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In this building, some hundred feet long, and very many broad, the floor sanded, and on one side the sweltering furnaces (though on this great day of festival comparatively idle) a platform is raised; and on this, when the multitude are fairly wedged round, space scarcely left for many enthusiastic speakers, is seen John Ironshaft, giant-limbed, but grey-haired, and somewhat decrepit, from his untiring labour of body and mind, for he has done God's work with both, and that manfully; for, though possessor of where he stands, and of streets of houses, he has been, more or less, a swart worker to the present hour, and but a leader in the great army that nobly and daily serves by the essential and primæval condition of nature. Yes; though possessor of this honourable substance, he has not set himself apart as a capitalist, but has distributed it through high and well-paid wages-through untiring service in Parliament and Democratic Leagues-through patriotism to his country; not asking percentage for this thousand here, nor security for the thousand there-through lectures, through schools, through better-regulated dwellings-through being a brother to his brother men; and yet best, and yet truest, through genuine service by an iron pen; and by and through these things developing two of the great truths of the "Coming Reformation :" That the individual constitutes his country, and can have no true interests apart from it; and that politics can be no more separated from a genuine literature than truth from truth. Therefore, the highest order of intellect is necessarily the priesthood, missioned to teach the sublime and ever-advancing doctrines of onward Time! After some speaking, the multitude listening eagerly, and John Ironshaft standing forth with seven young and stalwart men-the sons of that small Nell-a group of working men come forward, and reverently uncovering something they bring, show neither gold nor silver, but four or five folio volumes, magnificently bound in vellum, the cover edges decorated with filagree of light bronze work. Some one, priest himself, then opens the cover of one volume, and all behold, magnificently printed on the fly-leaf, "The Works of John Ironshaft, the Priest of the New Age, and the Humanities of Nature. Printed and Presented by the Working Classes of his Country."

John takes the volume, and, giant-nerved even as he is, in this his seventieth year, his voice falters like a sobbing child's.

"This festival was, as I had hoped, men and brothers, more dedicated to the honour of our new and most magnificent democratic

literature, than personally to me as one of its assistant servants; otherwise I should have declined the apparent egotism of receiving such a gift before such an assembly. But, thanking you heartily for this touching and almost sublime evidence of your personal devotion to me, I thank you more for your recognition of great principles-for this strong evidence that I have spoken truth, and you have received it as such. As I have often told you in our Taxation and Universal Suffrage Leagues, there was a day when the merest ephemeral trash, so it applauded or disseminated conventional or aristocratical opinions, was eagerly received. Few or none of the giant brood of truths were allowed to heave themselves up from the depths of the People; and mostly, when condescendingly addressed, it was no more than to pander to their grossest tastes and worst ignorance. That day is passed; and literature, once debased to us, is, and will be, exalted by us. We shall absorb the aristocratic elements, and receive all into that grand sovereignty of democracy which refuses no truth. We are beginning, and we shall ultimately hear most marvellous and original music, from the roar of the furnace, from the flying of the shuttle, from the stroke of the hammer and the spade and the axe; we shall know that from darkness the divinest lights have to shine.'

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"John Ironshaft, in you we see this spiritual light," a hundred voices cry.

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No, no; a man may do good work, my friends, without being a prophet. All I want to persuade you is, of the wonderful poetry that lies hidden in the common human heart, and how, like the molten stream before your sight this moment, it may be moulded at will-by bad teachers and bad political institutions into evilby fearless prophets, who count the signs of Time, into all the grandeur and progress that Time requires. Thus, without being, as I have said, this prophet, I have now through fifty years of my life endeavoured to speak and act as a man. The roar you hear, taught me the absoluteness of this manhood; I heard it ask for justice; I heard it delicately whisper truth; I heard it say things of human brotherhood and mercy made active; I heard it say, Political Injustice exists, and they that hear my voice poured from the Soul of Labour must convert this into Justice. Thus I have worked against taxation, gold monopoly, and for suffrage and advanced education. And I thank God I have worked. I thank God I have worked with swart hand and giant arm. I thank God that what now lies here magnificent in vellum, was bred behind

those bellows in soot and darkness. From such darkness let diviner light than mine yet shine. And yet, forgive me here for being egotistical; this darkness might have never shown true light, but for one that became mine-the mother of these sons. She it was that softened my rude nature, and led me to the service I have done; and even does still, though the summer flowers wave over her, my friends, and in winter time the holly leaves..."

The world knows the love-story that we know; and many a pilgrimage has been made, this very summer's morn, to the lonely grave and the first home of that noble love. Many here look down to button-hole in coat and waistcoat at the touching sign there carried, of a true woman, and a noble man, whose history has become the world's. John Ironshaft knows this, and sees this. More touching than all the rest is the strong evidence that he lives in the popular heart! He or she who lives there has some hope of immortality!

Others now

There is much to say; but John can say no more. come forward and speak of his great life, its acts, and service; and one concludes his speech thus, with a quotation from a pen that has spread truth throughout the world: "Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new; but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, came at last Alfred and Shakspeare."

John Ironshaft is as grand as Alfred was; and time has yet to show whether nature was in him as great as Shakspeare; but at least we here learn that the time is come for the EXALTATION OF THE PEN.

New Books.

THE BACHELOR OF THE ALBANY. By the Author of the "Falcon Family." 1 vol. post 8vo. Chapman & Hall..

