Then fiercely dives below !---while Thunders roll
Her requiem, and Whirlwinds howl for joy!

And where are they, who from the breezy deck
Beheld the sun in orient glory rise
Like a divinity, and breathed a prayer
For the fresh promise of a placid sea?
Float they in lifeless masses through the deep?
Look!--where a lash of lightning stripes the sea,-
Like straw upon the wind, a bark is whirl'd
From wave to wave! within a pale-faced crew
Sit dumb as phantoms; with their eyes bedimm'd,
Their locks all foamy and their lips unclosed;
And when the clouds unsheath their fires, against
The wizard glare their upturn'd faces gleam
In one despairing row !---Their doom is seal'd
Above!---Death howls in every wolfish blast,
And rides on each gigantic wave! the Sea
Shall be their sepulchre, their coffins be
Her caves, until the summon'd Ocean hear

The trumpet, and her bosom❜d dead arise.'---pp. 39-41.

This passage will remind every body of Coleridge's "Plague Ship." Still it is full of energy, and sets off, by the horrors which it describes, the pastoral tone of simplicity and loveliness which marks the picture that succeeds it.

Wave, wind, and thunder have departed! shrunk
The vision'd ocean from my view,---and lo!
A distant landscape, dawning forth amid
The bright suffusion of a summer sun,
On yonder mead, that like a windless lake
Shines in the glow of heaven, a cherub boy
Is bounding, playful as a breeze new-born,
Light as the beam that dances by his side.
Phantom of beauty! with his trepid locks
Gleaming like water-wreaths,---a flower of life,
To whom the fairy world is fresh, the sky
A glory, and the earth one huge delight!
Joy shaped his brow, and Pleasure rolls his eye,
While innocence, from out the budding lip
Darts her young smiles along his rounded cheek.
Grief hath not dimm'd the brightness of his form,
Love and Affection o'er him spread their wings,
And Nature, like a nurse attends him with
Her sweetest looks. The humming bee will bound
From out the flower, nor sting his baby hand.
The birds sing to him from the sunny tree,
And suppliantly the fierce-eyed mastiff fawns
Beneath his feet, to court the playful touch.
To rise all rosy from the arms of sleep,
And, like the sky-bird, hail the bright-cheek'd morn
With gleeful song, then o'er the bladed mead

To chase the blue-wing'd butterfly, or play
With curly streams; or, led by watchful Love,
To hear the chorus of the trooping waves,
When the young breezes laugh them into life!
Or listen to the mimic ocean roar

Within the womb of spiry sea-shell wove,—
From sight and sound to catch intense delight,
And infant gladness from each happy face,-
These are the guileless duties of the day:
And when at length reposeful Evening comes,
Joy-worn he nestles in the welcome couch,
With kisses warm upon his check, to dream
Of heaven, till morning wakes him to the world.
'The scene hath changed into a curtain'd room,
Where mournful glimmers of the mellow sun
Lie dreaming on the walls! Dim-eyed and sad,
And dumb with agony, two parents bend
O'er a pale image, in the coffin laid,—
Their infant once, the laughing, leaping boy,
The paragon, and nursling of their souls!
Death touch'd him, and the life-glow fled away,
Swift as a gay hour's fancy; fresh and cold
As winter's shadow, with his eyelids seal'd,
Like violet lips at eve, he lies enrobed
An offering to the grave! but, pure as when
It wing'd from heaven, his spirit hath return'd,
To lisp its hallelujahs with the choirs

Of sinless babes, imparadised above.'-pp. 41-45,

Death next visits a poor victim of seduction, whose tale is pathetically told. The picture of the young poet,' prematurely snatched away is also vigorously touched. But we must pronounce the sketch of the city suddenly struck with pestilence, as a deplorable failure. The splendid town is all life and bustle in the morning;

1

-‘by noon the sun grew red,

And glared his fierceness through the sky, till forth
From out the swarthy womb of heaven, the Plague
Exhaled her breath, that with a viewless flow

Unroll'd itself through all the living town,

Which, sudden as an ocean chain'd,—grew dumb !'—p. 55. This is improbable fiction in its worst form; but it does not rest here; the idea is carried on through a series of changes, ridiculous for their abruptness ;

He whose cheeks

Were round and fair, and eyes alive with youth,
From beauty withered to a yellow wreck!

Then hush'd

The grinding cables! and the barges lay,
Like dead sea-horses on the ocean stretch'd.'

Why, we ask, like dead sea horses?

But we have never seen a more ludicrous example of false antithesis than that which follows-the victim is a young urchin who had been playing the moment before :

'Down fell his fainting arms, up turn'd his lids

And from his ghastly eye-balls glared the pest'!

The subject is a disgusting one, and we turn from it to a pastenderness, with which we must close our extracts. It describes the effects of consumption on a young female.

sage of great

Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all,

Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life

Of one,---the darling of a thousand hearts.

Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task

When delicately bending, oft unseen,

Thy mother marks thee with that musing glance

That looks through coming time, and sees thee stretch'd
A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb.

