the murder, I could perceive in him an involuntary shuddering, though it was counteracted, partly by the feebleness of his frame, and partly by the energy of his mind. This was an allegation he expected, and he had endeavoured to prepare himself for it. But there was much of what I said of which he had had no previous conception. When I expressed the anguish of my mind, he seemed at first startled and alarmed, lest this should be a new expedient to gain credit to my tale. His indignation against me was great for having retained all my resentment towards him, thus, as it might be, in the last hour of his existence. It was increased when he discovered me, as he supposed, using a pretence of liberality and sentiment to give new edge to my hostility. But as I went on, he could no longer resist. He saw my sincerity; he was penetrated with my grief and compunction. He rose from his seat, supported by the attendants, and-to my infinite astonishmentthrew himself into my arms!

'Williams,' said he, 'you have conquered! I see too late the greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it is to my fault, and not yours, that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my bosom that I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious accusation you might have brought against me. But I see that the artless and manly story you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer. All my prospects are concluded. All that I most ardently desired is for ever frustrated. I have spent a life of the basest cruelty to cover one act of momentary vice, and to protect myself against the prejudices of my species. I stand now completely detected. My name will be consecrated to infamy, while your heroism, your patience, and your virtues, will be for ever admired. You have inflicted on me the most fatal of all mischiefs, but I bless the hand that wounds me. And now'turning to the magistrate and now do with me as you please. I am prepared to suffer all the vengeance of the law. You cannot inflict on me more than I deserve. You cannot hate me more than I hate myself. I am the most execrable of all villains. I have for many years-I know not how long-dragged on a miserable existence in insupportable pain. I am at last, in recompense for all my labours and my crimes, dismissed from it with the disappointment of my only remaining hope, the destruction of that for the sake of which alone I consented to exist. It was worthy of such a life that it should continue just long enough to witness this final overthrow. If, however, you wish to punish me, you must be speedy in your justice; for as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me together!'

I record the praises bestowed on me by Falkland, not because I deserve them, but because they serve to aggravate the baseness of my cruelty. He survived but three days this dreadful scene. I have been his

upon my efforts. Both these events are accomplished, and it is now only that I am truly miserable.

Why should my reflections perpetually centre upon myself?-self, an overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland, I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear, I will consecrate to thy ashes! A nobler spirit lived not among the sons of men. Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a godlike ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the corrupt wilderness of human society! It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a happier field and a purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate into usefulness, is thus converted into henbane and deadly nightshade.

Sir Walter Scott has objected to what may be termed the master-incident in Caleb Williams, and calls it an instance of the author's coarseness and bad taste; namely, that a gentleman passionately addicted to the manners of ancient chivalry should become a midnight assassin when an honourable revenge was in his power. Mr Godwin might have defended himself by citing the illustrious critic's own example: the forgery by Marmion is less consistent with the manners of chivalry than the assassination by Falkland. Without the latter, the novel could have had little interest-it is the keystone of the arch. Nor does it appear so unsuited to the character of the hero, who, though smit with a romantic love of fame and honour, is supposed to have lived in modern times, and has been wound up to a pitch of frenzy by the public brutality of Tyrrel. The deed was instantaneousthe knife, he says, fell in his way. There was no time for reflection, nor was Tyrrel a person whom he could think of meeting on equal terms in open combat. He was a noisome pest and nuisance, despatched in a moment of fury by one whom he had injured, insulted, and trampled upon, solely because of his worth and his intellectual superiority.

We have incidentally alluded to the other novels of Godwin. St Leon will probably descend to posterity in company with Caleb Williams, but we cannot conceive that a torso of any of the others will be preserved. They have all a strong family likeness. What Dugald Stewart supposed of human invention generally, that it was limited, like a barrel-organ, to a specific number of tunes, is strictly true of Mr Godwin's fictions. In St Leon, however, we have a romantic story with much fine writing. Setting aside the 'incredible' conception on which it proceeds, we find the subordinate incidents natural and justly proportioned.

