recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends, and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. "You may easily believe," said he, "how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that it was not absolutely ne

believe I left

cessary for a merchant not to understand anything
except book-keeping; and, indeed,
him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer
to my unwearied intreaties was the same as that of
the Dutch schoolmaster in the Vicar of Wakefield
'I have ten thousand florins a-year without Greek; I
eat heartily without Greek.' But his affection for me
at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has
permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to
the land of knowledge."

"It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left my father, brothers, and Elizabeth."

"Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you so seldom. By the by, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account myself. But, my dear Frankenstein," continued he, stopping short, and gazing full in my face, "I did not before remark how very ill you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for several nights."

"You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one occupation, that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see; but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an end, and that I am at length free."

I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously, and fell down in a fit.

Poor Clerval! what must have been his feelings? A meeting which he anticipated with such joy so strangely turned to bitterness. But I was not the witness of his grief; for I was lifeless, and did not recover my senses for a long, long time.'

creator, and haunts him like a spell. For two years The monster ultimately becomes a terror to his he disappears, but at the end of that time he is presented as the murderer of Frankenstein's infant brother, and as waging war with all mankind, in consequence of the disgust and violence with which his appearance is regarded. The demon meets and confronts his maker, demanding that he should create him a helpmate, as a solace in his forced expatriation from society. Frankenstein retires and begins the hideous task, and while engaged in it during the secrecy of midnight, in one of the lonely islands of the Orcades, the monster appears before

him.

'A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he allotted to me. Yes, he had followed in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the fulfilment of my promise. As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.'

I trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preA series of horrid and malignant events now mark ceding night. I walked with a quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the the career of the demon. He murders the friend of thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I Frankenstein, strangles his bride on her weddinghad left in my apartment might still be there, alive, night, and causes the death of his father from grief. He eludes detection, but Frankenstein, in agony and and walking about. I dreaded to behold this monster; but I feared still more that Henry should see despair, resolves to seek him out, and sacrifice him The pursuit is prohim. Intreating him, therefore, to remain a few mi- to his justice and revenge. nutes at the bottom of the stairs, I darted up towards tracted for a considerable time, and in various counmy own room. My hand was already on the lock of tries, and at length conducts us to the ice-bound the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, stein recognises the demon, but ere he can reach shores and islands of the northern ocean. Frankenand a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when him, the ice gives way, and he is afterwards with they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on difficulty rescued from the floating wreck by the the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped crew of a vessel that had been embayed in that polar fearfully in; the apartment was empty, and my bed-region. Thus saved from perishing, Frankenstein room was also freed from its hideous guest. I could relates to the captain of the ship his 'wild and wonhardly believe that so great a good fortune could have drous tale,' but the suffering and exhaustion had befallen me; but when I became assured that my proved too much for his frame, and he expires beenemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy, fore the vessel had sailed for Britain. The monster visits the ship, and after mourning over the dead body of his victim, quits the vessel, resolved to seek the most northern extremity of the globe, and there to put a period to his wretched and unhallowed existence. The power of genius in clothing incidents the most improbable with strong interest and human sympathies is evinced in this remarkable story. The creation of the demon is admirably told. The successive steps by which the solitary student arrives at his great secret, after two years of labour, and the first glimpse which he obtains of the hideous monster, form a narrative that cannot be perused without sensations of awe and terror. While the demon is thus partially known and revealed, or seen only in the distance, gliding among cliffs and glaciers, appearing by moonlight to demand justice from his maker, or seated in his car among the tremendous solitudes of the northern ocean, the effect is striking and magnificent. The interest

and ran down to Clerval.

We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast; but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed me: I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud. Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival; but when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes for which he could not account; and my loud unrestrained heartless laughter frightened and astonished him.

ill

66

My dear Victor," cried he, "what, for God's sake, is the matter? Do not laugh in that manner. How you are! What is the cause of all this?" "Do not ask me," cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; "he can tell. Oh, save me! save me!"

ceases when we are told of the self-education of the monster, which is disgustingly minute in detail, and absurd in conception; and when we consider the improbability of his being able to commit so many crimes in different countries, conspicuous as he is in form, with impunity, and without detection. His malignity of disposition, and particularly his resentment towards Frankenstein, do not appear unnatural when we recollect how he has been repelled from society, and refused a companion by him who could alone create such another. In his wildest outbursts we partly sympathise with him, and his situation seems to justify his crimes. In depicting the internal workings of the mind and the various phases of the passions, Mrs Shelley evinces skill and acuteness. Like her father, she excels in mental analysis and in conceptions of the grand and the powerful, but fails in the management of her fable where probable incidents and familiar life are required or attempted.

