but his incidents, though exciting, are often highly silent a minute, and then went on in a cheerful tone. improbable.

MISS MULOCK.

'You must let me remain out a good while to-day, I feel so strong; and, perhaps, I might stay a little later, to watch the sunset. I never can see it from my room, you know; which seems rather hard, now the evenings are so beautiful and spring-like.' Philip soothed him as an elder brother might have done, and promised all, provided he felt strong enough. Then he took Leigh in his arms like a child, and carried him down stairs to the gay carriage. What different occupants were the fluttering, fashionable young wife, and the poor sick boy, who lay half-buried in cloaks and cushions! Yet Leigh lifted up his head with a cheerful look when Mrs Pennythorne appeared at a window to give her parting nod as they drove away. Philip saw the bright loving smile that passed between mother and son-he thought of it afterwards many a time. 'Now, where shall we go, Leigh?' was the first question proposed, as they drove along the interminable Kensington High Street. Leigh pleaded for some quiet road: he wanted to go far out in the country, to that beautiful lane which runs along by the river side at Chiswick. He had been there once at the beginning of his illness, and had often talked of the place since. It haunted him, he said, with its overhanging trees, and the river view breaking in between them-its tiny wavelets all sparkling in the sun. He knew it would look just the same this calm, bright May afternoon. So accordingly they went thither. It was one of those spring days when the earth seems to rest from her joyful labour of budding and blossoming, and to be dreaming of summer.

The birds in the trees

In 1849 appeared The Ogilvies-a 'first novel,' as the authoress timidly announced, but without giving her name. It was instantly successful and appreciated as a work of great genius, 'written with deep earnestness, and pervaded by a noble and loving philosophy. Next year came forth Olive, sustaining the reputation of the writer; and Olive has been followed by The Head of the Family, 1851; Alice Learmont, a Fairy Tale, 1852; Agatha's Husband, 1853; John Halifax, Gentleman, 1856; Nothing New, 1857; A Woman's Thoughts About Women, &c. Several children's books-as Rhoda's Lessons, Cola Monti, A Hero, Bread upon the Waters, and The Little Lychetts-have been produced by the authoress of The Ogilvies; and she has contributed a great number of short essays and poems to Chambers's Journal and other periodicals. The accomplished and gifted young lady, who has thus delighted and benefited society by her genius, is MISS DINAH MARIA MULOCK, born at Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, in 1826. Notices of her father-a literary man, but of eccentric views and opinions-occur in his countryman Moore's journals and Life of Byron. As a moral teacher, none of the novelists of the present day excel Miss Mulock. She is not formally didactic-she insinuates instruction. A too prolonged feminine softness and occasional sentimen--the swans in the water-the white clouds in the sky talism constitute the defects of her novels, though -were alike still; and upon all things had fallen the less prominent in her later works than in her spell of a blessed silence-a silence full of happiness, first two novels. Her mission, it has justly been and hope, and love. Happiness, hope, and love, what words, what idle words they would sound, unto the two remarked, is to shew how the trials, perplexities, who were passing slowly under the shadow of the trees! joys, sorrows, labours, and successes of life deepen or wither the character according to its inward Oh, earth, beautiful, cruel mother! how canst thou smile bent-how continued insincerity gradually darkens children! But the earth answers softly: 'I smile with with a face so fair when sorrow or death is on thy and corrupts the life-springs of the mind-and a calm and changeless smile, to tell my frail children how every event, adverse or fortunate, tends to that if in me, made but for their use, is such ever strengthen and expand a high mind, and to break renewed life and joy, shall it not be so with them? the springs of a selfish or even merely weak and And even while they gaze upon me, I pour into their self-indulgent nature.'* In carrying out this moral hearts my deep peace!' It was so with Philip and purpose, Miss Mulock displays eloquence, pathos, Leigh. They sat silent, hand in hand, and looked on a subdued but genial humour, and happy delineation this beautiful scene: from both, the bitterness passed of character. A little more artistic labour, and away-the bitterness of life, and that of death. Which wider observation of life and manners, would place was the greater? On the bridge at Kew, Leigh spoke. her in the highest rank of novelists. We give one He begged that the carriage might rest a moment to extract from The Ogilvies, descriptive of the death let him look at the sunset, which was very lovely. He of the boy Leigh Penny thorne. Mr Dickens's half lifted himself up, and the large brown eyes seemed description of a similar event, in his novel of drinking in all the beauty that was in land, river, and Dombey, was much admired, but it is not more sky: they rested longest there. Then they turned to meet truly or pathetically given than in this passage by Philip's: that mute gaze between the two was full of Miss Mulock. solemn meaning. Are you content?' whispered Philip. 'Yes, quite now let us go home.' Leigh's eyes closed, and his voice grew faint. 'You seem tired,' said the other anxiously. Yes, a little. Take me home soon, will you, Philip?' His head drooped on the young man's shoulder heavily-so heavily, that Philip signed to the coachman to drive on at his utmost speed. Then he put his arm round the boy, who lay with closed eyes, his white cheek looking gray and sunken in the purple evening light. Once Philip spoke, almost trembling 'Are you quite easy, dear lest no answer should come. Leigh?' The eyes opened, and the lips parted with a faint smile. Yes, thank you, only weary; I can hardly keep awake, but I must till I have seen my mother.' still the dying head sank heavier on Philip's shoulder, and the hands which he drew in his to warm them were already growing damp and rigid. He sat with this solemn burden in his arms, and the carriage drove homewards until they entered the square. The mother stood at the door! Take her away, for God's sakeonly one minute,' whispered Philip to the servant; but