The

bed.' 'Beware,' I answered; 'the slightest falsehood more shall instantly be expiated in your blood.' 'I call Abraham to witness,' rejoined the once more terrified Jew, it is my child! only my child!' 'Tell me,' cried I, with severity of accent, how old is this child?' 'Only five years,' said Mordecai: 'my dear Leah died when she was a year old, and though we had several children, this single one has survived her.' 'Speak to your child: let me hear her voice!' He spoke to her; and she answered, 'Father, I want to come out.' I was satisfied it was the voice of a little girl. I turned to the Jew: 'Take care,' said I, 'how you deceive me now; is there no other person in that room?' He imprecated a curse on himself if there were. I opened the door with caution, and the little girl came forward. As soon as I saw her, I seized her with a rapid motion, and returned to my chair. 'Man,' said I, 'you have trifled with me too rashly; you have not considered what I am escaped from, and what I have to fear; from this moment this child shall be the pledge of my safety; I will not part with her an instant as long as I remain in your house; and with this rapier in my hand, I will pierce her to the heart the moment I am led to imagine that I am no longer in safety.' The Jew trembled at my resolution; the emotions of a father worked in his features and glistened in his eye. At least let me kiss her,' said he. Be it so,' replied I: 'one embrace, and then, till the dawn of the coming day, she remains with me.' I released my hold; the child rushed to her father, and he caught her in his arms. 'My dear Leah,' cried Mordecai, now a sainted spirit in the bosom of our father Abraham! I call God to witness between us, that, if all my caution and vigilance can prevent it, not a hair of this child shall be injured! Stranger, you little know by how strong a motive you have now engaged me to your cause. We poor Jews, hunted on the face of the earth, the abhorrence and execration of mankind, have nothing but family affections to support us under our multiplied disgraces; and family affections are entwined with our existence, the fondest and best loved part of ourselves. The God of Abraham bless you, my child! Now, sir, speak! what is it you require of me?'

I told the Jew that I must have a suit of clothes conformable to the appearance of a Spanish cavalier, and certain medical ingredients that I named to him, together with his chafing-dish of coals to prepare them; and that done, I would then impose on him no further trouble. Having received his instructions, he immediately set out to procure what I demanded. He took with him the key of the house; and as soon as he was gone, I retired with the child into the inner apartment, and fastened the door. At first I applied myself to tranquillise the child, who had been somewhat alarmed at what she had heard and seen this was no very difficult task. She presently left me, to amuse herself with some playthings that lay scattered in a corner of the apartment. My heart was now comparatively at ease; I saw the powerful hold I had on the fidelity of the Jew, and firmly persuaded myself that I had no treachery to fear on his part. Thus circumstanced, the exertion and activity with which I had lately been imbued left me, and I insensibly sunk into a sort of slumber. *

*

Now for the first time I was at leisure to attend to the state of my strength and my health. My confinement in the Inquisition, and the treatment I had experienced, had before rendered me feeble and almost helpless; but these appeared to be circumstances scarcely worthy of attention in the situation in which I was then placed. The impulse I felt in the midst of the confusion in the grand street of Valladolid, produced in me an energy and power of exertion which nothing but the actual experience of the fact could have persuaded me was possible. This energy, once begun, appeared to have the faculty of prolonging itself, and

I did not relapse into imbecility till the occasion seemed to be exhausted which called for my exertion. I examined myself by a mirror with which Mordecai furnished me; I found my hair as white as snow, and my face ploughed with a thousand furrows. I was now fifty-four, an age which, with moderate exercise and a vigorous constitution, often appears like the prime of human existence; but whoever had looked upon me in my present condition, would not have doubted to affirm that I had reached the eightieth year of my age. I examined with dispassionate remark the state of my intellect: I was persuaded that it had subsided into childishness. My mind had been as much cribbed and immured as my body. I was the mere shadow of a man, of no more power and worth than that which a magic lantern produces upon a wall. These are thy works, superstition! this the genuine and proper operation of what is called Christianity! Let the reader judge of what I had passed through and known within those cursed walls by the effects; I have already refused, I continue to refuse, to tell how those effects were produced. Enough of compassion; enough of complaint; I will confine myself, as far as I am able, to simple history.