In 1823 Mrs Shelley published another work of fiction, Valperga; or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, three volumes. The time of the story is that of the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibbelines. She is also the author of a novel upon the story of Perkin Warbeck.

[Love.]

It is said that in love we idolize the object, and placing him apart, and selecting him from his fellows, look on him as superior in nature to all others. We do so; but even as we idolize the object of our

affections, do we idolize ourselves: if we separate him from his fellow mortals, so do we separate ourselves, and glorying in belonging to him alone, feel lifted above all other sensations, all other joys and griefs, to one hallowed circle from which all but his idea is banished: we walk as if a mist, or some more potent charm, divided us from all but him; a sanctified victim, which none but the priest set apart for that office could touch and not pollute, enshrined in a cloud of glory, made glorious through beauties not our

own.

REV. C. R. MATURIN.

by natural causes. Circumstance has been styled
'an unspiritual god,' and he seldom appears to less
advantage than in the plots of Mr Maturin. Be-
tween 1807 and 1820 our author published a num-
ber of works of romantic fiction-The Milesian
Chief; The Wild Irish Boy; Women, or Pour et
Contre; and Melmoth the Wanderer-all works in
three or four volumes each. 'Women' was well
received by the public, but none of its predecessors,
as the author himself states, ever reached a second
edition. In Women' he aimed at depicting real
life and manners, and we have some pictures of
Calvinistic Methodists, an Irish Meg Merrilees, and
an Irish hero, De Courcy, whose character is made
up of contradictions and improbabilities. Two female
characters, Eva Wentworth and Zaira, a brilliant
Italian (who afterwards turns out to be the mother
of Eva), are drawn with delicacy and fine effect.
The former is educated in strict seclusion, and is
purity itself. De Courcy is in love with both, and
both are blighted by his inconstancy. Eva dies
calmly and tranquilly, elevated by religious hope.
Zaira meditates suicide, but desists from the attempt,
and lives on, as if spell-bound to the death-place of
her daughter and lover. De Courcy perishes of
remorse. These scenes of deep passion and pathos
are coloured with the lights of poetry and genius.
Indeed the gradual decay of Eva is the happiest of
surpassed. The simple truthfulness of the descrip-
all Mr Maturin's delineations, and has rarely been
tion may be seen in passages like the following:-

The weather was unusually fine, though it was Eva passed them almost entirely in the garden. She September, and the evenings mild and beautiful. had always loved the fading light and delicious tints of an evening sky, and now they were endeared by that which endears even indifferent things—an inthem. Mrs Wentworth remonstrated against this ternal consciousness that we have not long to behold indulgence, and mentioned it to the physician; but he "answered neglectingly;" said anything that amused her mind could do her no harm, &c. Then Mrs Wentworth began to feel there was no hope; and Eva was suffered to muse life away unmolested. To the garden every evening she went, and brought her library with her; it consisted of but three books

The REV. C. R. MATURIN, the poetical and eccen--the Bible, Young's Night Thoughts, and Blair's tric curate of St Peter's, Dublin, came forward in 1807 as an imitator of the terrific and gloomy style of novel writing, of which Monk Lewis was the modern master. Its higher mysteries were known only to Mrs Radcliffe. The date of that style, as Maturin afterwards confessed, was out when he was a boy, and he had not powers to revive it. His youthful production was entitled Fatal Revenge, or the Family of Montorio. The first part of this title was the invention of the publisher, and it proved a good bookselling appellation, for the novel was in high favour in the circulating libraries. It is undoubtedly a work of genius-full of imagination and energetic language, though both are sometimes carried to extravagance or bombast. There was, however, as has been justly remarked, 'originality in the conception, hideous as it was, of the hero employing against the brother who had deceived him the agency of that brother's own sons, whom he persuades to parricide, by working on their visionary fears, and by the doctrines of fatalism; and then, when the deed is done, discovering that the victims whom he had reasoned and persecuted into crime were his own children!' The author made abundant use of supernatural machinery, or at least what appears to be such, until the unravelling of the plot discloses that the whole has been effected, like the mysteries of the Castle of Udolpho,

