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George Prince Regent James. perhaps the best of the numerous band. If he had not written so much-if, instead of employing an amanuensis, to whom he dictates his thick-coming fancies,' he had concentrated his whole powers on a few congenial subjects or periods of history, and resorted to the manual labour of penmanship as a drag-chain on the machine, he might have attained to the highest honours of this department of composition. As it is, he has furnished many light, agreeable, and picturesque books-none of questionable tendency and all superior to the general run of novels of the season. Mr James's first appearance as an author was made, we believe, in 1822, when he published a History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince. In 1829 he struck into that path in which he has been so indefatigable, and produced his historical romance of Richelieu, a very attractive fiction. In 1830 he issued two romances, Darnley, or the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and De L'Orme. Next year he produced Philip Augustus; in 1832 a History of Charlemagne, and a tale, Henry Masterton; in 1833 Mary of Burgundy, or the Revolt of Ghent; in 1834 The Life and Adventures of John Marston Hall; in 1835 One in a Thousand, or the Days of Henri Quatre, and The Gipsy, a Tale; in 1837 Attila, a romance, and The Life and Times of Louis XIV.; in 1838 The Huguenot, a Tale of the French Protestants, and The Robber; in 1839 Henry of Guise, and A Gentleman of the Old School; in 1840 The King's Highway, and The Man at Arms; in 1841 Corse de Leon, Jacquerie, or the Lady and Page; The Ancient Régime, and A History of the Life of Richard Cœur de Lion; in 1842 Morley Ernstein;

*Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, by Leigh

Hunt.

in 1843 Forest Days, Eva St Clair, The False Heir, and Arabella Stuart. We have in this catalogue some seventy or eighty volumes. There seems,' says a lively writer, 'to be no limit to his ingenuity, his faculty of getting up scenes and incidents, dilemmas, artifices, contretemps, battles, skirmishes, disguises, escapes, trials, combats, adventures. He accumulates names, dresses, implements of war and peace, official retinues, and the whole paraphernalia of customs and costumes, with astounding alacrity. He appears to have exhausted every imaginable situation, and to have described every available article of attire on record. What he must have passed through-what triumphs he must have enjoyed-what exigencies he must have experiencedwhat love he must have suffered-what a grand wardrobe his brain must be! He has made some poetical and dramatic efforts, but this irresistible tendency to pile up circumstantial particulars is fatal to those forms of art which demand intensity of passion. In stately narratives of chivalry and feudal grandeur, precision and reiteration are desirable rather than injurious-as we would have the most perfect accuracy and finish in a picture of ceremonials; and here Mr James is supreme. One of his court romances is a book of brave sights and heraldic magnificence-it is the next thing to moving at our leisure through some superb and august procession.'

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REV. G. R. GLEIG.

The REV. G. R. GLEIG, chaplain of Chelsea Hospital, in the early part of his life served in the army, and in 1825 he published his military reminiscences in an interesting narrative entitled The Subaltern. In 1829 he issued a work also partly fictitious, The Chelsea Pensioners, which was followed next year by The Country Curate; in 1837 by The Hussar, and Traditions of Chelsea Hospital; and in 1843 by The Light Dragoon. Besides many anonymous and other productions, Mr Gleig is author of Memoirs of Warren Hastings, a work which certainly has not added to his reputation.

W. H. MAXWELL-C. LEVER-S. LOVER.

Various military narratives, in which imaginary scenes and characters are mixed up with real events and graphic descriptions of continental scenery, have been published in consequence of the suc cess of the Subaltern. Amongst the writers of this class is MR W. H. MAXWELL, author of Stories of Waterloo, 1829; Wild Sports of the West; Adventures of Captain Blake; The Bivouac, or Stories of the Peninsular War; The Fortunes of Hector O'Halloran, &c. MR C. LEVER is still more popular; for, in addition to his battle scenes and romantic exploits, he has a rich racy national humour, and a truly Irish love of frolic. His first work was The Confes sions of Harry Lorrequer, which was followed by Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon; Jack Hinton, the Guardsman; Tom Burke Of Ours; and Arthur O'Leary, his Wanderings and Ponderings in many Lands. Mr Lever's heroes have all a strong love of adventure, a national proneness to blundering, and

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tendency to get into scrapes and questionable situations. The author's chief fault is his often mistaking farce for comedy-mere animal spirits for wit or humour. MR SAMUEL LOVER, author of Legends and Stories of Ireland, Rory O'More, Handy Andy, L. S. D. &c. is also a genuine Irish writer, a strong lover of his country, and, like Moore, a poet and musician, as well as novelist. The scenes of war, rebellion, and adventure in Mr Lover's tales are related with much spirit.

