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tions, and shrouded in a nebulous veil, has yet its place in the empyrean.

Of Richter's individual works, of his opinions, his general philosophy of life, we have no room left us to speak. Regarding his novels, we may say, that, except in some few instances, and those chiefly of the shorter class, they are not what, in strict language, we can term unities: with much callida junctura of parts, it is rare that any of them leaves on us the impression of a perfect, homogeneous, indivisible whole. A true work of art requires to be fused in the mind of its creator, and, as it were, poured forth (from his imagination, though not from his pen,) at one simultaneous gush. Richter's works do not always bear sufficient marks of having been in fusion; yet neither are they merely rivetted together; to say the least, they have been welded. A similar remark applies to many of his characters; indeed, more or less, to all of them, except such as are entirely humorous, or have a large dash of humour. In this latter province, certainly, he is at home; a true poet, a maker: his Siebenkäs, his Schmelzle, even his Fibel and Fixlein are living figures. But in heroic personages, passionate, massive, overpowering as he is, we have scarcely ever a complete ideal: art has not attained to the concealment of itself. With his heroines again he is more successful; they are often true heroines, though perhaps with too little variety of character; bustling, buxom mothers and housewives, with all the caprices, perversities, and warm generous helpfulness of women; or white, half-angelic creatures, meek, still, long-suffering, high-minded, of tenderest affections, and hearts crushed yet uncomplaining. Supernatural figures he has not attempted; and wisely, for he cannot write without belief. Yet many times he exhibits an imagination of a singularity, nay, on the whole, of a truth and grandeur, unexampled elsewhere. In his dreams there is a mystic complexity, a gloom, and amid the dim, gigantic, half-ghastly shadows, gleamings of a wizard splendour, which almost recall to us the visions of Ezekiel. By readers who have studied the Dream in the New-year's Eve, we shall not be mistaken.

Richter's Philosophy, a matter of no ordinary interest, both as it agrees with the common philosophy of Germany, and disagrees with it, must not be touched on for the present. One only observation we shall make: it is not mechanical, or sceptical; it springs not from the forum or the laboratory, but from the depths of the human spirit; and yields as its fairest product a noble system of Morality, and the firmest conviction of Religion. In this latter point we reckon him peculiarly worthy of study. To a careless reader he might seem the wildest of infidels; for

nothing can exceed the freedom with which he bandies to and fro the dogmas of religion, nay, sometimes the highest objects of Christian reverence. There are passages of this sort which will occur to every reader of Richter; but which, not to fall into the error we already blamed in Madame de Stael, we shall refrain from quoting. More light is in the following: "Or," inquires he, in his usual abrupt way, (Note to Schmelzle's Journey,) "Or are all your Mosques, Episcopal Churches, Pagodas, Chapels of Ease, Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else but "the Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of "Holies?" Yet, independently of all dogmas, nay, perhaps in spite of many, Richter is in the highest sense of the word religious. A reverence, not a self-interested fear, but a noble reve rence for the spirit of all goodness, forms the crown and glory of his culture. The fiery elements of his nature have been purified under holy influences, and chastened by a principle of mercy and humility into peace and well-doing. An intense and continual faith in man's immortality and native grandeur accompanies him; from amid the vortices of life, he looks up to a heavenly loadstar; the solution of what is visible and transient, he finds in what is invisible and eternal. He has doubted, he denies, yet he believes. "When, in your last hour," says he, (Levana, p. 251.) "when, in your last hour, (think of this,) all fa"culty in the broken spirit shall fade away and die into inanity"imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment,-then at last will the "night-flower of Belief alone continue blooming, and refresh "with its perfumes in the last darkness."

To reconcile these seeming contradictions, to explain the grounds, the manner, the congruity of Richter's belief, cannot be attempted here. We recommend him to the study, the tolerance, and even the praise, of all men who have inquired into this highest of questions with a right spirit; inquired with the martyr fearlessness, but also with the martyr reverence, of men that love Truth, and will not accept a lie. A frank, fearless, honest, yet truly spiritual faith is of all things the rarest in our time.

Of writings which, though with many reservations, we have praised so much, our hesitating readers may demand some specimen. To unbelievers, unhappily, we have none of a convineing sort to give. Ask us not to represent the Peruvian forests by three twigs plucked from them; or the cataracts of the Nile by a handful of its water! To those, meanwhile, who will look on twigs as mere dissevered twigs, and a handful of water as only so many drops, we present the following. It is a summer Sunday night; Jean Paul is taking leave of the Hukelum Par

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son and his wife; like him, we have long laughed at them or wept for them; like him also, we are sad to part from them:

"We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore our"selves asunder from repeated embraces; my friend retired with "the soul whom he loves. I remained alone, behind him with "the Night.

