CYCLOPEDIA OF he might assure himself he never should have reason to We were still engaged in discussing the topics I have mentioned, when I was suddenly alarmed by the noise of some one stirring in the inner apartment. I had looked into this room, and had perceived nothing but the bed upon which the old man nightly reposed himself. I sprung up, however, at the sound, and perceiving that the door had a bolt on the outside, I eagerly fastened it. I then turned to Mordecai-that was the name of my host: 'Wretch,' said I, 'did not you assure me that there was no one but yourself in the house?' cried Mordecai, 'it is my child! it is my child! she went 'Oh,' into the inner apartment, and has fallen asleep on the bed.' 'Beware,' I answered; the slightest falsehood more shall instantly be expiated in your blood.' 'I call Abraham to witness,' rejoined the once more terrified Jew, it is my child! only my child!' 'Tell me,' cried I, with severity of accent, 'how old is this child?' 'Only five years,' said Mordecai: 'my dear Leah died when she was a year old, and though we had several children, this single one has survived her.' 'Speak to your child let me hear her voice!' He spoke to her; and she answered: 'Father, I want to come out.' I was satisfied it was the voice of a little girl. 'Take care,' said I, 'how you deceive me now; is there I turned to the Jew: no other person in that room?' He imprecated a curse on himself if there were. caution, and the little girl came forward. As soon as I opened the door with I saw her, I seized her with a rapid motion, and returned to my chair. 'Man,' said I, you have trifled with me too rashly; you have not considered what I am escaped from, and what I have to fear; from this moment this child shall be the pledge of my safety; I will not part with her an instant as long as I remain in your house; and with this rapier in my hand, I will pierce her to the heart the moment I am led to imagine that I am no longer in safety.' The Jew trembled at my resolution; the emotions of a father worked in his features and glistened in his eye. At least let me kiss her,' said he. Be it so,' replied I; 'one embrace, and then, till the dawn of the coming day, she remains with me.' I released my hold; the child rushed to her father, and he caught her in his arms. My dear Leah,' cried Mordecai, 'now a sainted spirit in the bosom of our father Abraham! I call God to witness between us, that, if all my caution and vigilance can prevent it, not a hair of this child shall be injured!-Stranger, you little know by how strong a motive you have now engaged me to your cause. poor Jews, hunted on the face of the earth, the abhorWe rence and execration of mankind, have nothing but family affections to support us under our multiplied disgraces; and family affections are entwined with our existence, the fondest and best loved part of ourselves. -The God of Abraham bless you, my child!-Now, sir, speak! what is it you require of me?' I told the Jew that I must have a suit of clothes conformable to the appearance of a Spanish cavalier, and certain medical ingredients that I named to him, together with his chafing-dish of coals to prepare them; and that done, I would then impose on him no further trouble. Having received his instructions, he immediately set out to procure what I demanded. He took with him the key of the house; and as soon as he was gone, I retired with the child into the inner apartment, and fastened the door. At first I applied myself to tranquillise the child, who had been somewhat alarmed at what she had heard and seen; this was no very difficult task. She presently left me, to amuse herself with some playthings that lay scattered in a corner of the apartment. My heart was now comparatively at ease; I saw the powerful hold I had on the fidelity of the Jew, and firmly persuaded myself that I had no 268 ΤΟ 1830. treachery to fear on his part. Thus circumstanced, the exertion and activity with which I had lately been imbued left me, and I insensibly sunk into a sort of slumber. Now for the first time I was at leisure to attend to ment in the Inquisition, and the treatment I had the state of my strength and my health. My confineexperienced, had before rendered me feeble and almost helpless; but these appeared to be circumstances scarcely worthy of attention in the situation in which I was then placed. The impulse I felt in the midst of the confusion in the grand street of Valladolid, produced in me an energy and power of exertion which nothing but the actual experience of the fact could have persuaded me was possible. This energy, once begun, I did not relapse into imbecility till the occasion seemed appeared to have the faculty of prolonging itself, and to be exhausted which called for my exertion. examined myself by a mirror with which Mordecai furnished me; I my face ploughed with a thousand furrows. I was now I found my hair as white as snow, and fifty-four, an age which, with moderate exercise and a vigorous constitution, often appears like the prime of human existence; but whoever had looked upon me in my present