rather more than a creative faculty. Yet she has created some beautiful characters, more beautiful than reality, and yet as real as the laws of fictior. require-as real as Miranda or Imogen are real; and nobody but those who talk nonsense without knowing it, contend that they are real in the sense that Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett are real. S. M.'s characters are for the most part life-like; but it is not the common every-day life that they are like they conform to the harmonies of a higher sort of life in which the true artist loves to work. This as regards the conception and working out of her chief characters; they are ideal and beautiful. She would never have made a heroine out of Elizabeth Bennett: her tendency is towards the poetic in most things; yet occasionally we come across such accurate pieces of common life as the following, which Miss Austen herself might have written: the truthfulness and the latent humour are in her style. A haughty, fashionable young beauty is sent to rusticate with some old aunt's : Miss Barron remarked that the aspen was certainly shaped like an elin, but she could never see that the elm had the smallest resemblance to an aspen. Miss Eliza said that was particularly strange. She would not have been surprised if her sister had not seen the likeness in the aspen; but the elm was really so extraordinarily like, that she could not understand how any one could fail to perceive it. Here the conversation dropped, and scarcely anything more was said till we exchanged our frigid "good nights," and departed to rest. in illness with devotion, though assuredly not with tenderness; and I do believe that, if either had died, the survivor would have found it possible to look graver, and say less than before. But to live with them-I would rather live with three students of the French horn and a singing master! There was no improvement when the sisters I believe these were both very good women: they came in. They were hard-featured, angular women, were strongly attached to each other, and intended with harsh, dull voices, and manners that were stiff, to be very kind to me. They were charitable to the and scarcely polished enough to be called formal. poor, and regular in the performance of their reThey never spoke except in case of absolute neces-ligious duties. They would have nursed each other sity, and then said as little as they could. As for small talk, only a frantic person could have thought of such a thing in their presence. Occasionally each contradicted the other, and sometimes both at once briefly contradicted Mr. Barron, and these were the liveliest moments of the day. They never argued they could not have said consecutive words enough for an argument; they might rather be said to deal in fragmentary and detached cavils. When we came into the drawing-room after dinner, they both sat down bolt upright upon the sofa, and steadily stared at me. I found I could not bear it, and many and furious were the efforts which I made at conversation. Whatever I said Miss Barron doubted, and Miss Eliza Barron immediately differed from her sister, and did not agree with me. One specimen I may give :— Miss Eliza (resolutely). "I counted them." I. "What a venerable-looking old house this is! I quite admire it. I do love everything that is oldfashioned and quaint. These couches, now, and those tall, narrow mirrors are quite pleasant to my eyes! only one fancies every one ought to wear hoops and powder here." Miss Barron. "The house may look venerable, but it is'nt a hundred years old; and we furnished the drawing-room last summer." Miss Eliza. "Last spring, Priscilla. Yes, cer This same haughty beauty Madeline is not only a finely conceived, but a vigorously executed character-a character far too ideal for the pen of Miss Austen--too ideal and too passionate. Perhaps our authoress is herself scarcely aware that, as a creation, Madeline is worth much more than Ida. The latter is charming, and very lovely; but there is no shadow in the picture: she is like an angel or a fairy, or a young saint by Raphael. She is removed away from your sympathies, because of her superhuman perfections. No so with Madeline: she has been sinned against and sinning: she has been tried, and found wanting: she knows sorrow, and the meaning of the words temptation, despair, struggle, and remorse, and that as noble and radically virtuous minds know it. It is the delineation of Madeline's character, and the story of her early life, which show us that the authoress has an intuition, if not an experience of some things Miss Austen seems not to knowthings indicated in the old harpers' lay in Wilhelm Meister "Wer nie sein brod mit thräuen ass," &c. The following combines the