I was now once again alone. The little girl, who had been unusually disturbed and roused at an unseasonable | hour, sunk into a profound sleep. I heard the noise which Mordecai made in undressing himself, and composing his limbs upon a mattress which he had dragged for the present occasion into the front room, and spread before the hearth. I soon found by the hardness of his breathing that he also was asleep. I unfolded the papers he had brought me; they consisted of various medical ingredients I had directed him to procure; there were also two or three vials containing sirups and essences. I had near me a pair of scales with which to weigh my ingredients, a vessel of water, the chafingdish of my host in which the fire was nearly extinguished, and a small taper, with some charcoal to re-light the fire in case of necessity. While I was occupied in surveying these articles and arranging my materials, a sort of torpor came suddenly over me, so as to allow me no time for resistance. I sunk upon the bed. I remained thus for about half-an-hour, seemingly without the power of collecting my thoughts. At length I started, felt alarmed, and applied my utmost force of mind to rouse my exertions. While I drove, or attempted to drive, my animal spirits from limb to limb, and from part to part, as if to inquire into the general condition of my frame, I became convinced that I was dying. Let not the reader be surprised at this; twelve years' imprisonment in a narrow and unwholesome cell may well account for so sudden a catastrophe. Strange and paradoxical as it may seem, I believe it will be found in the experiment, that the calm and security which succeed to great internal injuries are more dangerous than the pangs and hardships that went before. I was now thoroughly alarmed; I applied myself with all vigilance and expedition to the compounding my materials. The fire was gone out; the taper was glimmering in the socket: to swallow the julep, when I had prepared it, seemed to be the last effort of which my organs and muscles were capable. It was the elixir of immortality, exactly made up according to the prescription of the stranger.

Whether from the potency of the medicine or the effect of imagination, I felt revived the moment I had swallowed it. I placed myself deliberately in Mordecai's bed, and drew over me the bed-clothes. I fell asleep almost instantly.

*

*

My sleep was not long: in a few hours I awaked. With difficulty I recognised the objects about me, and recollected where I had been. It seemed to me that my heart had never beat so vigorously, nor my spirits flowed so gay. I was all elasticity and life; I could scarcely hold myself quiet; I felt impelled to bound and leap

like a kid upon the mountains. I perceived that my little Jewess was still asleep; she had been unusually fatigued the night before. I know not whether Mordecai's hour of rising were come; if it were, he was careful not to disturb his guest. I put on the garments he had prepared; I gazed upon the mirror he had left in my apartment. I can recollect no sensation in the course of my life so unexpected and surprising as what I felt at that moment. The evening before I had seen my hair white, and my face ploughed with furrows; I looked fourscore. What I beheld now was totally different, yet altogether familiar; it was myself-myself as I had appeared on the day of my marriage with Marguerite de Damville; the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the complexion, every circumstance, point by point, the I leaped a gulf of thirty-two years. I waked from a dream, troublesome and distressful beyond all description; but it vanished like the shades of night upon the burst of a glorious morning in July, and left not a trace behind. I knew not how to take away my eyes from the mirror before me.

same.

I soon began to consider that, if it were astonishing to me that, through all the regions of my countenance, I could discover no trace of what I had been the night before, it would be still more astonishing to my host. This sort of sensation I had not the smallest ambition to produce: one of the advantages of the metamorphosis I had sustained, consisted in its tendency, in the eyes of all that saw me, to cut off every species of connection between my present and my former self. It fortunately happened that the room in which I slept, being constructed upon the model of many others in Spain, had a stair at the further end, with a trap-door in the ceiling, for the purpose of enabling the inhabitant to ascend on the roof in the cool of the day. The roofs were flat, and so constructed that there was little difficulty in passing along them from house to house, from one end of the street to the other. I availed myself of the opportunity, and took leave of the residence of my kind host in a way perfectly unceremonious, determined, however, speedily to transmit to him the reward I had promised. It may easily be believed that Mordecai was not less rejoiced at the absence of a guest whom the vigilance of the Inquisition rendered an uncommonly dangerous one, than I was to quit his habitation. I closed the trap after me, and clambered from roof to roof to a considerable distance. At length I encountered the occasion of an open window, and fortunately descended, unseen by any human being, into the street.

