the solace and recreation of the gentle folks of those days, as modern novels are, too much, now but they were the study also of the knights and ladies of the olden time, and, despite their innumerable faults, they well deserved to be so; for they depicted lofty, noble, high-minded characters. Stiff, starched, and out of nature, you say. Probably so; but all the world moved on stilts at that time, and we have a very strong suspicion that if the Chevalier Bayard and Sir Philip Sidney were to make their appearance in our world as they lived, breathed, and acted some few centuries ago, they would very likely be considered" stiff, starched, and out of nature" too. It was quite impossible that living men and women could be what many of the potent knights and peerless dames of the chivalric romance were pourtrayed to be; but it is the recorded opinion of some of the most deeply read and best informed men of the present time, that the study of those romances had a greatly elevating and purifying effect on the real life of that day; and that possibly even a Sidney or a Bayard might have shone with somewhat of a diminished lustre had he not been accustomed to contemplate these transcendant models. But what has all this to do with Angela? Much. We cannot unravel the chain of our argument link by link, because, unfortunately, we are not engaged to write "a number" for SHARPE, but only an article" in one. We must skip to the present times. 66 Two Old Men's Tales." These tales, strange to say, we had neither read nor heard of, we were therefore totally unprepared for the mental treat we enjoyed in "Mount Sorel." For, with all its faults, a great treat it was. The clever and piquant but always lady-like and high-principled Miss Pickering had passed away; and with the vulgar caricatures of Mrs. Trollope, and the heartless chicaneries and minauderies of fashionable life, reiterated usque ad nauseam, however cleverly, by Mrs. Gore, we were sufficiently sated; and we longed for something, even though only in a novel, something above the common stamp of the thousand and one scribblers of the day. And in "Mount Sorel" we found it; for amid much that was weak and faulty, there were "pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts." There was a high strain of romance also, but there was an understratum of right principle and good sense. She In "Emilia Wyndham," the authoress took a bolder flight, and successfully. "Mount Sorel" was altogether imaginative, poetic,—we might almost say unreal. "Emilia Wyndham" treats of every-day existence, of actual life; it is practical, real, tangible, yet withal very imaginative -a difficult combination. "A spirit, yet a woman too," the heroine is represented. does not descend from her pedestal and stoop to the homely and practical duties in which her fate involves her; but these become invested with grace and beauty, from the purity and elevation of her own truthful and rightly judging spirit. It is this principle carried out through the Of these the leading principle is, as every details of practical life which has obtained for body knows, utilitarian. A better taste is hap-"Emilia Wyndham" high suffrages, notwithpily springing up: aspirations are felt and are standing some glaring improbabilities in the beginning to be displayed by many after a conduct of the story. higher, a loftier, an inward life, so to speak, all ideas of which appeared to be annihilated, certainly have been utterly torpid, for a century past. This deadness and this reaction have of course pervaded alike things of the highest moment and things of no moment at all; the same influences have been felt in the most momentous concerns of existence, and in the every-day pleasures of life. It is with the latter only we have to do. Those who agree with us in dislike of the rationalizing matter-of-fact spirit of many popular writers, yclept par excellence utilitarian, who love to picture life, not as under higher influences it might be, but as it is-man in his coarseness, grossness, or crime-woman in her weakness and feebleness and folly; who call any thing not met with on the broad bustling crowded highway of life, romantic, highflown, out of nature those who dislike this tendency as much as we do, will understand the eagerness with which, after glancing over the first few pages, we betook ourselves to the perusal of "Mount Sorel," by the author of "The "Norman's Bridge will probably never become so popular as "Emilia Wyndham :" it wants much of the relieving grace and lighter details which embellish that work. "Angela," like "Norman's Bridge" and "Mount Sorel," is rather in the form of a series of pictures than in that of a straightforward narrative. Not, however, that the story is uncontinuous, (may we use the word?) but that the "old man"--like other old men, we supposeis somewhat garrulous, and his numerous remarks and reflections, however true in the abstract, and however beautiful in the expression -as they often are-do too much interrupt the course of the tale, and give it a