school of romance in late years, as well as the great ability which their composition evinces, must not blind our eyes to the degrading tendency of such compositions upon the national literature. Immediate circulation, great profit to the bookseller, a dazzling reputation to the author, are by no means to be relied on as the heralds of lasting fame. In cases innumerable, they have proved the reverse. Still less are they to be considered as proofs that the writer, be his abilities what they may, has worthily performed his mission, or elevated himself to the exalted level of which his art is susceptible. The most pernicious romances and poems that ever appeared have often been ushered into the world by the most unbounded immediate applause: witness the Nouvelle Heloïse of Rousseau, and Pucelle of Voltaire. It was just their dangerous and seductive qualities which gave them their success. Rousseau knew this well. He addressed himself with skill and perfect knowledge of the age to its passions and vices :-"J'ai vu les mœurs de mon temps, et j'ai publié ces lettres," were the first words of his Nouvelle Heloise. In the school we have mentioned, there is nothing immoral or improper; but is there anything elevating or improving? The true test of real excellence is not immediate success but durable fame; it is to be found not in the popularity of circulating shops or reading clubs, but in the shelves of the library or the delight of the fireside. When a work suddenly attains great immediate celebrity in a particular circle or country, it is generally, though not always, an indication that it is not destined to enjoy any lasting reputation. The reason is, that it is addressed to local feelings, temporary passions, and particular desires; and it rises to eminence from interesting or gratifying them. But that is not the way permanently to attract mankind. Nothing can do so but what is addressed to the universal feelings of our nature, and has penetrated to the inmost chords, which are common to all ages and countries. The touching them alone can secure durable fame.

Where now are all the novels portraying fashionable life with which the shops of publishers teemed, and the shelves of circulating libraries groaned, not ten years ago? Buried in the vault of all the Capulets. Where will the novels. portraying manners in the lowest walks of life be ten years

hence? He is a bold man who says they will be found in one well-selected library. We do not dispute the ability of some of these productions. We are well aware of the fidelity with which they have painted the manners of the middle class, previously little touched on in novels; we fully admit the pathos and power of occasional passages, the wit and humour of many others, the graphic delineation of English character which they contain. But, admitting all this, the question is-have these productions come up to the true standard of novel-writing? Are they fitted to elevate and purify the minds of their readers? Will the persons who peruse, and are amused, perhaps fascinated, by them, become more noble, more exalted, more spiritual beings, than they were before? Do not these novels, able and amusing as they are, bear the same relation to the lofty romances of which our literature can boast, that the Boors of Ostade, or the Village Wakes of Teniers, do to the Madonnas of Guido, or the Holy Families of Raphael? These pictures were and are exceedingly popular in Flanders and Holland, where their graphic truth could be appreciated; but are they ever regarded as models of the really beautiful in painting?

The doctrine now so prevalent is essentially erroneousthat the manners of the middle or lowest class are the fit object of the novelist, because they are natural. Many things are natural which yet are not fit to be exposed, and by the customs of all civilised nations are studiously concealed from the view. Voltaire's well-known answer to a similar remark when made in regard to Shakspeare, indicates, though in a coarse way, the true reply to such observations.

If everything that is natural, and we see around us, is the fit object of imitation, and worthy of being perpetuated in literature, it can no longer be called one of the Fine Arts. It is degraded to a mere copying of nature in her coarsest and most disgusting, equally as her noblest and most elevating aspects. We protest against the doctrine, that the lofty art of romance is to be lowered to the delineating the manners of cheesemongers and grocers, of crop-head charity boys, or smart haberdashers' and milliners' apprentices of doubtful reputation. If we wish to see the manners of such classes,

we have only to get into a railway or steamboat; the sight of them at breakfast or dinner will probably be enough for any person accustomed to the habits of good society. Still more solemnly do we enter our protest against the slang of thieves or prostitutes, the flash words of receivers of stolen goods and criminal officers, the haunts of murderers and burglars, being the proper subject for the amusement or edification of the other classes of society. It might as well be said that the refuse of the common-sewers should be raked up and mixed with the garbage of the streets to form our daily food. That such things exist is certain; we have only to walk the streets at night, and we shall soon have ample evidence of their reality. But are they the proper object of the novel-writer's pencil? That is the question; and it is painful to think that in an age boasting its intelligence, and glorying in the extent of its information, such a question should be deemed susceptible of answer in any but one way.