condition, would not have doubted to affirm that I had reached the eightieth year of my age. I examined with dispassionate remark the state of my intellect: I was persuaded that it had subsided into immured as my body. I was the mere shadow of a man, childishness. My mind had been as much cribbed and of no more power and worth than that which a magic lantern produces upon a wall. Let the reader judge of cursed walls by the effects; I have already refused, I what I had passed through and known within those continue to refuse, to tell how those effects were produced. Enough of compassion; enough of complaint; I will confine myself, as far as I am able, to simple history. . . . been unusually disturbed and roused at an unseasonable I was now once again alone. The little girl, who had hour, sunk into a profound sleep. I heard the noise which Mordecai made in undressing himself, and composing his limbs upon a mattress which he had dragged for the present occasion into the front room, and spread before the hearth. I soon found by the hardness of his breathing that he also was asleep. I unfolded the papers he had brought me; they consisted of various medical ingredients I had directed him to procure; there essences. were also two or three phials containing sirups and I had near me a pair of scales with which dish of my host, in which the fire was nearly extinguished, to weigh my ingredients, a vessel of water, the chafingand a small taper, with some charcoal to re-light the fire in case of necessity. While I was occupied in surveying torpor came suddenly over me, so as to allow me no time these articles and arranging my materials, a sort of for resistance. I sunk upon the bed. I remained thus for about half-an-hour, seemingly without the power of collecting my thoughts. At length I started, felt alarmed, and applied my utmost force of mind to rouse my exertions. While I drove, or attempted to drive, my part, as if to inquire into the general condition of my animal spirits from limb to limb, and from part to frame, I became convinced that I was dying. Let not the reader be surprised at this; twelve years' imprisonment in a narrow and unwholesome cell may well account for so sudden a catastrophe. Strange and paradoxical as it may seem, I believe it will be found in the experiment, that the calm and security which succeed to great internal injuries are more dangerous than the pangs and hardships that went before. I was vigilance and expedition to the compounding my matenow thoroughly alarmed; I applied myself with all rials. The fire was gone out; the taper was glimmering in the socket: to swallow the julep, when I had prepared it, seemed to be the last effort of which my organs and muscles were capable. It was the elixir of immortality, exactly made up according to the prescription of the stranger. NOVELISTS. ENGLISH LITERATURE. Whether from the potency of the medicine or the effect of imagination, I felt revived the moment I had swallowed it. I placed myself deliberately in Mordecai's bed, and drew over me the bed-clothes. I fell asleep almost instantly. recollected where I had been. It seemed to me that my My sleep was not long in a few hours I awaked. With difficulty I recognised the objects about me, and heart had never beat so vigorously, nor my spirits flowed so gay. I was all elasticity and life; I could scarcely hold myself quiet; I felt impelled to bound and leap I perceived that my like a kid upon the mountains. little Jewess was still asleep; she had been unusually fatigued the night before. I know not whether Mordecai's hour of rising were come; if it were, he was careful not to disturb his guest. I put on the garments he had prepared; I gazed upon the mirror he had left in my apartment. I can recollect no sensation in the course of my life so unexpected and surprising as what I felt at that moment. The evening before, I had seen my hair white, and my face ploughed with furrows; I looked fourscore. What I beheld now was totally different, yet altogether familiar; it was myself-myself as I had appeared on the day of my marriage with Marguerite de Damville; the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the complexion, every circumstance, point by point, the I waked same. I leaped a gulf of thirty-two years. from a dream, troublesome and distressful beyond all description; but it vanished like the shades of night upon the burst of a glorious morning in July, and left not a trace behind. I knew not how to take away my eyes from the mirror before me. I soon began to consider that, if it were astonishing to me that, through all the regions of my countenance, had been the night before, it would be still more astonishing to my host. This sort of sensation I had not the smallest ambition to produce one of the advantages of the metamorphosis I had sustained consisted in its tendency, in the eyes of all that saw me, to cut off every species of connection between my present and my former self. It fortunately happened that the room in which I slept, being constructed upon the model of many others in Spain, had a stair at the further end, with