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chists, under the inspection of the united synod. There is also a missionary minister settled in South Australia.

The part which of late years the United Secession Church has taken on the voluntary question is, we believe, not unknown to our readers. This branch of the subject would require a considerable chapter for itself, especially as connected with the rise, progress, and results of the controversy. In the meantime we forbear; although the details, we are persuaded, would be found of great and growing interest, should we by and by find leisure to resume the annals of THE SECESSION.

Art. VI.-The Travels and Romantic Adventures of Monsieur Violet, among the Snake Indians and Wild Tribes of the Great Westera Prairies. Written by Captain Marryatt, C.B. Three Vols. 12mo. Longman and Co.

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SINCE the renowned travels of Baron Munchausen,' we doubt whether anything so like them has appeared as the 'Travels and Romantic Adventures of Monsieur Violet.' His Adventures' are, indeed, well entitled to be so called.

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We notice the book principally for the sake of protesting against the principle on which it is composed. History, travels, and novels, are all very well in their way; but we like to have them tolerably distinct. We like it to be evident to which of these classes of composition a book belongs; and do not approve of their being so jumbled together as at once to strip a work of the authenticity which should be impressed on the two first, and the inter-connexion of parts, which ought to cha racterise the last. It is more especially necessary that this distinctness of aim and object should be maintained in works which, like the present, may be expected to fall principally into the hands of the young. They should, at all events, know, when reading works which profess to be 'Travels,' and which gravely handle here and there matters historical, geographical, and political, whether they are reading fact or fiction.

No person of reflection can take up the present work, in spite of the solemnity of the preface, without coming to the conclusion, that whatever fragments of fact the worthy Captain may have gleaned from some types of his 'Monsieur Violet,' it is essentially a work of fiction, and is to be added-though violating all those laws of the probable, which ought to preside over such compositions-to the author's long list of novels. But the

young are not usually persons of reflection; and as it is desirable in any case, so it is especially desirable in theirs, that the boundaries between true history and mere fiction should not be thus studiously obliterated.

On the supposition-which every grown-up man must arrive at-that this series of adventures is, in the main, fictitious, we must also protest against that unusually solemn assertion of their truth which is found in the writer's preface, as far passing the ordinary licence by which writers of fiction sometimes seek to give an air of authenticity to their tales. Those contrivances, long since exhausted, deceive no one, and are intended to deceive no one: and are, therefore, of little consequence. Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham and Dr. Dryasdust are understood to be as much fictitious personages as any of those in the tales which they serve to preface. The bundle of old MSS. found in a neglected chest amongst other family papers, is perfectly well understood to be a nonentity; and, indeed, it, and other similar claptraps, have been so often repeated, that they are now considered rather proofs of poverty, than of fertility, of invention. It is no wonder, therefore, if authors-resolved not to tell us that their tale is a tale-should strive to hit on some less hackneyed vouchers of authenticity. We cannot think, however, that this laudable desire should carry an author to such gravity of asseveration as is found in the following passages of Captain Marryatt's preface :

'It is unnecessary to inform the reader in what manner I became acquainted with the party from whose notes and memoranda I have compiled these volumes. Of the authenticity and correctness of what he asserts, I have myself no doubt, as he has been with me during the whole time which it has taken me to write the work, and I have had full opportunity for explanation and correction..

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If the reader discovers an air of romance in this narrative, it must not be laid upon my shoulders. I have, as far possible, softened down the tone of it; but romantic it certainly is, and must be, from its very nature. Some of the descriptions in the natural history of these countries may surprise; but in unknown countries, unknown creatures must be expected to be met with. I can only say that the accounts of these have been submitted to the severest investigation, and that I fully believe that they are correct, not only on that account, but from the respectability of the party who has furnished me with the details.'

These passages indicate what Walter Scott, speaking of Defoe's grave assertions of the matter-of-fact truth of one of his inimitable fictions, calls,-Ineffable powers of self-possession.' Such language can be justified, even artistically, only where the veri-similitude of the narrative is so perfect as not to

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make the assertions of the preface simply ridiculous. In this latter respect, wide, indeed, is the interval between Defoe's Plague Year' and the 'Travels of Monsieur Violet.' Defoe's grave assumption of an historic air is maintained by the most fertile invention and artful intertexture of the most natural and probable incidents. Monsieur Violet's Romantic Adventures' are so extravagantly improbable, as to make the serious preface absolutely ludicrous; as we have said, they can be compared to nothing but the Travels of Baron Munchausen. It requires something more than a serious face for one moment in the preface, to give veri-similitude to fiction. Mere hardihood and 'ineffable self-possession' are sufficient for the one, but there must be much more for the other.

Every epic poem, or historic novel, has, of course, its basis of fact, and its superstructure of fiction; and no ill consequence is likely to come of this, where the reader clearly understands, first, that it is a fiction which he is reading, and, secondly, what are the limits between the historical and the fictitious in the given case. Where the latter condition, indeed, is found, it is very possible that a reader may, even as regards history, derive positive advantages from reading well executed historic novels; he will, without being liable to be misled, obtain much more vivid and impressive views of events known to be historic, than from any history whatever. But the case is widely different, where the reader finds in the preface a declaration that the book is simply a narrative of facts, and yet, after seeing that the book itself gives the lie direct to such a supposition, finds that it gravely proffers information on various subjects, geographical, statistical, political, and historical, which may be true or not, but which yet, from his necessary ignorance of the tribes and countries in question, he cannot at all test, and as to which he can devise no method by which he may separate the residuum of truth from the monstrous mass of romance with which it is con nected. And for these reasons we protest against such a book as the present.

