No. 730.-22 May 1858.-Enlarged Series, No. 8.

POETRY.-Rejoicing at Watt's Release, 592. For Mother's Sake, 592. My Friend, 622. Monterey, 622. Loyalty to the Union, 622.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Cry of Religion by the Irreligious, 579. Correspondence of Napoleon I., 591. A Backward Relation, 591. Milton against the Bishops, 591. Re-discoveries, 621. Falimpsests in Russia, 630. Sea-blue and Sea-green, 630. M. Quatremère's Library, 630. The "Simplicity of Youth," 635. Monument to Luther, 635, Children Quick Observers, 635. Judicial Dignity in Louisiana, 639. History of Chili, 639. Effect of Division of Labor on Art, 639.

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grown men in some sort must ever be; it is only once in a lifetime that we can know the Library Edition. Illustrated by upwards of passionate reading of youth; men soon lose Two Hundred Engravings on Steel, after its eager learning power. But from peculiDrawings by Turner, Landseer, Wilkie, arities in their structure, which we shall try Stanfield, Roberts, &c., including Portraits of the Historical Personages des- to indicate, the novels of Scott suffered less cribed in the Novels. 25 vols. demy, 8vo. than almost any book of equal excellence Abbotsford Edition. With One Hundred from this inevitable superficiality of perusal. and Twenty Engravings on Steel, and Their plain, and, so to say, cheerful merits, nearly Two Thousand on Wood. 12 suit the occupied man of genial middle life. vols. super-royal 8vo. Author's favorite Edition. 48 post foolscap coincident with their popularity. The next Their appreciation was to an unusual degree generation, hearing the praises of their fathers in their earliest reading time, seized with avidity on the volumes; and there is much in very many of them which is admirably fitted for the delight of boyhood. A third generation has now risen into at least the commencement of literary life, which is quite removed from the unbounded enthusiasm with which the Scotch novels were originally received, and does not always share the still more eager partiality of those who, in the opening of their minds, first received the tradition of their excellence. New books have arisen to compete with these; new interests distract us from them. The time, therefore is not perhaps unfavorable for a slight criticism of these celebrated fictions; and their continual republication without any criticism for many years seems almost to demand it.

Cabinet Edition. 25 vols. foolscap 8vo. Railway Edition. Now publishing, and to be completed in 25 portable volumes, large type. People's Edition. 5 large volumes royal 8vo. IT is not commonly on the generation which was contemporary with the production of great works of art, that they exercise their most magical influence. Nor is it on the distant people whom we call posterity. Contemporaries bring to new books, formed minds and stiffened creeds; posterity, if it regard them at all, looks at them as old subjects, worn-out topics, and hears a disputation on their merits with languid impartiality, like aged judges in a court of appeal. Even standard authors exercise but slender influence on the susceptible minds of a rising generation; they are become" papa's books;" the walls of the library are adorned with There are two kinds of fiction which, though their regular volumes; but no hand touches in common literature they may run very them. Their fame is itself half an obstacle much into one another, are yet in reality to their popularity; a delicate fancy shrinks distinguishable and separate. One of these, from employing so great a celebrity as the which we may call the ubiquitous, aims at companion of an idle hour. The generation describing the whole of human life in all its which is really most influenced by a work of spheres, in all its aspects, with all its varied genius is commonly that which is still young interests, aims, and objects. It searches when the first controversy respecting its mer- through the whole life of man; his practical its arises; with the eagerness of youth they pursuits, his speculative attempts, his roman- . read and re-read; their vanity is not unwill- tic youth, and his domestic age. It gives an ing to adjudicate in the process their imag- entire feature of all these; or if there be any ination is formed; the creations of the author lineaments which it forbears to depict, they range themselves in the memory; they be- are only such as the inevitable repression of a con.e part of the substance of the very mind. regulated society excludes from the admitted The works of Sir Walter Scott can hardly be province of literary art. Of this kind are the said to have gone through this exact process. novels of Cervantes and Le Sage, and, to a Their immediate popularity was unbounded. certain extent, of Smollet or Fielding. In No one-a few most captious critics apart-our own time, Mr. Dickens is an author whom ever questioned their peculiar power. Still nature intended to write to a certain extent they are subject to a transition, which is in with this aim. He should have given us not principle the same. At the time of their pub- disjointed novels, with a vague attempt at a lication mature contemporaries read them romantic plot, but sketches of diversified with delight.

