heroine's affections are mingled with anxie- | among the negroes? Instead of this, pious ties as to the state of her soul. The young ladies nauseate us with novels which remind curate always has a background of well- us of what we sometimes see in a worldly dressed and wealthy, if not fashionable, woman recently "converted; "-she is as society;-for Evangelical silliness is as snob-fond of a fine dinner table as before, but she bish as any other kind of silliness; and the invites clergymen instead of beaux; she Evangelical lady novelist,. while she explains thinks as much of her dress as before, but to you the type of the scapegoat on one she adopts a more sober choice of colors and page, is ambitious on another to represent patterns; her conversation is as trivial as the manners and conversation of aristocratic before, but the triviality is flavored with people. Her pictures of fashionable society gospel instead of gossip. In The Old are often curious studies considered as efforts Gray Church,' we have the same sort of of the Evangelical imagination; but in one Evangelical travesty of the fashionable particular the novels of the White Neck- novel, and of course the vicious, intriguing cloth School are meritoriously realistic, baronet is not wanting. It is worth while their favorite hero, the Evangelical young curate, is always rather an insipid per

sonage.

66

to give a sample of the style of conversation attributed to this high-born rake—a style that in its profuse italics and palpable innuendoes, is worthy of Miss Squeers. In an evening visit to the ruins of the Colosseum, Eustace, the young clergyman, has been withdrawing the heroine, Miss Lushington, from the rest of the party, for the sake of a tête-à-tête. The baronet is jealous, and vents his pique in this way:

The most recent novel of this species that we happen to have before us, is "The Old Gray Church." It is utterly tame and feeble; there is no one set of objects on which the writer seems to have a stronger grasp than on any other; and we should be entirely at a loss to conjecture among what phases of life her experience has been gained, "There they are, and Miss Lushington, no but for certain vulgarisms of style which doubt, quite safe; for she is under the holy sufficiently indicate that she has had the guidance of Pope Eustace the First, who advantage, though she has been unable to has, of course, been delivering to her an use it, of mingling chiefly with men and edifying homily on the wickedness of the heathens of yore, who, as tradition tells us, women whose manners and characters have in this very place let loose the wild beastises not had all their bosses and angles rubbed on poor St. Paul!-0, no! by-the-bye, I down by refined conventionalism. It is less believe I am wrong, and betraying my want excusable in an Evangelical novelist, than in of clergy, and that it was not at all St. But no matter, it any other, gratuitously to seek her subjects Paul, nor was it here. among titles and carriages. The real drama would equally serve as a text to preach from, and from which to diverge to the of Evangelicalism-and it has abundance of degenerate heathen Christians of the present fine drama for any one who has genius day, and all their naughty practices, and so enough to discern and reproduce it-lies end with an exhortation to come out from among the middle and lower classes; and among them, and be separate; -and I am are not Evangelical opinions understood to sure, Miss Lushington, you have most give an especial interest in the weak things scrupulously conformed to that injunction this of the earth, rather than in the mighty? evening, for we have seen nothing of you Why, then, cannot our Evangelical lady agreed it has been a charming party of But every one seems novelists show us the operation of their pleasure, and I am sure we all feel much religious views among people (there really indebted to Mr. Grey for having suggested it; are many such in the world), who keep no and as he seems so capital a cicerone, I hope carriage, "not so much as a brass-bound he will think of something else equally gig," who even manage to eat their dinner agreeable to all.”. without a silver fork, and in whose mouths the authoress' questionable English would be strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England, as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's pictures of religious life

since our arrival.

This drivelling kind of dialogue, and equally drivelling narrative, which, like a bad drawing, represents nothing, and barely indicates what is meant to be represented, runs through the book; and we have no doubt is considered by the amiable authoress to con

"Adonijah," we presume, exem

stitute an improving novel, which Christian ciples."
mothers will do well to put into the hands plifies the tale of "sound principles;
of their daughters. But everything is rela-
tive; we have met with American vegetarians
whose normal diet was dry meal, and who,
when their appetite wanted stimulating,
tickled it with wet meal; and so, we can
imagine that there are Evangelical circles in
which The Old Gray Church" is devoured
as a powerful and interesting fiction.