Grave. One evening the unusual beauty of the sky made her involuntarily drop her book. She gazed upward, and felt as if a book was open in heaven, where all the lovely and varying phenomena presented in living characters to her view the name of the Divinity. There was a solemn congeniality between her feelings of her own state and the view of the declining day-the parting light and the approaching darkness. The glow of the western heaven was still resplendent and glorious; a little above, the blending hues of orange and azure were softening into a mellow and indefinite light; and in the upper region of the air, a delicious blue darkness invited the eye to repose in luxurious dimness: one star alone showed its trembling head-another and another, like infant births of light; and in the dark east the half-moon, like a bark of pearl, came on through the deep still ocean of heaven. Eva gazed on; some tears came to her eyes; they were a luxury. Suddenly she felt as if she were quite well; a glow like that of health pervaded her whole frame-one of those indescribable sensations that seem to assure us of safety, while, in fact, they are announcing dissolution. She imagined herself suddenly restored to health and to happiness. She saw De Courcy once more, as in their early hours of love, when his face was to her as if it had been the face of an angel; thought after thought came back on her heart like

gleams of paradise. She trembled at the felicity that filled her whole soul; it was one of those fatal illusions, that disease, when it is connected with strong emotions of the mind, often flatters its victim with—that mirage, when the heart is a desert, which rises before the wanderer, to dazzle, to delude, and to destroy.'

eyelids, or the stilly rush of his pinions as they sweep my brow.'

'Melmoth,' another of Mr Maturin's works, is the wildest of his romances. The hero' gleams with demon light,' and owing to a compact with Satan, lives a century and a-half, performing all manner of adven-covered every compartment of the walls, save where tures, the most defensible of which is frightening an Irish miser to death. Some of the details in Melmoth' are absolutely sickening and loathsome. They seem the last convulsive efforts and distortions of the Monk Lewis school of romance. In 1824 (the year of his premature death) Mr Maturin published The Albigenses, a romance in four volumes. This work was intended by the author as one of a series of romances illustrative of European feelings and manners in ancient, in middle, and in modern times. Laying the scene of his story in France, in the thirteenth century, the author connected it with the wars between the Catholics and the Albigenses, the latter being

the earliest of the reformers of the faith. Such a time was well adapted for the purposes of romance; and Mr Maturin in this work presented some good pictures of the crusaders, and of the Albigenses in their lonely worship among rocks and mountains. He had not, however, the power of delineating varieties of character, and his attempts at humour are wretched failures. In constructing a plot, he was also deficient; and hence "The Albigenses,' wanting the genuine features of a historical romance, and destitute of the supernatural machinery which had imparted a certain degree of wild interest to the author's former works, was universally pronounced to be tedious and uninteresting. Passages, as we have said, are carefully finished and well drawn, and we subjoin a brief specimen.

[A Lady's Chamber in the Thirteenth Century.]

'I am weary,' said the lady; 'disarray me for rest. But thou, Claudine, be near when I sleep; I love thee well, wench, though I have not shown it hitherto. Wear this carkanet for my sake; but wear it not, I charge thee, in the presence of Sir Paladour. Now read me my riddle once more, my maidens.' As her head sunk on the silken pillow-How may ladies sink most sweetly into their first slumber?'

'I ever sleep best,' said Blanche, when some withered crone is seated by the hearth fire to tell me tales of wizardry or goblins, till they are mingled with my dreams, and I start up, tell my beads, and pray her to go on, till I see that I am talking only to the dying embers or the fantastic forms shaped by their flashes on the dark tapestry or darker ceiling.'

'And I love,' said Germonda, to be lulled to rest by tales of knights met in forests by fairy damsels, and conducted to enchanted halls, where they are assailed by foul fiends, and do battle with strong giants; and are, in fine, rewarded with the hand of the fair dame, for whom they have periled all that knight or Christian may hold precious for the safety of body and of soul.'