a trap-door in the ceiling, for the purpose of enabling the inhabitant to ascend on the roof in the cool of the day. The roofs were flat, and so constructed that there was little difficulty in passing along them from house to house, from one end of the street to the other. I availed myself of the opportunity, and took leave of the residence of my kind host in a way perfectly unceremonious, determined, however, speedily to transmit to him the reward I had promised. It may easily be believed that Mordecai was not less rejoiced at the absence of a guest whom the vigilance of the Inquisition rendered an uncommonly dangerous one, than I was to quit his habitation. I closed the trap after me, and clambered from roof to roof to a considerable distance. At length I encountered the occasion of an open window, and fortunately descended, unseen by any human being, into the street. I could discover no trace of what CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. A successful imitator of the style of Godwin MRS OPIE. MRS AMELIA OPIE (1769–1853) (Miss Alderson of Norwich) commenced her literary career in 1801, when she published her domestic and pathetic tale of The Father and Daughter. Without venturing out of ordinary life, Mrs Opie invested her Her first novel narrative with deep interest, by her genuine painting of nature and passion, her animated dialogue, and feminine delicacy of feeling. went through eight editions, and is still popular. A long series of works of fiction proceeded from the pen of this lady. Her Simple Tales, in four volumes, 1806; New Tales, four volumes, 1818; Temper, or Domestic Scenes, a tale, in three volumes; Tales of Real Life, three volumes; Tales of the Heart, four volumes; Madeline (1822), are all marked by the same characteristics-the por6 most traiture of domestic life, drawn with a view to regulate the heart and affections. In 1828 Mrs Opie published a moral treatise, entitled Detraction Displayed, in order to expose that common of all vices,' which, she says justly, is found 'in every class or rank in society, from the peer to the peasant, from the master to the valet, from the mistress to the maid, from the most learned to the most ignorant, from the man of genius to the meanest capacity.' The tales of this lady have been thrown into the shade by the brilliant fictions of Scott, the stronger moral delineations of Miss Edgeworth, and the generally masculine character of our more modern literature. She is, like Mackenzie, too uniformly pathetic and tender. She can do nothing well,' says Jeffrey, 'that requires to be done with formality, and therefore has not succeeded in copying either the conor the severe and solemn dignity of majestic centrated force of weighty and deliberate reason, virtue. To make amends, however, she represents admirably everything that is amiable, generous, and gentle.' Perhaps we should add to this the Some of her short tales are power of exciting and harrowing the feelings in no ordinary degree. full of gloomy and terrific painting, alternately In Miss Sedgwick's Letters from Abroad (1841), resembling those of Godwin and Mrs Radcliffe. we find the following notice of the then venerable novelist: 'I owed Mrs Opie a grudge for having made me in my youth cry my eyes out over her stories; but her fair cheerful face forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker faith and costume; but I fancied that her elaborate simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to adopt a theory than to change one's habits.' Mrs Opie survived till 1853, and was in her eighty-fourth year at the time of her death. An interesting volume of Memorials of the accomplished authoress, selected from her letters, diaries, and other manuscripts, by Miss Brightwell, was published in 1854. After the death of her husband in 1807, Mrs Opie resided chiefly in In 1825 she was her native town of Norwich, but often visited London, where her company was courted by the literary and fashionable circles. formally admitted into the Society of Friends or Quakers, but her liveliness of character and goodwas eminently cheerful and happy. ness of heart were never diminished. Her old age 269 a ANNA MARIA PORTER-JANE PORTER. ANNA MARIA PORTER (1780-1832) was daughter of an Irish officer, who died shortly after her birth, leaving a widow and several children, with but a small patrimony for their support. Mrs Porter took her family into Scotland while Anna Maria was still in her nurse-maid's arms, and there, with her only and elder sister Jane, and their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, she received the rudiments of her education. Sir Walter Scott, when a student at college, was intimate with the family, and, we are told, was very fond of either teasing the little female student when very gravely engaged with her book, or more often fondling her on his knees, and telling her stories of witches and warlocks, till both forgot their former playful merriment in the marvellous interest of the tale.' Mrs Porter removed to Ireland, and subsequently to London, chiefly with a view to the education of