natural Austen-like ease of describing ordinary incidents, with the deeper significance of a writer who is apt to look much below the surface in the merest trifles: "My dear," says Miss Barron to me, in her most acid and ferocious tone, "there is Mr. Tyrrell coming up the sweep." D I, who had been moving listlessly about the room till the moment before, when I caught a glimpse of his approaching figure, and sat down satisfied, answered with a careless ease, 66 Really!" "He was here yesterday," observed Miss Eliza. I did not think this speech demanded a reply, so I was silent. Well do I remember, even now, the glow of plea. sure that shot through me at these words-words to which I doubtless imputed double their real significance. Oh! the exquisite delight of praise from one to whom we look up, but who is at once reserved, fastidious, and just-who is not given to petty raptures or shallow admiration, but who quietly watches actions, measures them by a true, and therefore a high standard, and so decides for the most part that they may best be treated with a charitable silence. To find unexpectedly that such a one approves, commends, admires-to detect it, if only in a gesture, much more in a smile or quiet word-these are among the few bright moments of life, which, like flashes of sunlight across a dreary landscape, lend it a transient beauty hard to part with, impossible to forget. Mr. Tyrrell gave me a comic look, but immediately answered, "We were discussing friendship, ma'am." "And the day before!" chimed in Miss Barron, They both waited as if they expected me either to deny or defend the fact; but as I maintained a profound silence, they felt a little puzzled, and had only time to say, "Really, my dear!" both at once, with peculiar savageness, twice over, when the entrance of Mr. Tyrrell himself cut the remonstrance short. He paid his compliments to the party, but, noticing me only by a slight shake of the hand, addressed himself at once to Miss Barron. He had brought her a specimen of a flower which Miss Barron, quick to discover, resolute to disshe particularly wanted for her hortus siccus, and turb any intercourse which might presume to transhad hitherto been unable to procure. The Misses cend the limits of formal disquisition or dull Barron were devoted to dried flowers. One mi-jocularity, here interposed. She made the most serable colourless little sprawling skeleton of a plant, unpleasant observation that can possibly be made strapped down on its sheet of white paper, was inore when you are enjoying a little genuine conversation. beautiful in their eyes than a whole canopy of living" Pray," asked she, "what are you talking about?” roses, pouring out fragrance and sparkling with dew. The animation with which they instantly began to quarrel about the name, habits, and favourite localities of this new treasure, proved beyond mistake that they were highly delighted. Mr. Tyrrell joined for a few minutes in the discussion, and then turning to me, asked to see my last sketch, which he criticised and condemned in that half authoritative, half jocose manner peculiar to himself, and by virtue of which he was able to say and do things such as no other man ever said or did without giving offence. In five minutes more we were established over our drawing-book, and my morning's occupation was fixed quite satisfactorily to myself. "I can't praise this last production of yours," observed he, as he examined and unsparingly criticised a sketch in crayons, of which I was particularly proud. "The outline is as hazy and uncertain as a lady's logic!" He looked provokingly in my face as he pronounced the last words, for we often contested the questions of the relative intellects of the two sexes, half in play half in earnest-an unpleasant lurking consciousness that he thought I plumed myself upon my abilities, giving more than the usual quantity of asperity to my repartees. The lady seemed not a little scandalized; friendship, she thought, was far too dangerous a subject to be discussed without the intervention of a chaperon, so she immediately asked another question, the first she could manage to think of. "What sort of friendship?" was her inquiry. "Friendship between a man and a woman," he rejoined, evidently determined to plague her. "Ah! you look incredulous, Miss Barron; you are one of those who consider such friendship has no real existence. That it must needs either rise into love or degenerate into convenience. But I don't see why this should be. I believe the relation between friend and friend to have roots as deep and sanctions as divine as that between husband and wife; and, were I a woman, no senseless conventionalities of etiquette should prevent my seeking nourishment for the inner life