JOHN FENIMORE COOPER.

JOHN FENIMORE COOPER, the American novelist, has obtained great celebrity in England, and over all Europe, for his pictures of the sea, sea-life, and wild Indian scenery and manners. His imagination

John Fenimore Cooper.

is essentially poetical. He invests the ship with all the interest of a living being, and makes his readers follow its progress, and trace the operations of those on board, with intense and never-flagging anxiety. Of humour he has scarcely any perception; and in delineating character and familiar incidents, he often betrays a great want of taste and knowledge of the world. When he attempts to catch the ease of fashion,' it has been truly said, he is singularly unsuccessful.' He belongs, like Mrs Radcliffe, to the romantic school of novelists-especially to the sea, the heath, and the primeval forest. Mr Cooper, according to a notice of him some years since in the New Monthly Magazine, was born at Burlington on the Delaware, in 1798, and was removed at an early age to Cooper's Town, a place of which he has given an interesting account in The Pioneers. At thirteen he was admitted to Yale college, New Haven, and three years afterwards he went to sea-an event that gave a character and colour to his after-life, and produced impressions of which the world has reaped the rich result. On his marriage to a lady in the state of New York, he quitted the navy, and devoted himself to composition. His first work was published in 1821, and since that period he must have written above seventy volumes. Among them are The Pilot; The Pioneers; The Spy; The Prairie; The Last of the Mohicans; The Red Rover; The Borderers; The Bravo; The Deer Slayer; Eve Effingham; The Headsman; Heidenmauer; Homeward Bound; Jack o' Lantern; Mercedes of Castile; The Pathfinder; The Two Admirals; The Water Witch; Wyandotte; Ned Myers, or Life before the Mast, &c. Besides his numerous works of fiction, Mr Cooper has written Excursions in Italy, 1838; a History of the American Navy, 1839, &c. In these he does not appear to advantage. He seems to cherish some of the worst prejudices of the Americans, and, in his zeal for republican institutions, to forget the candour and temper becoming an enlightened citizen of the world.

HALIBURTON.

MR HALIBURTON, a judge in Nova Scotia, is the reputed author of a series of highly-amusing works illustrative of American and Canadian manners, abounding in shrewd sarcastic remarks on political questions, the colonies, slavery, domestic institutions and customs, and almost every familiar topic of the day. The first of these appeared in 1837, under the title of The Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville. A second series was published in the following year, and a third in 1840. Sam Slick' was a universal favourite; and in 1843 the author conceived the idea of bringing him to England. The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England, gives an account of the sayings and doings of the clockmaker when elevated to the dignity of the Honourable Mr Slick, Attaché of the American Legation to the court of St James's.' There is the same quaint humour, acute observation, and laughable exaggeration in these volumes as in the former, but, on the whole, Sam is most amusing on the other side of the Atlantic.

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W. HARRISON AINSWORTH.

Mr W. HARRISON AINSWORTH has written several picturesque romances, partly founded on English history and manners. His Rookwood, 1834, is a very animated narrative, in which the adventures of Turpin the highwayman are graphically related, and some of the vulgar superstitions of the last century coloured with the lights of genius. In the interest and rapidity of his scenes and adventures, Mr Ainsworth evinced a dramatic power and art, but no originality or felicity of humour or character. His marvellous history of the Scottish cavalier, but is second romance, Crichton, 1836, is founded on the scarcely equal to the first. He has since written Jack Sheppard, a sort of Newgate romance, The Tower of London, Guy Fawkes, Old St Pauls, and Windsor Castle. There are rich, copious, and brilliant descriptions in some of these works, but their tendency is at least doubtful. To portray scenes of low successful villany, and to paint ghastly and hideous details of human suffering, can be no elevating task for a man of genius, nor one likely to promote among novel readers a healthy tone of moral feeling or sentiment.

SAMUEL WARREN-MRS BRAY-ALBERT SMITH—

HON. C. A. MURRAY.

