book came to this country, we extracted a note, which will be found in our Number for October, page 216. We are happy it is now before the reader entire. Very difficult has it been for those who wished well to the cause of Poland, to obtain accounts of the state of that country prior to the late events, and to make themselves acquainted with the causes which led to that noble example of resistance to a despot, whose oppression and crime the plea of madness could alone excuse. But in the madness of Constantine there was method. No more efficient and dishonourable system of espionage was ever established than that of this tyrannical satrap. From other states in Europe he kidnapped his victims. We have long had a knowledge of one attempt of this nature being made on an individual in our own country by Constantine's commands; an unsuccessful attempt it is true, for the facility of execution was not co-equal with the efficiency and readiness of the means employed in other respects. Now that Poland is to be yet more rigorously dealt with, in all probability trampled under the feet of the Russian ruler, this book will show reasons which add to the causes of their justifiable resistance on the part of the Poles. It is written in a sketchy style by one who was an eye-witness of what he relates; and it only sets in a still more aggravated light the monstrous tyranny of the wretch, whom Cholera has carried to his account "unanointed, unanneal'd.” The most striking part is that entitled "Sketches of Warsaw." We would have it printed on a sheet of paper, and given away to increase the hatred of despotism, which all Englishmen should feel by the picture of its actions. On reaching Poland, then in profound peace, (we omit the previous account of our author and his journey,) he says, on entering Poland, close your heart as securely as your portmanteau; have a care of your words as of your purse; for you are approaching Poland." An examination of the Author's books followed, as it would on entering Spain or Austria; and Harro proceeds to Warsaw. A passenger humming aFrench air well known in Poland, and connected with its past history, is stopped by a young Pole, who says, "The driver may inform against us, and we shall be sent God knows where." We forbear to comment on less important matters, even on the exquisite beauty of the Polish women, for the sake of matters relating to the government. In Poland all universities were regulated like barracks, and military discipline and punishment was the law in them! There were five classes of spies established by Constantine; and it does not appear that they were in communication with each other-there were spies high and low, for the rich and poor, the civil and military departments. Constantine ordered all who came to Warsaw, and who had been in Italy or France, to appear before him, and his humour decided their fate; if they were suspected they were lost. To wear the old national dress was an offence punishable by arrest. At four in the morning all was bustle in Warsaw the Grand-Duke rose at that hour, and all must do the same. Constantine resided at the Belvedere Palace, which was surrounded by unbroken stillness, for none ventured to approach it. Even the nightingales seemed to sing and the frogs to croak, as it were by stealth, round the dwelling of the tyrant. The military levee of the despot was held in all the grim formality of old Frederick (not the Great) of Prussia, and his minister Grumkow. All was parade form: a button out of order, a whisker not exactly twisted, were matters to make the "all-powerful," as his slaves called him, furious beyond controul. Harring describes in a very lively tone the chief individuals who figure in the ante-chamber, the tools of the "allpowerful." "The General of division Kurnatovski stands fearfully beside our Lord,'' as he always styles the Grand-Duke when he speaks of him. He trembles from the very bottom of his soul, for the fate of the day hangs on a hair. Should the men march in the slightest degree out of time, or not keep step with mathematical precision, the thunderbolts of the Belvedere will fall on the luckless wight who happens to be nearest. "I recollect some orderlies of the lancers, in whom the penetrating eye of the Grand-Duke could discern no fault, and his highness uttered in a tone of satisfaction the words Charoscho-prekrasznie (good): but unluckily casting a glance at the 1 In Polish Nacz Pun. gloves of the men, he perceived that the seams of the fingers were sewed inside instead of outside. On making this discovery, he thundered out: Contrary to regulation!' The general and the commissariat officers were angrily summoned; and after the Grand-Duke had vented his rage, the general of the regiment, the colonel of the squadron and the quarter-master were placed under arrest, and the privates were sentenced to receive 500 lashes each. Suppose any general had ventured to intercede, and had thus addressed the Grand-Duke: May it please Your Imperial Highness to consider that the soldiers are allowed only two pair of regimental gloves per year; that they must always appear in clean gloves; that they must be daily washed, and that consequently they require a few pairs additional, which, like those that have excited your displeasure, they purchase from the Jews, &c.' Such an address would have been nothing