was dying; and, although Zaira's attempts to detain him were very painful to him, he at last broke away. There is something very affecting in the detail of her despair, and of the fatal path into which it had nearly betrayed her. In the weakness of her mind, she listens to infidel arguments, which in her better days, she would have despised. She had the religion of warm feeling, and of intellectual glorying, and had believed also in Revelation, though without much knowledge of the grounds of her belief. All her natural bulwarks fell down in the hour of her misery,— she fluctuated for a time between superstition and doubt, and at last summoned all her resolution to the act of suicide. From this purpose, however, she is diverted by a strong impulse to return to Ireland; she does so,-and remains in the neighbourhood of De Courcy without his knowing of it. She at last accidentally discovers in the old mad woman, from whom, in the beginning of the book, De Courcy had rescued Eva,-her own mother, -and, more wonderful still, that she herself is the mother of Eva. She rushes to the house of the Wentworths,-but barely in time to see the eyes of her daughter Eva closed. She and De Courcy again meet at the funeral, but, as is most strikingly stated, without the slightest emotion from each other's presence. The thoughts of each were now absorbed in the sad coffin before them. The young man, not long after, was buried by the side of his lost bride, and, at the early age of nineteen, finished his tumultuous course of disordered passion. Zaira continued to live, but a monument of despondency and wo, and was ever after heard to utter the melancholy words, " My child, I have murdered my child." The catastrophe of this tale may seem very strained and unnatural; but it is really less so than our bare and imperfect sketch makes it appear to be. There is something, no doubt, radically extravagant in its conception, but it is much better coloured over than could well be looked for; and it is, perhaps, a piece of artifice in our author to make the outset of his story singularly blundering and confused, like a man writing on without knowing what he is to say next, that we may be the more satisfied with its final winding up. Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem The tale, indeed, abounds with "miracula;" and we are not sure that they can always be called "speciosa." There are in it visions, dreams, and impulses, in abundance,-besides the mad woman, who is a kind of prophetess in her lunes, and starts up every now and then, dancing before us in a way to make us giddy. She is not a very happy invention, but is a sort of decoction of Meg Merrilies, the old wicked woman in the Antiquary, and all Miss Edgworth's wild Irish women distilled together into one "hell broth." Indeed, we like our author least when he does not draw from his own stores. It is true he has not disfigured Corinne, but has given a new and edifying view of a mind like hers under the terrible feeling of religious desertion. Zaira is thus original, though an imitation; and is, we conceive, not greatly inferior to her model. The evangelical characters are all admirably imagined,-the pure Eva,-the conscientious Mrs. Wentworth, her controversial husband,-and all the gang of preachers and elect who assemble within his doors. Indeed, we cannot well conceive any thing better than the temperate and discriminating manner in which our author has walked over this delicate ground. He exposes, with a powerful hand, the follies of the methodistical system, and its bad effects on the minds both of its professors and of those who are merely lookers on;-yet his best characters are all among this order,-and, although their faculties are cramped and depressed by the narrowness of their creed, they are still eminent examples of the power of genuine piety. Take the instance of Mrs. Wentworth. "She appeared about fifty years of age; her person was plain, but her clear commanding eye, the severe simplicity of her manners, and consciousness of perfect sincerity accompanying every word she uttered, and communicating itself irresistibly to her hearers, made one respect her the moment they beheld her, and love her a very few moments afterwards. Withdrawn and recollected from the embarrassment of the preceding night, her manner appeared comparatively cold, but it was rather the coldness of habit than of character; there was more, too, of the measured and limited phraseology of the Evangelical people in her conversation, but when she continued to speak for any time, one easily saw that the range of her mind was far more extensive than that of the objects to which it was confined. She herself appeared to feel this self-imposed constraint, and to escape from it, from time to time, but soon returned again, and the final impression which she left was that of strong sense, rigid rectitude of principle and conduct, and a temper and heart naturally warm, but subdued by the power of religion." Her husband is an admirable contrast. "Calvinism, Calvinism was every thing with him; his expertness in the five points would have foiled even their redoubtable refuter Dr. Whitby himself; but his theology, having obtained full possession of his head, seemed so satisfied with its conquest, that it never ventured to invade his heart. His mind was completely filled with a system of doctrines, and his conversation with a connexion of phrases, which he often uttered mechanically, but sometimes with a force that imposed not only on others, but on himself. In this state he was perhaps as happy as he could be, for he had a gratifying sense of his own importance, and his conscience was kept tranquil by listening to or repeating sounds, which to him had all the effect of things. Never was Mirabeau's acute remark, that' words are things,' more strongly verified, than in the case of Mr. Wentworth's religion." The death-bed of the sainted Eva made him at last feel the distinction. She entreated her aunt that she might die in private, and not surrounded by preachers. • My "Wentworth, who was in the room, did not like her last sentiments; he could not bear that a niece of his, brought up in the very strictest sect of Evangelical