cussion should instantly engross every eye and every tongue-that, as the buzz of criticism subsided, public attention should turn to what was to follow-that a general whisper should tell that he was again employed-that contradictory rumours should soon state, with more and more decision, the character and the name of the unfinished work-that the different opinions should each find sup porters, and even partizans, until the oracular annunciation The

by the author of is in the press,' should give certainty on one point, and stimulate curiosity and anticipation on every other, and that at length, like the castle in the vale of St. John, the magical edifice should at once shine forth, from among the mists which concealed it, and display the royal palace, the feudal castle, the mo dern mansion, the border tower, the highland sheeling, or the Zetland burgh, which the invisible architect thought fit residence for his living creations.

But dazzling as this eminence appears from below, it is, perhaps, less conducive to the happiness of him who has attained it, than many of the humble points of his ascent. He can scarcely hope that any of his subsequent efforts will exceed the excited expectation of the public; he must constantly fear that they will disappoint it. In this, perhaps, lies the great superiority of speculative pursuits over those of the imagination. Every step, which the ma thematician, or the chemist, or the political economist, has made, facilitates his subsequent advances. He has, probably, discovered a new instrument, of calculation or decomposition, or a general principle, with which he may tie up the scattered facts that were before independent burthens on his memory; or he has detected the fallacy, or the omissions, which threw doubt and inconsistency over his reasonings. He covers at every succeeding stride a wider space. - But the earlier works of a poet have the same advantage over his subsequent ones, which the earlier poets had over their successors, or which the first settlers in a new colony enjoy over those who follow them they preoccupy whatever is most beautiful or most productive; they exhaust the scenes, the characters, and the incidents, which are best fitted for description, or which he is best fitted to describe. To revert to our colonial metaphor, he must either break up new ground of inferior fertility, or apply additional labour, with a diminished effect, to what is already in cultivation. Our author has, in the work before us, employed both expedients with characteristic boldness. Nothing can be more barren, than the waste land which he has endeavoured to reclaim-nothing more over cropped, than the old ground which he has ventured still to continue under the plough. Most of his former works derived interest from their mere subjects: the fore ground was filled with distinct portraits of persons, whom we had long been endeavouring

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to

to make out in the distance of history; his back ground was formed of scenery, magnificent in its elements, and splendid from its variety. But the characters of the Pirate are purely fictitious, and the scene is laid in a country too obscure, until our author's genius stamped it with notoriety, to excite attention, and too uniform to detain it. What could be done for Zetland he has done: he has painted with his usual vivid accuracy the few natural objects it afforded the rocky promontory, the inland sea, the fierceness of a northern ocean, and the caprice of a northern climate, with its misty calm and irresistible tempest, and he has suited to it, with admirable consistency, the habits and character of its inhabitants. The promise of his motto is fully performed

-nothing of them

But doth suffer a sea-change.'

Their furniture and their food are, almost wholly, the produce or the gifts of the sea;-all their language and conversation is insular, and almost fishy; limited by the narrow experience, and full of the maritime superstitions and associations, of their situation. In his usual pursuit of national, as well as individual, contrast, he has described his Zetlanders before they became assimilated in feeling to their Scottish proprietors and neighbours, and has attributed to them, in a mitigated degree, the hostility towards the new-comers, which gives spirit to his Saxons in Ivanhoe.

It is at Burgh-Westra, the residence of Magnus Troil, the Cedric of the piece, that the story commences: the previous chapters having introduced to us Mordaunt Mertoun, a poor youth on whom the office, not a very high one in our author's court, of heros en chef, is forced; and to his father, Basil Mertoun, a misanthropic recluse, marked by the mystery-the silence-the gloom-the general apathy and occasional impetuosity-the sternness and the pride which, at once, indicate, to a practised novel-reader, one of the numerous family of retired criminals, or injured lovers. Minna and Brenda, the daughters of Magnus Troil, we must describe in our author's own words:

'From her mother, Minna inherited the stately form and dark eyes, the raven locks and finely-pencilled brows, which showed she was, on one side at least, a stranger to the blood of Thule. Her cheek,

O call it fair, not pale,

was so slightly and delicately tinged with the rose, that many thought the lily had an undue proportion in her complexion. But in that predominance of the paler flower, there was nothing sickly or languid; it was the true natural complexion of health, and corresponded in a peculiar degree with features which seemed calculated to express a contemplative and high-minded character.