in such a relation." "It is not her part to seek, but to be sought," remarked I. "True," he said; "but she must respond to and meet the seeker, suffering herself to be led to the ground on which he desires to place her, and showI-ing, by the alacrity and frankness of her cordiality, that she neither distrusts the reality of his affection nor mistakes its nature." "And the haziness serves the same purpose in both, I suppose you would say," rejoined "namely, that of concealing defects?" "Well," replied he, "I don't think I should be disparaging you if I were to say so. Ladies ought not to be logicians." "It would be very inconvenient for gentlemen if they were," retorted I. He laughed heartily, and made me a low bow. "You have the victory," he said. "I confess I gave you a fair opening for checkmate, and you took advantage of it." "The poor woman!" cried I-"this she may do; but what will the result be? She will perhaps overlook and despise the wretched gossip which besets her path at its outset, like the mocking voices on that mountain in theÁrabian Nights,' always eager to bewilder and check the adventurer, who presumes to rise above the level of the valley; but she can neither overlook nor despise the disappoint"You deserve to be defeated," answered I. "Itment which she is sure to encounter in the ascent is so common-place to say that women are deficient in reasoning powers; it is a mere stock commodity of ordinary small-talk, quite below the notice of an adventurous speculator like yourself. I wonder you were not ashamed to say it!" "I think I might well be ashamed to maintain it against you," he replied. "I thought you never paid compliments?" was itself. It is very rare to find a man who is not too fickle or too vain to form a true friendship with a woman: either he will fancy she is falling in love with him, and think it quite necessary to discourage her, or he will change his mind, and cease to need her just when he has made himself necessary to her. I will give you the rule and definition of masculine friendship, if you like; it is this: make all the use you possibly can of your friend; be frank, confiding, familiar, attentive, cordial, so long as it suits you; and as soon as it ceases to suit you, drop her quietly, without the compliment of a pause or the, racter that he should do so. Her discovery that mere decency of gradation." As we are on the subject of Madeline's story, and intend to make our extracts from that portion of the book, we will give the following, which is a well-known truth, gracefully putgrace, by the way, is the most prominent quality in our author's style, and is very attractive:— About three weeks after this conversation-three weeks of close, habitual, familiar intercourse, Mr. Tyrrell returned to London. He was a perfect gentleman, and so could not, under any circumstances, neglect the courtesies due to a lady: he paid his farewell visit at Stanbury Hall, and was profuse in his polite regrets—had even a warmer look, a softer word, a longer shake of the hand for me-hoped I would not forget my drawing or my drawing-master, &c., &c., and went. I felt sure he would write: day after day passed, and no letter. Oh, the dreary bitterness of that time of expectation! No bell rang, no door opened, even at the most unreasonable and impossible hour of the day, that I did not look round with stealthy quickness, expecting to see the servant enter with a letter for me. I learned to know the sound of a footstep on the gravel-walk, while it was yet too far off to be audible to ears less eagerly acute-to calculate to a nicety the time which must elapse ere the visitor should come within sight of a particular corner of a particular window in the drawing-room, at which I always established myself with some seeming occupation; to wait, watch, argue with myself, tell myself that I expected nobody, receive my disappointment, and quietly withdraw my eyes from that miserable pane of glass, without any human being suspecting what was passing within me twenty times a-day. he married her out of compassion, and not from love-her sudden flight upon that discovery, and her persistence in concealment afterwards, are all good points in the romance, because they are true to the character of the woman. The way in which Madeline's story is woven with that of the fair Ida and the Lee family is sufficiently vraisemblant. Ida is an only child and an heiress, brought up in seclusion by a charmingly romantic father. At the age of eighteen she is introduced to the various branches of her family. Among the young gentlemen cousins she is to choose a husband. To our thinking they are none of them worthy her acceptance. They are of what in slang like Waverley, of whom Scott himself said phraseology