short of open rebellion against his Imperial Highness, and degradation from his rank would have been the fate of the general who might have ventured to begin such an appeal, for as to ending it, that certainly would never have been permitted. The condemnation of the Grand-Duke would soon have cut it short." The defunct tyrant, it seems, deemed the English a dangerous language, and forbad its study. He interfered in the minutest details of every thing, probably from having no intellect for those of more importance, from sheer littleness of mind. For a German foreigner to have studied at Jena or Wurzburgh was an offence which placed him under the surveillance of a spy, or he received an order to quit Warsaw in twenty-four hours. "If he should happen to see a foreigner newly arrived from Paris, he scans him narrowly, and then addresses him a few questions concerning passing events. Every foreigner who comes either to make a stay in Warsaw, or merely to pass through it, is closely questioned concerning his previous places of abode, and is very particularly asked whether he has attended any of the German universities, and which of them. Should the unsuspecting foreigner answer Jena or Wurzburgh, the bushy eye-brows of the Grand-Duke are drawn down over his nose. The order for watching strictly, which has already been privately given, is then repeated openly; or perhaps the foreigner receives notice to quit Warsaw in twenty-four hours. "If the foreigner happen to be a person of any importance, or a young man of good family, he is, without further ceremony, required to enter the military service; and the gold lace trappings of his uniform are the strongest and surest chains that ever were forged. The prisoner, perhaps, never recovers his liberty, or, if he does, it is only when, after years of captivity, ill health renders him unfit for longer service, and his conduct has been such as to cause no objection to his liberation. If it should be thought that he is in any way dangerous, he is allowed to take leave of his regiment, and is to appearance dismissed, without being allowed to depart, so that he is kept from month to month and from year to year in hopeless uncertainty. Native subjects of Russia, who on their return from the German universities visit Warsaw, are never permitted to proceed home. They must enter the service, are planted in the military school, and are kept prisoners for six or eight years, though they can be legally detained only four years. Indeed, an imperial ukase published in 1829 declares that native Russians are required to serve only three years. But this ukase is locked up in the cabinet of the Grand-Duke, together with many others, which are not brought into operation because they are not in accordance with his will." A great coat buttoned on the wrong side, a hat not properly crossed, if the owner was seen by the Arch-Duke, was visited with arrest. Foreigners were forced into the military service, and never suffered to leave Warsaw, which perhaps they had only entered as travellers, A boy chalked on a wall, "Long live the Constitution of 1791," and one half of the students in the University of Wilna, and numerous young men from different parts of the empire, were one half of them either knouted, imprisoned, made common soldiers, or sent to Siberia. The description of Warsaw is interesting. The guard-houses, the parades, the fears of the military of their tyrant, the pyramid of bayonets, the degradation of citizens, and the whole system of grinding oppression, which the Poles endured, are related, we have no doubt, without the slightest exaggeration. The schools, ranks, Russians in Warsaw, their arrogance, &c. &c., are all detailed in a manner at once so lively and interesting, that the reader cannot fail to be entertained by the style, while he derives information from the Author's unflagging narrative. In Warsaw, speaking of its resemblance to Rome, our author says, the "only ruins are the broken spirits of the people." We shall conclude with the following extract relative to the statue of Copernicus, which was made by Thorwaldson, and paid for from a fund left by the Abbé Staszie: it was erected in front of the Academy of Arts, in 1830. "This statue was to be uncovered on the day appointed for the interment of the Abbé Staszie. The Grand-Duke gave order for a review on that day, in order to prevent the patriotic portion of the military from attending the funeral ceremony in the Bilani convent; for the erection of a statue in honour of a Polish star-gazer was a crime in the eyes of his Imperial Highness. "On learning that the poet Niemcewicz intended to deliver an address on the uncovering of the statue, he summoned him to his presence. "The venerable bard was angrily asked what he intended to say on the occasion. There was no alternative but to pay some compliment to the government; and Niemcewicz replied that he should avail himself of the opportunity to extol publicly the paternal government of the Emperor and King, and in particular the graciousness of His Imperial Highness, who permitted the Poles to raise a monument of their national honour.' "To this no objection could be made, and Niemcewicz was enjoined to make no other allusion to Poland or the Poles, under pain of incurring the Grand-Duke's displeasure. The address which had been previously