and intelligent, but with that over-sensitiveness which peculiarly belongs to keen feelings nursed in solitude, and wanting that just self-appreciation which is only to be acquired in society. There are some very acute remarks scattered through these pages, and the Indian scenes are written with great spirit. Sir William Johnson, who seems to have entered with the passion of a poet into "the high life of a hunter," and whose powerful influence over the Indians was founded on mental supremacy, supported by natural gifts, is one of the prominent and most interesting characters; his sketch alone is worth the book. We, however, enter our protest against the feeling so unfavourable to the English which runs through the work; the two British officers are just coarse caricatures. Bogle Corbet" having been so recently reviewed at full length in these pages, we shall do no more than allude to the useful information which Mr. Galt has made its third volume the medium of conveying to Canadian emigrants. Our next exhibitor in this national picture gallery is a female, whose colours are drawn with all the delicacy of feminine touch, and all the truth of feminine tact; we allude to the " Sketches of Irish Character" by Mrs. S. C. Hall. Without dwelling "delightedly on darkness," she good humouredly points out the faults and failings of her countrymen, but it is in juxtaposition with their good qualities. Their thoughtlessness is balanced by their kindliness; their profusion by their generosity; their impetuosity by their general good temper; their indolence by their readiness to oblige. Mrs. Hall neither represents Ireland as a sort of Surrey theatre for all sorts of melo-dramatic horrors, neither does she exactly paint it as the

"First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea ;"

but she points existing evils and apposite remedies, and all within the reach of daily existence.

66

Some of her specimens of the poetical imagery and exaggeration in which the Irish indulge, are most amusingly given. We are ourselves greatly taken by the figure of speech with which Larry Moore ushers in his matrimonial grievances. My wife turns at me as wicked as a weasel." One great charm in these pages, whether in their gaiety or their gravity, is their womanliness; by which we mean a mixture of mirth, malice, mischief, and pathos, only to be blended by that "interesting riddle," as some old author calls her-a woman. "The Smuggler" is our last. Of this work, we have only space to say it has all the marks which distinguish Mr. Banim's children-powerful, but coarse, vivid though exaggerated, with some most life-like peasants, and one or two puppets as heroes and heroines. Mr. Banim is the Walter Scott of the Irish peasantry; but we must add, that in his English pictures, he has studied effect much more than truth; his vices and miseries come "deeper and deeper still." We will terminate our remarks by reminding him that lights are quite as necessary to a composition as shadows.

L'ENVOI.

We have now given a general and we think fair view of the novels of the present season. Our parting word of advice both to readers and publishers is -judicious selection. That some of the works might well have been omitted, no one can in common honesty deny; but take the majority, and it must be equally admitted that a large and varied fund of entertainment has been provided for the public, and that the average of talent is such as to meet the belief of the upholders of perfectibility, rather than of those who lean to that of deterioration. We conclude with the anecdote of an elderly gentleman who introduced a marrying friend of his to his fourteen nieces with—" Well, it will be very hard if out of them all you can't find one to suit your taste."

LIVING LITERARY CHARACTERS, NO. X.

Miss Mitford.

(With an engraved Likeness.)

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD is the only child of Dr. Mitford, a gentleman who in early life received a Diploma as a Physician, but who many years ago retired from practice, and has since devoted a large portion of his time to the discharge of his duties as a Magistrate for Berkshire, to which those of a Magistrate for Wiltshire have been recently added. As Chairman of the most important and populous divivision of Berks, that which includes Reading, he has distinguished himself not only by his activity, but by those rarer qualities, a cordial sympathy with the pleasures and the sufferings of the labourers, and a disposition to make just allowance for their frailties. Miss Mitford's mother, whom she lost at the beginning of last year, was a lady of ancient family, and of singularly amiable manners. The greater part of her life has been spent with her parents in or near Three Mile Cross, a village so called from its being situate just three miles from Reading, and which by virtue of one of the happiest prerogatives of genius, has become classic ground. It straggles prettily up a gentle hill, on the road from Reading to Southampton, and is often pointed out to the traveller, as the scene of those pictures of rural life which have so often multiplied the enjoyments of country people and given the feeling of the fresh air to citizens.

