stuff. 'Tis true, he thought, as far as regarded peror to himself, 'I see nothing! Am I a simplehimself, there was no risk whatever; but yet he ton? I not fit to be emperor? Oh,' he cried aloud, preferred sending some one else, to bring him intel-charming! The stuff is really charming! I apligence of the two weavers, and how they were prove of it highly;' and he smiled graciously, and getting on, before he went himself; for everybody in the whole town had heard of the wonderful property that this stuff was said to possess.

have been watched with more interest than the slow 66 It was the talk of the whole town. growth of that boundary line on the map. The bit"The emperor could no longer restrain his curi- terness with which Sir John Ross was reproached osity to see this costly stuff; so, accompanied by a for turning back in the straits between Boothia chosen train of courtiers, among whom were the Felix and the main land, showed how much impatwo trusty men who had so admired the work, off tience was felt to place the truth beyond a doubt. he went to the two cunning cheats. As soon as The reproaches even went to the extent of insinuatthey heard of the emperor's approach they beganing cowardice; a defect that could scarcely be posworking with all diligence, although there was still not a single thread on the loom.

From Blackwood's Magazine.
THE TIMES OF GEORGE II.*

taste of the ladies for historical publications, for diving into the trunks of family memorials, and giving us those private correspondences which are to be found only by the desperate determination to find something and everything, is a fortunate turn of the

wheel.

FEMALE authorship is beginning to flourish in England. To this employment no rational objection can be raised. The want of occupation for female life in the higher classes has long been a It is true that England boasts of many distinsubject of complaint, and any honest change which guished female writers; that the works of Mrs. removes it will be a change for the better. The Radcliffe opened a new vein of rich description and quantity of time and thread which has been wasted solemn mystery; that the comedies of Inchbald on chainstitch, and roundstitch, and all the other netted her innocent and persevering spirit some mysteries of the needle, in the last three centuries, thousand pounds; and that Joanna Baillie's trageis beyond all calculation. If the fair artists had dies entitle her to an enduring fame. We also been workers at the loom, they might have clothed acknowledge, with equal sincerity and gratification, half the living population in "fine linen," if not in the merits of many of our female novelists in the purple. If they had been equally diligent in brickpast half century; their keen insight into character, making, they might have built ten Babels; or if their close anatomy of the general impulses of the they had devoted similar energies, on Iago's hint, human heart, and the mingled delicacy and force "to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer," they with which they seize on personal peculiarities, be-might have tripled the population, or anticipated long to woman alone. But their day, too, has the colossal vats of Messrs. Truman & Co. What gone down. They were first rivalled by the " myriads of young faces have grown old over worsted life novel," the most vulgar of all earthly caricatures. "highparrots and linsey-woolsey maps of the terrestrial They are now extinguished by the low-life novel, globe! What exquisite fingers have been thinned the most intolerable of all realities. The true novel, to the bone, in creating carnations to be sat upon, true in its fidelity to nature, polished without affecand cowslip beds for the repose of favorite poodles! tation, and vigorous without rudeness, now sleeps What bright eyes have been reduced to spectacles, in the grave, and must sleep, until posterity shall, in the remorseless fabrication of patchwork, quilts with one voice, demand its revival. and flowery footstools for the feet of gouty gentleYet, until another race of genius shall arise, and men! Nay, what thousands and tens of thousands the laurel of Fielding or of Shakspeare shall descend have been flung into the arms of their only bride-on our female authors, we must be grateful for their groom, Consumption, leaving nothing to record their gentle labors in the rather rugged field of history. existence but an accumulation of trifles, which cost them only their health, their tempers, their time, their charms, and their usefulness!

But the age of knitting and tambour passed away. The spinning-jenny was its mortal enemy. The most inveterate of fringemakers, the most painstaking devotee of patchwork, when she found that Arkwright could make in a minute more than with all her diligence she could make in a month, and that old Robert Peel could pour out figured muslins, by a twist of a screw, sufficient to give gowns to the whole petticoat population of England, had only to give in; the spinsterhood were forced to feel that their "occupation was o'er."

Even then, however, the female fingers were not suffered to "forget their cunning;" and the age of pursemaking began. The land was inundated with purses of every shape, size, and substance. Then followed another change. The Berlin manufacturers had contrived to bring back the age of worsted wonders, though, by a happy art, they saved the fair artists all the trouble of drawing and design. We are still under a Gothic invasion of trimmings and tapestry, of needle-work nondescripts, moonlight minstrels in canvass, playing under cross-bar balconies; and all the signs of the zodiac brought down to the level of the ivory fingers of womankind.

To this, we must acknowledge, that the incipient

It must be owned that gallantry has a good deal to do in giving these works the name of history. They want all the vigor, all the philosophy, and all the eloquence of history. Of course no human being will ever apply to them as authorities. Still, they have the merit of giving general statements to general readers, of supplying facts in their regular order, and probably, of inducing the multitude, who would shrink from the formalities of Hume or Gibbon in solemn quartos and ponderous octavos, to dip into pages having all the look and nearly all the slightness of the modern novel. At all events, if they do nothing else, they employ the time of pens, which might be much worse occupied; and that pens are often much worse occupied, we have evidence from hour to hour.