In any case, indeed, the work must be considered a failure; for, whether it be regarded as a genuine collection of 'traveller's tales,' or simply a romance, probability is equally violated. How differently would either a genuine historian, or a genuine novelist, (like Defoe, for example,) have introduced the work to the reader. It is unnecessary,' says Capt. Marryatt, 'to inform the reader in what manner I became acquainted with the party from whose notes and memoranda I have compiled these volumes.' Unnecessary! No. A man who was really writing the adventures of another at his dictation, or who, while really a novelist, wished to appear to be writing history, would have

thought such information most indispensable. A writer, like Swift or Defoe, would have given us a thousand ingenious incidents, and the minutest and most circumstantial details as to the when, the where, and the how, he became acquainted with his 'Monsieur Violet.'

The hero of the adventures-a Frenchman, and, we presume, a Gascon-is an equal violation of all probability. He is the son of a French gentleman, who having adhered to the unfortunate Charles the Tenth, accompanies him to Holyrood; and, having seen him located at Prague, where the exiled monarch finally took up his residence, set out on his travels with his young son, then about nine years of age, through Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land. On his return, he encounters in Italy an old friend, the Prince Seravalle, who had just returned from a long sojourn amongst the Shoshones or Snake Indians in California. The prince, who had, in earlier years, been unsuccessful in some political movements, persuades the French refugee, despairing of his country's fortunes and disgusted with European life, to accompany him back to the wilds of the far West, and take up his abode amongst the wigwams, scalps, and tomahawks of the noble' and chivalrous' Shoshones.

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At this part of his story, Captain Marryatt indulges in some very brutifying, not to say brutal encomiums on the superiority of savage life. He says, "There was, perhaps, another feeling, even more powerful, which induced the Prince Seravalle to return to the Indians with whom he had lived so long,-I refer to the charms and attractions which a wild life offers to a man of civilization, more particularly when he has discovered how hollow and heartless we become under refinement.' He goes on-

'Not one Indian who has been brought up at school, and among the pleasures and luxuries of a great city, has ever wished to make his dwelling among the pale faces, while on the contrary many thousands of white men, from the highest to the lowest stations in civilization, have embraced the life of the savage, remaining with and dying among them, although they might have accumulated wealth and returned to their own country.'

That a life of wild adventure may for a time or even for a permanence, have great charms for an enterprising mind, if that mind has been but half developed, we can readily believe; but that a highly civilized man, with a really cultivated mind, can voluntarily embrace the life of a savage,' is quite another thing, and we do not believe it. That which would constitute the happiness even of the first-mentioned character would be the wild freedom-the constant activity-the robust c c c 2

health-the strong physical enjoyment of such a life-not the adoption of savage habits and customs. Much as such adventurers may enjoy the boundless forest or prairie, we doubt not they would enjoy them all the more if there were no savages at hand. A civilized man may love the gigantic sports of the extreme west-the exciting charms of the buffalo hunt, without wishing to live in wigwams, or in the slightest degree to assimilate his manners, habits, customs or opinions, to those of savages. Captain Marryatt has confounded two thingsthe love of the forest and the prairie, and the love of savage life.

We never hear persons descanting on the superiority of savage life its few wants-its simple pleasures, and so on, without thinking of Johnson's rebuke to one who was insisting on a similar doctrine. Sir,' said he,' the doctrine is brutal. A bull might as well say,-I have this meadow and this cow; and what can existence require more?'

But he immediately proceeds to show practically the vanity of his own eulogies. Prince Seravalle, and his French friend, in spite of all their grotesque passion for a savage life, are sufficiently slow to strip themselves of civilization. They take out with them a somewhat copious and various assortment of all the elements of a highly artificial existence, at least for men who contemplate a denizenship amongst savages. When poets talk of cottages,' says Cowper in one of his charming letters, ' when poets talk of cottages, hermitages, and such like things, they mean a house with six sashes in front, two comfortable parlours, a smart staircase, and three bed chambers of convenient dimensions. In like manner, Captain Marryatt's Prince Seravalle, who is so enamoured of 'a savage life,' 'loaded his vessel with implements of agriculture, and various branches of the domestic arts; procured some old pieces of artillery, a large quantity of carabines from Liege, gunpowder, &c.; materials for building a good house, and a few articles of ornament and luxury.' This is pretty well for a 'savage life.' 'He had also engaged masons, smiths and carpenters, and he was to be accompanied by some of his former tenants, who well understood the cultivation of the olive tree and the vine.' Several additions were made to the cargo, by Monsieur Violet, and, amongst the rest, an extensive library,' two missionaries, and a priest for the education of young Monsieur Violet; all which, instead of indicating that civilized man may become eager to embrace the life of a savage,' proves that he is determined, if possible, to enjoy civilized life even amongst savages. In accordance with this, the prince endeavours to introduce the practice of agricul ture, and other arts of civilized life amongst his 'noble' friends;

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