MRS OPIE.

MRS AMELIA OPIE (Miss Alderson of Norwich) commenced her literary career in 1801, when she published her domestic and pathetic tale of The Father and Daughter. Without venturing out of ordinary life, Mrs Opie invested her narrative with deep interest, by her genuine painting of nature and passion, her animated dialogue, and feminine delicacy of feeling. Her first novel went through eight editions, and is still popular. A long series of works of fiction proceeded from the pen of this lady. Her Simple Tales, in four volumes, 1806; New Tales, four volumes, 1818; Temper, or Domestic Scenes, a tale, in three volumes; Tales of Real Life, three volumes; Tales of the Heart, four volumes; Madeline (1822); are all marked by the same characteristics-the portraiture of domestic life, drawn with a view to regulate the heart and affections. In 1828 Mrs Opie published a moral treatise, entitled Detraction Displayed, in order to expose that most common of all vices,' which she says justly is found in every class or rank in society, from the peer to the peasant, from the master to the valet, from the mistress to the maid, from the

most learned to the most ignorant, from the man of genius to the meanest capacity.' The tales of this lady have been thrown into the shade by the brilliant fictions of Scott, the stronger moral delineations of Miss Edgeworth, and the generally masculine character of our more modern literature. She is, like Mackenzie, too uniformly pathetic and tender. She can do nothing well,' says Jeffrey, that requires to be done with formality, and therefore has not succeeded in copying either the concentrated force of weighty and deliberate reason, or the severe and solemn dignity of majestic virtue. To make amends, however, she represents admirably everything that is amiable, generous, and gentle.' Perhaps we should add to this the power of exciting and harrowing up the feelings in no ordinary degree. Some of her short tales are full of gloomy and terrific painting, alternately resembling those of Godwin and Mrs Radcliffe.

In Miss Sedgwick's Letters from Abroad (1841) novelist: I owed Mrs Opie a grudge for having we find the following notice of the then venerable made me in my youth cry my eyes out over her stories; but her fair cheerful face forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker faith and costume; but I fancied that her elaborate simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to adopt a theory than to change one's habits.'

Mrs Opie survived till 1853, and was in her eighty-fourth year at the time of her death. An interesting volume of Memorials of the accomplished authoress, selected from her letters, diaries, and other manuscripts, by Miss Brightwell, was published in 1854. After the death of her husband in 1807, Mrs Opie resided chiefly in her native town of Norwich, but often visited London, where her company was courted by the literary and fashionable circles. In 1825 she was formally admitted into the Society of Friends or Quakers, but her liveliness of character and goodness of heart were never diminished. Her old age was eminently cheerful and happy.

ANNA MARIA PORTER.

This lady was a daughter of an Irish officer, who died shortly after her birth, leaving a widow and several children, with but a small patrimony for their support. Mrs Porter took her family into Scotland, while ANNA MARIA was still in her nurse-maid's arms, and there, with her only and elder sister Jane, and their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, she received the rudiments of her education. Sir Walter Scott, when a student at college, was intimate with the family, and, we are told, 'was very fond of either teasing the little female student when very gravely engaged with her book, or more often fondling her on his knees, and telling her stories of witches and warlocks, till both forgot their former playful merriment in the marvellous interest of the tale.' Mrs Porter removed to Ireland, and subsequently to London, chiefly with a view to the education of her children. Anna Maria became an authoress at the age of twelve. Her first work bore the appropriate title of Artless Tales, the first volume being published in 1793, and a second in 1795. In 1797 she came forward again with a tale entitled Walsh Colville; and in the following year a novel in three volumes, Octavia, was produced. A numerous series of works of fiction now proceeded from Miss Porter-The Lake of Killarney, 1804; A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love, 1805; The