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romantic literature, wherein sudden conversions and love at first sight abounded, this was æsthetic, though to us most painful. We prefer Hector to Achilles; not so the Greeks. When Göthe treated in Iphigenie the same subject as Euripides, he was forced to introduce new feelings and new ethics: the Greeks would have laughed at her scruples of honour; Christians would have shuddered at the Greek treachery. It is owing to the neglect of this branch of inquiry that such utterly false criticisms are written on Calderon; critics mistake the Catholic element he breathed, the Catholic audience he addressed. Such an essay should contain potentially the whole history of poetry; and it is from the want of it that no history of poetry yet written is really critical. To write such a history, a man must, as Schlegel says, "possess an universality “ of mind; a flexibility, which, throwing aside all personal "predilections and blind habits, enables him to transport "himself into the peculiarities of other ages and nations, and “feel them, as it were, from their central point*.”

We have now performed our task of introducing Hegel and German æsthetics to our readers; more we could not do-more we did not attempt: to such as are interested in the subject we hope it will be sufficient.

ARTICLE II.

Viola the Affianced; or, 'Tis an Old Tale and often told. (Second edition.) Colburn. 1839.

We were invited to the perusal of this little volume by its very modest title, and have found so much in it to set us thinking, that we would, if possible, acknowledge our obligations to the author. The tale might have been an old one, if the subject were commonly well enough apprehended to be told out clearly in words, but we fear it is one on which ignorance is as general as it is fatal. The philosophical scope of the book, if we guess it rightly, is very bold. It is a reading on the anatomy of one of the saddest of all heart-maladies—

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a research into the source of the deepest suffering, often the only form of suffering, of which the finest and gentlest spirits are cognizant. It is here that the secret of their earthly trial lies. Disappointed affection has no present anguish so tormenting as the discovery that a mere phantom of the brain has been mistaken for a state of the heart. Such is the theme of the very serious tale we propose in this place to notice; and our notice will be serious, for we hold to the paradox, no longer new, that there may be more substantial truth in a work of fiction than in the faithfullest chronicle of facts.

We fancy we detect abundant evidence of female authorship. These are the usual characteristics of the best novels of our day, which are the mintage of the noble hearts, and the well-informed observing heads, of gifted women. Our female novelists have been generally content to show us how a set of very ordinary people behave under very ordinary circumstances. We have little or no incident-so little as almost to amount to dullness-nothing in any one page to set us guessing at what may be coming in the next. We are made acquainted with feelings rather than with facts; broad results rather than striking events; a course of conduct rather than single actions. We have more of the doings of daily life than of the feats of an hour. We find food for our reflections in the passing accidents of the page before us, and so are taught the lessons which the actual events of life might fail to suggest. There is an Homeric homeliness in these works which is never vulgar and never trivial. These are, if we mistake not, some of the features of such chef-d'œuvres as Miss Martineau's 'Dearbrook,' Miss Edgeworth's 'Helen,' and Miss Austen's 'Emma,' and we trace them here. Perhaps, from the nature of the subject, we have rather more of storm, and less of the repose of the novels we have named. At the same

time it must be owned that "The Old Tale' has a few blemishes, which may be strictly feminine, but which the accomplished artists we have alluded to have contrived to avoid.

The tale opens with Cousin Dorothy's distress on the death of her mother-her only near and dear relation-and her introduction to Charles Sidney, whose house is to be henceforth her asylum. Mr. Sidney is a right-minded man of the world,

a good deal tainted with the vulgarity of pounds, shillings and pence; straightforward in his dealing with his kind; one to whom "getting into debt" appears "the only species of theft his rank in life allows." His heart is fortified with a good deal of humanity, of which he is chary enough; like his worldly possessions, it might have been a talent committed to his care, and to be scrupulously accounted for. Dorothy

is strong-hearted, and a calm, contented soul, sensitive to her situation of "poor relation:" here with her cousins is to be her home; it is the offering, if not of the highest charity, yet of duty; so she resolves to endure, as she best may, Mrs. Sidney and the other family nuisances inseparable from a lot for which she may, on all other accounts, well be thankful. Let us hear her account of her relatives :

"Mr. Sidney was a perfect man of business, devoted to his mercantile concerns, eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet abhorring speculation, tormentingly punctual and methodical in his habits, (it was said, indeed, that all the clocks and watches in the neighbourhood were regulated by his movements,) precise in his manners, and rigorously neat in his attire. In person he was tall, stout, and inflexibly erect; his eye was deep-set and penetrating; his brow thoughtful, as that of one absorbed in calculation; his step 'plantigrade' and determined. A man he was of 'cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows.'

"Mrs. Sidney belonged to that numerous class of persons who are, at this present day, so rife in the world; persons whom La Bruyère has described as 'portés par la foule, et entrainés par la multitude.' There was a species of moral cowardice in her disposition, a truckling to opinions, a slavish fear of outstepping the bounds of conventional propriety. This all-pervading dread influenced every action and warped every notion. What will people say?' was her watch-word. We must do as others do!' was her favourite aphorism. Alas! how few there are who dare chalk out a path for themselves! how fewer still, who, having chalked it out, walk perseveringly and consistently therein! How many corroding cares and feverish anxieties would be spared to us, if we could only dare think for ourselves! if we were but to assert our own moral dignity, and, scorning the shuffling tricks, the petty manœuvres and dishonest practices of those who are ever hustling and jostling each other as they strive, with an energy worthy of a better cause, to ascend yet higher and higher on the ladder of artificial society, we were but content to walk nobly and unblenchingly in the sphere allotted to us! "For aught else that appeared, Mrs. Sidney was an estimable woman, devoted to her husband, fond and proud of her children in no common degree. I am sure, too, she thought she did not make me feel my dependent situation; but I had a foolish pride, and was apt to be mortified when she would bid me ring the bell or fetch a chair, whilst her own boys, or two or three idle young men, were lounging about the apartment; and I have often

felt the blood tingling in my cheeks on hearing her say to a stranger, who would perhaps rise politely to greet me on my entering the room, 'Oh! don't disturb yourself; 'tis only cousin Dorothy.'