may be termed the muff speciesthat he was 66 a sneaking piece of inanity." And though the young Messrs. Lee are not inane, and do not sneak, yet they have not sufficient bone and muscle about them to "give the world assurance of a man." Still there is no denying that they have as much manhood about them as many an individual of our acquaintance of whom we may say "Nature made him, and therefore let him pass for a man;" but as S. M. has idealized nature fairly and legitimately in her two chief women, why not have given the men something of heroism, and artistic beauty, too? She has been a little unfair, we think, in her portraiture of young men but to make amends, she has given us an injured husband, who is really a hero in thought, feeling, and conduct. Mr. Tyrrell is a careful and life-like presentiment of an intellectual man, who has erred in conduct, and can acknowledge his own error, and forgive that of another towards himself. By Ida's interven wife; and when she is sufficiently recovered from severe illness, he is admitted to an interview. He enters the chamber in silence, and takes a seat beside her : There is a species of hope which seems only to exist for the sake of enhancing disappointment. It does not cheer you while it is present, for you have no faith in it; but nevertheless it contrives to afflict you when it departs, as keenly as though it commanded your fullest confidence. Gradually, how-tion he learns the past history of his fugitive ever, I waked up to the consciousness that I had made a blunder the blunder of a woman's life, which she is as loath to believe as slow to forsake which even in the deep privacy of her own thoughts she cannot confess without an agony of shame. I had imagined myself beloved, and it was not so. She observed the merest trifles-that a corner of Bitterer even than this-the feeling which I had the hearth-rug was displaced by the leg of his chair mistaken for love was not even friendship-it was no-that a fly had settled on his arm, and travelled feeling at all: it was a cheat, a plaything, a mockery! Yet would it have required a far greater credulousness to believe that it did not exist than to have supposed that it did, before inexorable facts thus forced upon me. Even now, when I recall the constancy and closeness of our intercourse, which, though allowed by me, was assuredly sought by him, it seemed to me quite impossible that it should utterly cease in a moment of time, and that he should feel no void, no vacancy, no want! How could I have thus been for awhile all to him, and then suddenly nothing? I little knew the in- "I fear I have startled you," said he, again adstability of man, and the omnipotence of circum-dressing her. "If you are not strong enough to see stance. along the coat-sleeve till it reached his hand, and was shaken off by a slight involuntary movement. The picture never rose up before her thoughts afterwards without the fly and the fold in the carpet. When she lifted a momentary glance to his facenot his eyes, those she could not meet - she saw that his colour came and went rapidly; she felt, rather than heard, that there was suppressed agitation in the calmness of his voice, and this helped to strengthen her. Yet his manner was deliberate, assured, and very gentle. me, to listen to me, I will go. I can wait till you are more completely recovered." The way in which Madeline's marriage with Mr. Tyrrell is brought about is, we think, one of the best things in the story. It is not in accordance with the highest moral principles that that gentleman should ask to make her his wife, but it is quite in accordance with his cha-to-." He hesitated. "I am quite strong enough," she answered. he. "I will not distress you long; I have only a few "Then if that be the case I will speak," replied words to say. My object is not to distress you, but to relieve you. It is better, I think, at once to "I understand," interposed she quickly, and bowing her head-it is better." Why was this tone of commiseration so inexpressibly bitter to her? And for what was it preparing her? For silence! He did not speak again for some minutes; the pause was intolerable, and at last she lifted her eyes, and met his earnest, melancholy gaze fixed immoveably on her face. It seemed to fascinate her, and she surveyed him as though taking note of the change of years. A little more expansion of the lofty forehead, a line or two of thought, a shade of pathos, a touch of softness--the picture was mellowed, not faded. And how was it with her? The radiancy and buoyancy of her beauty were gone for ever; nor could she guess how much of loveliness time, sorrow, and discipline had given in its place. She knew not how the gradual moulding of the heart had traced its work