[Death of Leigh Pennythorne.]

'Leigh may take a little longer drive to-day, for Mrs Frederick does not want the carriage. I wish I were going with you both,' sighed the mother; but Mr Pennythorne does not like being left alone when he is writing.' 'Cillie! Cillie! are you going to stay in Leigh's room all day?' resounded from the study door. Poor Mrs Pennythorne cast a hopeless glance at Philip, hastily kissed her boy, and disappeared in a moment. Leigh looked after her wistfully. I wish she could stay with me a little more. She would like it now, and afterwards! But she is a good, dear mother! and she knows I think so. Be sure you tell her that I did, Philip.' Wychnor pressed the boy's hand: it was a strange and touching thing, this calm mingling of death with life in Leigh's thoughts and words.

* North British Review, November 1858.

He was

་

And

ing interest, but it has greater variety, and the inmates of the old house are drawn with consummate skill. The Blithedale Romance is a story founded on the Socialist experiment at Brook Farm, which, of course, proved a failure.

she had sprung already to the carriage. 'Leigh! how is my darling Leigh?' Her voice seemed to pierce even through the shadows of another world and reach the dying boy he opened his eyes and smiled tenderly upon her. Leigh is tired-almost asleep. Take the cushion, Mrs Pennythorne, and I will carry him in,' said Wychnor hastily. She obeyed without a word, but her face grew deadly white, and her hands trembled. When the boy was placed, as he seemed to wish, in his mother's arm-chair, she came and knelt before him, looking into his face. There was a shadow there. She saw it, and felt that the time was come when not even the mother could stand between her child and death. Philip thought she would have shrieked, or fainted; but she did neither. She only gazed into the dim eyes with a wild, earnest, almost beseeching gaze. 'Mother, you will let me go?' murmured Leigh. She drew a long sigh, as if repressing an agony so terrible that the struggle was like that of a soul parting; and then said: 'Yes, my darling!' He smiled-what a heaven is there in the happy smile of the dying!-and suffered her fond ministering hands-unwilling even yet to give up their long tendance-to unfasten the cloak and put the wine to his lips. Then she sat down beside him, laid his head on her bosom, and awaited-oh, mighty strength of a mother's love!-awaited, tearless and calm, the passing away of the life which she had given, 'He is quite content-quite happy-he told me so,' Philip whispered in her ear, with his soft, comforting voice. She turned round one moment with a startled air: Yes, yes, I know. Hush!' and she bent down again over her child, whose faint lips seemed trying to frame, scarcely louder than a sigh, the last word: 'Mother!' Then there fell over the twilight-shadowed room a solemn silence, long and deep, in the midst of which the spirit passed. They only knew that it was so, when, as the moon rose, the pale spiritual light fell on the calm face of the dead boy, still pillowed on the mother's breast. She turned and looked upon it without a cry or a moan, so beautiful, so heavenly was it!-are two distinct individuals, and can never be At that moment, had they put to her the question of old: Is it well with the child?' she would have answered, like the Shunammite: 'It is well!'

