them, just as much as any) are given over to cheating, coveting, puffing their own goods by shameless and unmanly boasting, undermining each other by the dirtiest means, while the sons of religious professors, both among the higher and the middle classes, seem just as liable as any other young men to fall into unmanly profligacy: if I am asked why the poor profess God's Gospel and practice the devil's works; and why, in this very parish now, there are women who, while they are drunkards, swearers, and adulteresses, will run anywhere to hear a sermon, and like nothing better, saving sin, than high-flown religious books:-if I am asked, I say, why the old English honesty which used to be our glory and our strength, has decayed so much of late years, and a hideous and shameful hypocrisy has taken the place of it, I can only answer by pointing to the good old Church Catechism, and what it says about our duty to God and to our neighbour, and declaring boldly, It is because you have forgotten that. Because you have despised that. Because you have fancied that it was beneath you to keep God's plain human commandments. You have been wanting to save your souls,' while you did not care whether your souls were saved alive, or whether they were dead, and rotten, and damned within you; you have dreamed that you could be what you called spiritual,' while you were the slaves of sin; you have dreamed that you could become what you call 'saints,' while you were not yet even decent men and women.

Dynevor Terrace; or, The Clue of Life. By the Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." In two volumes. New York: Appletons. 1857.

In matters of literature we have been used to regard ourselves as little better than downright Old Fogies. We profess, indeed, to have something of a go-ahead spirit; we do not quite believe in dwelling forever in a hard-shell crust of ancient thoughts and usages; we hold it better to make a slight misstep now and then, than to be evermore stepping in a washtub; we seem to have a tolerably clear sense and perception that our duties lie mainly in the present, though with an earnest and careful looking to the future: still we cannot get quit of the notion that our strength for the course and service of duty is to come chiefly from the past; our feelings and preferences take strongly to the men and things of years foregone; after mingling in the dust and heat of the day, we love to refresh ourselves among the sages and senators of the forest, who had their planting a great while ago; and in the article of books especially, we have a huge propensity to brace and stay our judgment on the solemn verdict and approval of Time, who, God bless the old lady! has become so widely and justly celebrated as the mother of Truth. The result of all which is, that we reluctantly enter into an acquaintance with any new candidate for literary honours; there being so many old books which we know to be good, that we cannot choose but grudge the time of reading an unknown book in order to ascertain whether it be worth the reading. And this may be deemed a sufficient explanation of our literary old-fogyism.

After all, there is, perhaps, more of easy self-indulgence than of real manliness in thus tying one's self up to the society of established reputation and excellence long and generally acknowledged. It relieves one from the responsibility of weighing what he reads, and of making up his own mind about it.

If it keeps one out of danger, it keeps him also from developing in himself the powers of safety; and one will often learn more, as well as show a more manly courage, by venturing into the paths of intellectual novelty, where the necessi ties of an independent and self-centered judgment meet him and press upon him.

Be this as it may, we do occasionally turn aside from the old familiar faces, to cultivate a new acquaintance; the result of which sometimes is a sad loss of time and patience, but oftener a substantial gain in expanding the sympa thies and liberalizing the thoughts. An instance of this occurred some few years ago, when we were induced to open an acquaintance with Miss Yonge in The Heir of Redclyffe, and were so far from regretting it, that we determined to keep it up and carry it on. We have in her a sufficiently original and peculiar specimen of the modern novel: though without any thing of an overstrained and exaggerated individuality, she is by no means a mere echo or reflection: her mind has a firm character of its own; and in what she writes we taste the sap and flavour of unborrowed and home-grown thought. Her observation is large and close, her tastes pure and simple; in spirit and temper she is thoroughly religious, and in the main wisely so; christian piety, in deed and in truth, being a paramount aim in all that she writes. She is not romantic at all; exciting incident and adventure have no share in the interest of her stories: the materials of her fictions are taken from "the common things that round us lie;" her men and women and children and dogs have the breath and pulse of actual every-day life, their minds and manners smacking of what the authoress has lived, played, thought, felt, worked, and suffered amidst; the moral and religious tone is elevated, healthful, and pure, free from cant and conceit, and with very little of that sentimental self-anatomy which renders so much of contemporary writing offensive alike to good taste and right principle; the style, though with less of ease and mellowness than were to be wished, and though sometimes rather too wiry and abrupt, is not wanting in breadth and variety. Her forte is decidedly in the tender and pathetic, where she wields very great power, and seems, at times, able to do almost anything she wills with the reader. Perhaps her greatest defect lies in a too constant solemnity of mind. She cannot play the powers of intellectual sport and frolic seem to have no place in her composition. She very seldom attempts to unbend from the serious mood, and when she does so, the effect is rather that of one acting a part in which she is not at home. Wit and humour, in their various forms and combinations, are the great exhilarants of fictitious writing. We miss them almost entirely in the good and gifted authoress of The Heir of Redclyffe and Dynevor Terrace. This is certainly a great defect; such perhaps as no affluence of other powers can fully make up for: we question much whether any work of fiction in which the arts of mental . play are altogether wanting can establish for itself a permanent interest; as the excitement of novelty wears off, it can hardly fail, we suspect, to become vapid and tedious.