In vivid painting of the passions, and depicting scenes of modern life, the tales of Mr SAMUEL WARREN, F.R.S. have enjoyed a high and deserved degree of popularity. His Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, two volumes, 1837, contain many touching and beautiful stories; and his Ten Thousand a Year, though in some parts ridiculously exaggerated, and too liable to the suspicion of being a satire upon the middle classes, is also an amusing and able novel. MRS BRAY, a Devonshire lady, and authoress of an excellent tour among the mountains and lakes of Switzerland, has written a number of historical and other novels-De Foix, or Sketches of Manners and Customs of the Fourteenth Century, 1826; Henry de Pomercy; The Protestant, a Tale of the Reign of Queen Mary; Talba, or the Moor of Portugal; Trelawney of Trelawney, &c. An English novel, Caleb Stukeley, published anonymously in 1842, is a vigorous and interesting work, though in some parts coarse and vehement in style. The Adventures of Mr Ledbury, by ALBERT SMITH, and The Prairie Bird, by the HONOURABLE C. A. MURRAY, may be mentioned as

among the superior class of recent novels. The whole of these it would be impossible to enumerate; for not only does every year and month send out a new one,' but every magazine contains tales and parts of romances well written, and possessing many of the requisites for successful works of this description. The high and crowning glory of originality, wit, or inventive genius, must always be rare; but in no previous period of our literature was there so much respectable talent, knowledge, and imagination embarked in fictitious composition. One great name, however, yet remains to be mentioned.

CHARLES DICKENS.

through scenes of poverty and crime, and all the characters are made to discourse in the appropriate language of their respective classes; and yet we recollect no passage which ought to cause pain to the most sensitive delicacy, if read aloud in female society.'

The next work of our author was Nicholas Nickleby, a tale which was also issued in monthly numbers, and soon attained to extensive popularity. The plan of this work is more regular and connected than that of Pickwick,' the characters generally not overdrawn, and the progressive interest of the narrative well sustained. The character of Mrs Nickleby is a fine portraiture of the ordinary English wife, scarcely inferior in its kind to Fielding's The pedagogue Squeers, and his seminary of Dotheboys Hall, is one of the most amusing and graphic of English satirical delineations; and the picture it presents of imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity, is known to have been little, if at all, caricatured. The exposure was a public benefit. The ludicrous account of Mr Crummles and his theatrical company will occur to the reader as another of Dickens's happiest conceptions, though it is pushed into the region of farce. In several of our author's works there appears a minute knowledge of dramatic rules and stage affairs. He has himself, it is said, written an opera and a farce, and evidently takes pleasure in the business of the drama. May not some of his more startling contrasts in situation and description be traced to this predilection? Oliver Twist, the next work of Mr Dickens, is also a tale of English low life, of vice, wretchedness, and misery, drawn with the truth and vigour of Crabbe. The hero is an orphan brought up by the parish, and thrown among various scenes and characters of the lowest and worst description. The plot of this novel is well managed, and wrought up with consummate art and power. The interest of the dark and tragical portions of the story is overwhelming, though there is no unnatural exaggera- || tion to produce effect, and no unnecessary gloom. Take, for example, the following account of a scene of death witnessed by Oliver while acting in the capacity of attendant to an undertaker.

Few authors have succeeded in achieving so bril-Amelia; and Ralph Nickleby is also ably portrayed. liant a reputation as that secured by MR CHARLES DICKENS in the course of a few years. The sale of his works has been unexampled, and they have been translated into various languages, including even the Dutch and Russian. Writings so universally popular must be founded on truth and nature-must appeal to those passions and tastes common to mankind in every country; and at the same time must possess originality and force of delineation. The first publication of Dickens was a series of sketches and illustrations, chiefly of ordinary English and metropolitan life, known as Sketches by Boz. The earlier numbers of these were written for a newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, and the remainder for a magazine. They were afterwards collected and published in two volumes, bearing respectively the dates of 1836 and 1837. The author was then a young man of about twenty-six. In 1837 he began another series of a similar character, The Pickwick Papers, of which 30,000 copies are said to have been sold. Though defective in plan and arrangement, as Mr Dickens himself admits, the characters in this new series of sketches, and the spirit with which the incidents are described, amply atone for the want of any interesting or well-constructed plot. The hero, Pickwick, is almost as genial, unsophisticated, and original as My Uncle Toby, and his man, Sam Weller, is an epitome of London low life in its most agreeable and entertaining form. The dialogue overflowed with kindly humour, and felicities of phrase and expression; the description was so graphic and copious, and the comic scenes so finely blended with tenderness and benevolence, that the

effect of the whole was irresistible. The satire and ridicule of the author were always well directed, and though coloured a little too highly, bore the clear impress of actual life and observation. To aid in these effects, Mr Dickens called in the artist and engraver. What Boz conceived and described, Phiz represented with so much truth, and spirit, and individuality seizing upon every trait and feature, and preserving the same distinguishing characteristics throughout-that the characters appeared to stand bodily forth to the world as veritable personages of the day, destined to live for all time coming. The intimate acquaintance evinced in 'Pickwick' with the middle and low life of London, and of the tricks and knavery of legal and medical pretenders, the arts of bookmakers, and generally of particular classes and usages common to large cities, was a novelty in our literature. It was a restoration of the spirit of Hogarth, with equal humour and practical wit and knowledge, but informed with a better tone of humanity, and a more select and refined taste. There is no misanthropy in his satire,' said one of his critics, and no coarseness in his descriptions-a merit enhanced by the nature of his subjects. His works are chiefly pictures of humble life -frequently of the humblest. The reader is led

[Death and Funeral of a Pauper.]