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

MR NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, at one time American consul at Liverpool, has written two of the most original and powerful of our modern fictions, and a series of short tales and sketches, scarcely inferior, as respects purity of style or individuality of portraiture, to those of Washington Irving. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, about the year 1807. He studied at Bowdoin College, and early became a contributor to literary periodicals, in which all American authors seem to make their first flights. These sketches were collected and published, the first series in 1837, a second in 1842, and a third in 1843. The first two were entitled Twice-told Tales, and the third, Mosses from an Old Manse-this last title being derived from the name of the house in which the essayist lived, the Old Manse,' in the village of Concord. A number of excellent children's books also proceeded from Mr Hawthorne's graceful and attractive pen. His romances are-The Scarlet Letter, 1850; The House with Seven Gables, 1851; and The Blithedale Romance, 1852. The first of these pictures of New England life and Puritanism is on a painful subject, for The Scarlet Letter is the badge of the heroine's shame, and her misery and degradation form the leading theme of the story. But it is intensely interesting, and its darker shades are relieved by passages of fine description. The second romance does not possess the same harrow

"The peril of our new way of life,' says Mr Hawthorne, was not lest we should fail in becoming practical agriculturists, but that we should probably cease to be anything else. While our enterprise lay all in theory, we had pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the spiritualisation of labour. It was to be our form of prayer and ceremonial of worship. Each stroke of the hoe was to uncover some aromatic root of wisdom, heretofore hidden from the sun. Pausing in the field, to let the wind exhale the moisture from our foreheads, we were to look upward, and catch glimpses into the far-off soul of truth. In this point of view, matters did not turn out quite so well as we anticasually around me, out of the midst of my toil, cipated. It is very true that, sometimes, gazing I used to discern a richer picturesqueness in the visible scene of earth and sky. There was, at such moments, a novelty, an unwonted aspect, on the face of nature, as if she had been taken by surprise and seen at unawares, with no opportunity to put off her real look, and assume the mask with which she mysteriously hides herself from mortals. But this was all. The clods of earth which we so constantly belaboured and turned over and over, were never etherialised into thought. Our thoughts, on the contrary, were fast becoming cloddish. Our labour symbolised nothing, and left us mentally sluggish in the dusk of the evening. Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise. The yeoman and the scholarthe yeoman and the man of finest moral culture, though not the man of sturdiest sense and integrity

melted or welded into one substance.' In quaint description and love of odd localities, Mr Hawthorne, in his short pieces, reminds us of Charles Lamb. He is a humorist with poetical fancy and feeling. In his romances, however, he puts forth greater power-a passionate energy and earnestness, with a love of the supernatural, but he never loses the simplicity and beauty of his style.

MRS STOWE.