prepared was therefore abandoned, and an eulogium on the Russian government was pronounced at the ceremony of uncovering the statue of Copernicus. "When I was in Rome, in the year 1822, I saw the equestrian statue of Poniatowski, in Thorwaldson's atelier; and five years afterwards, when I visited Warsaw, I of course expected to see it erected. "Poniatowski's statue, however, was not in its destined place; and never would have been seen there during the government of Constantine. "The model of the statue was paid for by patriotic subscriptions; and only a trifling contribution was required to defray the expense of the bronze cast. "From all that has already been related of the despotic tyranny of the GrandDuke, it may readily be imagined that some risk was incurred by those patriots, who subscribed to Poniatowski's monument; for, however secretly their names might be concealed, they immediately found their way into the list of the suspected, or, if already inscribed, they were illustrated with notes." This work should be in the hand of every hater of tyranny,-of every man who wishes to see what Russian oppression is, and how fatal to hope itself is the blighting influence of despotic rule. The Tauroboliad; or, The Sacrifice of the Constitution: a Satire. Hatchard and Son. This is a satirical poem founded on the Reform Bill, which it reprobates of course; a corrupt House of Commons being the most perfect of all possible modes of popular representation. The ceremony of Taurobolism, instituted by Julian the Apostate, is not unhappily taken as the peg upon which to hang the machinery of the poem. Sir Charles Wetherell could not have hit upon one more pertinent in his wildest hap-hazard paroxysm of oratorical delirium. The form of dialogue is adopted as between Whig and Tory: it is a harmless jeu d'esprit which may be read by either party without angry feeling. The verse is easy and flowing; but there is the fatality which attends all the red-hot advocates of Toryism, that they are obliged, even in caricaturing the doctrines of reform, to censure so obviously the soundest deductions of common sense, that they seem rather their own enemies than the foes of those they would hold up to ridicule: thus the arguments put into the mouth of the Whig, in answer to the Tory speaker in this volume, possess all the advantages of which we speak. We wonder the writer was not sensible of this weak point. The Tory imagines that premises sound and unshaken, and conclusions equally immoveable, are to be put down by hooting "revolution," and by assertions of changes being dangerous, innovation ruinous, and that the preservation of things in one state, however bad, is the true wisdom. The irrefutable argument is never put down; but "the creed for which our fathers fought," (which was Popery, for they were Catholics for six or seven hundred years,) the thing that has "worked so well," the respect due to rank, and such monstrous nonsense, is placed against facts clear as noon-day to the veriest idiot that ever walked the earth without a keeper. Ingenuity is eternally on the rack among the cleverest Tories to find specious arguments to combat plain truth. This misfortune appears in the present otherwise clever work. The author arms his opponent too powerfully with the steel weapon of victory, and meets him himself with a lathe dagger and a shield of pasteboard. For example, at page 19, the Whig attacks oppression, appeals to reason, denounces superstition, hails the march of freedom over the waste of tyranny, applauds the French for kicking out the miserable Charles X., hails liberty while under the rule of law, &c. The Tory calls the attack on oppression a crime, insinuates that the Whig is a leveller, and supporter of anarchy; attacks the press of course, appeals to Cressy, and the hypocrite Charles I., and the chivalry which supported him, (not a word of James II. or William III., because the Tories are hankerers after the Stuart dynasty; the revolution of 1688 is a thing not much liked by them,) then the poor "Times" newspaper is attacked, with that "monster" the Press; "Radical" is abused, but, as is the Tory custom, not answered or refuted. The "unwashed artificers" are brought in, sedition cried, Carlile denounced, and some of the usual declamations of Toryism close the reply. The picture we confess is a faithful one. Facts cannot be overturned by empty words. The author of the Tauroboliad is an excellent painter of the life, and fills up the canvass well-the Whig side with irrefutable arguments, the Tory with reasonless declamation. The following is from one of the Tory replies. The Press! that monster-in its dreadful power Slave of a public craving to be fed With lies and scandal, as with daily bread, The fiend must cater for its master's will, And tear the victim it is trained to kill. But if this servile minister at length And swallow down, to feed a present spite, This hit at the Times, the Press, and Radical, is exceedingly well done,Lord Londonderry to the life. The writer is a clever fellow, and has rendered the sound side of the political question great service by the contrasts in his dialogue— Reason v. Declamation. The Smuggler; a Tale. By the Author of "Tales of the O'Hara Family," &c. 3 Vols. 8vo. Colburn and Co. In the present day, it may fairly be asserted that the novelist has the power of