her children. Anna Maria became an authoress at the age of twelve. Her first work bore the appropriate title of Artless Tales, the first volume being published in 1793, and a second in 1795. In 1797 she came forward again with a tale entitled Walsh Colville; and in the following year a novel in three volumes, Octavia, was produced. A numerous series of works of fiction now proceeded from Miss Porter-The Lake of Killarney, 1804; A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love, 1805; The Hungarian Brothers, 1807; Don Sebastian, or the House of Braganza, 1809; Ballad Romances, and other Poems, 1811; The Recluse of Norway, 1814; The Village of Mariendorpt; The Fast of St Magdalen; Tales of Pity for Youth; The Knight of St John; Roche Blanche; and Honor O'Hara. Altogether, the works of this lady amount to about fifty volumes. In private life Miss Porter was much beloved for her unostentatious piety and active benevolence. She died at Bristol while on a visit to her brother, Dr Porter of that city, on the 21st of June 1832, aged fifty-two. The most popular, and perhaps the best of Miss Porter's novels is her Don Sebastian. In all of them she portrays the domestic affections, and the charms of benevolence and virtue, with warmth and earnestness; but in Don Sebastian we have an interesting though melancholy plot, and characters finely discriminated and drawn. The MISS JANE PORTER, sister of Anna Maria, is authoress of two romances, Thaddeus of Warsaw, 1803, and The Scottish Chiefs, 1810; both were highly popular. The first is the best, and contains a good plot and some impassioned scenes. second fails entirely as a picture of national manners -the Scottish patriot Wallace, for example, being represented as a sort of drawing-room hero-but is written with great animation and picturesque effect. In appeals to the tender and heroic passions, and in vivid scene-painting, both these ladies have evinced genius, but their works want the permanent interest of real life, variety of character, and dialogue. A third novel by Miss Porter has been published, entitled The Pastor's Fireside. Late in life she wrote a work, Sir Edward Seaward's Diary, which has a good deal of the truthfulness of style and incident so remarkable in Defoe. Miss Jane Porter died at Bristol in 1850, aged seventy-four. MISS EDGEWORTH. Her MARIA EDGEWORTH, one of our best painters of national manners, whose works stimulated the genius of Scott, and have delighted and instructed generations of readers, was born January 1, 1767, at Hare Hatch, near Reading, in Berkshire. She was of a respectable Irish family, long settled at Edgeworthstown, county of Longford, and it was on their property that Goldsmith was born. father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), was himself a man attached to literary pursuits, and took great pleasure in exciting and directing the talents of his daughter.* latter thought of writing any essay or story, she always submitted to him the first rough plans; and his ready invention and infinite resource, when she had run into difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate her at her utmost need. It was the happy experience of this,' says Miss Edgeworth, and my consequent reliance on his ability, decision, and perfect truth, that relieved 6 Whenever the Mr Edgeworth wrote a work on Professional Education, one volume, quarto, 1808; also some papers in the Philosophical Transactions, including an essay on Spring and Wheel Carriages, and an account of a telegraph which he invented. This gentleman was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was afterwards sent After a to Oxford. Before he was twenty, he ran off with Miss Elers, a young lady of Oxford, to whom he was married at Gretna Green. and in 1770 succeeded, by the death of his father, to his Irish He then embarked on a life of fashionable gaiety and dissipation, property. During a visit to Lichfield, he became enamoured of shortly after the death of his wife. In six years this lady died of Miss Honora Sneyd, a cousin of Anna Seward's, and married her consumption, and he married her sister; a circumstance which exposed him to a good deal of observation and censure. matrimonial union of seventeen years, his third wife died of the same malady as her sister; and, although past fifty, Mr Edgeworth scarcely lost a year till he was united to an Irish lady, Miss benefit Ireland, by reclaiming bog-land, introducing agricultural Beaufort. His latter years were spent in active exertions to and mechanical improvements, and promoting education. Among his numerous schemes, was an attempt to educate his eldest son on jacket and trousers, with arms and legs bare, and allowed him to the plan delineated in Rousseau's Emile. He dressed him in run about wherever he pleased, and to do nothing but what was agreeable to himself. In a few years he found that the scheme had succeeded completely, so far as related to the body; the youth's health, strength, and agility were conspicuous; but the state of his mind induced some perplexity. He had all the virtues that are found in the hut of