No work of fiction, perhaps, ever had so large an immediate sale as the American story of Uncle Tom's Cabin, by MRS HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. It first appeared in parts in a weekly journal, The Washington National Era, 1850; and when completed it was published in a collected form, and in less than a year 200,000 copies are said to have been sold in the United States. It was soon imported into this country, and there being no restraining law of international copyright, it was issued in every form from the price of a shilling upwards. At least half a million copies must have been sold in twelve months. So graphic and terrible a picture of slavery in the Southern States of America could not fail to interest all classes; and though 'Uncle Tom' may have been drawn too saint-like, and Legree, the slave-owner, too dark a fiend, it is acknowledged that the characters and incidents in the tale are founded on facts and authentic documents. To verify her statements Mrs Stowe, in 1853, published a Key to, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she had collected advertisements of the sale of slaves, letters from the sufferers, and arguments in support of slavery from newspapers,

law reports, and even sermons. The law of the case is thus eloquently summarised by the authoress.

[American Law of Slavery.]

Slavery, as defined in American law, is no more capable of being regulated in its administration by principles of humanity than the torture system of the Inquisition. Every act of humanity of every individual owner is an illogical result from the legal definition; and the reason why the slave code of America is more atrocious than any ever before exhibited under the sun, is that the Anglo-Saxon race are a more coldly and strictly logical race, and have an unflinching courage to meet the consequences of every premise which they lay down, and to work out an accursed principle, with mathematical accuracy, to its most accursed results. The decisions in American law-books shew nothing so much as this severe, unflinching accuracy of logic. It is often and evidently not because judges are inhuman or partial, but because they are logical and truthful, that they announce from the bench, in the calmest manner, decisions which one would think might make the earth shudder, and the sun turn pale. The French and the Spanish nations are, by constitution, more impulsive, passionate, and poetic than logical; hence it will be found that while there may be more instances of individual barbarity, as might be expected among impulsive and passionate people, there is in their slave code more exhibition of humanity. The code of the state of Louisiana contains more really humane provisions, were there any means of enforcing them, than that of any other state in the Union. It is believed that there is no code of laws in the world which contains such a perfect cabinet crystallisation of every tear and every drop of blood which can be wrung from humanity, so accurately, elegantly, and scientifically arranged, as the slave code of America. It is a case of elegant surgical instruments for the work of dissecting the living human heart; every instrument wrought with exactest temper and polish, and adapted with exquisite care, and labelled with the name of the nerve, or artery, or muscle which it is designed to sever. The instruments of the anatomist are instruments of earthly steel and wood, designed to operate at most on perishable and corruptible matter; but these are instruments of keener temper and more ethereal workmanship, designed in the most precise and scientific manner to DESTROY THE IMMORTAL SOUL, and carefully and gradually to reduce man from the high position of a free agent, a social, religious, accountable being, down to the condition of the brute, or of inanimate matter.

Mrs Stowe visited England in this year (1853), and was received with great distinction. In London she received an address from the ladies of England, presented to her in Stafford House-the residence of the Duke of Sutherland-by Lord Shaftesbury. She afterwards travelled over the country, and from England she proceeded to France and Switzer

land.

some

An account of this European tour was published by Mrs Stowe, under the title of Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. There are pleasant passages of description in this work, but on the whole it is unworthy of the authoress. So much tuft-hunting, vanity, and slip-slop criticism could hardly have been expected from one who had displayed so much mastery over the stronger feelings and passions of our nature, and so much art in the construction of a story. Receptions, breakfast-parties, and personal compliments make up a large portion of these Memories, but here is one pleasing extract.

[English Trees-Warwick Castle.]