upon her countenance; she thought herself a wreck, a mere phantom of the past, and involuntarily she shook her head as he gazed upon her, her lips parting with a painful, yet half-deprecating smile. Madeline," said he at length, and the name fell upon her car like a stroke upon an open wound, "we have both been wrong-nay," putting up his hand, "hear me. My fault has been as great as yours: I feel; it so. We have both suffered-you the most for you had not that consolation which has been the innocent charm and study of my life." He hurried over this reference to their child as if he feared to agitate her too powerfully. "Now I am not looking to the past with any bitterness, nor to the future with any romance. I see the whole truth, clearly, strongly, coldly if you will; and seeing it, I am ready, anxious to resume the duty to which I was once as faithless as yourself. I disguise nothing; this is my wish. But not for an instant will I be a restraint upon you; you shall decide for yourself and for me." 66 She had covered her face with her hands, but he felt that she was listening; he felt, too, how stiff and heartless were his words. Doubt of her feelings, desire to spare them, pride, shame, all united to constrain him; yet his voice softened and faltered as he proceeded:-" Whatever you may once have felt," said he, rather hurriedly, "I know that indignation, and the lapse of years, and the sense of wrong, must long since have effaced it. I know you, Madeline: I appeal to no past feelings: I was unworthy of the gift which I first sought, and, whatever your offences may have been, I deserved that it should be withdrawn." 66 No, no," answered she, sobbing, and keenly feeling the generous delicacy of his words: "let there be truth between us! I was sorely tried, and my sin was heavy: the depth of my humiliation has avenged it!" with hands of adamant. You were a woman with infinite capacity, of womanly perfection, but without one help, one guidance, one healthful memory of instructed childhood, one habit of wise discipline, ere the tender will had hardened itself in opposition. I need not go on. Such as you were, I took you, and took also the duty and the privilege (you gave me the power) of making you that which you were capable of becoming. How did I fulfil this duty? Do you suppose I have never thought of this?-never asked myself with kecnest reproach why, when you opened to me a way into the very depths of your character, through your generous, self-abandoning, confiding heart, I repaid you by obstinately refusing to use it? You did not know me; and I stood aloof and suffered you to destroy your own happiness and mine, rather than by a word enlighten you. Do you suppose, Madeline,” he continued, dropping his voice as he drew nearer to her," that in solitude, at nightfall, in those hours when conscience is suddenly revealed to the soul, as an angel of judgment, beneath whose sentence it must needs fall prostrate-that at such times I have never told myself, with bitter, ineffectual tears, that if she whom I had irrevocably lust could be restored to me, I would be to her other than I had been? We have all such thoughts of the dead in our tender moments, and when there has been real wrong they make the helpless remorse of a lifetime. But you and I are happier, for we have the power of reparation. And when my boy -our child-" "Oh, no more! no more! Have mercy upon me!" she exclaimed, and with a sudden, irresistible movement, flung herself at his feet. "Give me your pardon; say to me, 'Go in peace,' and let me hide myself again for ever!" Tyrrell felt that he had conquered. How gently he raised her! "I have forgiven everything!" said he, as with grave tenderness and authority he took her hands in his. "But I retract my former words; I will not leave you liberty of choice; I decide for you. A year hence you shall abandon me if you will; till then, my wife, come back to me, and have faith in me!" in an uncommon degree? "You are right," he exclaimed, taking up her it does not belong to the class of religious novels words with a mixture of vehemence and solemnity: "there must be perfect truth between us now. Listen, then, to THE TRUTH. When we were together, seven years ago, I was a mere man of the world my standard of life was neither natural nor supernatural, but artificial; and to it my feelings, sympathies, conceptions, hopes were all bound, as -a class of works in our opinion as false in taste as futile for direct instruction. It is a veritable, genuine novel, interesting on purpose, and indirectly a vehicle for the inculcation of true religious principles, raising the soul above the daily cares and small aims of life. J. M. W. THE CHILD'S CORNER. THE CHILDREN'S ZODIAC. BY MRS. T. K. HERVEY. THE