religion, should thus depart without leaving a memorable article for the obituary of an Evangelical Magazine. He had expected this at least from her. He had (unconsciously in his own mind) dramatized her whole dying scene, and made a valuable addition to the testimony of those who die in all the orthodoxy of genuine Calvinism. dear Eva,' said he, approaching her bed, and softening his voice to its softest tones, I trust that I am not to discover, in your last words, a failure from the faith for which the saints are desired to contend earnestly, and to resist even unto blood. I trust that your approach to the valley of the shadow of death does not darken your view of the five points, those immutable foundations on which the foundation of the gospel rests, namely,'-and Wentworth began reckoning on his fingers; Mrs. Wentworth in vain made signs to him, he went on as far as imputed right eousness,' when Eva, lifting her wasted hand, he became involuntarily silent. ( My dear uncle,' said the dying Christian, the language of man is as the dust in the balance' to me now. I am on the verge of the grave, and all the wretched distinctions that have kept men at war for centuries, seem to me as nothing. I know that 'salvation is of grace through faith,' and knowing that, I am satisfied. Man may disfigure divine truth, but can never make it more plain. Oh, my dear uncle, I am fast approaching that place where there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian or Scythian, bondman, or free, but Christ is all in all. Speak no more of points which I cannot understand; but feel that the religion of Christ is a religion of the soul,-that its various denominations, which I have heard so often discussed, and with so little profit, are of light avail, compared with its vital predominance over our hearts and lives. I call,' said she, collecting her hollow voice to utter the words strongly, I call two awful witnesses to my appeal, the hour of death, and the day of judgment;-they are witnesses against all the souls. Oh, my dear uncle, how will you stand their testimony? You have heard much of the language of religion, but I fear you have yet to learn its power.' She paused; for dim as her eyes were bourly growing, she could see the tears running fast down Wentworth's rugged cheeks," &c. Nothing can be more beautiful and affecting than all this scene, and the whole character, indeed, of this amiable girl,-yet there is a fine moral in the representation of the bad effects, even upon her mind, of the contracted system in which she had been educated. With a little more play of thought, and indulgence of affection, she would have fixed her lover, become a valuable and beloved wife, and none of the misery which followed from his wandering would ever have befallen! While our author is thus at home in all the bad and the good of evangelical religion, (our readers, we trust, will see that we are using the term according to the cant acceptation of the age, not in its original sense, for in that sense it can include nothing but what is good,) he no less admirably represents the philosophical religion of Zaira in her best days, the atheism of some of her Parisian associates, and the sad depression of her spirit amidst doubts and misery. In all this nothing is overstrained, but all is most naturally and candidly exhibited. Her bursts of natural piety are beautiful, but they float upon the surface of the soul;even the arguments of infidelity are given fairly and without any attempt to distort them;-but how fine is the result of the whole! With all Zaira's powers of mind and her shining virtues, she has, in the hour of misfortune and disappointment, no anchor upon which her soul can steady itself,-while the simple Eva, educated in the darkest and most contracted views of Christianity, yet finds its blessed consolations smoothing her passage to the grave! In this representation, we really think our author has done an invaluable service to the cause of true religion. He keenly satirizes the follies which disfigure it. He portrays, in all their most dazzling and brilliant colours, those qualities of mind which seem able to stand without its support, and upon their own strength and enduring stability;-yet, in the hour of trial, all these meteor glories vanish, and Religion is left alone to support the trembling soul as it is sinking in the waves of darkness and of death. We must now, however, give a specimen or two of the fascinating Zaira. Take her first appearance. "The curtain rose, and a few moments after she entered. She rushed so rapidly on the stage, and burst with such an overwhelming cataract of sound on the ear, in a bravura that seemed composed apparently not to task, but to defy the human voice, that all eyes were dazzled, and all ears stunned, and several minutes elapsed before a thunder of applause testified the astonishment from which the audience appeared scarcely then to respire. She was in the character of a princess, alternately reproaching and supplicating a tyrant for the fate of her lover; and such was the perfect self-possession, or rather the force with which she entered into the character, that she no more noticed the applauses that thundered round her, than if she had been the individual she represented; and such was the illusion of her figure, her costume, her voice, and her attitudes, that in a few moments the inspiration with which she was agitated was communicated to every spectator. The sublime and sculptor-like perfection of her form, the classical yet unstudied undulation of her attitudes, almost conveying the idea of a Sybil or a prophetess, under the force of ancient inspiration,—the resplendent and almost overpowering lustre of her beauty, her sunlike eyes, her snowy arms, her drapery blazing with diamonds, yet falling round her figure in folds as light as if the zephyrs had flung it there, and delighted to sport among its wavings,―her imperial loveliness, at once attractive and commanding, and her voice developing all that nature could give, or art could teach,—maddening the ignorant with the discovery of a new sense, and daring the scientific beyond the bounds of expectation or of experience, mocking their amazement, and leaving |