thing but a single character, on whom the whole interest, or nearly so, is concentrated;-and a few of the very finest things in the book have the appearance of being detached scenes and fragments from some work of a more extensive order. We could scarcely pretend to tell almost any of the author's stories more shortly than he has told them himself; but if we were called upon to say to what stories of any former writer they bear most resemblance, we rather think we should say, that they put us more in mind of some of the beautiful little sketches of Italian life in Boccaccio's pathetic novels, than of any thing else with which we had previously been acquainted. Now and then scenes from the traditional history of the country are introduced; and this also is the case in Boccaccio. But the likeness lies in nothing so much as in the power of producing a pathetic effect, by the use of the simplest images in the most simple and unaffected manner possible. Take for example, the tale of HELEN EYRE, which being the last in the book, is the freshest on our fancy. A young English officer dies, and leaves behind him in a small Scottish town, (Kelso, we think, is indicated,) a not innocent, but yet young, gentle, beautiful creature one that ought to have been his wife one whose sorrow is blended with a strange, deep, and pas sionate feeling of anguish, arising out of her sense, that she cannot, in her brokenness of heart, claim even the slender consolation of being called the widow of her only lover. This poor drooping creature is mother of one girl, an infant. She languishes for a few weeks after hearing of her lover's death, and dies there among strangers, in a strange land. So the child is all an orphan-but not all deserted. A high-born, high-bred Scottish lady an old widow, Mrs Montgomery, had visited, from compassionate motives, the penitent mother on her death-bed; and she takes home the child, and treats Helen Eyre as if she had been her own daughter. Helen grows up, virtuous, beautiful, accomplished, she gains friends, above all she is like a sister to Constance Beaumont, a young lady of her own age, of an ancient and honourable family, in the same neighbourhood. But kindly as she is treated by almost all about her, Helen has been forced into the know ledge of her own mother's offence; and the stain of her birth hangs like a weight upon a breast too noble for repining. In process of time, the brother of Constance Beaumont comes home, falls in love with Helen and tells her his love. She loves the youth, and con fesses her love; but she is too proud to enter a family who may despise her origin, and she will not marry Beaua mont unless all his family are to re ceive her which she has no hope they will ever do-like an equal. The feel ings of the good but proud mother of Beaumont, form an obstacle that nei ther she nor her lover hope to over come. Mrs Montgomery dies, and Constance and old Mrs Beaumont visit Helen in her filial affliction. While they are all deeply moved-passionately occupied with thoughts of com mon sorrow, young Beaumont enters the chamber. He falls on his knees before his mother, and a few words of eloquence, such as nature and virtued alone could prompt, sweep all before them. The high aged lady folds Head len to her maternal bosom,-and they are one family. Now, here is a story perfectly sime! ple; perhaps few could believe on seeing the outline, that in the book it** has all the appearance of being per fectly natural. Yet it is so; and it is just in the skill with which difficulties of this sort are overcome, withoutTM even the slightest semblance of art or preparation, or exaggeration, that this author displays his greatest and most peculiar power. In spite of much en thusiastic description-in spite of pas sion, that is nothing but the highest sort of poetry-in spite of language often elevated to the sublime the story of Helen Eyre is one which nobody who reads it, could ever suspect to be any thing but a true picture of real events. The contrasts between the subdued feelings of the girl loving, but not hoping, because the sense of a foreign shame presses on her souland the buoyant feelings of a proud lover sacrificing all to his love, and unconscious that he is making any sai crifice, on the one hand; and between the meek affections of the young lady, and the high spirit of the old lady on the other; and the manner in which four persons, all feeling so differently, are made to blend their hearts toge ther, under the inspiration of one generous impulse these are things which none but a master could have dared to meddle with-which none but a very great genius could have drawn out, and delineated to the full in a few simple pages, as the author before us has done. There would be no end of it, if we were to go into the many little pieces here composed of materials not unsimilar to these, and managed in a style of equal mastery. But we must make a few extracts, to give some notion of the author's way of writing; and these shall be from a tale in the middle of the volume, which is one of our chief favourites, that of BLIND ALLAN. Allan Bruce, a worthy young