The French novels are making rapid way into our circulating libraries. Yet nothing can be more unfortunate, for nothing can be more corrupting than a French novel of the nineteenth century France, always a profligate country, always had profligate writers. But they were generally confined to " Memoirs," "Court Anecdotes," and the ridicule of the world of Versailles; their criminality was at least partially concealed by their good breeding, and their vice was not altogether lowered to the grossness of the crowd.

The revolution created a new school. All there was hatred to duty, faith, and honor. The deepest profligacy was pictured as scarcely less than the

natural right of man; and all the abominations of an amitié eternelle, and defy the world, through the human heart were excited, encouraged, and three volumes. propagated by daring pens, sometimes subtle, sometimes eloquent, and in all instances appealing to the most tempting abominations of man.

But the revolution fell, and with the ascendant of Napoleon another school followed. War, public business, the general objects of the active faculties, and strong ambition of a people with Europe at its feet, partially superseded alike the frivolous taste of the monarchy, and the rabid ferocities of revolutionary authorship. The bulletins of the "Grande Armée" told a daily tale of romance, to which the brains of a Parisian scribbler could find no rival, and men with the sound of falling thrones echoing in their ears, forgot the whispers of low intrigue and commonplace corruption.

In reprobating this detestable school, we certainly have no hope that our remarks will reform the French novelism of the day; but we call on the critical press of England to take up the rational and righteous task of reforming our own.

Within these few years, the English novels are rapidly falling into the imitation of the French. And we say it with no less regret than surprise, that the chief imitators are females. The novels written by men have generally some manliness, some recollection of the higher impulses which occasionally act on the minds of men; some reluctancy in revealing the more infirm movements of the mind; and some doubts as to the absorption of all human nature in one perpetual whirl of lovemaking.

The "Three Glorious Days" of July, 1830, have now produced another change; and peace has given But with the female pen in general, the whole leisure to think of something else than conquest affair is resolved into one impulse-all is “ pasand the conscription. The power of the national sion." The winds of heaven have nothing to do pen has turned again to fiction, and the natural wit, but to "waft a sigh from Indus to the pole." The habitual dexterity, and dashing verbiage of France art of printing is seriously presumed to have been have all been thrown into the novel. Even the invented only for "some banished lover, or some French drama, once the pride of the nation, has captive maid." Flirtation is the grand business of perished under this sudden pressure. A French life. The maiden flirts from the nursery, the marmodern tragedy is now only a rhymed melo-drama. ried woman flirts from the altar. The widow adds Even French history attracts popular applause only to the miscellaneous cares of her "bereaved" life, as it approaches to a three volume romance. Ev- flirtation from the hearse which carries her husband ery man of name in French modern authorship has to his final mansion. She flirts in her weeds more attained it only by the rapid production of novels. glowingly than ever. But she knows too well the But no language can be too contemptuous, or too "value of her liberty" to submit to be a slave once condemnatory, for the spirit of those works in gen-more; and so flirts on for life, in the most innocent eral. Every tie of society is violated in the progress of their pages; and violated with the full approval of everybody. Seduction is the habitual office of the hero. Adultery is the regular office of the heroine. In each the vice is simply a matter of course. Manly honor is a burlesque everywhere, but where the criminal shoots the injured husband in a duel. Female virtue is only a proof of dulness or decay, a vulgar formality of mind, or an unaccountable inaptitude to adopt the customs of polished society.

The hero is pictured with every quality which can charm the eye or ear; he is the handsomest, the most accomplished, and the most high-spirited of mankind—all sentiment, and all scoundrelism. The heroine-always a wife or a widow-in the former instance is the "lovely victim of a marriage in which her heart had no share," and in which she is entitled to have all the privileges of her heart supplied; and in the latter is a creature full of charms, about twenty-one, resolved to live for love, but never to be "chained in the iron links of a dull and obsolete ceremonial" again. She quickly fixes her eyes on some Adolphe, Auguste, or Hyppolite, "Officier de la Garde," who has performed prodigies of valor in Algiers, taken lions by the beard everywhere, and is the best waltzer in all Paris. They meet, flame together, swear

manner imaginable, taking all risks, and throwing herself into situations of which the result would be obvious anywhere but in the pages of an English novel.

The French have no scruples on such subjects, and their candor leaves nothing to the imagination. Our female novelists have not yet arrived at that pitch of explicitness, and it is to be hoped will pause before they leap the gulf.