In childhood, Miss Mitford was found to possess fine powers of observation and reflection; and, when scarcely on the verge of womanhood, she was persuaded into print; yet her first publication contained little whence either the vigour of her prose-writings or the richness of her tragic vein could be suspected. It was a volume of poems, of which the principal was a romantic tale in the octosylabic verse, after the poetic manner of Scott, entitled "Christine, or the Maid of the South Seas," engagingly conceived and neatly versified, but manifesting nothing beyond an elegance of mind and graceful facility of expression. Was it that "fear and niceness, the handmaids of woman," restrained her from striking at once into an untried path, and induced her modestly to take refuge in the imitation of a style to which fashion and a great name had given currency? Or was it that her genius was lulled into an enchanted slumber by the same antique witcheries which had bound up that free spirit who used them to fascinate others, and was awakened like his from its golden dreams to seek for the forms of beauty in the realities of .the material world and for the symbols of passion in the authentic history of the human heart? Be this as it may, it was a fortunate hour for her own fame and for us, when she ventured in good plain prose to set down what she saw every day about her. The success was such as to leave no doubt of her graphic power; pictures succeeded sketches, volume followed volume in rapid succession; and the result is a series of works, under the unassuming title of "Our Village," which resemble nothing that preceded them in literature, and yet are as true likenesses of the most familiar objects in the world as an imagination of reasonable honesty can be desired to mirror !

Engrands by Thomson from an Riginal Traning by I Bentay

M. R. Mitford

London Published in the New Monthly Day by Cothurn & Braley, Out 12787

Perhaps the great distinction of these works is, that they arenot only in style and subject, but in manner and tone-essentially and idiomatically English. There are no writings, since the novels of Fielding, which we should so readily present to a foreigner, in order to show him what, in the most characteristic points, English scenery, habits, and virtues are. The descriptions of the country are all individual they set, or seem to set, the very place before us by a few masterly touches, almost as few and as vivid as those of Mr. Cobbett himself; and then the places are such as belong only to England. They are not show places, which seem to extort admiration, till the very eye is weary, but quiet unpretending scenes ;-the warm homestead; the dark pond covered with water-lilies, and edged with hazels; the stubble upland, cheered by the ploughboy's jocund whistle or the ploughman's song; the village green all alive and heroic with cricketers; the winding lane running unsuspected among the hedge-row woods; the shady bank where the violets cluster thickest in early spring-these are the scenes which she loves to set in no artificial lustre, but in the sweetest lights of common day. We may, perhaps, like Miss Mitford, be partial-but there is no county which seems to us so full of pictures, which speak to the heart of home, as Berkshire-so touching in their quiet, so unpretending in their loveliness; so fitted for pensive and happy thought to those, at least, whose slender imagination does not aspire to make friends of mountains, and whom the grander forms of matter oppress and chill; and these are the scenes which will ever "look green" in her prose. That her rustic pictures are from a lady's hand is rather felt from the tact to discover the graceful, and the absence of all that could offend, than from any want of power or of courage. She dares do all that may become a woman. Her country lads are not young gentlemen in masquerade; their cudgels are no playthings; their eating and drinking are no joke; her sportsmen do not rest on their guns; her lovers" do not sigh gratis," but "the lady speaks her mind freely "—happily without any blank verse to halt for it. Her Mayings and dances would content a servant girl of eighteen; and her cricket matches are such as an Eaton boy would not disdain to play or to praise. Her in-door scenes of higher life have the same verisimilitude and ease, resembling, in so small degree, those of Miss Austin; but they betray the female hand more than the rustic sketches, as there is more of the personal mingled with them. But all alike seem written to make the reader happy. Among the incidents there are few that are not agreeable; her characters are always redeemed by some virtue or genial frailty; and with what zest she dwells on the bright passages of humble life, from the joy shed into the modest bosom by the unhoped-for avowal, down to the gratification of blameless vanity at a village Maying! There is, no doubt, a mannerism about these works; but the sameness is only in the frame, while the pictures within are infinitely various, full of striking contrasts and delicate gradations, always true, almost always happy.

It is a rare lot for the same author, whether man or woman, to found such a village class of composition, and also to bear off the tragic honours of the stage. There are many instances of versatility