Miss Yonge's genius seems, thus far, to have reached its height and done its

best in The Heir of Redclyffe. The work has indeed some very considerable faults both of plot and characterization; still, on the whole, it carries, in large measure, the interest of original and truthful delineation, and of natural and genuine passion. Here, as elsewhere, the authoress rarely tries her hand at description, and shows little aptitude for it. The incidents are simple and common, never such as to wind the thoughts up to a fervour of expectation. Nor are there any very bold and exciting strokes of character. The effect is produced by a vast number of little delicate touches, which are rather felt in the aggregate, than noticed in detail. Nor has the authoress the power of going out of herself, and forgetting her own preferences in the enthusiasm of her conceptions: consequently, we see her characters not exactly as they are in themselves, but as they are more or less coloured by her likes and dislikes: nevertheless, she is really their medium, not they hers; it is the characters that we see through her mind, not her mind through them. Somehow, a tolerably distinct impression of her persons generally steals into the mind, though from such numerous gossamer-like pencillings that we cannot trace them. Though but the men and women of ordinary life, they gradually work themselves up to a strong hold on our thoughts and feelings; we cannot tell why we should care for them, yet we do care for them; and they teach us deep and solemn lessons, because they are pictures of that real life which always has enough to teach, if there be but the ear and the heart to listen to it. And so, despite of sundry drawbacks, The Heir of Redclyffe is a work of real genius and power; a work to make men pause and think, to lift them out of themselves, and, if their natures be not hard and cold, to make them the wiser and better for reading. The life and death of Guy, and the widowhood of Amy are deeply affecting, and more fruitful of practical instruction than many sermons and moral discourses. No one can contemplate these characters without longing to be like them; and in some this longing can hardly fail to issue in serious effort.

Dynevor Terrace is not equal, as a whole, to The Heir of Redcliffe; yet it is fraught with salutary movings of head and heart, and leaves a deep and wholesome impression. One of its leading faults is the introduction of too many persons for distinctness of acquaintance and a due concentration of interest. Sometimes they pass before the eye so rapidly, or huddle upon it so thick, that their forms melt into each other and appear run together, so that one does not readily distinguish them, nor find their goings-out and comings-in. The incidents, too, are, for the most part, rather too common-place to fill the mind, and transport the reader out of himself: sometimes, as in that whereby Lord Fitzjocelyn gets lamed, they are managed so coarsely and inartificially that one does not take a clear and vivid conception of them. Moreover, the delineation of both characters and events is something too microscopic and wire-drawn: the dialogue and narrative are at times charged with a minuteness of petty detail, that becomes tedious and soporific: the work is without due centres of interest, or rather has so many of them that the effect is as if there were none: the excitement of the scene is too evenly diffused, and with

out sufficient interchange of lull and gale to keep the spirits alert and quick. So that the impression is somewhat like that of a picture which is all foreground; where there is no grouping or perspective to give the mind salient points; and where the eye gets wearied and baffled because all the objects have nearly the same emphasis of colouring. These faults, however, are mainly confined to the first half of the story in the latter half they mostly disappear, and the interest grows on to a proportionable height.