the savage; he was quick, fearless, generous; but he knew not what it was to obey. It was impossible to induce him to do anything that he did not please, or prevent him from doing anything that he did please. Under the former head, learning, even of the lowest description, was never included. In fine, this child of nature grew up perfectly ungovernable, and never could or would apply to anything; so that there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his own inclination of going to sea! Maria Edgeworth was by her father's first marriage: she was twelve years old before she was taken to Ireland. The family were involved in the troubles of the Irish rebellion (1798), and were obliged to make a precipitate retreat from their house, and leave it in the hands of the rebels; but it was spared from being pillaged by one of the invaders, to whom Mr Edgeworth had troubles were over, is thus described by Miss Edgeworth in her previously done some kindness. Their return home, when the father's Memoirs. It serves to shew the affection which subsisted between the landlord and his dependents. 'When we came near Edgeworthstown, we saw many well-known faces at the cabin doors looking out to welcome us. One man, who was digging in his field by the roadside, when he looked up clasped his hands; his face, as the morning sun shone upon it, was as our horses passed, and saw my father, let fall his spade and the strongest picture of joy I ever saw. The village was a melancholy spectacle; windows shattered and doors broken. But though the mischief done was great, there had been little pillage. Within our gates we found all property safe; literally not a twig touched, nor a leaf harmed." Within the house everything still open on the library table, with pencils, and slips of paper conwas as we had left it. A map that we had been consulting was taining the first lessons in arithmetic, in which some of the young people (Mr Edgeworth's children by his second and third wife) had been engaged the morning we had been driven from home; a pansy, in a glass of water, which one of the children had been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had passed seemed like an incoherent dream.' ENGLISH LITERATURE. MISS EDGEWORTH, vivid colours, and contrasted with the cheerfulness, the buoyancy of spirits, and the manly virtues arising from honest and independent exertion. In 1817 our authoress supplied the public with two other tales, Harrington and Ormond. The first was written to counteract the illiberal prejudice entertained by many against the Jews: the second is an Irish tale, equal to any of the former. The death of Mr Edgeworth in 1817 made a break in the literary exertion of his accomplished daughter, but she completed a Memoir which that gentleman had begun of himself, and which was published in two volumes in 1820. In 1822 she returned to her course of moral instruction, and published in that year, Rosamond, a Sequel to Early Lessons, a work for juvenile readers, of which an earlier specimen had been published. A further continuation appeared in 1825, under the title of Harriet and Lucy, four volumes. These tales had been begun fifty years before by Mr Edgeworth, at a time when no one of any literary character, excepting Dr Watts and Mrs Barbauld, condescended to write for children.' me from the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so much subject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished anything without his support. He inspired in my mind a degree of hope and confidence, essential, in the first instance, to the full exertion of the mental powers, and necessary to insure perseverance in any Occupation.' A work on Practical Education (1798) was a joint production of Mr and Miss Edgeworth. In 1800 the latter published anonymously Castle Rackrent, an admirable Irish story; and in 1801, Belinda, a novel, and Moral Tales. Another joint production of father and daughter appeared in 1802, an Essay on Irish Bulls, in which the authors did justice to the better traits of the Irish character, and illustrated them by some interesting and pathetic stories. In 1803, Miss Edgeworth came forward with three volumes of Popular Tales, characterised by the features of her genius-'a genuine display of nature, and a certain tone of rationality and good sense, which was the more pleasing, because in a novel it was then new.' The practical cast of her father's mind probably assisted in directing Miss Edgeworth's talents into this useful and unromantic channel. It appeared strange at first, and of 1823, Miss Edgeworth, accompanied by two of It is worthy of mention, that, in the autumn one of the best of the authoress's critics, Francis her sisters, made a visit to Sir Walter Scott at Jeffrey, said at the time, 'that it required almost Abbotsford. She not only, he said, completely the same courage to get rid of the jargon of answered, but exceeded the expectations which he fashionable life, and the swarms of peers, found- had formed, and he was particularly pleased with lings, and seducers, as it did to sweep away the the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind mythological persons of antiquity, and to intro- which she united with such formidable powers of duce characters who spoke and acted like those acute observation. 