'Peace and good rest to you all, my dame and maidens,' said the lady in whispering tones from her silken couch. None of you have read my riddle. She sleeps sweetest and deepest who sleeps to dream of her first love her first-her last-her only. A fair good night to all. Stay thou with me, Claudine, and touch thy lute, wench, to the strain of some old ditty -old and melancholy-such as may so softly usher sleep that I feel not his downy fingers closing mine

Claudine prepared to obey as the lady sunk to rest amid softened lights, subdued odours, and dying melodies. A silver lamp, richly fretted, suspended from the raftered roof, gleamed faintly on the splendid bed. The curtains were of silk, and the coverlet of velvet, faced with miniver; gilded coronals and tufts of plumage shed alternate gleam and shadow over every angle of the canopy; and tapestry of silk and silver the uncouthly-constructed doors and windows broke them into angles, irreconcilable alike to every rule of symmetry or purpose of accommodation. Near the ample hearth, stored with blazing wood, were placed a sculptured desk, furnished with a missal and breviary gorgeously illuminated, and a black marble tripod supporting a vase of holy water: certain amulets, too, lay on the hearth, placed there by the care of Dame Marguerite, some in the shape of relics, and others in less consecrated forms, on which the lady was often observed by her attendants to look somewhat disregardfully. The great door of the chamber was closed by the departing damsels carefully; and the rich sheet of tapestry dropt over it, whose hushful sweeping on the floor seemed like the wish for a deep repose breathed from a thing inanimate. The castle was still, the silver lamp twinkled silently and dimly; the perfumes, burning in small silver vases round the chamber, began to abate their gleams and odours; the scented waters, scattered on the rushes with which the floor was strewn, flagged and failed in their delicious

tribute to the sense; the bright moon, pouring its glories through the uncurtained but richly tinted casement, shed its borrowed hues of crimson, amber, and purple on curtain and canopy, as in defiance of the artificial light that gleamed so feebly within the chamber.

Claudine tuned her lute, and murmured the rude song of a troubadour, such as follows:

Song.

Sleep, noble lady! They sleep well who sleep in warded castles. If the Count de Monfort, the champion of the church, and the strongest lance in the chivalry of France, were your foe as he is your friend, one hundred of the arrows of his boldest archers at their best flight would fail to reach a loophole of your

towers.

Sleep, noble lady! They sleep well who are guarded by the valiant. Five hundred belted knights feast in your halls; they would not see your towers won, though to defend them they took the place of your vassals, who are tenfold that number; and, lady, I wish they were more for your sake. Valiant knights, faithful vassals, watch well your lady's slumbers; see that they be never broken but by the matin bell, or the sighs of lovers whispered between its tolls.

Sleep, noble lady! Your castle is strong, and the brave and the loyal are your guard.

Then the noble lady whispered to me through her silken curtain, A foe hath found his way to me, though my towers are strong, and the valiant are my guard, and the brave and the beautiful woo me in song, and with many kissings of their hands.' And I asked, what foe is that? The lady dropt her silken curtain, and slept; but methought in her dreams she murmured-That foe is Love!"

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

We have already touched on the more remarkable and distinguishing features of the Waverley novels, and the influence which they exercised not only on this country, but over the whole continent of Europe. That long array of immortal fictions can only be

compared with the dramas of Shakspeare, as presenting an endless variety of original characters, scenes, historical situations, and adventures. They

walhrfeed

as a novelist, to preserve his mask, desirous to obviate all personal discussions respecting his own productions, and aware also of the interest and curiosity which his secrecy would impart to his subsequent productions.

In February 1815-seven months after 'Waverley' -Scott published his second novel, Guy Mannering. It was the work of six weeks about Christmas,