"I had certainly no right to claim deference or attention from any person, much less from young men, for I was very plain, and, worse than that, I was unpardonably dowdy-looking; even dress failed to improve me. It was not true, in my case, that 'fine feathers make fine birds.' I had but one offer of marriage during the whole time I lived with the Sidneys, and that was from an elderly gentleman (as the boys facetiously called him) of threescore and ten, who was so captivated by the skilful manner in which I bound up a lacerated foot, the property of that mischievous imp, Dick Sidney, that having one evening indulged in sundry liberal potations, and being the next day confined to his bed with a toe as inflamed as his temper, he sent me a proposal of marriage in due form, with a detailed statement of his funded and landed property, and the offer of a settlement-such a settlement! that I think it would have been the climax of virtue, in any woman acquainted with his liberal intentions, not to sigh for the 'pride, pomp and circumstances of glorious widowhood;' but I refused him, although my cousin Charles swore I was a fool for my pains, and Mrs. Sidney prophesied I should never have another offer. She was right, and I was right too; and so I believe they all thought when shortly after he married a very young lady, whom he survived; she having died after four years of connubial bliss, without any visible or tangible complaint. The physicians were driven to a nonplus; they felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, tried the stethoscope to her heart and lungs, and finally, wagging their oracular heads, pronounced it an inward complaint. Her own maid averred she died of worry. The malady or the treatment is little known in the 'ars medendi'; but few are aware how often it has swollen the bills of mortality."-Page 17-20.

Then comes the heroine, Viola Sidney:

"Well did she become her name! You could not meet the melting gaze of her dark, 'unfathomable eye,' you could not listen to her touching melodious voice, without being assured that so spoke, so gazed the Sicilian maid, when she gave forth the feigned story of her sister's love, by which she would have Orsino interpret her own. Viola was romantic, ardent, affectionate to a degree little common; but then had she an energy of mind, a moral rectitude of disposition, a firm and undeviating resolve, which acted as a powerful counterpoise, and together gave an unity of character which I have rarely seen equalled."-Page 22.

Again:

"And truly my heart did warm very tenderly towards those gay young things; but especially did I love with an intense affection that graceful, swanlike, lovely, and most loveable of human beings, Viola Sidney. There was another too, of whom I have not yet spoken; Lucy, the delight of the entire household, who was but an infant when I first came to reside with them; her disposition was eminently gentle and affectionate. As she grew up every one remarked that she was astonishingly like Viola; and so she

was like her; but only when Viola was in her pensive moods,―her oriental moods, as I used to term them, when she drooped her fair head so languishingly, and her large dark eyes seemed to be drinking in excess of love. But then what most charmed me in Viola Sidney was, that I have seen those same eyes dancing in their own sunny rays-I have seen them lit up by the 'Promethean spark' of intellect—I have seen them too flash with noble indignation at the tale of oppression or unmerited contumely. It was not one only, but a complete galaxy of impressions. I scarcely know when I thought her loveliest; each gaze of her varying countenance seemed to me surpassingly beautiful, until another came and dimmed it. Little Lucy, on the contrary, had but one regard, and that was soft, melting, confiding; her eyes swam in their own liquid lustre.”—Page 38.

Barring the last sentence, which does not convey any very distinct image, the passage we have cited gives a very prepossessing account of the personal appearance of two of the chief characters of the drama. Well, Viola comes out at a citizen's ball, makes a wonderful impression on every one but herself, which indifference to her own charms, by the way, and her entire want of vanity, seems rather to vex papa and mama. Mrs. Sidney too, who is looking for events long before their time, fancies that she has not her daughter's full confidence. Cousin Dorothy has something to the point.

"And yet no mother can have the confidence of her children who does not, in their nursery and school days, enter into all their pursuits and amusements, who does not listen to their communications with a lively interest, sympathizing with their sorrows, and making their joys her own. She need not then fear that the nurse or the governess will supplant her in the affections of her children; she too will be careful not to quench that confidence by the inopportune lecture or sharp rebuke. Few are aware of the chilling blight, the drear opakeness and desolation of feeling which have at such times fallen on a young girl's heart; when in the full gush of confiding love and boundless trust she has asked for sympathy and succour where nature whispered she might not plead in vain; she yet has found her confidence repelled her trust betrayed. How often, from that moment, has she gone on her way a solitary being, in silence and in loneliness, letting her feelings prey on themselves; and like the canker-worm in the bud, blighting and blasting their own freshness ere they come to maturity!"-Page 47.

But we must not stop to cull flowers by the way: to the tale. After she has passed three years in the gay world, Lord Glenalbert proposes to Viola Sidney. Mr. Sidney of course accepts the peer for his daughter, and when the deed is done irrevocably, Viola appears to cousin Dorothy, who is ever awake, "to be arguing or reasoning herself, as it were, into love."

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