'Never,' says Mr Lockhart, who were to peruse their adventures.' In 1806 'did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford than that appeared Leonora, a novel, in two volumes. moral purpose is here aimed at, and the same skill never can I forget her look and accent when she A on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there; is displayed in working up ordinary incidents into was received by him at his archway, and exthe materials of powerful fiction; but the plot is claimed, "Everything about you is exactly what painful and disagreeable. The seduction of an exemplary husband by an abandoned female, and The weather was beautiful, and the edifice and its one ought to have had wit enough to dream." his subsequent return to his injured but forgiving appurtenances were all but complete; and day wife, is the groundwork of the story. Irish charac- after day, so long as she could remain, her host ters figure off in Leonora as in the Popular Tales. had always some new plan of gaiety.' Miss EdgeIn 1809 Miss Edgeworth issued three volumes of worth remained a fortnight at Abbotsford. Two Tales of Fashionable Life, more powerful and years afterwards, she had an opportunity of repayvarious than any of her previous productions. ing the hospitalities of her entertainer, by receivThe history of Lord Glenthorn affords a striking ing him at Edgeworthstown, where Sir Walter met picture of ennui, and contains some excellent de- with as cordial a welcome, and where he found lineation of character; while the story of Almerianeither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but represents the misery and heartlessness of a life of mere fashion. Three other volumes of Fashionable Tales were issued in 1812, and fully supported the authoress's reputation. The number of tales in this series was three-Vivian, illustrating the evils and perplexities arising from vacillation and infirmity of purpose; Emilie de Coulanges, depicting the life and manners of a fashionable French lady; and The Absentee-by far the best of the three stories-written to expose the evils and mortifications of the system which the authoress saw too many instances of in Ireland, of persons of fortune forsaking their country-seats and native vales for the frivolity, scorn, and expense of fashionable London society. In 1814, Miss Edgeworth entered still more extensively and sarcastically into the manners and characters in high-life, by her novel of Patronage, in four volumes. The miseries resulting from a dependence on the patronage of the great-a system which, she says, is 'twice accursed-once in giving, and once in receiving -are drawn in snug cottages and smiling faces all about.' Liter- ist: her Helen, in three volumes, is fully equal to * Lockhart's Life of Scott. her Fashionable Tales, and possesses more of ardour and pathos. The gradations of vice and folly, and the unhappiness attending falsehood and artifice, are strikingly depicted in this novel, in connection with characters-that of Lady Davenant, for example-drawn with great force, truth, and nature. In 1847 Miss Edgeworth wrote a tale called Orlandino for Chambers's Library for Young People. She died May 21, 1849, being then in her eighty-third year. The good and evil of this world supplied Miss Edgeworth with materials sufficient for her purposes as a novelist. Of poetical or romantic feeling she exhibited scarcely a single instance. She was a strict utilitarian. Her knowledge of the world was extensive and correct, though in some of her representations of fashionable folly and dissipation she borders upon caricature. The plan of confining a tale to the exposure and correction of one particular vice, or one erroneous line of conduct, as Joanna Baillie confined her dramas each to the elucidation of one particular passion, would have been a hazardous experiment in common hands. Miss Edgeworth overcame it by the ease, spirit, and variety of her delineations, and the truly masculine freedom with which she exposes the crimes and follies of mankind. Her sentiments are so just and true, and her style so clear and forcible, that they compel an instant assent to her moral views and deductions, though sometimes, in winding up her tale, and distributing justice among her characters, she is not always very consistent or probable. Her delineations of her countrymen have obtained just praise. The highest compliment paid to them is the statement of Scott, that the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact' of these Irish portraits led him first to think that something might be attempted for his own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland. He excelled his model, because, with equal knowledge and practical sagacity, he possessed that higher order of imagination, and more extensive sympathy with man and nature, which is more powerful, even for moral uses and effects, than the most clear