are marked by the same universal and genial sym- and marks of haste are visible in the construction pathies, allied to every form of humanity, and free of the plot and development of incidents. Yet what from all selfish egotism or moral obliquity. In length of time or patience in revision could have painting historical personages or events, these two added to the charm or hilarity of such portraits as great masters evinced a kindred taste, and not dis- that of Dandy Dinmont, or the shrewd and witty similar powers. The highest intellectual traits and Counsellor Pleydell-the finished, desperate, seaimagination of Shakspeare were, it is true, not ap- devotion of that gentlest of pedants, poor Dominie beaten villany of Hatteraick-the simple uncouth proached by Scott: the dramatist looked inwardly upon man and nature with a more profound and Sampson-or the wild savage virtues and crazed searching philosophy. He could effect more with superstition of the gipsy-dweller in Derncleugh? his five acts than Scott with his three volumes. The astrological agency and predictions so marvelThe novelist only pictured to the eye what his great lously fulfilled are undoubtedly excrescences on the prototype stamped on the heart and feelings. Yet story, though suited to a winter's tale in Scotland. both were great moral teachers, without seeming to The love scenes and female characters, and even teach. They were brothers in character and in ge- Press family, but the Scotch characters are all adMannering himself, seem also allied to the Minerva nius, and they poured out their imaginative treasures with a calm easy strength and conscious mastery, youthful feeling and spirit in the description of the mirably filled up. There is also a captivating of which the world has seen no other examples. So early as 1805, before his great poems were wanderings and dangers of Bertram, and the events, produced, Scott had entered on the composition of improbable as they appear, which restore him to Waverley, the first of his illustrious progeny of tales. his patrimony; while the gradual decay and death He wrote about seven chapters, evidently taking of the old Laird of Ellangowan-carried out to the Fielding, in his grave descriptive and ironical vein, green as his castle and effects are in the hands of for his model; but, getting dissatisfied with his the auctioneer-are inexpressibly touching and naattempt, he threw it aside. Eight years afterwards tural. The interest of the tale is sustained throughhe met accidentally with the fragment, and deter-out with dramatic skill and effect. mined to finish the story.* In the interval between In May 1816 came forth The Antiquary, less rothe commencement of the novel in 1805 and its mantic and bustling in incidents than either of its resumption in 1813, Scott had acquired greater predecessors, but infinitely richer in character, diafreedom and self-reliance as an author. In Mar-logue, and humour. In this work Scott displayed mion and The Lady of the Lake he had struck his thorough knowledge of the middle and lower He confined his story out a path for himself, and the latter portion of ranks of Scottish life. 'Waverley' partook of the new spirit and enthusiasm. chiefly to a small fishing town and one or two A large part of its materials resembles those em- country mansions. His hero is a testy old Whig ployed in the Lady of the Lake'-Highland feudal- laird and bachelor, and his dramatis persona are ism, military bravery and devotion, and the most little better than this retired humorist-the family easy and exquisite description of natural scenery old barber-and a few other humble landward and of a poor fisherman-a blue-gown mendicant-an He added also a fine vein of humour, chaste yet burrows town' characters. The sentimental Lord ripened, and peculiarly his own, and a power of uniting history with fiction, that subsequently be- Glenallan, and the pompous Sir Arthur Wardour, came one of the great sources of his strength. His with Lovel the unknown, and the fiery Hector portrait of Charles Edward, the noble old Baron of M'Intyre (the latter a genuine Celtic portrait), are Bradwardine, the simple faithful clansman Evan necessary to the plot and action of the piece, but Dhu, and the poor fool Davie Gellatley, with his they constitute only a small degree of the reader's fragments of song and scattered gleams of fancy and pleasure or the author's fame. These rest on the inimitable delineation of Oldbuck, that model of sensibility, were new triumphs of the author. The poetry had projected shadows and outlines of the black-letter and Roman-camp antiquaries, whose Highland chief, the gaiety and splendour of the oddities and conversation are rich and racy as any court, and the agitation of the camp and battle-field; of the old crusted port that John of the Girnel but the humorous contrasts, homely observation, might have held in his monastic cellars-on the and pathos, displayed in Waverley,' disclosed far restless, garrulous, kind-hearted gaberlunzie, Edie deeper observation and more original powers. The Ochiltree, who delighted to daunder down the burnwork was published in July 1814. Scott did not sides and green shaws-on the cottage of the Muckleprefix his name to it, afraid that he might compro-backets, and the death and burial of Steenie-and mise his poetical reputation by a doubtful experiment in a new style (particularly by his copious use of Scottish terms and expressions); but the unmingled applause with which the tale was received was, he says, like having the property of a hidden treasure, not less gratifying than if all the world knew it was his own.' Henceforward Scott resolved,

*He had put the chapters aside, as he tells us, in a writingdesk wherein he used to keep fishing-tackle. The desk-a substantial old mahogany cabinet-and part of the fishingtackle are now in the possession of Scott's friend, Mr William Laidlaw, at Contin, in Ross-shire.

which is described with such vivid reality and apon that scene of storm and tempest by the sea-side, palling magnificence. The amount of curious reading, knowledge of local history and antiquities, power of description, and breadth of humour in the Antiquary,' render it one of the most perfect of the author's novels. If Cervantes and Fielding really excelled Scott in the novel (he is unapproached in romance), it must be admitted that the Antiquary' ranks only second to Don Quixote and Tom Jones. In none of his works has Scott shown greater power in developing the nicer shades of feeling and character, or greater felicity of phrase