the story, but none, we think, of a very prominent character. Among those faults, we do not rank the various improbabilities comprised in the story; first, because real life is scarcely less full of improbabilities than romance, and secondly, because the art of the writer is often most happily displayed in throwing a plausible air over unlikely incidents, and in working them into the story, so as to make them seem probable. In a work of fiction, probabilities and improbabilities being equally true, the only difference between them consists in the degree of skill which is shewn in the introduction and management of them.

Many admirable sentiments occur in these volumes; and we are convinced that the Writer has meant to convey, in some instances, religious instruction; but where this is not a writer's main object, it is seldom either happily or efficiently accomplished. As a moral writer, we must place Mrs. Hall, if somewhat above her friend Miss Mitford, yet, much below Miss Jewsbury, although, in another way, she has displayed talents equal, at least, to both. We make this remark, not for the sake of comparison, but of distinction. Works of a totally different description are often confounded under a common name. The " Three Histories" of Miss Jewsbury are all truth, though a fiction. The Buccaneer, though containing a vein of historic and moral truth, is pure romance. The reader of Mrs. Hall's work cannot close the volumes without forming a very high estimate of the powers of the author. On reading Miss Jewsbury's tales, we are less struck with the genius than with the knowledge of the writer,-less with her power of describing, than with her skill in analysing. She brings before us, not scenes so much as things, and is more philosophical than dramatic. The female Writer of the day with whom Mrs. Hall may be most fairly compared, and whom she may be thought to have followed, is Miss Lawrance. The latter, in some fragments of a story contributed to " Friendship's Offering," has ventured upon the same historic ground, and indicated talents capable of producing greater things. Both ladies have given portraits of Cromwell and of Cromwell's still more illustrious Latin secretary; and our readers may compare with the extract given in our November Number (p. 452), the following portrait.

Behold him as he sits, within the tapestried chamber at Hampton Court! 'Tis the same room in which the Protector sat last night; but how changed its aspect, just by the presence of that one man! How different is the feeling with which we regard men of great energy and men of great talent. Milton, blind-blind, powerless as to his actions, overwhelming in his genius, grasping all things and seeing into them, not with the eyes of flesh, but those of mind, altering the very atmosphere wherein we move, stilling the air that we may hear his oracles!

< The room is one of most curious fashion, and hung with the oldest

tapestry in England, lighted on either side by long and narrow windows, that are even now furnished as in the time of the old Cardinal who built them. On the low seat formed within the wall the Poet sat. Who would suffer a thought of the ambitious Wolsey or the sensual Henry to intrude where once they held gay revels and much minstrelsy in their most tyrant pastimes? Cromwell, the great Protector, even Cromwell is forgotten in the more glorious company of one both poor and blind! He sat, as we describe him, within the embrasure of the narrow window; the heat and brightness of the summer sun came full upon his head, the hair upon which was full and rich as ever, parted in the centre, and falling in waving curls quite to his shoulders; his eyes were fixed on vacancy, but their expression was as if communing with some secret spirit, enlivening thus his darkness; he seemed not old nor young, for the lines upon his face could not be considered wrinkles-tokens were they of care and thought-such care and such thought as Milton might know and feel. He was habited with extraordinary exactness; his linen of the finest quality, and his vest and doublet put on with an evident attention to even minute appearance. His hands of transparent whiteness were clasped, as if he were attending to some particular discourse; he was alone in that vast chamber, yet not alone, for God was with him,—not in outward form, but in inward spirit. It was the Sabbath-day, and ever observed in the Protector's family with respect and reverence. The morningmeeting was over, and Cromwell in his closet, " wrestling," as he was wont to term it, "with sin." Silence reigned through all the courts -that due and reverend silence which betokens thoughtfulness, and attention to one of the Almighty's first commands-" Keep holy the sabbath-day," given when he ordained that man should rest from his labours in commemoration that he himself set an example of repose after calling the broad earth into existence and beauty. The poet sat but for a little time in that wide silence; yet who would not give a large portion of their every-day existence to have looked on him for those brief moments, moments which for their full feeling might play the part of years in our life's calendar? Blessed holy time!-when we can look on genius, and catch the gems that fall from its lips! Yet Milton spoke not,-he only looked; and still his looks were heavenward-turned towards that Heaven from whence they caught their inspiration. He heard the sound of coming footsteps, and loving quiet on that holy day, withdrew to his own chamber. How empty now appeared the tapestried hall! as when some great eclipse shuts to the golden portals of the sun, and steeps the earth in darkness!' Vol. III. pp. 32–35.