66

"the

taste and humor are to be found in other members of the series. We are told on the cover, that the incidents of this tale are "fraught with unusual interest," and the preface winds up thus: "To those who feel interested in the dispersed of Israel and Judea, these pages may afford, perhaps, information on an important subject, as well as amusement." Since the "important subject" on which this book is to afford information is not specified, it may possibly lie in some esoteric meaning to which we have no key: but if it has relation to the dispersed of Israel and Judea at any period of their history, we believe a tolerably well-informed school-girl already knows much more of it than she will find in this "Tale of the Jewish Dispersion." Adonijah" is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero

66

But, perhaps, the least readable of silly women's novels are the modern-antique species, which unfold to us the domestic life of Jannes and Jambres, the private love affairs of Sennacherib, or the mental struggles and ultimate conversion of Demetrius the silversmith. From most silly novels we can at least extract a laugh; but those of the modern-antique school have a ponderous, a leaden kind of fatuity, under which we groan. What can be more demonstrative of the inability of literary women to measure their own powers, than their frequent assumption is a Jewish captive, and the heroine a Roman of a task which can only be justified by the rarest concurrence of acquirement with genius? The finest effort to re-animate the past is of course only approximative-is always more or less an infusion of the modern spirit into the ancient form,

vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the "Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews; " and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is adorned with that pecu"Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst, liar style of grandiloquence which is held by Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist, some lady novelists to give an antique coloring, In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln." and which we recognize at once in such Admitting that genius which has familiar- phrases as these:" the splendid regnal ized itself with all the relics of an ancient talents undoubtedly possessed by the Emperiod can sometimes, by the force of its peror Nero "-"the expiring scion of a lofty sympathetic divination, restore the missing stem "-" the virtuous partner of his couch" notes in the "music of humanity," and re--"ah, by Vesta! "-and "I tell thee, construct the fragments into a whole which Roman." Among the quotations which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, serve at once for instruction and ornament on and interpret it to our duller apprehension, the cover of this volume, there is one from —this form of imaginative power must always Miss Sinclair, which informs us that "Works be among the very rarest, because it demands of imagination are avowedly read by men of as much accurate and minute knowledge as science, wisdom, and piety;" from which creative vigor. Yet we find ladies constantly we suppose the reader is to gather the cheerchoosing to make their mental mediocrity more conspicuous, by clothing it in a masquerade of ancient names; by putting their feeble sentimentality into the mouths of Roman vestals or Egyptian princesses, and attributing their rhetorical arguments to Jewish high-priests and Greek philosophers. A recent example of this heavy imbecility is Adonijah, a Tale of the Jewish Dispersion," which forms part of a series, "uniting," we are told, "taste, humor, and sound prin

ing inference that Dr. Daubeny, Mr. Mill, or Mr. Maurice, may openly indulge himself with the perusal of "Adonijah," without being obliged to secrete it among the sofa cushions, or read it by snatches under the dinner table.

"Be not a baker if your head be made of butter," says a homely proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean, let no woman rush into print who is not prepared for the consequences. We are aware that our remarks

The standing apology for women who become writers without any special qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to bad poetry. But society, like "matter," and Her Majesty's Government, and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from necessity, we believe there are three women who write from vanity; and, besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind of feminine literature is not likely to have been produced under such circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness.

are in a very different tone from that of the futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by reviewers who, with a perennial recurrence the extremely false impression that to write of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, at all is a proof of superiority in a woman. we imagine, in the experience of monthly On this ground, we believe that the average nurses, tell one lady novelist after another intellect of women is unfairly represented by that they "hail" her productions "with the mass of feminine literature, and that delight." We are aware that the ladies at while the few women who write well are very whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed far above the ordinary intellectual level of to be told, in the choicest phraseology of their sex, the many women who write ill are puffery, that their pictures of life are brilliant, very far below it. So that, after all, the their characters well drawn, their style fasci- severer critics are fulfiling a chivalrous duty nating, and their sentiments lofty. But if in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorthey are inclined to resent our plainness of ship of any false prestige which may give it speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment a delusive attraction, and in recommending on the chary praise, and often captious blame, women of mediocre faculties-as at least a which their panegyrists give to writers whose negative service they can render their sex-to works are on the way to become classics. abstain from writing. No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticized. By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. And every critic who forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately take in literature, will, on principle, abstain from any exceptional indulgence towards the productions of literary women. For it must be plain to every one who looks impartially and extensively into feminine literature, that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literary excellence - patient diligence, a sense of the responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art. In the majority of women's books you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation which a little selfcriticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent. The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation implied in

Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest ;-novels, too, that have a precious speciality, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements-genuine observation, humor, and passion. But it is

precisely this absence of rigid requirement | ble against, no external criteria to prevent a which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel- writer from mistaking foolish facility for maswriting to incompetent women. Ladies are tery. And so we have again and again the not wont to be very grossly deceived as to old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his their power of playing on the piano; here nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits certain positive difficulties of execution have some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably de la flute; "-a fable which we commend, breaks down. Every art which has its ab- at parting, to the consideration of any solute technique is, to a certain extent, feminine reader who is in danger of adding guarded from the intrusions of mere left- to the number of "silly novels by lady handed imbecility. But in novel-writing novelists."

there are no barriers for incapacity to stum

if he did not keep and preserve thee from them. And the same God sayeth thus unto thee: the wicked enemy, with an innumerable and infinite heap of all evils and mischiefs, doth assault thee, and lay watch for to subdue thee, and to swallow thee up; but I have appointed him his bound, over the which he cannot pass. The longer thou art under the cross, the better mayest thou learn all the virtues and goodness of God.-Miles Coverdale.

TURE.

SUCH trees as have strong and deep roots, and but in the time of temptation he feeleth how sufficient natural sap, can no violent heat of the lightly and easily he is tossed and turned of sun hurt nor harm. But such as are felled and every blast of the wind. By affliction and miscut down are soon dried up with the heat of the fortune God will put thee in remembrance, how sun, like as the grass also, that is mown down, many thousand perils are yet hanging over thy doth soon wither. Even so likewise, such faith-head, which should lighten and fall upon thee, ful persons as are rooted in Christ Jesus cannot troubles nor afflictions hurt-they grow and wax green notwithstanding; but the unfaithful do betray themselves, and show what they are, as soon as they see any heat of trouble or persecution coming. With one flail are both the stalks and ears of the corn beaten, and also the corn itself threshed and purged out. Even so with one manner of trouble and affliction, are the faithful purged and provoked to pray unto God, and to laud and magnify Him, and the unfaithful also to murmur and curse; and so they are both tried, proved, and known. When the corn is threshed, the kernel lieth mixed among the chaff, and afterwards are they dissevered asunder with the fan or windle. Even so the people in the church do first hear the preaching of God's Word. How some stumble, repine, and are offended at it, and others are not offended, and yet they dwell together, one with another; but when they are fanned or windled, and when the wind of trouble and affliction beginneth once to blow, then is it easy to sunder and to know the one from the other, the faithful from the unfaithful. Art thou pure corn? What needst thou then to fear, either the flail or the wind? In the threshing and in the wind thou shalt be delivered and sundered from the chaff, and shalt be made more pure than thou wast before. Let them fear that are chaff, which are not able to abide the wind, but must be blown away, and so cast out for ever.

MODERN DISCOVERIES CONFIRMING SCRIPthe purpose of establishing a museum for the - At a recent meeting held in London for illustration of the Holy Scriptures, Sir Henry Rawlinson, distinguished for his researches at Nineveh, said that he had been enabled to trace Oriental records by means of the monumental inscriptions now in the British Museum, from the time of Abraham's departure from Ur of the Chaldees, down to that of Alexander the Great, ever the course of the history came in contact a period of two thousand years; and that whenwith that of the Jewish people, there was an absolute coincidence between these records and the details of Scripture—the same names, the same succession of kings, the same acts.

ALUMINA IN SOAPSTONE.-The London Mining Journal says that a gentleman, on a late tour in Cornwall, had occasion to examine the It is a profitable and a good thing for a man serpentine porphyry at Kynance Cave and Gue to know himself well. Felicity and prosperity Greave. In the porphyry there are only traces blindeth a man, but when he is under the cross, of alumina to be found. At these places, howhe beginneth to mark the frailness of his body, ever, he found the serpentine was traversed by the uncertainty of his life, the feebleness dykes of granite, and the soapstone lies spread of his understanding, the infirmity and weak-out in sheets at the juncture of the serpentine ness of his own strength and power. He shall spy and perceive how far he is entered in the way of virtue, how the matter standeth between God and him, whether he be a champion of God's, or of the devil's. For a man thinketh himself often to be well grounded and stablished,

and granite. He therefore considers the soapstone to be the result of the contact of these rocks at a high temperature, the serpentine giving the magnesia, and the felspar of the granite supplying a sufficient quantity of the alumina to form the soapstone.