The story takes its first name from the principal locality of the scene: the second name is significant of the moral, which turns on finding "the clue of life," so as to be able to unwind the thread smoothly, and without running it into snarls and catches. This moral is mainly illustrated in three pairs of lovers; which, it seems to us, is rather an overworking of the idea. The clue in question is neither more nor less than religious principle, and that not as an occasional resort for solace or support, nor as any speciality standing apart from or running alongside the course of daily life; but as a spirit pervading and informing all the parts of social and domestic conduct; a power that never speaks of itself, yet breathes in all the speech, that silently blends with and regulates the beatings of the heart, and works out unseen in a constant serenity and benignity and sweetness of deportment. If we must have religious novels, it is not easy to point out how one could be constructed on a better idea. Nor can such a lesson be unseasonable at a time when religion is so apt to be used rather as a special suit for church and Sunday than as an every-day workingdress; a thing to win heaven with hereafter, and not the very life-principle of a heaven upon earth. Some of the persons are represented as having already found the clue at the outset for these, seeming hindrances prove to be but helps; and they have a light within that shines all the brighter as clouds and darkness gather round them from without. Others are long in finding the clue, and pass through many hard struggles and sufferings before they find it; yet their sufferings are in the end seen to be but blessings in disguise, as they are thereby broken and disciplined into a wiser quest. The contrast between these two sets of persons is managed with a good deal of skill, and the lesson forcibly evolved: perhaps, indeed, a severe criticism might decide that this part of the work would evince more skill if there were less management about it; the particulars of the development being too visibly ordered in support of a foregone conclusion. For the best lessons of a moral work are generally those which are not specially prominent, and the energy of which so possesses the author that he is scarce conscious of their transpiration, and conveys them best without planning for the conveyance of them at all.

The plot of Dynevor Terrace is much too intricate and complex to be analyzed in the limits of a notice. As regards character, the happiest effort is an aged gentlewoman called Mrs. Frost, a serene and saintly old grandmother, such as it does one's heart good to contemplate. Bred to brilliant expecta tions, but afterwards reduced, without fault of her own, to the necessities of humble labour for herself and others, she has faced them with a brave and cheerful heart, and slid into a thoughtful, benevolent, wise old age, in her own

grace so charmed that no adversities can shake the fabric of her peace; and her life sweetly touches its close, like the passing of a bright, tranquil, sunny day. She is indeed a genuine streak of heaven, blessing and beautifying all who come within her radiance. If the authoress had done no more than give us this charming and instructive portrait, she would be richly entitled to our gratitude and respect. The other characters are of varied excellence both in conception and execution, but we cannot stay to remark upon them. On the whole, the book, notwithstanding the wearisomeness of the first half, will amply repay a careful and thoughtful perusal.

Characters and Criticisms. By W. Alfred JONES, A.M. In two Volumes. New York: I. Y. Westervelt, 371 Broadway. 1857.

These volumes are a collection of miscellaneous papers which were written from time to time, and published in various weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The essays, for such they are in substance and form, embrace a wide variety of topics, literary and personal. The author is a careful, patient, studious man; thoroughly upright in word, straightforward, manly, and generally sound in his judgments; modest and unpretending in style; without affectation of profundity or originality; never speaking unless he have something to say, and seldom running the expression beyond the matter. All these qualities are visible enough in the workmanship before us, making it tasteful, scholarly, discriminating, and solid. The air of the book is wholesome and bracing if there be little to transport or exhilarate the reader, to send his mind into the altitudes or the abysses of thought, there is much to ground and bottom him in its solidities, much to store his capacity with polite and useful information, and not a little to invigorate and sharpen his insight of men and things.

The volumes discover an eminently catholic taste, a genial fellowship with divers forms of excellence, and a mind well travelled and at home in almost every walk of English literature. We have been pretty largely favoured with books gotten up with a view to guide and stimulate the reading of the young. We deny not but there may be much of utility in such efforts; but we should prefer to seek our help in this matter from one who, without any plan or forethought of instructing others, spoke out, free and fresh, what has been silently gathered in from the experienced pleasure and profit of his own studies. Such guidance, it seems to us, is all the better, forasmuch as it goes by heart, and not by rule. And there is plenty of such guidance in the volumes before us. As an instance of this, we may fitly refer to the essay On Preaching, which abounds in just and pertinent criticism; though the author, in his comparison of the old and the modern English divines, speaks rather too much, we suspect, in disparagement of the latter. Here is a passage abundantly true in itself, and which may go some way towards explaining the waning of clerical influence in our time:

The old English Divines wrote not merely sermons,-but they wrote books of