In the correct finishing of her portraits and pictures, Miss Lawrance, we think, excels. The graphic talent of Mrs. Hall is displayed in a bolder use of the pencil: if we may use the metaphor, she paints in oil. But we have said more than enough to intimate our opinion of the sort and degree of literary merit displayed in these volumes, and now leave our readers to frame the verdict.

Art. IV. The Year of Liberation: a Journal of the Defence of Hamburgh against the French Army under Marshal Davoust in 1813: with Sketches of the Battles of Lutzen, Bautzen, &c. &c. In two Volumes. 12mo. pp. 656. Price 18s. London, 1832.

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UNDER a title that does not seem to promise much, we have in these volumes a melange of the most brilliant and entertaining description. The ostensible subject, though an interesting episode of the war of liberation', would, in ordinary hands, have afforded scanty materials for a chapter; but give this Writer any subject, and it is evident that he could work it up into any prescribed form or number of volumes. At the touch of his pencil, the most common-place and unsightly objects become picturesque. He has the strange art of making an old story new, of imparting to the fresh coinage of his fancy the semblance of history, and of making veritable history scem half romance and half a joke. By help of scenic description, inexhaustible anecdote, portraiture of character, politics, battles, poetry, romance, the grave and the gay, the lively and the severe, he contrives to keep the attention in a state of constant and pleasureable excitement; so that, whatever be the road he chooses to travel, the reader thinks only of the pleasant company he finds himself in. He has endowed a mere incident with the opulence that would have sufficed to furnish out a whole history of the war. But the most remarkable feature of the work is, that, although the Writer's style is too vivacious to be sentimental, too sportive for grave philosophy, and you scarcely know when he is quite in earnest, there lies concealed beneath this off-hand, trifling manner of dealing with things, a depth of observation and a seriousness of opinion and purpose, which impart to some of his occasional observations an axiomatic force and practical value, redeeming both the book and its author from the class to which a superficial glance might have referred them. The charm of the work is its style, which sparkles with wit, or flashes with eloquence, from beginning to end; but the retrospect of events which the work comprises, is adapted to be at the present moment peculiarly instructive. We seem to be taken behind the scenes of the great drama, and are shewn the machinery of history.

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The Author is quite serious in his Preface, which contains the moral of the tale. From this war, the great patriotic war of 'Germany', eminently rose, he remarks, the fearful supremacy of Russia, which now threatens all independence, and the not 'less fearful sense of popular power, which threatens all government; the imbodying of the principles of despotism and democrasy, at this hour arming for a conflict, which, whenever it arrives, may cover the world with dust and ashes.' Upon this

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single sentence, we could hang a dissertation; and at some future period, we may favour our readers with one; but we must now pass on.

The rising of the people of Hamburgh against the French was one of the most interesting incidents of the war. The present Writer has described it as he saw it; with the opportunities of one on the spot, and the fresh impressions of the moment; impressions heightened, rather than diminished, by the twenty years which have since been interposed. He has found no record of the transactions from the native pen; and he has long felt an allowable anxiety that some memorial should exist of a public effort, which exhibited all the essential features of public virtue. The general aspect of German affairs at the time will be found occasionally observed.'

The first chapter introduces us to a groupe of characters on board the packet, sketched with a vigour and humour that just stop short of caricature, and make the week's voyage, which lasts the chapter, not seem tedious. Heliogoland is the subject of Chapter II.; and we must insert the graphic description of this singular outpost of the Continent.