man, betrothed to Fanny Raeburn, a kind, good-hearted girl, has the terrible misfortune to become quite blind; and he, for he is above all selfishness, listens to the voice of all the friends on both sides, who represent to him how foolish and imprudent a thing it would be for him, condemned to blindness and helplessness, to marry Fanny Raeburn. She, too, in so far listens to the same not unkind suggestions-but at length her generous heart teaches her what is her duty. "She was willing to obey them in all things in which it was her duty to obey but here she knew not what was her duty. To give up Allan Bruce was a thought far worse to her than to give up life. It was to suffer her heartstrings to be hourly torn up by the roots. If the two were willing to be married, why should any one else interfere? If God had stricken Allan with blindness after their marriage, would any one have counselled her to leave him? Or pitied her because she had to live with her own blind husband? Or would the fear of poverty have benumbed her feelings? Or rather would it not have given new alacrity to her hands, and new courage to her heart? So she resolved, meekly and calmly, to tell Allan that she would be his wife, and that she believed that such was, in spite of this infliction, the will of God. "Allan Bruce did not absent himself, in his blindness, from the House of God. One Sabbath, after divine service, Fanny went up to him in the church-yard, and putting her arm in his, they walked away together, seemingly as cheerful as the rest of the congregation, only with somewhat slower and more cautious steps. They proceeded along the quiet meadow-fields by the banks of the stream, and then across the smooth green braes, till they gently descended into a holm, and sat down together VOL. XI. in a little green bower, which a few hazels, mingling with one tall weeping birch, had of themselves framed; a place where they where they had first spoken of a wedded had often met before Allan was blind, and life. Fanny could have almost wept to see the earth, and the sky, and the whole day, so beautiful, now that Allan's eyes were dark; but he whispered to her, that the smell of the budding trees, and of the primroses that he knew were near his feet, was pleasant indeed, and that the singing of all the little birds made his heart dance within him-so Fanny sat beside her blind lover in serene happiness, and felt strengthened in her conviction that it was her duty to become his wife. "Allan-I love you so entirely-that to see you happy is all that I desire on earth. Till God made you blind, Allan, I knew not how my soul could be knit into yours I knew not the love that was in my heart. To sit by you with my workto lead you out thus on pleasant Sabbaths to take care that your feet do not stumble -and that nothing shall ever offer violence to your face-to suffer no solitude to surround you but that you may know, in your darkness, that mine eyes, which God still permits to see, are always open upon thee, my beloved-thou must not say nay, you for these ends, Allan, will I marry for God would not forgive me if I became not thy wife.' And Fanny fell upon his neck and wept. "There was something in the quiet tone of her voice-something in the meek fold of her embrace-something in the long weeping kiss that she kept breathing tenderly over his brow and eyes that justified to the Blind Man his marriage with such a woman. Let us be married, Fanny, on the day fixed before I lost my sight. Till now I knew not fully either your heart or my own-now I fear nothing. Would, my best friend, I could but see thy sweet face for one single moment nowbut that can never be ! All things are possible to God-and although to human skill your case is hopeless-it is not utterly so to my heart-yet if ever it becomes so, Allan, then will I love thee better even than I do now, if indeed my heart can contain more affection than that with which it now overflows.' "Allan Bruce and Fanny Raeburn were married. And although there was felt, by the most careless heart, to be something sad and solemn in such nuptials, yet Allan made his marriage-day one of sober cheer. fulness in his native village. Fanny wore her white ribbands in the very way that used to be pleasant to Allan's eyes; and blind as he now was, these eyes kindled with a joyful smile, when he turned the clear sightless orbs towards his bride, and saw her within his soul arrayed in the sim 4 Q ple white dress which he heard all about him saying so well became her sweet looks. Her relations and his own partook of the marriage-feast in their cottage there was the sound of music and dancing feet on the little green plat at the foot of the garden, by the river's side-the bride's youngest sister, who was henceforth to be an inmate in the house, remained when the party went away in the quiet of the evening and peace, contentment, and love, folded their wings together over that humble dwelling." Their married life is happy far be yond what they themselves could have expected on their bridal-day. Allan is favoured by his neighbours, and MUSIC, that gift of Heaven to the blind, furnishes him with