disconnected and disjointed appearance. It is very possible that it may be only or chiefly for the dissemination of these truths, reflections, and axioms that the authoress weaves her romances at all; but she must remember that young people, ay, and old ones too, are very apt to "skip and go on," if the wholesome but nauseous draught be not sufficiently disguised by the honey on the edge of the cup. 66 in In "Angela" are described the trials, priva- | contrasted almost in the same page by her purtions, and heroic self-sacrifice-daily immolation, chase of a splendid grand piano for Angela, it might well be called-of a young orphan girl, and, at the close of the same volume, by the left with the somewhat unusual tax of three little expenditure of some thousand pounds half brothers and sisters, totally dependent on her jewellery for her. exertions for their livelihood. It is meant to be a picture, not less absolute than that of Emilia Wyndham, or Mrs. Grant, of the power and influence of high and firmly-based principle in nerving and sustaining the mind and frame in the most adverse and trying circumstances possible. As a whole, perhaps, the work is a little too highflown; but this, as our opening remarks will show, we consider "a fault on the right side" in a novel. It partakes largely, as might be expected, both of the beauties which illustrate and the faults which disfigure the other works of this authoress. A deep strain of tenderness, a touching pathos, pervades it; and the descriptions, many of them, are beautiful, and as truthful as beautiful. In the first volume they abound; in the subsequent ones they yield, as it is right they should, to the more active progress of the piece. Here and there the illustrations are sadly overstrained, and therefore highly injudicious, exciting an inclination to smile where it is least desirable that one should be felt. As, for instance, when the authoress likens a Gin Palace to that "heaving, boiling, surging sea of molten fire which some philosophers suppose we should see were the earth to yawn to its centre." And this exaggerated image is the more inappropriate, inasmuch as it is placed in the mouth of one peculiarly remarkable for cool and dispassionate reasoning, sound judgment, and solid argument. Again, when the authoress, in her honest and earnest abhorrence of inebriety, causes a weary and worn under-housemaid (who, having been appointed to sit up by the sick bed of Angela, is awakened before dawn from an impromptu doze by a movement of the suffering girl,) to start suddenly into a dissertation on Mr. Dickens and his works, lamenting that he does not write energetically against drunkenness,-this, considering time, place, and circumstance, is certainly ridiculous, though the housemaid's father had died of "the tremens." Another absurdity is the making Augusta and Angela, with their tame officer, paper, paint, and repair, &c. the cottage. Not if they had done it for a whim-that amongst fashionable people sanctifies every thing. But that Augusta should undertake this dirty, disagreeable, and, to delicate and unpractised fingers, really difficult and painful work, merely and seriously to save the few shillings it would have cost to employ a workman, is really too improbable, too ridiculous, and too generally inconsistent, even if it were not absolutely But these and other such improbabilities sink into insignificance beneath the earnest feeling, high tone, and lofty principle of the work generally; and very slight care and attention are requisite on the part of the authoress to avoid such blemishes in future. We confess we are disappointed with the close of the work-disappointed on every ground of fancy, feeling, and the experience of the three volumes at the utter separation of Angela from her charges. Was this absolutely necessary ? The story is deeply interesting. From a host of clever sketches of character we select, for an extract, that of the old nurse, "A stiff, elderly woman, short and thin, and precise to stiffness in her attire, and with a somewhat forbidding countenance. She looked cross, but she looked sensible, and what we English call thoroughly respectable.' A peculiar characteristic, which our nation holds particularly in reverence. "She was evidently a dependent, but she came up with all the authority of an old servant, who has the advantage, by some twenty or thirty years, of the other members of the family in point of age, and who has lived so long among them, that she considers herself quite a part and portion of its circle, makes its interests her own, and serves with a zeal and fidelity which are indefatigable, only requiring in her turn that all her fancies, whims, tempers, and wishes shall be implicitly respected, and that nobody in the house hold but herself shall have a whim of their own." Vol. i. pp. 77, 78. 