The scarce less beautiful, equally lovely, and equally innocent Brenda,

Brenda, was of a complexion as differing from her sister, as they differed in character, taste, and expression. Her profuse locks were of that paly brown, which receives from the passing sun-beam a tinge of gold, but darkens again when the ray has passed from it. Her eye, her mouth, the beautiful row of teeth, which, in her innocent vivacity, were frequently disclosed; the fresh, yet not too bright glow, of a healthy complexion, tinging a skin like the drifted snow, spoke her genuine Scandinavian descent. A fairy form, less tall than that of Minna, but even more finely moulded into symmetry--a careless and almost childish lightness of step-an eye that seemed to look on every object with pleasure, from a natural and serene cheerfulness of disposition, attracted even more general admiration than the charms of her sister, though, perhaps, that which Minna did excite, might be of a more intense as well as a more reverential character.'-vol. i. p. 43. 45, 46.

Mordaunt has as yet lived with them both in perfect intimacy, but without apparent preference of one to the other, 'treating them as an affectionate brother might treat two sisters, so equally dear to him, that a breath would turn the scale of affection.' After a visit of a week, immediately preceding the commencement of the narrative, he leaves them to return to his father's residence, Jarlshof, at the foot of Sumburgh-Head, the south-eastern extremity of the island.

'But he had not advanced three hours on his journey, before the wind, which had been so deadly still in the morning, began at first to wail and sigh, as if bemoaning beforehand the evils which it might perpetrate in its fury, like a madman in the gloomy state of dejection which precedes his fit of violence; then gradually increasing, the gale howled, raged, and roared, in the full fury of a northern storm.'—vol. i. P. 61.

He is forced to take refuge at Harfra, the abode of Triptolemus Yellowley, an agricultural enthusiast, of mixed Scottish and Yorkshire blood, and one of the Bores of the work (for unhappily there is a double allowance) whom fate, for his own and our misfortune, had transported, with his sister Babie, to this unfertile and prejudiced region. He is soon followed by Bryce Snaelsfoot, a travelling jagger, or pedlar, (our old acquaintance Andrew Fairservice, with a pack at his back,) who is destined to act an important part in the subsequent events. And, as the storm encreased in violence, a woman, tall enough almost to touch the top of the door with her cap, stepped into the room, signing the cross as she entered, and pronouncing with a solemn voice" the blessings of God and Saint Ronald on the open door, and their braid malison and mine upon close handed churls." The speaker was as striking in appearance as extravagantly lofty in her pretensions and in her language. She might well have represented on the stage, so far as features, voice, and stature were concerned, the Bonduca or Boadicea of the Britons, or the sage Velleda, Aurinia, or any other fated Pytho-ness, who ever led to battle a tribe of the ancient Goths. Her features were high and well formed, and would have been handsome

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handsome but for the ravages of time, and the effects of exposure to the severe weather of her country. Age and, perhaps, sorrow, had quenched, in some degree, the fire of a dark blue eye, whose hue almost approached to black, and had sprinkled snow on such part of her tresses as had escaped from under her cap, and were dishevelled by the rigour of the storm.

Such was the appearance of Norna of the Fitful Head, upon whom many of the inhabitants of the island looked with observance, many with fear, and almost all with a sort of veneration.'—vol. i. pp. 117, 118.