The North Sea was angry, and a whole wilderness of immense waves, topped with yellow, bilious-looking foam, rolled furiously towards the little half-drowned island which continually escaped from us, and seemed as if it were swimming away for its life. But, rough as the gale was, it was luckily in our favour. We were hurled along like the foam itself, and, in the course of a few hours, we were abreast of the beach. The scene there was a very curious and peculiar one. All seemed on the smallest scale, and might have been sketched for Gulliver's first view of Lilliput. Heligoland is probably the smallest spot to which human life, adhesive as it is, ever thought of clinging. . . . Like every other nook of this over-travelled world, it has long since lost its ancient spell; but it was then a novelty, and an extremely characteristic one. Paley should have put it into his chapter of "Contrivances." It was impossible to look upon it without recognizing the original design of nature for the intercourse of nations; the Plymouth Breakwater, or the Eddystone lighthouse, is not a clearer evidence of intention. Though it has stood from the creation or the deluge, a solitary point in the deep, the playground of the seamew and the porpoise for some thousand years, it was yet as obviously placed for the uses of human kind, when the low shores of Holstein and Hanover should be peopled, as if it had been piled by a Telford or a Rennie before our eyes. Standing about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Elbe, it is seen at the exact distance sufficient for ships to make the land, without being entangled in the shoals which line the whole shore of Germany; its very form is that of the pedestal of a light-house; and many a storm-tost blaze must have flared from it to the squadrons with which Denmark and Sweden first paid such formidable visits to their more opulent neighbours of Germany and England.

Its population, time out of mind, have been pilots; and even in its

name of "Holy Island," there may be found some reference to the sailor's gratitude for his preservation. But things had now, in the American phrase, prodigiously progressed; for the pedestal was not merely topped with a huge light-house, glittering with reflectors and all the improvements of modern art, but it was enjoying that peculiar prosperity which, according to the proverb, in the worst of times, falls somewhere; and being the first mark of all vessels bound for the Elbe, and just out of the reach of Napoleon's talons besides, it had become a grand depot of commerce; or, to use a less dignified, but truer appellation, of smuggling of the most barefaced kind. Every spot was crowded with clerks and agents from England and Germany; many of them not improbably agents of more important concerns than the barter of sugar and coffee; for those were times when every feeling of right, seconded by every dexterity of man, was concerting the fall of the great enemy; and Heligoland was, perhaps, more nearly connected with Vienna, and even with Paris, than half the cabinets alive.

'But all before us, was the merchant and his merchandize, bales of Manchester manufactures and bags of West India produce, and among them the busy Englishman stalking about, and the spectacled German following him, and each apparently too well employed to think of the fates of empires.

From our deck, the beach, which looked scarcely more than a hundred yards wide; and the rock itself, which did not seem half the number of feet high, gave the thickest picture of human swarming, that I had ever seen; the whole was black, restless, and buzzing with life; it had the look of an immense beehive.' pp. 20–24.

'It blows a storm; and every wave that rolls in upon the little beach threatens to wreck our whole navy at its anchors. The man who "pitied idle gentlemen upon a rainy day," should have added to the rainy day, confinement upon an island a mile round, as flat as a bowling-green, and with nothing upon it but a gathering of crazy huts, shaking in every limb, groaning in the wind as if they were groaning their last, and making it a doubtful point, whether it were wiser to take the chance of being swept into the sea with them, or without them.

'But the sea is magnificent: I now feel, for the first time, the full force of the words, "the wilderness of waves." As far as the eye can reach, the whole horizon is one moving mass of billows, rolling, foaming, and thundering on each other; sheets of spray suddenly caught up and whirling to vast distances, like the banners of the host of waters. Here are no chains of rock to fret the waves, no projections and promontories to break their mass, no distractions of the eye by the mixture of land and water: all is ocean, deep, dreary, and illimitable. With such an object before the poets of the north, well might they fill their imaginations with shapes of desolate power. Among the clouds which come continually rolling along the horizon, and almost touching the waters, it would be no difficult fancy even now, to conceive some of the old pirate fleets, spreading sail from the Baltic, and sweeping down, with the lightning for their pilot, and the winds for their trump, to the spoil of Europe. All is wild, melancholy, and grand.'

Vol. I. pp. 36-38.