and irresistible reasoning. The object of Miss Edgeworth, to inculcate instruction, and the style of the | preceptress, occasionally interfere with the cordial sympathies of the reader, even in her Irish descriptions; whereas in Scott this is never apparent. He deals more with passions and feelings than with mere manners and peculiarities, and by the aid of his poetical imagination, and careless yet happy eloquence of expression, imparts the air of romance to ordinary incidents and characters. It must be admitted, however, that in originality and in fertility of invention, Miss Edgeworth is inferior to none of her contemporary novelists. She never repeats her incidents, her characters, dialogues, or plots, and few novelists have written more. Her brief and rapid tales fill above twenty closely printed volumes, and may be read one after the other without any feeling of satiety or sense of repetition. An Irish Landlord and Scotch Agent. 'I was quite angry,' says Lord Glenthorn, with Mr M'Leod, my agent, and considered him as a selfish, hardhearted miser, because he did not seem to sympathise with me, or to applaud my generosity. I was so much irritated by his cold silence, that I could not forbear pressing him to say something. "I doubt, then," said he, since you desire me to speak my mind, my lordI doubt whether the best way of encouraging the industrious is to give premiums to the idle." But, idle or not, these poor wretches are so miserable, that I cannot refuse to give them something; and surely, when one can do it so easily, it is right to relieve misery, is it not? "Undoubtedly, my lord, but the difficulty is to relieve present misery, without creating more in future. Pity for one class of beings sometimes makes us cruel to others. I am told that there are some Indian Brahmins so very compassionate, that they hire beggars to let fleas feed upon them; I doubt whether it might not be better to let the fleas starve." 'I did not in the least understand what Mr M'Leod meant; but I was soon made to comprehend it by crowds of eloquent beggars who soon surrounded me; many who had been resolutely struggling with their difficulties, slackened their exertions, and left their labour for the easier trade of imposing upon my credulity. The money I had bestowed was wasted at the dram-shop, or it became the subject of family quarrels ; and those whom I had relieved, returned to my honour with fresh and insatiable expectations. All this time my industrious tenants grumbled, because no encouragement was given to them; and looking upon me as a weak, good-natured fool, they combined in a resolution to ask me for long leases or a reduction of rent. 'The rhetoric of my tenants succeeded, in some silence. I was too proud to ask his opinion. I ordered, instances; and again, I was mortified by Mr M'Leod's and was obeyed. A few leases for long terms were signed and sealed; and when I had thus my own way completely, I could not refrain from recurring to Mr M'Leod's opinion. "I doubt, my lord," said he, "whether this measure may be as advantageous as you hope. These fellows, these middle-men, will underset the land, and live in idleness, whilst they rack a parcel of wretched under-tenants." But they said they would keep the land in their own hands and improve it; and that the reason why they could not afford to improve before was, that they had not long leases. "It may be doubted whether long leases alone will make improving farms of the Dowager-lady Ormsby's land, let at ten tenants; for in the next county to us there are many shillings an acre, and her tenantry are beggars: and the land now at the end of the leases is worn out, and worse than at their commencement." 'I was weary of listening to this cold reasoning, and resolved to apply no more for explanations to Mr M'Leod; yet I did not long keep this resolution: infirm of purpose, I wanted the support of his approbation, at the very time I was jealous of his interference. 'At one time I had a mind to raise the wages of labour; but Mr M'Leod said: It might be doubend whether the people would not work less, when se,, could, with less work have money enough to suphad them." ing the wages of labour, to force them to work or starve. I was puzzled, and then I had a mind to low her sisted provoking, Mr M'Leod said: "It might be dknown whether it would not be better to leave them alon man. 'I gave marriage-portions to the daughters of my tenants, and rewards to those who had children; for I had always heard that legislators should encourage population. Still Mr M'Leod hesitated to approve: he observed "that my estate was so populous, that the complaint in each family was, that they had not land for the sons. It might be doubted whether, if a farm could support but ten people, it were wise to encourage the birth of twenty. It might be doubted whether it were not better for ten to live, and be well fed, than for twenty to be born, and to be half-starved." 'To encourage manufactures in my town of Glenthorn, I proposed putting a clause in my leases, compelling my tenants to buy stuffs and linens manufactured at |