When we came fairly into the court-yard of the castle, a scene of magnificent beauty opened before us. I cannot describe it minutely. The principal features are the battlements, towers, and turrets of the old feudal castle, encompassed by grounds on which has been expended all that princely art of landscape gardening for which England is famous-leafy thickets, magnificent trees, openings, and vistas of verdure, and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green, as the velvet moss we sometimes see growing on rocks in New England. Grass is an art and a science in Englandit is an institution. The pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling, and otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the misty breath and often falling tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be appreciated. So again of trees in England. Trees here are an order of nobility; and they wear their crowns right kingly. A few years ago when Miss Sedgwick was in this country, while admiring some splendid trees in a nobleman's park, a lady standing by said to her encouragingly: 'O, well, I suppose your trees in America will be grown up after awhile!' Since that time, another style of thinking of America has come up, and the remark that I most generally hear made is, 'O, I suppose, we cannot think of shewing you anything in the way of trees, coming as you do from America!' Throwing out of account, however, the gigantic growth of our western river bottoms, where I have seen sycamore trunks twenty feet in diameter-leaving out of account, I say, all this mammoth arboria, these English parks have trees as fine and as effective, of their kind, as any of ours; and when I say their trees are an order of nobility, I mean that they pay a reverence to them such as their magnificence deserves. Such elms as adorn the streets of New Haven, or overarch the meadows of Andover, would in England be considered as of a value which no money could represent; no pains, no expense would be spared to preserve their life and health; they would never be shot dead by having gas-pipes laid under them, as they have been in some of our New England towns; or suffered to be devoured by canker-worms for want of any amount of money spent in their defence. Some of the finest trees in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in the Psalms, 'Excellent as the cedars.' They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the kingmaker. These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are themselves a living, growing, historical epic. Their seed was brought from the Holy Land in the old days of the Crusades: and a hundred legends might be made up of the time, date, and occasion of their planting.

Two other novels founded on American life, and touching on the slavery question, have been produced by Mrs Stowe-Dred, 1856; and The Minister's Wooing, 1859. Before the period of her European fame she had also contributed tales and sketches to American periodicals, afterwards collected and published as The May-Flower, and Two Ways of Spending the Sabbath. Mrs Stowe is the daughter of Dr Lyman Beecher, an able Congregational minister, and wife of the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, professor of biblical history in the Lane Seminary. She was born at Lichfield, Connecticut, in the year 1812.

MRS ELLIS.

This lady is the Hannah More of the present generation. She has written fifty or sixty volumes,

1832.

nearly all conveying moral or religious instruction, first is in the form of an autobiography, Passages and all written in a style calculated to render them in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside, both interesting and popular. Her principal works 1849. The quiet pathos and domestic incidents of are-The Women of England, 1838; A Summer and this story are not unworthy of Galt, whose Annals Winter in the Pyrenees, 1841; The Daughters of of the Parish probably suggested to Mrs Oliphant England, 1842; The Wives of England and The the outline of her tale. In 1851, Merkland, a Story Mothers of England, 1843; Prevention Better than of Scottish Life, appeared, and sustained the repuCure, 1847; Hints on Formation of Character, tation of the authoress. There is here a plot of 1848. Several short tales and poems have also stirring interest and greater variety of characters, been published by Mrs Ellis. This accomplished though the female portraits are still the best drawn. and industrious lady (née Sarah Stickney) was in Adam Grame of Mossgray, 1852, presents another 1837 married to the distinguished missionary, the series of home pictures, but is inferior to its predeRev. William Ellis, author of Polynesian Researches cessors. Harry Muir, 1853, aims at inculcating in the Society and Sandwich Islands, four volumes, temperance, and is a powerful, pathetic tale. The hero is one of those characters common in life, but difficult to render interesting in fiction-a goodnatured, pleasant youth, easily led into evil as well as good courses. Magdalen Hepburn, a Story of the Scottish Reformation, 1854, may be considered a historical romance, as Knox and other characters of his age are introduced, and the most striking scenes relate to the progress of the Reformation. The interior pictures of the authoress are still, however, the most winning portion of her works. Lilliesleaf, 1855, is a concluding series of Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, and the authoress has had the rare felicity of making the second equal to the first portion. Zaidee, a Romance, 1856, is in a style new to Mrs Oliphant. scene is laid partly in Cheshire and partly abroad, and the heroine, like Jane Eyre, is an orphan, who passes through various trying scenes and adventures

MISS C. M. YONGE-MISS SEWELL-MISS JEWSBURY, ETC.

