George Glen returned to Bentybrae, after having left a leg in Corsica, and being otherwise mutilated and disfigured. Although his figure was so much altered as scarcely to be recognised by his friends, yet Ellen Smith knew him the moment he appeared before her; she uttered a wild scream, whether of joy, sorrow, or alarm, was not known; for she rushed into his arms, and breathed her last in a few minutes.

John Glen and James Smith had not exchanged words for several years; but at Ellen's funeral, John

came up, pressed James's hand, and looked wistfully in his face, unable to speak,-accompanied James to his own house, and at the threshold of his door, said, "We have both been to blame, and are both justly punished; although we cannot forget, are you willing to forgive?" James led him in, and they now live with their former friendship renewed, both bitterly deploring the past.

Let the Whigs and Tories, the Ultras and Radicals of the present day, read and learn from this Tale of Bygane Times.

And strains from each band of soft mu. sic ascended,

Such as wail for the brave when the battle is o'er,

THERE is no feature in which the novels of our age differ more from those of the last, than in the speculative and ideal cast which they have assumed. The bustling plots, crowded with incidents, the characters developing themselves only in action, -the brief and meagre descriptions, -the system, which considered subject as every thing, and execution a matter of comparative insignificance, have been supplanted by more intellectual, and, we cannot help thinking, more interesting views. Plots have become simple even to poverty;-the province of action has been narrowed, to extend that of thought;-feeling has become the mainspring of interest, and its analyses and expression the test of talent;-descriptions of external nature have become more graphical and minute, and their connection with the business of the tale-as influencing, by their secret but sensible power, the feelings of the agents-is better understood, and rendered more effective and available. The first of these systems certainly indicates a want of refined feeling in the public. It was altogether of a meaner and more mechanical cast,-it addressed itself to a lower class of feelings, and might have been acted on by minds of no deep feeling, and even of scanty invention; for, though the process of creating an original story is one of no trifling effort, the task of combination or disjunction is not a difficult one, and a very slight acquaintance with the history of fiction enables us to see how frequently the composition of these novels of incident has been a work of alteration rather than invention. They had one advantage, however, in the very mediocrity of the principle on which they were constructed: they were seldom tire

some.

If the reader perused them with little of that deep thrilling interest which he now feels, we have no doubt he yawned less also. If he wept less, he laughed more: there were fewer chances of failure, for the effect of a sequence of ludicrous or striking incidents, admitted of little variation; and in the hands of an author of the greatest or the most

VOL. XIV.

slender talent, produced only a pleasure differing a little in degree. But the more ambitious system of modern novelists, while it renders the power of genius more visible, and vindicates more certainly its pre-eminence over mediocrity, makes the works of the lesser herd utterly wretched and intolerable; destitute of those humbler attractions of plot and incident which they might have attained, and filled with ludicrous and impotent strainings after those more magnificent qualities which it is hopeless for them to emulate or aspire to.

The present work has nothing to do, however, with these; it belongs to the higher class; and if we wished to prove the superiority of that principle of effect on which our modern tales are constructed, we know not where we should find a better example. With a plot of a grossly-defective kind-with few incidentsfew characters of importance, and one, the most interesting of these, appearing only, and disappearing, as in a dream,-with little aid from humour, and less from the mere painting of external nature; in short, by the mere force and grandeur of individual scenes, and the general eloquence and beauty of the writing, this tale creates and maintains the deepest and most vivid interest; and we close it at last, with those feelings of dreariness and desolation, with which we peruse the remorse of Caleb Williams, or the settled gloom of St. Leon, after his final parting with his son. Often, in the course of the story, we feel the unsatisfactory nature of some of the incidents,-the want of connection-of explanation;

the unreasonable supineness of some of the characters at one time, and their fiery and needless impatience at others, with a multitude of et cetera; but still we are hurried along by the impetuosity of the narrative; and it is only when we have fairly finished, that we have time to think of all the author's offences against consistency, and to wonder how, with so many faults, obvious to every one, we should have so yielded to its influence. But the truth is, all this only shows how little such things