Norna's magic-for she has the supernatural pretensions which sometimes dignify, and more often render absurd, her prototypes in our author's works, is that of her Norwegian ancestors: it is exercised on the elements. Subsequently (our author can scarcely refrain from saying consequently) to her chanting a Runic invocation, the tempest subsides, and Mordaunt regains his home. But the next morning, when he and his father looked from the the precipice, of which the landward slope was terminated by their house,

verge of

the wide sea still heaved and swelled with the agitation of the yesterday's storm which had been far too violent to subside speedily. The tide, therefore, poured on the headland with a fury deafening to the ear, and dizzying to the eye, threatening instant destruction to whatever might be at the time involved in its current. The sight of nature in her magnificence, or in her beauty, or in her terrors, has at all times an overpowering interest, which even habit cannot greatly weaken; and both father and son sate themselves down on the cliff to look out upon that unbounded war of waters, which rolled in their wrath to the foot of the precipice.

At once Mordaunt, whose eyes were sharper, and probably his attention more alert than that of his father, started up and exclaimed, "God in Heaven! there is a vessel in the roost."

Mertoun looked to the north-westward, and an object was visible amid the rolling tide. "She shews no sail," he observed; and immedi ately added, after looking at the object through his spy-glass, "she is dismasted, and lies a sheer-hulk upon the water."

"And is drifting on the Sumburgh-head," said Mordaunt, struck with horror, "without the slightest means of weathering the cape." "She makes no effort," replied the father; " she is probably deserted by her crew."

"And in such a day as yesterday," replied Mordaunt, "when no open boat could live, were she manned with the best men ever handled an oar-all must have perished." -vol. i. p. 160–162.

Onward it came, the large black hulk seeming larger at every fathom's length. She came nearer, until she bestrode the summit of one tremendous billow, which rolled on with her unbroken, till the wave and its burthen were precipitated against the rock, and then the triumph of the elements over the work of human hands was at once completed. One wave, we have said, made the wrecked vessel completely manifest

in her whole bulk, as it raised her, and bore her onward against the face of the precipice. But when that wave receded from the foot of the rock, the ship had ceased to exist; and the retiring billow only bore back a quantity of beams, planks, casks, and similar objects, which swept out to the offing, to be brought in again by the next wave, and again precipitated upon the face of the rock.

It was at this moment that Mordaunt conceived he saw a man floating on a plank or water cask, which, drifting away from the main current, seemed about to go a-shore upon a small spot of sand, where the water was shallow, and the waves broke more smoothly.'-vol. i. p. 163 -165.

Mordaunt, at great risk, rescues the shipwrecked man; and, by the powerful intervention of Norna, succeeds in placing him, with some of his baggage unplundered, at the cottage of the Ranzelman, or petty magistrate of the hamlet. A scene has, in the mean time, been passing, which is painted in our author's happiest manner. The love of fortuitous gain, which seems one of the strongest passions of uncultivated human nature-which gives zest to the pursuits of the sportsman and the gambler-which makes the soldier prize booty so much above pay-which caused the feudal monarch or his delegate, to bestow so disproportionate an attention on treasure-trove, and wreck, and royal fish, and heriots, and other casual sources of revenue, and forces poor Swertha, Mertoun's housekeeper, to exclaim that a ship a-shore is a sight to while the minister out of his very pu'pit in the middle of his preaching—this universal passion has poured the whole village upon the beach, in earnest unscrupulous plunder of the wreck.

In the evening Mordaunt visits the stranger, whom he finds a tall and well-made man, with a bold, sun-burnt handsome countenance, and manners that, in addition to the characteristic openness of a sailor, have an affectation of bluntness, a sort of defiance, uncalled for by his situation. He describes himself as Clement Cleveland, captain and part owner of the shipwrecked vessel, and departs, the next morning, for Burgh Westra, with an introduction from Mordaunt, in the hope of regaining a part of his plundered property, through the assistance of Magnus Troil. The story is now undramatic for a couple of months, during which a mutual attachment arises between Minna and Cleveland, whom Zetland hospitality had made an inmate at Burgh Westra, and both Cleveland and Troil are disposed to quarrel with Mordaunt; Cleveland, because Norna has informed him that she destines Minna for Mordaunt ; Troil, because he has received from the pedlar, Snaelsfoot, and from the gossips of the island, false rumours, that Mordaunt had spoken disrespectfully and presumptuously of his intimacy with the sisters. The anger of Troil shows itself in the interruption of the usual intercourse be