entertaining more than the didactist or the dramatist; though, at the same time, it must be admitted that he does not possess so many capabilities of instructing as the one, or of elevating as the other. Still, these powers are by no means withheld from him in the exposure of human frailties,—a method of instructing the human heart, which, though it may properly take the name of instruction, in fact tends directly to elevation of mind, which is not necessarily the case with the instruction of the intellect,-in the bringing of evil propensities into hatred, and petty vices into contempt, the Le Sages and Fieldings may well dispute the palm with the Aristophaneses and the Molieres. There is certainly no novelist of the present day, who has laboured so assidu ously to render the entertainment of his productions, if not subservient, at least assistant to their instruction, as the writer of the work the name of which stands at the head of this article. To his powers of entertainment, his popularity will bear the best testimony; but it is not upon this ground that he must prefer his claim to renown. In the invention and construction, and the working-out of the plot, as well as in the general language of his narrative, there are more than one authorScott, in particular-who go beyond him. In forcible and just delineation of character, in the exposition of motives with relation to actions,-the dramatic, the elevating portion of the novelist's task,-Mr. Banim has, at least, no living superior. In the faculty of rendering his tales and novels vehicles for useful information, by means either of laying before his readers previously unknown facts, or of tracing the connexion of some well-known fact with a remote and unthought-of cause-in this most important branch he is altogether without a competitor; the importance of such information, of course, to be tried by its practical utility. : As to the first of these three points,-that which comprises the author's story and style, it will be necessary to say only a few words. The great faults that have been found with Mr. Banim's writings are, that his events are often improbable, and too often of a painfully terrific nature; and that his diction is frequently coarse, and occasionally turgid and unintelligible and there is a great deal of truth in the accusation. But when such charges are brought forward, it should always be borne in mind that Mr. Banim has never been a mere romance-writer, nor a scribbler of "Fashionable Novels"-that he has always had a great and important end in view, of which there will be occasion to speak presently-that, in furthering that end, it was often necessary for him to relate horrid, and even revolting, facts, and to speak plain and unpleasant truths; and then it will be seen that, in doing so, though he may not have best consulted his literary fame, he at least does not deserve to be classed with the ordinary writers of horrors, whose only object is to excite and interest. For instance; it may be necessary, for Mr. Banim's object, to show the miserable and degrading effects of some particular law on the minds of the people: to do this, so as to do it effectually, he must do it forcibly; and unless he presents a powerful picture of degradation and misery, his end will not be attained. Still, it cannot be denied that the habit of dwelling on such pictures, for however good a purpose, is apt to generate a gloominess of mind, and to induce a tendency to recur to scenes of horror more frequently than occasion would strictly warrant. Much that has been advanced as to incidents, may be said as to Mr. Banim's style. He is often coarse, because he is plain-spoken; he is, however, often unintelligible, or cramped in his diction, apparently from haste and want of caution. Indeed, his works seldom can lay claim to elegance of language. Secondly, as to his characters. Among writers of every class, there is no distinction more apparent than that which exists between good and bad dramatists; and, under this point of view,-namely, as delineators of character,-novelists may be so considered. Any ordinary genius may select, if not invent, a striking plot; but it requires a master-hand to pourtray the actors who shall work it out. What an immeasurable distance there is between the babblers of Otway and Rowe, and the characters of Shakspeare! The reason is, the former knew how to write plays, the latter knew the human heart. In one respect, as to the power of exhibiting character, the novelist possesses facilities which are denied to the dramatist. The former is enabled not only to represent his actors as moving and speaking before the reader, but can also, by the aid of narrative, transport him to any distant place or time; and thus can show his characters not only as they are, but as they were, and can then trace the gradations that have made them such as they are. Of this advantage Mr. Banim has very largely availed himself; and the instances he has given, in his different works, of the progressive formation and consistency of character, prove him to be deeply read in the secret motives of men's actions. To take an instance from the work under consideration ;-Michael Mutford, the hero of "The Smuggler," is a wild, unsteady, and, as it is commonly called, inconsistent character. To draw such a mind accurately, is perhaps as difficult a |