66 "Where is she? where is she? Left to herself, all alone, the blessed one! Oh Biddy! Biddy! If you'd only been tossed by the bull yourself! But there was the baby. Oh! those children! those children! they'll be the death of her, a generous angel! Oh, you're there, are you, Miss Angela? all safe and sound, I declare; and such a fright as you've given my poor heart! I vow I think I shall never get over it. And you will take those walks to please the children; you will, in spite of all I can say! You are the provokingest girl in the world! I'm sure you deserve to be tossed by the bull a hundred thousand times. Well, well, you're not hurt, I see; and don't tell Mrs. Nevil, pray; for the fright, though it's all over, will half kill her.'"-Vol. i. p. 112. "I wonder at you, mistress-I really do-letting this young man, of whom we none of us know nothing at all, come dangling after Miss Angela in this fashion, teaching her drawing-on week-days well and good, as she must get her living by her parts, poor thing, one of these days, I am much afeard-but Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and,' (remark the emphasized conjunction, reader, pray), and Saturdays, is, in my opinion, more than enough; and when it comes to Sundays too, I say you ought to look to it." " We give another character (a contrast), in whom the readers of "Norman's Bridge" will be pleased to recognise an old acquaintance. "While they were thus sitting together, the door of an inner room opened, and the minister appeared. "He was now become a very old man. Ninety years he had seen. His frame of the extremest tenuity, his stooping gait, his pale, thin face, and scanty grey hair, told of his great age, and of the labour of a life not passed without the experience of much sorrow and care. But his fine expanded brow, his still clear and intelligent eye, his mouth, so grave yet sweet, his whole venerable appearance, gave evidence that life had been spent wisely and well. "She whom he had followed, had venerated in life and supported in death, had long gone before him into those regions of ineffable and unsullied love and light into which he steadily, in the spirit, looked. "He had tarried, content to remain and attend the earthly pilgrimage of her so inexpressibly dear to them both. He had stood by to strengthen and support her soul in its hours of darkness, and he had lived to exult in the rich harvest which had arisen under the ploughshare of sorrow. He had lived to witness the full fruition of all those expectations which he and Mary had placed upon Joan. With how much secret joy, with what calm seriousness of satisfaction, did he now see the child of those dearest hopes, the object of such intense interest, now playing that part which they had so fondly anticipated—a royalty of virtue and usefulness amid the daughters of women! "How are you to-day, my dear Mr. M'Dougal? This is the first time we have met this morning,' said Joan, rising from her chair as the door opened, taking him by both hands and drawing him gently towards the fire. I went out so early; and I would not disturb you, for I was afraid you had not slept well, as you were not stirring.' "The old eye is wakeful,' said Mr. M'Dougal; but the silence of midnight is not solitary. It is peopled with many spirits the spirit of the past, which is rather solemn than mournful; and the spirit of the present, which you make serene.' dear-bought result of a life of strong discipline; but when we see it in the opening of the day-when it is as the free gift of God to a sweet and generous nature— then it is precious indeed. Sweet young lady, I am not going to praise you, but to congratulate you.' "He still kept holding her hand, and his dim blue eye scanned, with much attention, that sweet and interesting face. "There are lines of suffering and sorrow in it, I see,' said he; but there is the sure trust of faith, and the strength of a holy heart. The old man's blessing be upon thee, my child!'”—Vol. ii. PP. 217-220. We offer no apology for the length of this, the last, extract with which we shall trouble the reader, as it affords so fair a specimen of the truly poetic feeling with which these volumes abound. A little more care in the arrangement of her plots, a strict avoidance of that besetting sin of modern novelists, the tendency to exaggeration and caricature, and a little closer attention to the useful recommendation to keep probability in view," will ensure Mrs. Marsh a place in the very foremost rank of the talewriters of the day. DOMBEY AND SON,1 66 Mr. Charles Dickens; and the promise which former We have before us a new work from the pen of excellence gave has been ably fulfilled. Scarcely any writer of the present day has so much power in his hands for good or evil as this gentleman: the extensive circulation of his works; their rapid succession; their peculiar appeal in language and subject to the middle classes-we had almost written, the masses of society, render him at all times an important and ever ready authority; whilst his high moral tone, and a certain internal evidence that he writes upon a conviction of the truths he is maintaining, place him in the first rank of the popular writers of the present day. Perhaps few tastes have grown so rapidly of late years as the taste for works of fiction: and the increased demand has had a corresponding effect upon and other causes have combined to raise the standard the supply; with this difference, that whilst education of demand amongst the many, opportunities of profit and necessity for compliance of some sort have pro"Miss Nevil, pray let me introduce you to Mr. duced a proportionate deterioration of quality in the M'Dougal, the oldest friend I have in the world.