'It is of great use as well as delight to us, to see any thing we write tried upon such a person as you, who will and can do what so few have either the courage or power to attempt, tell the impressions really made upon their feelings, and point out the causes of these impressions.

'I do not know what you mean by saying that every sensible mother is like Lady Mary Vivian. You are requested to explain. I wish I could find any excuse for begging another letter from you.

'Perhaps we shall, as we at present intend, be in London next spring.

'Last night, my father and I were numbering the people we . should wish to see. Our list is not very numerous, but Mrs. Inchbald was one of the first persons, we at the same moment eagerly named. Believe me to be, my dear madam,

'your obliged and grateful, MARIA EDGEWORTH.'

After having met Mrs. Inchbald in London, on the eve of the production of her novel of Patronage,' Miss Edgeworth wrote the following letter.

Edgeworth's Town, Dec. 9, 1813. 'My dear Mrs. Inchbald, I have desired our publisher to send you Patronage before it is published. I will not tell you of my fears or of my hopes in sending it to you. You will understand them all, and I am confident that you will write to me at least as frankly, now you have seen me, as you did before we met. I do not say before we became acquainted with each other; for in the crowds in which we met, it was impossible to become acquainted, with any degree of rational intimacy.

We have to thank you, however, and we heartily do thank you, for the effort you made to gratify us, which succeeded completely. My father desires me to say, that he cannot help hoping that Patronage' will come to a second edition; and he trusts that you know we are glad to profit by good advice, when we can get it, therefore he earnestly expects your corrections for a second edition.'

Mrs. Inchbald, pursuant to the author's request, after a perusal of Patronage' gave her criticisms upon it, in a letter to which Miss Edgeworth refers in the following.

'Edgeworth's Town, Feb. 14, 1814. 'My dear Mrs. Inchbald,-Nobody living but yourself could or would have written the letter I have just received from you. I wish you could have been present when it was read at the breakfast-table, that you might have seen what hearty entertainment

and delight it gave to father, mother, author, aunts, brothers, sisters, all, to the number of twelve. Loud laughter at your utter detestation of poor Erasmus,—as nauseous as his medicines; and your impatience at all the variety of impertinent characters who distract your attention from Lord Oldborough. Your clinging to him quite satisfied us all; it was in his character that my father placed his dependence; and we all agreed that if you had not liked him, there would have been no hopes for us. We are, in the main, of your opinion, that Erasmus and his letters are tiresome; but then please [to] recollect that we had our moral to work out, to show, to the satisfaction of the reader, how, in various professions, young men may get on without patronage. Wherever we are tiresome, we may be pretty sure of this; and after all, as Madame de Staël says, "Good intentions go for nothing in works of art;" much better in the French, La bonne intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit. You will make me forswear truth altogether; for I find whenever I meddle with the least bit of truth, I can make nothing of it, and it regularly turns out ill for me. The things to which you object are facts, and that which you most abhor is true.

'A nobleman, whom I never saw and whose name I have forgotten, (else I should not have used the anecdote), said the word you thought I could not have written and ought not to have known how to spell. But, pray observe, that the fair authoress does not say this odious word in her own proper person. Why impute to me the characteristic improprieties of my characters ? I meant to mark the contrast between his Grace's pride and the coarseness of his expression. I have now changed the word severe into coarse to mark this to the reader; but I cannot alter without spoiling the fact. I tried if saliva would do, but it would not so you must bear it as well as you can, and hate his Grace of Greenwich as much as you will,-but don't hate me. Did you hate Cervantes for drawing Sancho Panza eating behind the door?

'My next fact, you say, is an old story; and may be it belonged to your widow originally; but I can assure you it happened very lately to a gentleman in Ireland, and only the parting with the servant was added. I must admit the story is ill-told and not worth telling; and you must admit that it was natural, or it would not have happened twice.

The sixpence under the seal is my third fact. This happened in our own family. One of my own grandfather's uncles forged a will, and my grandfather recovered the estate my father now possesses, by the detection of the forgery in a sixpence under the seal. I agree with you that it was quite ill-judged and

awkward to tell that the old man was perjured, before his perjury was detected. I have sent to have that altered. I wish, if it is not too much trouble, you would take the trouble to alter it, and send your correction to Johnson, St. Paul's Churchyard, to Mr. Miles; for I have not and cannot get the fourth volume, and I have been obliged to write to the corrector of the press, and to trust to his discretion, and he may bungle it. I hope the fourth volume will not be reprinted before this reaches you.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! for liking the two Clays; but pray don't envelope all the country gentlemen of England in English Clay.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! says my father, for liking Lady Jane Granville. Her ladyship is his favorite; but nobody has mentioned her in their letters but yourself; I cannot believe that you ever resembled that selfish, hollow-hearted Lady Angelica.