A not less voluminous writer is MISS YONGE, whose novel, The Heir of Redclyffe, 1853, at once established her reputation. She had, however, previous to this date written several other tales -Henrietta's Wish, Venneth, and Langley School, 1850; The Kings of England, The Two Guardians, and Landmarks of Ancient History, 1852; &c. The popularity of The Heir of Redclyffe induced the authoress to continue what may be called the regular novel style; and in Heart's Ease, 1854; Daisy Chain, 1856; and Dynevor Terrace, 1857, we have interesting, well-constructed tales. The children's books of Miss Yonge have also been exceedingly popular; and all her works, like those of Mrs Ellis, have in view the moral improvement of the young, more particularly those of her own

sex.

The tales of MISS ELIZABETH SEWELL-Amy Herbert, Gertrude, Laneton Parsonage, Margaret Percival, Katherine Ashton, Cleve Hall, &c., are also well known, as affording moral instruction, blended with delicate, womanly pictures of life and character. MISS GERALDINE JEWSBURY is more ambitious in style, but not always so successful. Her novels are-Zoe, 1845; The Half-Sisters, 1848; Constance Herbert and Angelo, 1855; Right or Wrong, 1859; &c. Of these, Constance Herbert is the best, both for the interest of the story and its literary merits.

A series of novels by some unknown lady-sometimes we have seen 'Miss Manning' named as the authoress-was commenced in 1851, with The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mistress Powell, an ideal representation of Milton's first wife, written and printed in the antique style of the period. This has been followed by The Household of Sir Thomas More, The Provocations of Madame Palissy, The Good Old Times, &c.

SELINA BUNBURY.

Like several of her contemporaries, MISS BUNBURY has varied her literary labours, alternating truth with fiction-foreign travel with English novels. Her first work, Coombe Abbey, a tale, appeared in 1843; then Rides in the Pyrenees, 1844; Anne Boleyn, 1845; Evenings in the Pyrenees, 1848; Life in Sweden, 1853; Summer in Northern Europe, 1856; Our Own Story, 1856; Russia after the War, 1857. Some children's books and occasional productions have also proceeded from the pen of Miss Bunbury.

MRS OLIPHANT.

The tales illustrative of Scottish life by MRS OLIPHANT (née Margaret Wilson) have been distinguished by a graceful simplicity and truth. The

The

nearly all interesting, though in many instances highly improbable. Two shorter tales, Katie Stewart and The Quiet Heart have been published by Mrs Oliphant.

MISS CATHARINE SINCLAIR.

In the illustration of Scottish life this lady has also borne a part. Her novels have all enjoyed considerable popularity, and her narratives of tours in Scotland and Wales are pleasant light reading. The following are among her various productions: Modern Accomplishments, 1836; Modern Society, 1837; Holiday House, 1839; Hill and Valley (a Welsh tour), Scotland and the Scotch, Shetland and the Shetlanders, 1840; Journey of Life, 1847; Modern Flirtations, and Beatrice, 1855; &c. Miss Sinclair has for several years been a distinguished member of Edinburgh society, active in promoting its benevolent schemes and social improvement. She is a daughter of the late Sir John Sinclair, Bart., and was born in Edinburgh in the year 1800.

MRS MARY COWDEN CLARKE.

MRS MARY COWDEN CLARKE, daughter of Mr Vincent Novello, and born in 1809, has written a few works of fiction and literary sketches-Kit Bam's Adventures, 1849; The Girlhood of Shakspeare's Heroines, 1852; and The Iron Cousin, 1854. But Mrs Clarke has conferred a greater favour on the public by her Concordance to Shakspeare, being a verbal index to the dramatic works of the poet-a work long wanted, and very ably executed by this lady.

CHARLES READE.

The novels of MR CHARLES READE-Fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford, and in 1843 called to the Bar-have been among the most popular of our recent works of fiction. In 1853 appeared his Peg Woffington, a lively, sparkling story of town-life