-supply. It is of the greatest consequence in a country | Miss Nevil, sir. You who love energy will love Miss Nevil, who toils unremittingly in the ungrateful task of educating most unmanageable children, in order to maintain not only her own independence, but three children, the offspring of her father by a second wife. Do not blush, dear Angela,' as the colour overspread the fair young creature's cheek; 'it is to give Mr. M'Dougal pleasure that I tell him of these things.' "Let me take your hand, my dear,' said Mr. M'Dougal, with that authority which is given by great old age, and let me look into your fair young face. Yes, virtue is a noble thing when it is the final and like this, where so many turn for relaxation from the stern realities of life (and the realities of our own times are very stern indeed,) to the perusal of popular highest possible class. Now we are anxious to assert fictions, that those popular fictions should be of the our admiration of Mr. Dickens; and we do so on the grounds above mentioned, viz. that he has always written, not only for the temporary amusement of his readers, but with a view to their general interests and improvement; and be his subject matter grave or gay, the broadest humour or the deepest pathos, he philosophical truths in his homely characters, and omits no opportunity of inculcating religious and (1) Dombey and Son. By Charles Dickens. surrounding the most ordinary objects with feelings and sentiments of virtuous interest. His faults and he has them are not those of every novelist, and his beauties are all his own. We have for Mr. Charles Dickens so profound a respect, that in censuring his writings we approach the task with the utmost diffidence; still we must confess that although the work before us is as full of beauties as any thing he has yet written, we believe it to be quite as full of faults. There is a good broad road of probability, broad enough for anybody not utterly intoxicated with popularity, which might have answered the author's purpose, without travelling down the bye-lanes of possibility, and even losing his way in them in search of catastrophes. If Mr. Dickens creates impossible | characters, to be sure we have no right to quarrel with his pulling the strings his own way; but we protest as strongly against the falsities of fiction as we approve of its realities. Everybody likes to be able to sympathize with the characters portrayed; but when those characters are placed by the author in impossible or almost impossible positions, we lose that power: a virtuous interest is merged in an unhealthy curiosity or amazement; and the character ceases to be a beacon for our guidance, or a quicksand to avoid. Who ever dreamt of Edith Grainger, or rather Dombey, the proud, imperious, but generous Edith, running away with Carker, the managing clerk of her husband, known and despised by herself, only for the sake of humiliating the self-satisfied Dombey? Florence, too, the very gem of the book, kind, gentle, constant in her affection to her father, childlike as she is, might have spared herself the pain of kissing old Captain Cuttle, or asking the advice of his friend Bunsby on so delicate a subject as Walter's safety. When Mr. Dickens began writing, the semi-pathetic was admirable, because original—it has ceased to be so; and we are more inclined to laugh at than with it. The book is moreover full to overflowing of waves whispering and wandering; of dark rivers rolling to the sea; of winds, and golden ripples, and such like matters, which are sometimes very pretty, generally very untrue, and have become, at all events, excessively stale. We fear Mr. Dickens may some day have to call in the aid of the immortals. a Dombey is a character new to fiction, and uncommon in real life-a counting-house aristocrat. Not so rare in the higher classes of society, but then more dignified, with less cravat and more manner. Cold, selfish (though probably not in trifles), proud of his order, and of himself as one of its heads. To us there is something, we admit, rather respectable in this pride-something honourable in his vanity as British merchant, and a devilish upright gentleman," as Cousin Feenix hath it. It is too much the fashion to turn up one's nose at the shop now-a-days. We are all West-end men: the son is all very well in the drawing-room near Portland Place, but we connect him not with our City greatness; we prefer St. James's to St. Olave's; and a cornetcy in the Blues, to a corner stool in the counting-house. Dombey was free from this vanity, at all