Superficial the reading of scenes, and the obvious life of varied man

kind The literary fates, however, if such be- | plained with a careful minuteness. At the ings there are, allotted otherwise. By a very same time the sentimental element assumes terrible example of the way in which in this a great deal of prominence. The book is in world great interests are postponed to little fact, as well as in theory, a narrative of the ones, the genius of authors is habitually sac- feelings and fortunes of the hero and herorificed to the tastes of readers. In this age, ine. An attempt more or less successful has the great readers of fiction are young people. been made to insert an interesting love-story The "addiction" of these is to romance; and in each novel. Sir Walter was quite aware accordingly a kind of novel has become so that the best delineation of the oddest charfamiliar to us as almost to engross the name, acters, or the most quaint societies, or the which deals solely with the passion of love; strangest incidents, would not in general satand if it uses other parts of human life for the isfy his readers. He has invariably attempted occasions of its art, it does so only cursorily an account of youthful, sometimes of decidand occasionally, and with a view of throw-edly juvenile, feelings and actions. The dif ing into a stronger or more delicate light ference between Sir Walter's novels and the those sentimental parts of earthly affairs which are the special objects of delineation. All prolonged delineation of other parts of human life is considered "dry," stupid, and distracts the mind of the youthful generation from the "fantasies" which peculiarly charm it. Mr. Olmsted has a story of some deputation of the Indians, at which the American orator harangued the barbarian audience about the "great spirit," and "the land of their fathers," in the style of Mr. Cooper's novels; during a moment's pause in the great stream, an old Indian asked the deputation, "Why does your chief speak thus to us? we did not wish great instruction or fine words; we desire brandy and tobacco." No critic in a time of competition will speak uncourteously of any reader of either sex ; but it is indisputable that the old kind of novel, full of great "instruction" and varied pictures, does not afford to some young gentlemen and some young ladies either the peculiar stimulus or the peculiar solace which they desire.

specially romantic fictions of the present day is, that in the former the love-story is always, or nearly always, connected with some great event, of the fortunes of some great historical character, or the peculiar movements and incidents of some strange state of society; and that the author did not suppose or expect that his readers would be so absorbed in the sentimental aspect of human life as to be unable or unwilling to be interested in, or to attend to, any other. There is always a locus in quo, if the expression may be pardoned, in the Waverley Novels. The hero and heroine walk among the trees of the forest according to rule, but we are expected to take an interest in the forest as well as in them.

No novel, therefore, of Sir Walter Scott's can be considered to come exactly within the class which we have called the ubiquitous. None of them in any material degree attempts to deal with human affairs in all their spheres -to delineate as a whole the life of man. The Waverley Novels were published at a The canvas has a large background, in some time when the causes that thus limit the cases too large either for artistic effect or the sphere of fiction were coming into operation, common reader's interest; but there are albut when they had not yet become so omnip- ways real boundaries-Sir Walter had no otent as they are now. Accordingly these thesis to maintain. Scarcely any writer will novels everywhere bear marks of a state of set himself to delineate the whole of human transition. They are not devoted with any life, unless he has a doctrine concerning thing like the present exclusiveness to the human life to put forth and inculcate. The sentimental part of human life. They de- effort is doctrinaire. Scott's imagination was scribe great events, singular characters, strictly conservative. He could understand strange accidents, strange states of society; (with a few exceptions) any considerable they dwell with a peculiar interest-and as if movement of human life and action, and could for their own sake-on antiquarian details re- always describe with easy freshness every lating to a past society. Singular customs, thing which he did understand; but he was social practices, even political institutions not obliged by stress of fanaticism to mainwhich existed once in Scotland, and even tain a dogma concerning them, or to show elsewhere, during the middle ages, are ex- their peculiar relation to the general sphere