From The Examiner.

emerging for a few days from obscurity, may by infecting-if it ever can infect deeplya true poet, rot his verse, and take the life out of his reputation. Whenever Mr. Massey is so far moved by his topic as to speak what his own nature dictates, he writes those pages which enable all his readers to declare with confidence that he is truly a poet. He never stops to study finery of speech, but touches hearts by singing from his heart. Incomparably the best things in this volume are two little works produced under the influence of genuine emotion; one a long poem on the bereavement of a mother who has lost her last-born infant, called the Mother's Idol Broken, and the other that connected

Craigcrook Castle. By Gerald Massey. Bogue. WE give a hearty welcome to another book from Mr. Gerald Massey, a young writer who through hard beginnings of life has already attained to much, and undoubtedly is capable of more than he has yet achieved. Craigcrook Castle deserves to be bought and read; there is true poetry to be found in the little volume, as there was true poetry to be found in the Ballad of Babe Christabel, and some of the lyrics that accompanied it. There is sufficient sign in the new book of increased maturity of thought, and we like it none the worse but all the better for whatever defect of judgment may still lead the young poet astray in the expression of strong feelings series of lyrics, "Glimpses of the War," of imperfectly controlled by reason, as when which we believe we may say that, taken as in the poem of Lady Laura he is found echo- a complete work-for they should be all ing Mrs. Browning's Cry of the Factory read together they form, whatever may be Children, or, in another place, bitterly scorn- their minute defects, the most spirited accoming the reception in this country of the Em- paniment to the whole tale of the late war peror of France, whom he sees only as Louis that has been produced up to this date by Napoleon. We should not care at once any of our English minstrels. wholly to miss these flashes of the fire of youth; there remains now in Mr. Massey's verse but little of the old wild reference to what he once considered social wrongs; in other respects, also, his muse is soberer, and has not suffered any loss of power.

The

In other parts of the book, wherever there occurs little to stir the depths out of which come the highest utterances, we are apt to find that a good artist has been working from bad models. Craigcrook Castle, in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, is a ruin with "a We must dwell a little on one cause of tiny town of towers," round about which misgiving which this new volume of verse roses abound, and from behind which slopes suggests; but it is in no spirit of cold criti- a hill. The poet tells in his opening verses cism that we wish to do so. It is natural of the place and of a picnic party there asand right that one of the young poets of the sembled, he describes some of the persons in day should take an interest in the works of it,-an exiled patriot, an English bridegroom, others who are travelling, or endeavoring to and so forth, tells that at twilight they re travel, with him the same road to fame, and mained for a symposium which they were to seem to travel at an equal pace; it is well, enliven with tale and song, and in that way also, that he takes pleasure in their efforts. introduces the collection of his verses. Only let him not make them objects of his opening narrative abounds in poet's thoughts, imitation. Upon the manner in which Mr. and great labor has been manifestly spent Massey sets to work, during the years now upon the composition, but it has been almost passing, to assure the education of his power labor in vain, for it is so written that someas a poet, must depend alone his ultimate times an entire page conveys as a whole, success or failure. We see in the new vol- however studied its component sentences, no ume evidence that Mr. Massey spares no distinct meaning to the reader. To avoid pains to sing well; he is manifestly disposed this very grave defect, Mr. Massey has only to submit his strength to careful training, to avoid all effort to say clever things. but we fear that he has of late spent some is clever, and will not fail to drop good say. of his labor in the wrong direction. A lit-ings in sufficient plenty as he goes. What erary career bright in its promise is before he has once produced naturally he may test, him, but he must observe in time that there and if necessary polish, with the utmost of is a way of writing which, though it may the skill proper to his art; but he must be help one who is but very little of a poet in more ready to subtract than add. Let him

He