events; and in his misfortunes proved it. He was selfish and proud, but he would be under dishonourable obligations to none; he exacted, and he paid, the uttermost farthing. Mr. Morfin announces a great philosophical truth when he propounds to Miss Harriett, "that it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!" We see but one contradiction throughout in the character of Dombey, and that is, his determination to make Carker his confidant in so private a matter as his wife's conduct to himself. We have read the work attentively, and though we think we see Mr. Dickens's intention, we confess ourselves unable to go with him; we cannot reconcile it with Dombey's character, even on the score of his unbending tyranny. But these are minor considerations-spots in the sun-as little affecting the real beauty of the work, or its intrinsic value as a moral lesson, as if they had never existed. Its excellences are of a high cast. Religious sentiments expressed in language whose simplicity enhances their innate beauty; a feeling for women, and a development of their best and loveliest natures, as in the simple Polly Toodle, and the despised Miss Tox; the accidental interpolation of good apart from the main story, so common in Mr. Dickens's writings; and those admirably touching incidents, than which none are more exquisite or more exquisitely told than the reappearance of Susan Nipper before Florence in the old dress she used to serve her in; situations of the highest dramatic power as a whole, are rendered life-like by the wonderful talent for detail-a talent possessed by no writer of modern times in such perfection. We really feel inclined to doubt whether the scene between Mr. and Mrs. Dombey in the 40th chapter has, in its peculiar way, ever been surpassed; and though we think that Mr. Dickens might sometimes avoid a difficulty by a little premeditation of his plan, we cannot but admire his consummate tact in releasing his creations from the awkward positions in which he places them : "Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus." racter. It would not be fair to leave this portion of Mr. Dickens's work without saying a few words on the excellent lesson to be learnt from his principal chaWhen a fashionable novelist introduces misfortune as attaching to his hero, it is usually in a manner retributive: the corrective has seldom any place in his mind. Misfortune, as the just penalty of folly or vice, is in his opinion a very handsome stretch of morality. Mr. Dickens does more, for he applies to misfortune that which makes it truly valuable, its scriptural quality of correction: he makes it the dark cloud, and heavy storm, which precede the setting sun's beams of humility and resignation. The opening scenes of Dombey and Son at once arrest attention; the lonely situation of the almost orphan girl, with her steady attachment to her father, and her infantine regard for her protector, Walter Gay, are in the author's best style. Poor Florence! a sort of "bad boy" in Dombey's house; no use to the firm, or to swell the importance of her father; loving every one, beloved by every one, excepting by him whose love she most covets. She is a sort of nucleus round which the best affections of the rest of the dramatis personæ play. Even Toots and Susan seem to have no separate existence, as man and wife, apart from her. Edith can afford to forgive, and to ask forgiveness of her husband, when his love has taken the same direction as hers: we rather doubt whether Florence could have run away from home as she did; a wife would, for a blow is hard to bear; but a child, so constant in her love, and so gentle in her disposition, might have well borne it from a father at such a moment of distraction as at the loss of his wife. Nor do we quite fall in love again with Florence until she makes an offer to another person: she is sadly too fond of rambling about London for so particular a gentleman's daughter as Mr. Dombey; and her easy accommodation, with Captain Cuttle and his hook, to circumstances which would have made most young ladies, to say the least of it, squeamish, is somewhat unnatural. But she is the woman, the fond, the devoted woman, when she meets with Walter Gay, returned from his voyage, but still a beggar, without a home to offer her, and too honourable, too feeling, too little selfish, to ask her to share his sorrows and Mr. Dickens has shown a tact in this most difficult scene, a knowledge of the human beart in one of its most incomprehensible phases, which will place him higher than ever as a writer. We spoke of his semi-pathos just now-we will now speak of his real pathos; and if this, and some other scenes towards the end of the book, will not refute the philosophical notion that sympathy for unreal distress is hurtful in its tendencies, we know of nothing that will. We envy not the man who has arrived at so extraordinary a pitch of virtue, as to read with out feeling these exquisitely pathetic scenes. which the author thus uses, is not only very beautiful, but amongst