the means of support ing his wife and the children that grow up, one after another beside his knees. There is a beautiful passage describing the blind man's feelings, which we must extract. "Whatever misgivings of mind Allan Bruce might have experienced-whatever faintings and sickenings and deadly swoons of despair might have overcome his heart, it was not long before he was a freedman from all their slavery. He was not immured, like many as worthy as he, in an asylum; he was not an incumbrance upon a poor father, sitting idle and in the way of others, beside an ill-fed fire, and a scanty board; he was not forced to pace step by step along the lamp-lighted streets and squares of a city, forcing out beautiful music to gain a few pieces of coin from passers by, entranced for a moment by sweet sounds, plaintive or jocund; he was not a boy-led beggar along the high-way under the sickening sunshine or the chilling sleet, with an abject hat abjectly protruded with a cold heart for colder charity;-but he was, although he humbly felt and acknowledged that he was in nothing more worthy than these, a man loaded with many blessings, warmed by a constant ingle, laughed round by a flock of joyful children, love-tended and love-lighted by a wife who was to him at once music and radiance, while his house stood in the middle of a village of which all the inhabitants were his friends, and of all whose hands the knock was known when it touched his door, and of all whose voices the tone was felt when it kindly accosted him in the wood, in the field, in the garden, by the river's side, by the hospitable board of a neighbour, or in the church-yard assemblage before entering in to the House of God." The end of the story is the recovery of Allan's sight by means of couching, and remembering, as we all must do perfectly well, the inimitable description of the first operation of the kind by Addison, and its consequences, who is there that can be insensible to the softness, beauty, and wisdom, of the following passage? joy in the soul of Allan Bruce when once "There was no uncontrollable burst of more a communication was opened between ed lessons of humility and temperance in it and the visible world. For he had learnall his emotions during ten years of blindness, in which the hope of light was too faint to deserve the name. He was almost afraid to believe that his sight was restored. Grateful to him was its first uncertain and wavering glimmer, as a draught of water to a wretch in a crowded dungeon. But he knew not whether it was to ripen into the perfect day, or gradually to fade back again in the depth of his former darkness. "But when his Fanny-she on whom he had so loved to look when she was a maiden in her teens, and who would not forsake him in the first misery of that great affliction, but had been overjoyed to link the sweet freedom of her prime to one sitting in perpetual dark-when she, now a staid and lovely matron, stood before him in the floodlike tears of an unsupportable with a face pale in bliss, and all drenched heaven it was to see! And as he took her happiness then truly did he feel what a that he might devour with his eyes that beto his heart, he gently bent back her head, smiled upon him unbeheld, and which now nign beauty which had for so many years that he had seen once more, he felt that he could even at that very moment die in peace. ther, his five loving children, that for the "In came with soft steps, one after anofirst time they might be seen by their father. The girls advanced timidly, with blushing cheeks and bright shining hair, while the boys went boldly up to his side, and the eldest, looking in his face, exclaimed with a shout of joy, 'Our father sees! -our father sees !'-and then checking his rapture, burst into tears. Many a vision had Allan Bruce framed to himself of the face and figure of one and all of his children. One, he had been told, was like and Lucy, he understood, was a blended himself, another the image of its mother, likeness of them both. But now he looked upon them with the confused and bewildered joy of parental love, seeking to know and distinguish in the light the separate objects towards whom it yearned; and not till they spoke did he know their Christian faces of all his children seem, to his eyes, names. But soon, soon, did the sweet ness, to the expression of the voices so long to answer well, each in its different lovelifamiliar to his heart. "Pleasant, too, no doubt, was that expansion of heart, that followed the sight of so many old friends and acquaintances, all of whom, familiar as he had long been with them in his darkness, one day's light now seemed to bring farther forward in his affection. They came towards him now with brighter satifaction and the happiness of his own soul gave a kinder expression to their demeanour, and represented them all as a host of human beings rejoicing in the joy of one single brother. Here was a young man, who, when he saw him last, was a little school-boy-here a man beginning to be bent with toil, and with a thoughtful aspect, who had been one of his own joyous and laughing fellow-labourers in field