VIRGIN; OR ANGEL HELP. "Swiftly turn the murmuring wheel! Night has brought the welcome hour, When the weary fingers feel Help, as if from fairy power; Dewy night o'erspreads the ground, Turn the swift wheel round and round." It was past midnight when, in a narrow room very poorly and scantily furnished, and lighted scarcely at all, a poor Maid sat before her spinning-wheel. At one end of the room, where she was toiling, there stood a small and homely bed, on which lay the mother of the maid. She was old, and much too ill to rise; and, being unable to work, she must have starved, but that her daughter, who was good and dutiful, supplied the wants of both by her industry. But it was only by very hard toil, spinning all the day and a great part of the night, that the poor Maid could earn enough for the support of her mother, whom she loved most tenderly. Often and often she lay down on her bed when the early morning hours were sounding, and wept bitterly to think that she could work no more, on account of the fatigue that oppressed her, and the sleepiness that, in spite of all her efforts, would steal over her senses. But the poor Maid was patient. She never indulged in idle repinings; and the wants of her mother and herself were very few. On this night she felt more than usually oppressed. She had heard the church clocks strike the hour of midnight; and still the appointed task she had set herself to finish was not done. As she sat thus, patiently toiling, and striving hard to keep her eyes open but a little while longer, and vainly urging her flagging fingers to pursue their labour-all at once a strain of music sounded overhead. As she listened to the sounds, by little and little the wheel grew dim before her eyes-the distaff faded from her sight-her hands relaxed their hold-she fell asleep. As the maid leaned back in her chair, hushed in the sweetest and most profound slumber, the entire room became suddenly illumined with a bright and dazzling light. And soon, instead of the one poor solitary maid sitting alone in the midnight by the bedside of the sick, the whole chamber became filled with radiant guests. Floating with noiseless wings into the room, kind angels took up the abandoned task. Yes! angel feet turned once more the silent wheel, and angel fingers twisted the neglected flax-for no task of kindness is too humble for the good. On the sill of the narrow casement window stood a flower-pot. The plant that grew there was small and stunted. It consisted only of a stem and a few green leaves, without bud or blossom. As one of the angel watchers bent across the lattice, and gazed upon the features of the sleeping maid, a single tear of pity dropped on the drooping plant. Slowly, a single bud began to form between the closed-up leaves. Then the bud grew larger and larger, till at last it burst its leafy sheath, and blossomed into a full-blown flower! The flower that grew up beneath the angel's tears, was a fair and graceful lily-a flower everywhere held to be the emblem of purity. But now the tired sleeper stirred slightly in her dreams, and the radiant guests prepared to depart. As softly as they had entered they stole away out of the room; and the dazzling light faded with their retreating steps. The Maid awoke. She looked at the work before her, and what was her astonishment to find, not only that her task was completed, but that more of the flax was spun than she could herself have twisted during an entire week! "Oh! mother," she could not help exclaiming in the innocent joy of her heart-“ Oh ! mother, my task is done!" The mother awoke at the sound of that be loved voice, and she answered-" Well hast thou done, my good and dutiful child." Then her daughter spoke to her again, saying Nay, my mother, I have slept. Angels must have toiled in my stead, for the work is not the work of my hands." 66 Sick as she was, and weary with age, a smile of intense happiness lighted the mother's placid face, as she again said, Angels may well have helped thee; for of all children thou hast shown thyself the most patient and devoted." As the maid turned aside her head to wipe away a tear of joy that rolled down her cheek at the words her mother spoke, her glance fell on the lily. "Oh! mother, mother!" she cried, " a new wonder is here: last night not a bud was to be seen, yet, behold-a lily is blooming." "Time, my darling," replied the mother, "has no power over the virtuous. Purity and truth are blossoms for all seasons.' Still, the poor Maid wondered greatly. All the day she pondered on the miraculous work that had been wrought by hands unseen by her. And as she looked at the pure white petals of the lily's flower, she marvelled more and more. As soon as night drew down again, she deter |