" A

year hath travell'd o'er the sea of time;
And now the shadows of the grave grow dark
Upon the maiden; yet no mournful wail,
Or word abrupt, betrays unlovely thoughts
Of gloom and discontent within; she dies
As gently as delicious sound: not false
To present scenes, and yet prepared to die.
Beautiful resignation, and the hopes
That well from out the fountain of her faith,
Have breathed around her a seraphic air
Of wither'd loveliness. The gloss of life
And worldly dreams are o'er; but dewy Morn,
And dim-eyed Eve, and all the inward gleams
Of rapture, darted from regretted joys,—
Delight her still: and oft when twilight comes,
She'll gaze upon the damask glow of heaven
With all the truth of happier days, until
A sunny fancy wreathes her faded cheek ;-
'Tis but a pleasing echo of the past,
A music rolling from remember'd hours.

The day is come, led gently on by Death;
With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined,
And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd,
Within a cottage room she sits to die;
Where from the window, in a western view,
Majestic ocean rolls.---A summer eve
Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air
Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore
The waves unrol them with luxurious joy,
While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like
A sea-god glares the everlasting Sun

O'er troops of billows marching in his beam !---
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, her eyes

Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe,
Till through each vein reanimation rolls!
'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd
Upon the heavens, as though her spirit gazed
On that immortal world, to which 'tis bound :
The sun hath sunk,-her soul hath fled without
A pang, and left her lovely in her death,

And beautiful as an embodied dream.'—pp. 61-64.

The Universal Prayer,' which in point of order we should have noticed first, is but a very indifferent performance. The spirit of piety that breathes through it, we cannot too highly commend; but as a poem it is worthy of no attention. Two small pieces at the end, entitled Beautiful Influences,' and Lines written On seeing a celebrated Poet,' are little better than pages of mere verbiage.The volume is appropriately inscribed to Sharon Turner!

ART. III-1. Coming out; and The Field of the Forty Foot-steps. By Jane and Anna Maria Porter. 3 vols. London: Longman. 1828. 2. Victoria, or The Male Coquette and The Dupe. 3 vols. London:

Robins. 1828.

3. The Rector of Overton, a Novel. 3 vols. London: Fisher and Son. 1828.

AMONG the novelists of modern days, the writers of the three volumes first named will always retain a deservedly respectable place. Inferior to Mrs. Radcliffe in richness of imagination, they are greatly her superior in the invention of a clear and probable story. Not equal on the other hand to the more classical writers of English novels; failing in true description of character, in close and keen penetration into the niceties of human principles, and in bold personifications of passion, they savour but little of the strong nervous style which once gave a dramatic air to the productions of our novelists, and of which but one or two examples, including Miss Edgeworth, at present exist. But the middle place which these authoresses occupy between the writers of high romance and those of stirring dramatic fiction, could not have been occupied better than by themselves. Their style is pure and flowing; their choice of subjects calculated to awaken a deep and lively interest, and the lessons they inculcate are those of a high and noble virtue. Not the least interesting circumstance also in their literary character, is the perfect harmony and affection which have so long existed between these two highly talented, and, by the near equality of their genius, rival sisters. Their minds appear to have gone on sharing in the same means of improvement, and acquiring strength in equal degrees; the same sentiments, the same tempering of romance with plain sense, and the same gently elevated style distinguish the writings of both, and but for the difference of the subjects on which they may be

employed, it would probably be difficult to keep the names of Jane and Anna Maria Porter ever distinctly apart.

The history of novel-writing would furnish some curious materials for a comparative view of the mental powers of the two sexes. We are inclined to hazard a conjecture, that one cause of the present low state of English literature, is the invasion which the stronger sex has made into the legitimate province of the weaker. There are, it is true, some few keen piercing minds among men, which having both strength and shrewdness, can observe sharply, and compare and generalize correctly, but this is not often the case. Men of strong minds can rarely habituate themselves to the view of trifling external circumstances; others of a more common and shrewder disposition, are commonly poor observers of life, when they have not an immediate share in the scene that is passing before them. Neither the one nor the other, therefore, are adapted to draw from the actual occurrences of life, materials which when properly disposed make the thrilling and exciting romance, or the agreeable novel. Women on the contrary, are very generally found to possess the faculties of observation in great perfection; from infancy to womanhood they are employed in their development. Their education is a mere teaching of them to judge of things and circumstances by their outward proprieties. And when they enter the world they find themselves regarded as the arbiters of what is right and wrong, both in manners and sentiment; they have no concern with the world, but as respects the modes and customs of social life; they have no call or necessity to examine its affairs, the causes of its tumults or its prosperity, and they are throughout witnessing a scene every the minutest part of which engages their attention, because their thoughts have nothing to make them anxious respecting the machinery which moves and holds together the fairy and changing spectacle. Women also, by the very destination of their being, are called as it were out of themselves, to observe what is passing around them. They have never, naturally, the self-pride of men. They trust in no vaunting hope of independence or sufficiency; and they therefore look into the world with less superciliousness, and a more careful, eager and scrutinizing eye, than those who belong to the other half of the human race. Women have, therefore, for a long time fairly stood their ground, and asserted, with no trifling success, their right over this province of literature. Some of their works of this kind have been conspicuous for the very beauty and delicate spirit of the sex itself; and were woman only to be viewed in a mirror, she could not be seen more truly or to more' advantage, than in some of these transcripts of her mind.

Within the last few years, however, these opinions respecting the fitness of the female genius for novel and romance writing. appear to be a little disputed, for we have had a flood of works belonging to this class, pouring incessantly from hands fitted to