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"And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, ❝and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night, like a Day. I walked, and still looked, like the magnet, to the region of midnight, to strengthen my heart at "the gleaming twilight, at this upstretching aurora of a morn66 ing beneath our feet. White night butterflies flitted, white "blossoms fluttered, white stars fell, and the white snow-pow"der hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth, which reaches "beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the "Eolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown "on from above; and my immortal Soul was a string in this "Harp. The heart of a brother, everlasting Man, swelled under "the everlasting heaven, as the seas swell under the sun and "under the moon.-The distant village clocks struck midnight, "mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient "Eternity. The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my "soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions "of the skin. I walked silently through little hamlets, and close "by their outer church-yards, where crumbled upcast coffin"boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had "lain in them, were mouldered into grey ashes. Cold thought! "clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart: I look up to the "starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and "over, and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and "all is Godlike or God. . . !

"Towards morning, I desired thy late lights, little city of my "dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I returned "to the Earth; and in thy steeples behind the by-advanced "great midnight, it struck half past two: about this hour, in "1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the "east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood "which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: Ah, retire, "bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth "like the mild divided Moon !"-End of Quintus Fixlein.

Such, seen through no uncoloured medium, but in dim remoteness, and sketched in hurried, transitory outline, are some features of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter and his works. Germany has long loved him; to England also he must one day be

come known; for a man of this magnitude belongs not to one people, but to the world. What our countrymen may decide of him, still more what may be his fortune with posterity, we will not try to foretell. Time has a contracting influence on many a wide-spread fame; yet of Richter we will say, that he may survive much. There is in him that which does not die; that Beauty and Earnestness of soul, that spirit of Humanity, of Love and mild Wisdom, over which the vicissitudes of mode have no sway. This is that excellence of the inmost nature which alone confers immortality on writings; that charm which still, under every defacement, binds us to the pages of our own Hookers, and Taylors, and Brownes, when their way of thought has long ceased to be ours, and the most valued of their merely intellectual opinions have passed away, as ours too must do, with the circumstances and events in which they took their shape or rise. To men of a right mind, there may long be in Richter much that has attraction and value. In the moral desert of vulgar Literature, with its sandy wastes, and parched, bitter, and too often poisonous shrubs, the writings of this man will rise in their irregular luxuriance, like a cluster of date-trees, with its greensward and well of water, to refresh the pilgrim, in the sultry solitude, with nourishment and shade.

ART. VIII.-Original Letters, illustrative of English History, including numerous Royal Letters from Autographs in the British Museum, and one or two other Collections. With Notes and Illustrations. By HENRY ELLIS, F. R. S. Sec. S. A. Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. Second Series, 4 vols. 8vo. pp. 1613. London. Harding and Lepard. 1827.

IT T is with great pleasure that we meet our learned and worthy Editor again in the prosecution of his very useful task, on which we formerly greeted his entrance by our meed of applause and thanks. We strongly urged him to continue; and we still urge him in like manner: For he has only begun, what may well last his life, the work of opening to the world the hitherto locked up treasures under his official care. If there were no other inducements to prosecute this duty, this alone should suffice, that it is the first and surest way by far of preserving for ever the valuable documents themselves-there being no more effectual way of perpetuating the testimony of any paper-writing, than giving it to the public through the press.

But the paramount reason for urging Mr Ellis to go on, is, that he thus makes accessible to all mankind what hitherto has been the property of the trustees, who never use it,-or of a few men living near the Museum, who only use it in the parts suited to their peculiar speculations and views.

In selecting from this work some of the more interesting portions, with the view both of giving them greater circulation, and of conveying a few remarks to the reader, we shall confine ourselves to the third and fourth volumes, as by far the most interesting. The barbarous remains of royal illiterature, (sit venia verbo,) or of priestly pride, alternating with sycophancy, are of little curiosity; though here and there such courtesies as that of the brutal savage, Glyndower's lieutenant, the pink of chivalry with our romancers, in his letter to Reginald Lord Grey de Ruthyn, may excite a smile. The Baron terms this doughty correspondent, "the strongest thief in Wales." His name is Griffith ap David ap Griffith; and he is of the true cast, which our sentimental lovers of "the olden time," who regret all improvement, would have us regard as the genuine race of men, high-minded men. "We hope," says Griffith, or, as he signs his name, Gruffuth, "we hope we shall do the a privy "thing; a rope, a ladder, and a ryng; high on gallows for to "hinge. And thus shall be your endynge; and he that made "the be the so helpynge; and we on our behalf, shall be well "willynge."-In which fine poesy of the true time of chivalry, be it observed, in passing, there is some little trace of the versification of its modern eulogists and imitators. But we deem the remains of less savage animals more befitting the degenerate taste and fallen nature of the present age to contemplate; and, therefore, pass at once some centuries downward in the series, from the Plantagenet to the Tudor and the Stuart.

In "that infamous year," as Lord Clarendon justly terms 1572, the news of the massacre at Paris excited a natural sympathy and alarm in England; and we now find, that the foul murder of Mary Queen of Scots, was first suggested by the base and cruel councillor-Fear. Female jealousy may have smoothed the way to its execution, by one of the most cold-blooded and perfidious of her sex; but its origin was in alarm, the cause of most of the evils that afflict nations. A Right Reverend Prelate has, it now appears, the singular honour of having first suggested this great crime, as an expedient" for the safety of our "Quene and Realme"-to which the canting miscreant dares to add blasphemously, "uf God will." The following letter, from Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London, to the Lord Burghley, substantiates his claim to the honour of inventing the greatest

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