4 D

weigh in the balance of excellence, and how easily the atoning power of genius can efface such errors. The author is evidently a man of great talent. His humour, to be sure, we do not much like; but his pathos, his scenes of passion, and his eloquence, are of the highest kind. His conception of character we estimate more highly from his Reginald Dalton than from the present work; yet even here there is a wonderful effect about his sketches. His females we have always thought particularly captivating. Athanasia was very good, and Helen Hesketh admirable. Of the heroine of this tale we see almost nothing;-she is remorselessly married in the beginning, and passes only once before our eyes until the conclusion ;-and yet even this unsubstantial pageant has something about it that lingers in our memory. Another beautiful and quiet female is opposed to her; gentle, affectionate, and tinged with religious melancholy; and her character is touched with the same chaste and powerful pencil. Wald himself, we cannot help thinking disagreeable, and none of the subordinate agents of the story are particularly interesting. But we suppose the reader would rather form his own opinion; and though it is difficult to select any passage that can give a proper idea of the characteristic vigour of the book, we shall extract a few of the shortest, accompanying them only by such a notice as to render them intelligible.

The story is related, like those of Godwin, in the first person; an arrangement well suited to such tales as depend for their effect on the exposé of feeling, and particularly to those where the narrator possesses no extraordinary qualities, either of evil or good, and may therefore detail his feelings, without any great violation of modesty on the one hand, or of probability on the other. Matthew Wald is the descendant of a family of Norman extraction, which had settled in Scotland; and at the opening of the tale, we find him, after the death of his father, residing at the family mansion, under the care of his aunt, enjoying, with all the thoughtlessness of youth, the present hour; attending school rather reluc

tantly, and wandering with his cousin Katharine among the woods and glens of Blackford. The first interruption to his gaiety is occasioned by the marriage of his aunt with a Mr Mather, who had been tutor in the family, and who soon begins to curtail his amusements, and to treat him with harshness. An incident of this kind, which young Wald revenges with a ferocity above his years, leads to his removal to the University of St. Andrews, where he quietly spends two winters in pursuing his studies. A sudden resolution strikes him to revisit Blackford, and it is here that the real interest of the tale begins. His feelings, when, on his arrival, he finds a general appearance of restraint and coldness, and the attentions of his cousin and his aunt devoted to a fashionable inmate of the house,-the Honourable Mr Lascelyne, the succession of little incidents, trifling in themselves, that work upon, and irritate his temper, are imagined and executed with great art and probability. The finishing stroke is given by a discovery which appears to him to confirm his suspicions of Katharine's attachment to Lascelyne; and with a promptitude which (by the way) forms an unnatural contrast to that unresisting, irresolute conduct, which he displays during this visit, he communicates to Mather his resolution to visit the Continent, and to continue his studies at Leyden. These are his parting feelings:

My plans, however, were discussed at some length during supper; and Lasce lyne talked away very easily about pack. ets, posts, bills of exchange, Amsterdam, Paris, "the Pyrenean, and the river Po." I was the last to go up stairs; and, although I trod as quickly as I could past my cousin's door, I could not shut my

ears.

There was profound silence in the house, and I heard one or two deep, choking sobs-some space between them. I paused for a moment, and sprung up to

my old garret. I had strained the string

to its uttermost stretch. My heart was full, and it would have broken had I not

yielded. I flung myself, half undressed, upon my bed, and wept like a child. And why not? I was a boy, a mere boy.

Never having once closed my eyes the whole night, I found when I rose (about five o'clock) that they were shockingly

red and swollen; and the more I bathed them in my basin, the worse I thought did they look." Nay, nay," I said to my proud self," this will never do. This part of the thing, at least, shall not be seen."