There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the

open door where Oliver and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark passage, :| and bidding Oliver keep close to him, and not be afraid, the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs, and, stumbling against a door on the landing, rapped at it with his knuckles.

It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in, and Oliver followed him.

There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching mechanically over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged children in another corner; and in a small recess, opposite the door, there lay upon the ground something covered with an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes towards the place, and crept involuntarily closer to his master; for, though it was covered up, the boy felt that it was a corpse.

The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly, and his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled, her two remaining teeth protruded over her under lip, and her eyes were bright and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look

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'Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady,' whispered Sowerberry in the old woman's ear; we are rather late, and it wont do to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men-as quick as you like.'

Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden, and the two mourners kept as near them as they could. Mr Bumble and Sowerberry walked at a good smart pace in front; and Oliver, whose legs were not so long as his master's, ran by the side.

There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr Sowerberry had anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the churchyard, in which the nettles grew, and the parish graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived, and the clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it might be an

on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys, whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard, played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin. Mr Sowerberry and Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him, and read the paper.

'Ah!' said the man, bursting into tears, and sink-hour or so before he came. So they set the bier down ing on his knees at the feet of the dead woman; 'kneel down, kneel down; kneel round her every one of you, and mark my words. I say she starved to death. I never knew how bad she was till the fever came upon her, and then her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor candle; she died in the dark-in the dark. She couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the streets, and they sent me to prison. When I came back she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death. I swear it before the God that saw it-they starved her! He twined his hands in his hair, and with a loud scream rolled grovelling upon the floor, his eyes fixed, and the foam gushing from his lips.

The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed, menaced them into silence; and having unloosened the man's cravat, who still remained extended on the ground, tottered towards the undertaker.

'She was my daughter,' said the old woman, nodding her head in the direction of the corpse, and speaking with an idiotic leer more ghastly than even the presence of death itself. Lord, Lord! well, it is strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there so cold and stiff! Lord, Lord!-to think of it; it's as good as a play, as good as a play!'

As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment, the undertaker turned to go away.

'Stop, stop!' said the old woman in a loud whisper. 'Will she be buried to-morrow, or next day, or tonight? I laid her out, and I must walk, you know. Send me a large cloak; a good warm one, for it is bitter cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we go! Never mind: send some bread; only a loaf of bread and a cup of water. Shall we have some bread, dear?' she said eagerly, catching at the

undertaker's coat as he once more moved towards the door.

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'Yes, yes,' said the undertaker; of course; anything, everything.' He disengaged himself from the old woman's grasp, and, dragging Oliver after him, hurried away.

The next day (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr Bumble himself) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode, where Mr Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak had been thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; the bare coffin having been screwed down, was then hoisted on the shoulders of the bearers, and carried down stairs into the street.

At length, after the lapse of something more than an hour, Mr Bumble, and Sowerberry, and the clerk were seen running towards the grave; and immediately afterwards the clergyman appeared, putting on his surplice as he came along. Mr Bumble then thrashed a boy or two to keep up appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of the burial-service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his surplice to the clerk, and ran away again. 'Now, Bill,' said Sowerberry to the grave-digger, fill up."

It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full that the uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The grave-digger shovelled in the earth, stamped it loosely down with his feet, shouldered his spade, and walked off, followed by the boys, who murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.

'Come, my good fellow,' said Bumble, tapping the man on the back, they want to shut up the yard.'

The man, who had never once moved since he had taken his station by the grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who had addressed him, walked forward for a few paces, and then fell down in a fit. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off) to pay him any attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him, and when he came to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed on their different ways.

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Well, Oliver,' said Sowerberry, as they walked home, how do you like it?'

'Pretty well, thank you, sir,' replied Oliver, with considerable hesitation. Not very much, sir.' 'Ah, you'll get used to it in time, Oliver,' said Sowerberry. Nothing when you are used to it, my boy.'

Oliver wondered in his own mind whether it had taken a very long time to get Mr Sowerberry used to it; but he thought it better not to ask the question, and walked back to the shop, thinking over all he had seen and heard.