We attribute a good deal of this dangerous adoption to the prevalent habit of yearly running to the continent. The English ear becomes familiarized to language on the other side of the channel, which would have shocked it here. The chief topic of foreign life is intrigue, the chief employment o foreign life is that half idle, half infamous intercourse, which extinguishes all delicacy even in the spectators. The young English woman sees the foreign woman leading a life which, though in England it would stamp her with universal shame, in France or Germany, and above all, in Italy, never brings more than a sneer, and seldom even the sneer. She sees this wedded or widowed profligate received in the highest ranks; flourishing without reproach, if she has the means of keeping an opera-box, or giving suppers; every soul round her acquainted with every point of her history, yet none shrinking from her association. If she has

one Cicisbeo, or ten, the whole affair is selon les nean, her affair is done, if she adds a page a day règles.

to her journal. She gossips along, and scribbles, The young English woman who blushes at this with the indefatigable finger of a maker of bobbin scandalous career, or exhibits any reluctance on lace, or a German knitter of stockings. The most the subject of the companionship or the crime, is slipshod descriptions of everything that has been laughed at as a "novice," is charged with a want described before; sketches of peasant character of the "savoir vivre," is quietly reproved for "the taken from the beggars at the roadside; national coldness of her English blood," and is recommend- traits taken from the common-places of the tableed to abandon, as speedily as possible, ideas so un-d'hote, and court secrets copied from the newspasuitable to "the glow of the warm South."

She soon finds a dangler, or a dozen danglers, who, having nothing on earth to do, and in their penury rejoiced to find any spot where they can kill an hour, and get a cup of coffee, are daily at her command. All those fellows, too, are counts; the title being about as common, and as cheap, as chimney-sweepers among us, though not belonging to so valuable a fraternity.

pers-all are disgorged into the journal. We have, unfailingly, whole pages of setting suns, moonlight nights, effulgent stars, and southern breezes. She gloats over pictures of enraptured monks, and sees heaven in the eyes of saints, copied from the painter's mistresses. If she goes to Italy, she tells us of the banditti, the gondola, and St. Peter's; gazes with solemn speculation on the naked beauties of the Belvidere Apollo; and descants in an ultraAfter a month's training of this kind, the poor ecstasy on the proportions of sages and heroes desfool is fit for nothing else, to the last hour of her titute of drapery; winding up by an adventure, in being. She is a flirt and a figurante, as long as which she falls by night into the hands of a marchshe lives. Duty and decorum are things too icy ing regiment, or band of smugglers setting out on for the "ardor of her soul." The life of England | a robbery, and leaving the world to guess at the is utterly barbarian to the refinement of the land results of the adventure to herself. of macaroni.

In all this farrago, she never gives the reader an And it is unquestionably much better that the atom of information worth the paper which she whole tribe should remain where they are, and blots. We have no additional lights on character, roam among the lazzaroni, than return to corrupt public life, national feeling, or national advancethe decencies of English life. If this sentimentalistment. All is as vapid as the "Academy of Comhas money, she is sure to be picked up by some pliments," and as well known as "Lindley Mur"superb chevalier," some rambling fortune-hunter, ray's Grammar." But why object to all this? or known swindler, hunted from the gambling ta- Why not let the scribbler take her way—and the ble; probably beginning his career as a frizeur or world know that vineyards are green, and the sky a footman, and making rapid progress towards the blue, if it desires the knowledge? Our reason is galleys. If she has none, she returns to England, this: such practices actually destroy all taste for to grumble, for the next fifty years, at the climate, the legitimate narratives of travel. Those trading the country, and the people; to drawl out her tourists talk nonsense, until intelligence itself bemaudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the comes wearisome. They strip away the interest Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a which novelty gives to new countries, and by runcameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some ning their silly speculation into scenes of beauty, inamorato, probably since hanged,) prate papistry, sublimity, or high recollection, would make Tempe and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holi-a counterpart to the Thames Tunnel; Mount Atlas days "charming things," and long to see the car- a fellow to Primrose Hill; and Marathon a facnival, and the worship of the Virgin together, simile of the Zoological Garden or Bartholomew imported to relieve the ennui of London. Fair. The subject is pawed, and dandled, and fondled, until the very name excites nausea; and a writer of real ability would no more touch upon

The subject is startling; and we recommend anything, and everything, in the shape of employment, in preference to the vitiating follies of a life of tour-it, than a great artist would paint St. George and ing.

the Dragon.

Another tribe of female authorship ought to be This has been the history of the decline of extinguished without a moment's delay. Those works of imagination in England. No sooner had are the yearly travellers. A woman of this kind Mrs. Radcliffe touched the old monasteries with scampers over the continent, like a queen's mes- her glorious pencil, than a generation of monk. senger, every season; she rushes along with the describers and ruined-castle-builders sprang up, rapidity and the regularity of the "Royal Mail." until the very name of convent or castle became The month of May no sooner appears in the cal- an abhorrence. Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the endar, than she packs up her trunk, and crosses to Last Minstrel," rich and romantic as it was, was Boulogne, "to make a book." One year she nearly buried under an overflow of heavy imitatakes the north, another the south; to her all tions, which drove his genuis to other pursuits, and points of the compass are equal. But whether the which filled the public ear with such enormities of roulage carries her to the Baltic or the Mediterra- octo-syllabic ennui, that it hates poetry ever since.