I put on my clothes, and crept down stairs as quietly as was possible, and found my way into the sitting-room, that I might write a note to Mr Mather. I wrote two or three, and tore them all into

bits." It will do just as well," I said, "to write from the village-or the first town I stop at, better still. I can say I walked out, and, finding the morning fine, was tempted to go on. I can say I hated the thoughts of taking leave-that, at least, will be true enough."

I had opened one of the window-shutters, and I now thought it would be as well to close it again. As I was walking on tiptoe across the room, my eye fell on two little black profiles of Katharine and myself, that we had sat for to an itinerant limner when we were children, and which had ever since hung over the chimney-piece. I took Katharine's off the nail, and held it for a minute or two in my hand; but the folly of the thing flashed upon me in a moment, and I replaced it. Her work-table was by the window, and I was so idle as to open the drawer of it. A blue sash was the first thing I saw, and I stuffed it like a thief into my bosom. I then barred the win dow again, and hurried out of the house by the back way.

It was a beautiful, calm, grey morning, -not a sound but the birds about the trees. I walked once, just once, round the garden, which lay close to the house, -sat down for a moment in the arbour where my father died, and then moved rapidly away from Blackford.

I could never describe the feelings with which I took my parting look of it from the bridge. The pride, the scorn, the burning scorn, that boiled above,-the cold, curdling anguish below,-the bruised, trampled heart.

I plucked the blue ribbon from my breast, kissed it once as I coiled it up, and flung it into the water below me. It fell into one of the pools among the rocks, where we had used to sail our boats. watched it till it had got under the bridge, and moved on.

I

The project of visiting Holland is prevented, however, by an accidental meeting with an acquaintance, which leads to a very different result. The father of Wald, in whose possession both the estate of his brother and his own had centered, had in his will

conveyed the former to Katharine, limiting his son to the possession of his own small property. This will, Wald, by the suggestion of a pretended friend, is induced to question, -conceiving that it was the intention of Mather and his wife to render Katharine's fortune the means of effecting a union, favourable to their own interest, between her and Lascelyne. He loses his case, however; and, during its dependence, has the mortification to learn, that the marriage had only been accelerated by the measure he had resorted to. After losing the greater part of his little fortune in the expenses of his law-suit, and the remainder (not so naturally) in an expedition with some surgical acquaintances for raising dead bodies, he is settled as tutor in the family of Sir Claud Barr of Barrmains. The family are uninteresting, with the exception of the eldest daughter, Joanne. Her peculiar situation at first awakens his curiosity, and he afterwards learns that she is the natural daughter of Sir Claud, by a Flemish lady, whose tragical story is related with great power and pathos by an old nurse. The quiet monotony of the hero's life at Barrmains is broken by an unexpected apparition :

Dinner was announced, and the party began to move towards the parlour. I stepped backwards, that all might pass, -and behold,-among the first, a lady, a young and graceful lady, arrayed in the deepest sables. The room was darkish ; but the figure, the gait, the profile,-I saw them all distinctly. With slow and stately steps, Katharine Wald glided by me: she passed the door,—her long black train floated over the threshold. I was in a dream; yet my eyes perused every form that followed,--and at last I was alone, and I had seen no Lascelyne. I cannot say what my feelings were. I followed the last of the company, as if I had been dragged by a chain. I would have bounded up the staircase, but the servants were all arranged in the blazing hall; and I crept,-I stole into the dining-room. My eye glanced once, just once, round the room; and I began to breathe again, when I found that I had hedged myself in at the bottom of the

table, on the same side towards the upper-end of which she had taken her seat.

But I was completely in a dream. The lights, the crowd, the buzz,--they found

me, and they left me alone. If I ate and drank, I was no more aware of what I was doing than the silver or glass before me. There was a ringing in my ears,-a dizziness on my brain. I knew not whether I had lived an hour or a minute, when my neighbours rose, and I perceived that the ladies were about to withdraw.