The atrocities of Sykes in the same tale, particularly his murder of the girl Nancy, are depicted with extraordinary power.

In 1840 Mr Dickens commenced a new species of fiction, entitled Master Humphrey's Clock, designed, like the Tales of My Landlord, to comprise different

tales under one general title, and joined by one connecting narrative. The outline was by no means prepossessing or natural, but as soon as the reader had got through this exterior scaffolding, and entered on the first story, the genius of the author was found to be undiminished in vivid delineation of character and description. The effects of gambling are depicted with great force. There is something very striking in the conception of the helpless old gamester, tottering upon the verge of the grave, and at that period when most of our other passions are as much worn out as the frame which sustains them, still maddened with that terrible infatuation which seems to shoot up stronger and stronger as every other desire and energy dies away. Little Nell, the grandchild, is a beautiful creation of pure-mindedness and innocence, yet with those habits of pensive reflection, and that firmness and energy of mind which misfortune will often engraft on the otherwise buoyant and unthinking spirit of childhood; and the contrast between her and her grandfather, now dwindled in every respect but the one into a second childhood, and comforted, directed, and sustained by her unshrinking firmness and love, is very finely managed. The death of Nell is the most pathetic and touching of the author's serious passages-it is also instructive in its pathos, for we feel with the author, that when death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to heaven.' In the course of this tale there are many interesting and whimsical incidents and adventures, with fine glimpses of rural scenes, old churches, and churchyards. The horrors of the almost hopeless want which too often prevails in the great manufacturing towns, and the wild and reckless despair which it engenders, are also described with equal mastery of colouring and effect. The sketch of the wretch whose whole life had been spent in watching, day and night, a furnace, until he imagined it to be a living being, and its roaring the voice of the only friend he had ever known, although perhaps grotesque, has something in it very terrible: we may smile at the wildness, yet shudder at the horror of the fancy. A second story, Barnaby Rudge, is included in Master Humphrey's Clock,' and this also contains some excellent minute painting, a variety of broad humour and laughable caricature, with some masterly scenes of passion and description. The account of the excesses committed during Lord George Gordon's riots in 1780 may vie with Scott's narrative of the Porteous mob; and poor Barnaby Rudge with his raven may be considered as no unworthy companion to Davie Gellatley. There is also a picture of an old English inn, the Maypole, near Epping Forest, and an old innkeeper, John Willet, which is perfect in its kind -such, perhaps, as only Dickens could have painted, though Washington Irving might have made the first etching. After completing these tales Mr Dickens made a trip to America, of which he published an account in 1842, under the somewhat quaint title of American Notes for General Circulation. This work disappointed the author's admirers, which may be considered as including nearly the whole of the reading public. The field had already been well gleaned, the American character and institutions frequently described and generally understood, and Mr Dickens could not hope to add

to our knowledge on any of the great topics connected with the condition or future destinies of the new world. On one national point only did the novelist dissertate at length-the state of the newspaper press, which he describes as corrupt and debased beyond any experience or conception in this country. He also joins with Captain Basil Hall, Mrs Trollope, and Captain Marryat, in representing the social state and morality of the people as low and dangerous, destitute of high principle or generosity. So acute and practised an observer as Dickens could not travel without noting many oddi. ties of character, and viewing familiar objects in a new light; and we are tempted to extract two short passages from his 'American Notes,' which show the masterly hand of the novelist. The first is a sketch of an original met with by our author on board a Pittsburg canal boat:—

peace.

Not so

this

passenger.

A thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey; indeed I don't remember having so much as seen him until he was brought out by circumstances, as great men often are. The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there of course it stops, the passengers being conveyed across it by land-carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. There are two canal lines of passage-boat; one is called the Express, and one (a cheaper one) the Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to come up, both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time. We were the Express company, but when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to the second boat, the proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we were five-and-forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not all of that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases, but suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless; and away we tested lustily, but, being a foreigner here, I held my went down the canal. At home I should have prothe people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and, He cleft a path among without addressing anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as follows: This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This may be all very well with down-easters and men of Boston raising, but it wont suit my figure nohow; and no two ways about that; and so I tell you. Now, I'm from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, and when the sun shines on me, it does shine a little. It don't glimmer where I live, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I am. I an't a Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men there. Rather. If down-easters and men of Boston raising like this, I am glad of it, but I'm none of that raising, nor of that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, it does. I'm the wrong sort of man for 'em, I am. They wont like me, they wont. This is piling of it up, a little too mountainous, this is.' At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel, and walked the other way; checking himself abruptly when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back again. It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other pas sengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away, were got rid of. When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board

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