendation, which belongs to them all. They are told without affectation; and simple and easy as this merit may seem, we regret to say it is a rare one. They are pictures of many-coloured life, undisturbed by the patois of ridiculous classifications which society does not really acknowledge. We are not promised initiation into social mysteries which have no existence, or perplexed with the shibboleth of imaginary routs. They are the productions of one who seems to be well-bred enough to have ventured to write naturally-to have eschewed the mincings and lispings of pseudo fashion-to have abstained from the intermixture of French in her dialogues, permitting even her duchesses to speak plain English—and to be content to have allowed her pretensions to a competent knowledge of London life to rest unsupported by any display of an intimate acquaintance with the tradesman's Directory.'

ART. VII. The Inferno of Dante, translated, by ICHABOD CHARLES WRIGHT, M.A., late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. 8vo. Second Edition. London: 1833.

D° o writers take precedence according to their popularity? How is it that Dante comes to us, resplendent in the admiration, and tarnished by the neglect, of five hundred years? Is the Divine Comedy' worth translating; is it capable of being translated; are we worthy that it should be translated for us; what manner of spirit or of knowledge should its reader bring with him? These are questions, which, no doubt, Mr Wright has asked himself. At all events, he is authorized to expect that his critics and his readers should pause upon them, in order to a just appreciation of his labours. How it can be translated best, is a further question; and it is one which, we allow, the present volume has gone a long way with us towards deciding.

Late foreign critics tell us that this is the age for studying Dante. We are glad to hear it is the age for studying any thing, and especially a poet. Dante, it is true, can be understood by study, and cannot be understood without. This characteristic of the great Florentine, is, however, far from being a facility to his naturalization among us at present. It is unfortunately the very ground of one of our principal apprehensions. Modern consumers of poetry seem just now divided into two classesthe mystics and the time-killers. The one sit down to a book as they sit by the seashore, with no particular wish to find a meaning there. Dante's figures, quarried out with the statuary boldness of an antique, are not vague and misty enough for them. The others (for the most part frivolous, unteachable, and almost unamuseable) hate a concealed thought as much as an epicure hates a concealed fish-bone. They hold it for a first principle, that, where a line requires to be read twice, the fatigue of having read it once is a greater compliment than it deserves. Yet these are the pleasure-readers for whom the ' mob of gentlemen that write with ease' are the elect composers. When we see the materials which go to the making of a 'popular' preacher or a fashionable' novel,-when we perceive what tricks, on every sort of stage, the vain, the ambitious, and the needy, are playing with their talents and their character, and what are the trifles and artifices which succeed,-when the public, the last and only patron, withdraws its favour from all works of real thought and learning,-when literature is loved, not for its own sake, its truth and beauty, but is looked to as a