'Would you have ever guessed that the character of Rosamond is like ME? All who know me intimately say that it is as like as possible; those who do not know me intimately would never guess it.

'Sneyd is in Dublin with his bride,-a bride no more, but dearer as a wife than bride. She was a Miss Broadhurst, and was called an heiress, because she had a considerable independent property. I draw largely upon your belief in my veracity, when I tell you, that this lady was utterly unknown to me and this family when I wrote " the Absentee," and that I took the name of Broadhurst because it did not belong to any person I knew, and drew the character from pure imagination. Sneyd never thought of her, until after "the Absentee" was published. Afterwards, perhaps, it led them a little towards each other. Is not this a curious coincidence? I hardly dare tell it, it has so much the air of falsehood; she is very amiable,—not handsome, but a tall, not a little plain girl. He is happy, as you know he is capable of being, from having found a wife exactly suited to him, and of whom he is passionately fond.'

Mrs. Inchbald died in 1821. Her success in life was wholly the result of her own exertions. Self-taught and inexperienced, she composed those works to which she owed her fame and little property, at such times as she could snatch from the wearing duties of an arduous profession. In the course of her life, she became acquainted with many individuals of the higher and lower classes, but it does not appear that she made any influential friends: on the conVOL. XXXVII.-No. 81

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trary, she herself negotiated her own affairs and prospered. In private life, her conduct, though tinged with eccentricity, did not lie open to any grave charge, and her benevolence and warmth of heart were great. She was a fond daughter, a kind sister, and a faithful wife. As an actress, she

must have claimed attention from her loveliness and correct conception of her author's meaning; but the slowness and monotony of her delivery destroyed her hopes of gaining popular applause. As a dramatist, she is distinguished for a certain ingenuity and vivacity of dialogue; her wit however is infrequent, and the intrigues of her comedies often present the unnatural combinations of farce. Her plays, with few exceptions, still retain the stage. Her talents as a novelist were by no means inferior; and had she devoted her whole attention to this department of literature, she would undoubtedly have produced works of lasting celebrity.

ART. VII.-Miss Leslie's Pencil Sketches.

Pencil Sketches, or Outlines of Character and Manners. By MISS LESLIE. Philadelphia. 1833.

THIS work is a collection of tales, some of which had appeared before in other forms, and been received by the public with decided and, we think, well-merited approbation. The new ones are not inferior in value to the others. They are all written in a correct, easy and spirited style, and exhibit a very keen and nice observation of the various scenes of domestic life, with a happy talent for working up the results in a narrative form. The fable is in all cases simple, and with perhaps one exception not deficient in probability. The characters, though at times overcharged, are in the main correctly drawn. The conversations, which they hold with each other, are conducted with point and propriety. In this particular, Miss Leslie approaches more nearly to the models furnished by the great masters in the art of novel-writing, than any of her American predecessors. Occasional descriptions of local scenery are introduced with effect. Mrs. Washington Potts is perhaps the best, as it is the longest and most elaborate, of the tales, though Frank Finlay is in

some respects the most agreeable. Uncle Philip and the Escorted Lady are also particularly good. In the latter, we would venture to suggest the omission of the part, which touches on the supposed errors in doctrine and discipline of some of our religious sects. This is too grave a matter to be treated in connexion with the airy nothings,' that form the staple of the book. We would also recommend the omission of the poems at the end of the volume. They are the only things in it, that have no pretension whatever to the character of poetry.

If there be any exception to be taken to the work before us, it lies rather against the choice of the subjects than the mode of treating them. Miss Leslie has generally taken sarcastic views of persons and things, and made us acquainted with individuals whom we never wish to hear or think of again. The ambitious pretensions of the apes of fashion,-the folly of those who are imposed upon by vulgar elegance, wherever it is sufficiently assuming, the results of schools, where the ruffle of education is supplied to those who want the linen,-the respect paid to foreigners, in the fond persuasion that those who are coarse abroad may possibly be genteel at home,-all these things are good subjects for occasional ridicule, provided the satirist does not seem to take them to heart. If he show that these things give him uneasiness, he impairs his own power, or rather shows that he is not a cool and impartial observer. We honor the person who steps gaily on in the journey of life, regardless of that universal inheritance,-the pinching shoe. Instead of stopping by the way-side to raise his molehills of inconvenience into mountains of sorrow, he gives every thing its right value and importance. This good nature implies good sense; it is one of the most powerful charms in the writings of Scott, and is felt by thousands who never ask themselves the reason of this perpetual delight. We would not say that all writers are wanting in good sense, who prefer contemplating and representing the dark side; but it is evident that they cannot cast this shadow, without standing in their own light. They might see in common conversation, that if satire please for a time, the hearers are not quite satisfied with themselves for having listened to it; not that their conscience upbraids them as seriously as perhaps it might; but because there is a feeling, that the malice which they indulge in sport will follow them in retribution.