A WARNING TO WIVES. By the Author of "Cousin Geoffry." 3 vols. post 8vo. T. C. Newby.

JANE EYRE; an Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. 3 vols. post 8vo. Smith, Elder, & Co.

Ir anything were wanting to show the futility of criticism, the continuous crop of novels would suffice. They are chopped up in

daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, yet, like docks in a field, or unfortunate eels in a frying-pan, they retain their vitality,-a vitality, let us hope, at least as regards the eels, more muscular than sensitive. Complex as the nature of human affairs is, and multitudinous as the phases of human life, they have had opportunity of being shown in all their striking features in these voluminous productions. But then, these writers do not confine themselves to human nature as it is, nor even to what it might or should be; but mix their ingredients with the incongruity, but not with the harmonious result, of the kaleidoscope. Novels, we fear, like the ladies, according to Dr. Johnson's informant (vide Boswell), were made to please, and therefore claim to be exempt from any other test than that which shall apply to this quality. Making ourselves the test, we pronounce them all signal failures; for whether they aim at the philosophical, the scientific, the social, the exciting, the sentimental, or the comic, they weary one with the same formula, bore one with the same phrases, and outrage one with their indestructible self-complacency and impertinent prying into human nature, blunting the edge of our susceptibilities by crawling over every circumstance of existence, and smearing with their slimy descriptions the bright face of nature itself. There have been men— perhaps we ourselves, in the fond impertinence of youthful enthu siasm, may have done so who declare that though "sitting at the fireside, we might climb the mountain or delve into the mine, might traverse the enamelled plain," &c. &c.-" View the pyramids in all their hoary majesty, or to walk through the streets of ancient Rome," &c. &c. "Comprehend life and human character in all its variety, without running the risks of temptation," &c. &c. But this is all humbug-we can use no other term and arises from the same motive that provides a perfect substitute for silver. There is nothing can be a substitute for the real thing; and the man who heaps up albata literature is as poor as he who heaps up albata plate. After all, it is not like its original. The life of novels, however well drawn, is not the life of nature; and ill drawn, it is a poor, greasy, poverty-stricken looking thing-not so good as iron, because it is continually presenting to the mind the superior article.

Whither, then, tends this diatribe against novels? Should fiction be obliterated from our literature? No; we do not go so far with Plato. Good fiction is a good familiar creature; but the washy flood that is continually pouring on the town, and, alas! country, is detestable. Would that the nuisance could be abated. It is a sad characteristic of the age that it has no modesty-no approach to self-knowledge. Every one who has been through Lindley Murray's grammar, and, alas ! many who have not, think themselves entitled to perpetrate a novel or a tragedy. Every one heated with a disordered fancy is no longer satisfied with reading, but must attempt to write a romance. And, unfortunately, failure begets failure; for the question is no longer tested by high models, but is, whether the writer cannot do something quite as good as something that is very bad. On no other principle

can we account for the multitude of bad novels daily issued. There are undoubtedly infinite degrees from good, tolerable, bad, to unendurable. And if they were not so numerous, we could afford to weigh with scruples, and forbear towards the mediocre. As it is, they will all soon be confounded together, and this portion of literature fall into the contempt it was held in before Scott, and those he incited raised it into estimation. The Elizabethan drama lasted in its prime but about fifty years; but the three volume novel will scarcely reach such an age, reckoning even from 1800. The historical novel has already ceased, and the romantic is fast following it. How long our drawingrooms and kitchens will supply scenes and transactions, remains to be proved; but judging from the reiteration of the same characters, and almost the same language, we should imagine not very long; or, at all events, they would be confined to that indiscriminating class who receive fiction, not as an exponent of human nature, but as a veritable truth itself. These "swelling spirits" will always require some exciting pabulum for their fiercely-burning souls; but, however numerous, will never be able to give a character to, or sustain such writings as, a genuine class of literature.

The three works at the head of our article have fallen on evil times; had they come earlier into the field they would have commanded some attention, more especially the first and the last.

"The Bachelor of the Albany" is a work of great pretensions, being written with a satirical object, and very mercilessly attacking all matters that seem objectionable to the author. Not that this is done in an ill-natured spirit, though with a self-complacency of style, that makes one doubt if the writer may not be as vulnerable as the numerous objects of his attacks. The book seems to be written in a patronising tone, and with a Sir Oracle style, that makes it, though exceedingly clever, somewhat offensive. Doubtless the author is one who has read and observed much, and even thought a good deal-so much, that he seems above his subject. He has considerable powers for describing social life and character, though all his descriptions are tinged with a sarcastic tone, that deprives them of much of their force. The narrative is exceedingly real-curiously so; indeed, so much so, that one scarcely thinks it right that the virtues, errors, foibles, and peculiarities should be so exposed to public gaze and animadversion. The Spread family, particularly, must be exceedingly uncomfortable at being thus drawn from the warm repose of their cosy family circle, to be exposed to the impertinent remarks and acquaintanceship of every dirty gent who can pay threepence for the loan of their history. We are not quite sure that this continual attraction of attention to the idiosyncracies of character is productive of social good. It tends either to lead men to a continual watchfulness of their neighbours, and ultimately either to a hardened state of indifference to all opinion, or to an endeavour to obtain a uniform manner and external conduct, which shall dwarf or conceal the natural inclinations.

The "moral" of the story is likely to be popular, for it is a warn

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