of life. He described vigorously and boldly | been by a real experience of the two at once. the peculiar scene and society which in every The second volume of Waverley is one of the novel he had selected as the theatre of most striking illustrations of this peculiarity. romantic action. Partly from their fidelity to The character of Charles Edward, his advennature, and partly from a consistency in the turous undertaking, his ancestral rights, the artist's mode of representation, these pictures mixed selfishness and enthusiasm of the group themselves from the several novels in Highland chiefs, the fidelity of their heredithe imagination, and an habitual reader tary followers, their striking and strange comes to think of and understand what is array, the contrast with the Baron of Bradmeant by "Scott's world; " but the writer wardine and the Lowland gentry; the collihad no such distinct object before him. No sion of the motley and half-appointed host, one novel was designed to be a delineation of with the formed and finished English society, the world as Scott viewed it. We have vivid its passage by the Cumberland mountains and fragmentary histories; it is for the slow and the blue lake of Ullswater,-are unceascritic of after-times to piece together their ingly and without effort present to the mind teaching. of the writer, and incite with their historical interest the susceptibility of his imagination. But at the same time the mental struggle, or rather transition, in the mind of Waverley,— for his mind was of the faint order which scarcely struggles, is never for an instant lost sight of. In the very midst of the inroad and the conflict, the acquiescent placidity with which the hero exchanges the service of the imperious for the appreciation of the "nice" heroine, is kept before us, and the imagination of Scott wandered without effort from the great scene of martial affairs, to the natural but rather unheroic sentiments of a young gentleman not very difficult to please. There is no trace of effort in the transition, as is so common in the inferior works of later copy

From this intermediate position of the Waverley Novels, or at any rate in exact accordance with its requirements, is the special characteristic for which they are most remarkable. We may call this in a brief phrase their romantic sense; and perhaps we cannot better illustrate it than by a quotation from the novel to which the series owes its most usual name. It occurs in the description of the court-ball which Charles Edward is described as giving at Holyrood House the night before his march southward on his strange adventure. The striking interest of the scene before him, and the peculiar position of his own sentimental career, are described as influencing the mind of the hero. "Under the influence of these mixed sensa-ists. Many historical novelists, especially tions, and cheered at times by a smile of intelligence and approbation from the Prince as he passed the group, Waverly exerted his powers of fancy, animation and eloquence, and attracted the general admiration of the company. The conversation gradually assumed the line best qualified for the display of his talents and acquisitions. The gaiety of the evening was exalted in character, rather than checked, by the approaching dangers of the morrow. All nerves were strung for the future, and prepared to enjoy the present. This mood is highly favorable for the exercise of the powers of imagination, for poetry, and for that eloquence which is allied to poetry." Neither "eloquence" nor "poetry" are the exact words with which it would be appropriate to describe the fresh style of the Waverley Novels; but the imagination of their author was stimulated by a fancied mixture of sentiment and fact very much as he describes Waverley's to have

those who with care and pains have "read up" their detail, are often evidently in a strait how to pass from their history to their sentiment. The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the two. If he had given us the English side of the race to Derby, he would have described the Bank of England paying in sixpences, and also the loves of the cashier.

It is not unremarkable in connection with this the special characteristic of the "Scotch novels," that their author began his literary life by collecting the old ballads of his native country. Ballad poetry is, in comparison at least with many other kinds of poetry, a sensible thing. It describes not only romantic events, but historical ones, incidents in which there is a form and body and consistence,— events which have a result. Such a poem as "Chevy Chace" we need not explain has its prosaic side. The latest historian of Greece has nowhere been more successful than in his