or at fair here a man on whom, ten years before, he had shut his eyes in advanced but vigorous life, now sitting, with a white head, and supported on a staff all this change he knew before, but now he saw it; and there was thus a some what sad, but an interesting, delightful, and impressive contrast and resemblance between the past and the present, brought immediately before him by the removal of a veil. Every face around him every figure was instructive as well as pleasant; and humble as his sphere of life was, and limited its range, quite enough of chance and change was now submitted to his meditation, to give his character, which had long been thoughtful, a still more solemn cast, and a temper of still more homely and humble wisdom.. “Nor did all the addition to his happiness come from human life. Once more he saw the heavens and the earth. By men in his lowly condition, nature is not looked on very often perhaps with poetical eyes. But all the objects of nature are in themselves necessarily agreeable and delightful; and the very colours and forms he now saw filled his soul with bliss. Not for ten dark years had he seen a cloud, and now they were piled up like castles in the summer heaven. Not for ten dark years had he seen the vaulted sky, and there it was now bending majestically in its dark, deep, serene azure, full of tenderness, beauty, and power. The green earth, with all its flowers, was now visible beneath his feet. A hundred gardens blóssomed a hundred hedge-rows ran across the meadow and up the sides of the hills the dark grove of sycamore, shading the village church on its mount, stood tinged with a glitter of yellow light and from one extremity of the village to the other, calm, fair, and unwavering, the smoke from all its chimneys went up to heaven on the dewy morning-air. He felt all this just by opening his eye-lids. And in his gratitude to God he blessed the thatch of his own humble house, and the swallows that were twittering beneath its eaves." "Such, perhaps, were some of the feelings which Allan Bruce experienced on being restored to sight. But faint and imperfect must be every picture of man's inner soul. This, however, is true, that Allan Bruce now felt that his blindness had been to him, in many respects, a blessing. It had touched all hearts with kindness towards him and his wife when they were poor-it had kept his feet within the doors of his house, or within the gate of his garden, often when they might otherwise have wandered into less happy and innocent places it turned to him the sole undivided love of his sweet contented Fanny-it gave to the filial tenderness of his children something of fondest passion-and it taught him moderation in all things, humility, reverence, and perfect resignation to the Divine Will. It may, therefore, be truly said, that when the blameless man once more lifted up his seeing eyes, in all things he beheld God. "Soon after this time, a small Nurserygarden between Roslin and Lasswade, bank sloping down gently to the Esk—was on sale, and Allan Bruce was able to purchase it. Such an employment seemed peculiarly fitted for him, and also compatible with his other profession. He had acquired, during his blindness, much useful information from the readings of his wife or children; and having been a gardener in his youth, among his many other avocations, he had especially extended his knowledge respecting flowers, shrubs, and trees. Here he follows that healthy, pleasant, and intelligent occupation. Among his other assistant Gardeners there is one man with a head white as snow, but a ruddy and cheerful countenance, who, from his selfimportance, seems to be the proprietor of the garden. This is Allan's Father, who lives in a small cottage adjoining takes care of all the garden-tools-and is master of the bee-hives. His old mother, too, is sometimes seen weeding; but oftener with her grand-children, when in the evenings, after school, they are playing on the green plat by the Sun Dial, with flowers garlanded round their heads, or feeding the large trout in the clear silvery well near the roots of the celebrated Pear Tree." From "the Hour in the Manse," the Forgers," Simon Gray," and various other tales in the volume, we could easily quote passages enough to shew that the awful, the terrible, the dark parts of man and his nature, are as much within the grasp of our author, as the passages we have now quoted shew the pathetic and the beautiful to be. But we despair of being able to quote any passages from the tales of that class, without in some measure injuring the after effect of what we only wish to introduce to our readers notice. We shall therefore make but one extract more, and it shall be from a story that stands almost alone in the book a fragment from the noble traditional History of the days of religious persecution in Scotland-the me mory of which days is yet fresh in the minds of our old shepherds and cottage matrons upon the moors of Clydesdale and Dumfries-shire. After describing at some length the state of the people of Lanark, at the time when the Presbyterian worship was not permitted to be celebrated in