the simplest and most natural of his materials. Before summing up our account of this extraordinary work, we cannot omit the particular mention of our old acquaintances, J. B. and Miss Tox: Joey Bagstock, sir, is a man that we know we have seen; and Miss Tox is a lady of whom we believe there are hundreds. Of the former, we can only regret that his constant assurances of openness and liberality have left him such a selfish, close-fisted old vagabond: that his face and heart, artificially coloured, have never reached the healthy roseate hue of our friend Cuttle, but remained a frosty blue—the one tinted by intemperance and climate, the other blushing for the false asseverations of its warmth. Miss Tox we certainly regard with no common feelings: Mr. Dickens has not thought it necessary to surround her with fictitious distinction; he has deprived her of even ordinary qualifications of purse or person, and invested her solely with that pure and genuine affection, that truly feminine constancy in adversity, which should make every woman an object of protection and kindness to man. He deserves much at our hands for placing a too often slighted class of persons-we mean the old maids of our country-in their true position; demanding our gratitude for their usefulness, and our sympathy with their affections. Edith is a strange but noble character; naturally of a fine disposition; warm, honest, independent, lovely, and to be loved; but twisted by the tortuous policy of a worldly mother into the scornful, the passionate, the mercenary; despising others, herself to be despised. We confess her marriage with Dombey surprised us-we were not prepared for so great a sacrifice of womanly dignity; nor do we like it but it sinks, as an incident, into a matter of every-day life, when compared with her elopement with Carker. Carker the manager; (he must have been a manager indeed;) the man with the teeth; the great incomprehensible of the work we know no Carker, we never saw one, nor do we believe in his existence. All that we can make out of Carker the manager is, by the three great features of his being his teeth, his journey from Dijon-we know the road, and never was a sketch more graphic than the author's description of it-and his death, an easy and rather new method for getting rid of a trouble-ally cleared up with consummate tact. The writing some situation. A duel was almost unavoidable but duels are very vulgar in novels, and happily very much out of fashion in society-the railway was new, and handy; and Mr. Dickens made a very tolerable use of it, all things considered. The book has contrasts too, which we should scarcely do our duty in omitting to notice. Edith and Alice, both sold to a stormy, wild, and fitful existence, we trace their relationship in mind and circumstance. The penitent death, and remorseful exile, of the one and the other, open a long vista for the reflective reader. Mrs. Skewton and Mrs. Brown —of the earth, earthy-seeking, with what constancy! temporal advantages for their children, at the expense of eternal happiness to themselves. In fact, there is scarcely a character or passage in the work, whatever. its faults, which may not be so considered as to act beneficially on the mind. It is somewhat worthy of remark, that whilst love for Florence seems to be the great influence uniting others, the same motive, in love for Paul, operates upon herself and Walter Gay. Under any other point of view there would be a haste, a want of modesty, on the part of Florence, irreconcileable with her character, childlike as it is. Her opportunities have been so few, and externals are so much against the likelihood of their marrying, that Mr. Dickens has done well to give a stronger impulse to their love than mere protection and gratitude. He has done so by calling in the aid of Paul-love for Paul and his memory-and we feel certain that the machinery | It was not our purpose to apply a telescope to the pages of Dombey and Son, for the sake of discovering faults or beauties too remote for the rest of mankind, and to remain blind to that which lies obviously before us. We shall therefore satisfy ourselves with adding, what we trust will have already become apparent, our great admiration of the work before us, which has been increased in no common degree by the perusal of the last two numbers. The story abounds in improbabilities, it is true; but they are more of situation than of character, and are gener is full of great truths, eloquent diction, true pathos, We In taking our leave of Dombey and Son, we have a grave complaint to make. Mr. Dickens has either had very imperfect glimpses of our aristocracy, or he is very partial in his delineation of them. He has never yet given us a lady or gentleman in the real acceptation of the term. They are all, in his view, fools or scoundrels; Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Verisopht; Cousin Feenix and Mrs. Skewton. Why for we admit there is much of the man of breeding about Cousin Feenix,-why think it necessary to make |