These two extremes of novel-writing-the Almacks and Jack Sheppard schools-deviate equally from the standard of real excellence. The one is too exclusively devoted to the description of high, the other of low life. The one portrays a style of manners as artificial and peculiar as that of the paladins and troubadours of chivalry; the other exhibits to our view the lowest and most degraded stages of society, and by the force of humour or the tenderness of pathos interests us too often in the haunts of vice or the pursuits of infamy. It is easy to see that the one school was produced by the reaction of the human mind against the other; genius, tired of the eternal flirtations of guardsmen and right honourables, sought for unsophisticated nature in the humour of low or the sorrows of humble life. But low and humble life are sophisticated just as much as elevated and fashionable; and, if we are driven to a selection, we would prefer the artificial manners of the great to the natural effusions of the vulgar. We would rather, as the child said to the ogress, be eaten up by the gentleman. But true novel-writing should be devoted to neither the one nor the other. It should aim at the representation of what Sir Joshua Reynolds called "general or common nature that is, nature by its general features, which are common to

all ages and countries, not by its peculiarities in a particular circle or society. It is by success in delineating that, and by it alone, that lasting fame is to be acquired. Without doubt every age and race of men have their separate dress and costume, and the mind has its externals as well as the body, which the artist of genius will study with sedulous care, and imitate with scrupulous fidelity. But the soul is not in the dress; and so it will be found in the delineation of mind as in the representation of the figure.

All these extravagances in the noble art of romance originate in one cause. They come of not making "the past and the distant predominate over the present. It is like sketching every day from nature in the same scenery or country; the artist, if he has the pencil of Claude Lorraine or Salvator Rosa, will in the end find that if the objects of his study are endless, their character has a certain family resemblance; and that, if he is not repeating the same study, he is reproducing, under different forms, the same ideas. But let him extend his observation to a wider sphere; let him study the sublimity of mountain or the sweetness of pastoral scenery; let him traverse the Alps and the Apennines, the Pyrenees or the Caucasus ; let him inhale the spirit of antiquity amidst the ruins of the Capitol, or the genius of Greece on the rock of the Acropolis; let him become imbued with modern beauty on the shores of Naples, or the combined charms of Europe and Asia amidst the intricacies of the Bosphorus-and what a world of true images, objects, and beauties, is at once let into his mind! It is the same with romance. It is by generalising ideas, by means of extended observation, that variety is to be communicated to conception, and freshness to incident; that the particular is to be taken from character, and the general impressed upon mind. But the novelist has this immense advantage over the painter-not only the present but the past lie open to his study. The boundless events of history present themselves to his choice; he can not only roam at will over the present surface of the globe, with all its variety of character, event, and incident, but penetrate backwards into the unsearchable depths of time. When will fresh subjects for description be wanting with such a field to the hand of genius? Never to the end of the

world; for years as they revolve, nations as they rise and fall, events as they thicken around mankind, but add to the riches of the vast storehouse from which it is to select its subjects, or cull its materials.

Look at Shakspeare-with what felicity has he selected from this inexhaustible reserve, to vary his incidents, to invigorate his ideas, to give raciness to his characters! He has not even confined himself to English story, rich as it is in moving or terrible events, and strikingly as its moving phantasmagoria come forth from his magic hand. The tragedies, the comedies, the events, the ideas, of the most distant ages of the world, of the most opposite states of society, of the most discordant characters of mankind, seem depicted with equal felicity. He is neither thoroughly chivalrous like Tasso and Ariosto, nor thoroughly Grecian like Sophocles and Euripides, nor thoroughly French like Corneille and Racine. He has neither portrayed exclusively the manners of Arthur and the Round Table, nor those of the courts of the Henrys or the Plantagenets. He is as varied as the boundless variety of nature. Profoundly imbued at one time with the lofty spirit of Roman patriotism, he is not less deeply penetrated at another with the tenderness of Italian love. If Julius Cæsar contains the finest picture that ever was drawn of the ideas of the citizens of the ancient world, Juliet is the most perfect delineation of the refined passions of the modern. The bursting heart, uncontrollable grief, but yet generous spirit of the Moor-the dark ambition and blood-stained career of the Scot, come as fresh from his pencil as the dreamy contemplation of the Prince of Denmark, or the fascinating creation of the forest of Ardennes. It is hard to say whether he is greatest in painting the racked grief of Lear, the homely sense of Falstaff, or the aërial vision of Miranda. Here is the historical drama-here is the varied picture of the human heart; and if the world is not prolific of Shakspeares, he at least has afforded decisive evidence of the vastness of the field thus opened to its genius.

The HISTORICAL ROMANCE should take its place beside the plays of Shakspeare. It does not aim at representation on the stage; it has not the powers of the actor, the illusion of scenery, the magic of theatrical effect, nor the charms