their parish church, the author introduces us to the persecuted congregation assembled amidst the solitary and sublime scenery of Cartland Craigs on the morning of a beautiful summer Sabbath, chiefly for the purpose of having the children, who had been born during the suspension of the public worship of God in the place, admitted into the body of the church by the rite of baptism. rocks, over a narrow chasm, of which the tiny stream played in a murmuring waterfall, and divided the congregation into two equal parts, sat about a hundred persons, all devoutly listening to their Minister, be called a small natural Pulpit of living who stood before them on what might well stone. Up to it there led a short flight of steps, and over it waved the canopy of a tall graceful birch tree. This pulpit stood on the middle of the channel, directly fa cing that congregation, and separated from them by the clear deep sparkling pool into which the scarce-heard water poured over the blackened rock. The water, as it left the pool, separated into two streams, and flowed on each side of that Altar, thus placing it in an island, whose large mossy golden blossoms and green tresses of the stones were richly embowered under the broom. Divine service was closed, and a "The church in which they were assem- row of maidens, all clothed in purest white, bled was hewn, by God's hand, out of the came gliding off from the congregation, and Aeternal rocks. A river rolled its way crossing the stream on some stepping stones, through a mighty chasm of cliffs, several arranged themselves at the foot of the pulhundred feet high, of which the one side pit, with the infants about to be baptized. presented enormous masses, and the other The fathers of the infants, just as if they corresponding recesses, as if the great stone had been in their own Kirk, had been sitgirdle had been rent by a convulsion. The ting there during worship, and now stood channel was overspread with prodigious up before the Minister. The baptismal fragments of rock or large loose stones, water, taken from that pellucid pool, was some of them smooth and bare, others con- 1 ying consecrated in a small hollow of one taining soil and verdure in their rents and of the upright stones that formed one side fissures, and here and there crowned with or pillar of the pulpit, and the holy rite shrubs and trees. The eye could at once proceeded. Some of the younger ones in command a long stretching vista, seeming- that semicircle kept gazing down into the ly closed and shut up at both extremities by pool, in which the whole scene was reflectthe coalescing cliffs. This majestic reach ed, and now and then, in spite of the grave of river contained pools, streams, rushing looks, or admonishing whispers of their shelves, and waterfalls innumerable; and elders, letting a pebble fall into the water, when the water was low, which it now was that they might judge of its depth from the in the common drought, it was easy to walk length of time that elapsed before the clear up this scene, with the calm blue sky over. air-bells lay sparkling on the agitated surhead, an utter and sublime solitude. On face. The rite was over, and the religious looking up, the soul was bowed down by service of the day closed by a Psalm. The the feeling of that prodigious height of un- mighty rocks hemmed in the holy sound, scaleable and often overhanging cliff. Be- and sent it in a more compacted volume, tween the channel and the summit of the clear, sweet, and strong, up to Heaven. far-extended precipices were perpetually When the Psalm ceased, an echo, like a flying rooks and wood-pigeons, and now spirit's voice, was heard dying away high and then a hawk, filling the profound abyss up among the magnificent architecture of the with their wild cawing, deep murmur, or cliffs, and once more might be noticed in shrilly shriek. Sometimes a heron would the silence the reviving voice of the waterstand erect and still on some little stone fall. island, or rise up like a white cloud along the black walls of the chasm, and disap. pear. Winged creatures alone could inhabit this region. The fox and wild-cat chose more accessible haunts. Yet here came the persecuted Christians and worshipped God, whose hand hung over their heads those magnificent pillars and arches, scooped out those galleries from the solid rock, and laid at their feet the calm water in its transparent beauty, in which they could see themselves sitting in reflected groups, with their Bibles in their hands. "Here, upon a semicircular ledge of "Just then a large stone fell from the top of the cliff into the pool, a loud voice was heard, and a plaid hung over on the point of a Shepherd's staff. Their watchful Sentinel had descried danger, and this was his warning. Forthwith the congregation rose. There were paths dangerous to unpractised feet, along the ledges of the rocks, leading up to several caves and places of conceal ment. The more active and young assisted the elder-more especially the old Pastor, and the women with the infants; and many minutes had not elapsed, till not a living creature was visible in the channel of the |