Instinctively I kept my face to the table, and fixed my eyes on the opposite wall, the side of the room along which she was not to pass. I was fixed,-I was a statue; and yet I trembled to the bone to think, that perhaps the skirt of her garment might be rubbing the back of my chair, even of my coat. She had happened to take the other way: she appear. ed right before my eyes,-I had not power to avert them. On she came,-she caught my dead gaze full; and I saw a sudden tremour agitate every fibre in her glorious frame. She opened her lips, and instantly compressed them again, as if they had been frozen. It was the work of a moment,-less than a moment. She walked on the door was closed upon the last of them. I had met those eyes once more, who could ever read their hazel depths? It was Katharine,-the same Katharine, the same unapproachable, ineffable loveliness;-and yet how changed in aspect and in bearing! What cold sombre sorrow was this that had seated itself upon the world's throne of beauty? whence that vestal gloom,-that more than matron gravity, that solemn, melancholy, dreary majesty? Had I seen her before she saw me, or only when she was seeing me?—had I seen, or had I fancied? And why that sable garb, that attire of deepest mourning? Burn, dull, sleepy brain! throb, throb once more, thou crushed and trampled, but still living heart! Is Lascelyne dead,-is the traitor below the sod,-are the worms feeding upon his beauty,-is Katharine a widow, is she free? Out upon the thought! Fool! slave!-crawling slave! where is the dream of thy youth,-the holy virgin dream?

Had the poor tutor remained in the room after the ladies were gone, it might have excited some notice,—my immediate disappearance, of course, did not. I was gasping for breath, and I made my way at once to the open air. I stood, I daresay, for half an hour, propped against the wall, just beyond the door. It was a dark windy night, and the old trees about the house were groaning, and the leaves fall. ing thick about me.

Suddenly, two horsemen came cantering close by me. The first reined his horse, and the light from the hall stream

ed full upon Lascelyne's face. He dismounted, and I could not but hear what he said to his groom. "Tell them," said he, "that your lady will require the carriage immediately after breakfast in the morning. My horses at the same time; for we have a longish stage to-morrow."

"Yes, my lord," said the man: and I saw the one enter the house, and the other take the way towards the stables.

I prowled about the woods a while, and then denned myself in my garret: and I need scarcely say, that I did not honour the distinguished company with my presence at their breakfast-table next morning. But how acute was my ear! How distinctly did I hear the carriagesteps slap, and the wheels begin to roll!

The death of Sir Claud breaks up the party. Wald commences surgeon in the county town in the neighbourhood, and Joanne retires to the residence of that old servant, who had related her story to Mathew Wald. The following is the picture of their retirement, and of one of the visits of Wald:

I deferred this visit, therefore, till the last evening of my stay; when I easily found my way to a lonely, and as lovely a retreat, certainly, as ever sheltered the infirmities of age, or the sorrows of youth. Fast by the green margin of the noble Ora, and embowered among the fading foliage of his birches, stood the little rustic shieling, for which that gentle child of misfortune had left the hall of her fa. thers. The hill rose precipitous behind, clothed to the loftiest crag with copsewood, from the midst of which, here and there, the red gigantic trunks of the native pine towered upwards with their broad sable canopies. The wide stream rolling in heavy murmurs close underneath the branches of the trees, its darkbrown waters gleaming with the gold of the sunset, appeared to cut off the wilderness it embellished from every intrusion of the world. A small skiff lay chained to the bank-and slowly did I urge it, with my single strength, against the deep and steady flow of the autumnal river.

From without, the appearance of the cottage itself was rude, and even desolate; but within, the habits of another life had already, in the course of but a few days, begun their triumph. I had to stoop ere I could pass the threshold; and I trod upon a floor of naked earth. the exquisite cleanliness that had entered with the new inhabitants, had of itself robbed poverty of all its meanness. Every thing upon the walls shone bright

But