being candidly stated without disguise or suppression. Although composed in the intervals of laborious professional occupation, this work might well be supposed to be the result of the labor of a life uninterruptedly devoted to the investigation. Originating nearly forty years since in an academical thesis, it has become the standard of ethnological science; and will remain so, we feel assured, so long as the life of its accomplished author shall be spared to engraft upon it the results of the inquiries now so extensively and vigorously prosecuted. Of the smaller work it will be enough to say that it affords a more concise and popular view of the subject, for the use of those who might be deterred from entering upon it by the bulk and profundity of the "Physical History;" those departments, however, being dwelt upon in most detail, which most support the doctrine of the Unity of the Race. We shall be happy if, by making Dr. Prichard's writings better known among our countrymen, we contribute towards their obtaining that place in our scientific literature, which they have long held in the estimation of the learned of Germany. by savage and unrelenting fierceness, are gentle, and tender, and affectionate to their young. The grim lion fondles with paternal softness his playful cubs; and the savage bear has been known to interpose her own body between the deadly musket and her helpless offspring. But this feeling in animals lasts only for a season. After they have nourished and brought up their young, these go out from their parents, all further ties between them are broken up, and they know each other no more. How different is this from human connections! The fond mother watches over the long and helpless period of infancy, instils into early childhood lessons of wisdom and virtue, and feels her hopes and affections increase with every year that brings an increase of reason. are such family ties severed by death. The child, on its part, returns the care and affection of its parents, and when old age and second childhood come upon them, the children then feel it their greatest happiness to repay in acts of kindness and attention the debt of gratitude which is justly due. What a moral beauty is thus thrown over the common instinctive affections, and how greatly superior appears man's nature to that of the mere brute.-British Quarterly. Nor AFFECTION FOR OFFSPRING IN BRUTES AND HUMAN BEINGS.-One of the strongest feelings of animals is that of affection for their offspring, and indeed so intense is this impulse among the greater number, that it may be said to exceed the care which they employ for their own preservation, or the indulgence of their own appetites. Among insects and some other of the inferior tribes, the care and solicitude of providing for their young engrosses the better half of their existence; for they labor during the prime of life to provide a comfortable nest and proper food for their offspring, which they are never destined to see, death overtaking them before they can enjoy the pleasure of beholding their future family. Many timid animals that shrink from danger while they are single and alone, become bold and pugnacious when surrounded by their young. Thus the domestic hen will face any danger and encounter any foe in order to protect her brood of chickens; and the lark and linnet will allow themselves to be taken in their nest rather than desert the young which lie protected under their wings. Even those animals whose general nature is characterized DICKENS IN AFRICA.-Perhaps no author ever sprung into popularity so suddenly and universally as Dickens. That popularity may be ascribed to the sympathy and geniality of Boz's style, and the thorough nationality and genuineness of his portraitures. An anecdote. will illustrate the influence of his works upon foreigners and absentees. "Mr. Davy, who accompanied Colonel Cheney up the Euphrates, was for a time in the service of Mehemet Ali Pacha. 'Pickwick' happening to reach Davy while he was at Damascus, he read a part of it to the Pacha, who was so delighted with it that Davy was, on one occasion, called up in the middle of the night to finish the reading of the chapter in which he and the Pacha had been interrupted. Mr. Davy read, in Egypt, upon another occasion, some passages from these unrivalled 'Papers' to a blind Englishman, who was in such ecstasy with what he heard, that he exclaimed he was almost thankful he could not see he was in a foreign country; for that while he listened, he felt completely as though he were again in England." From Bentley's Miscellany. MARIA EDGEWORTH. WHEN considering the imaginative litera- | ture of England during the past half century, the historian to come,-especially if there be anything of the Salique law-giver in his composition,-will possibly be surprised by the value of the contributions made to it by women. It is pleasant meanwhile for contemporary chroniclers to reflect how many among these have been allowed by "Time and Change" to live to the full enjoyment of their virtuous and bright reputation to have seen one fashion pass and another succeed, and the illustrations of truth and beauty which they originated, as clear and as little likely to wane as at the moment of being given forth to the world, amidst all the fevers and tremors of virgin authorship. The authoress of "The Canterbury Tales" has lived to become a classic; Jane Porter, to read the long list of his torical novels of which her own and her sister's were the predecessors; Joanna Baillie, though "Retired as noontide dew," ing to the Good Fairy who delighted us in the young days when a "book was a book," being called to the pleasant duty of pronouncing an éloge (as they say in France) upon the authoress of "Castle Rackrent," and the "Absentee," and "Vivian," and "Basil Lowe," and " Harry and Lucy,”the excellent and incomparable Maria Edgeworth. Our éloge, however, shall not be, "after the manner of the French," a piece of unmitigated flattery. No one has more closely and systematically addressed herself to the understanding than the delightful novelist whom we shall attempt to characterize; in the case of no one, therefore, is the keenest intellectual appreciation more of a necessity. The Della Cruscans did well to rhapsodize over one another's Della Cruscanisms; the class-novelists must look to be propped by class-panegyric, or assailed by class-prejudice;-the romantic, to be romantically approached with compliments of the superlative degree. We will try to be “fair and honest" with one, the whole scope and tissue of whose authorship has been to defend fairness and honesty by the inculcation of truth and high principle. delightful example among those who have been the equal and chosen friends of men of genius, and yet have kept, not acted the By Miss Edgeworth's own preface to the keeping of their womanly simplicity,-has third edition of the Memoirs of her Father, been searched out on the Hampstead Hill, we are reminded that eighty-two years have by the voices of the worthiest of the world elapsed since she was born, being the daughbringing her their precious and honest trib-ter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, by the utes. And here, now that we are at the end of a period of novelists,-now that the spasmodic manufacturers of horrors have had their day, now that the Silver Fork people have "said their say," and can hardly find a reader in the Porter's black chair, or in the drowsy Abigail, who sits up waiting for the return of Lady Anne from Almack's --now that the last school, that of "The Wooden Ladle," with its tales of jails and hospital anatomies, and garret graces, and kennel kindlinesses, begins to tire, and its sentimentality to be proved 66 a hollow thing," here do we find ourselves, return first of four wives, born in England, and until the age of thirteen, with little exception, brought up in this country. So far as can be gathered from the record already quoted Maria was less rigidly trained according to system than some of her brothers and sisters; one of whom was brought up according to the canons of Rousseau, and others, it may be divined, on plans which her own reference to her father's work on "Practical Education" explicitly points out were, in many of their details, proved to be untenable, if not fallacious. Time and space may thus have been given for an originality to de velop itself, which a more formal training might have discouraged. A girl has already gathered much, and felt more, ere she arrives at her teens; and though eighty-two years ago precocity was less common than it is in our time of electrically-diffused intelligence, it is not chimerical to presume that Imagination must even then have begun to stir,-nay, too, and taste to select have already awakened in one whose character throughout life has displayed a singular union of vivacity with temperance, of observation with reasoning power. Then, too, it may have been good for the authoress that Ireland, with its strange, pathetic, humorous life, came upon her as a contrast, not as a matter of course. She might otherwise hardly have so shrewdly noticed all the odd discrepancies and striking individualities of its Sir Condy Rackrents and its Sir Terence O' Fays; she might have treated that as natural, inevitable, and not worth the painting, which proved to be a vein of rare interest and peculiar nature. 66 It was by her Castle Rackrent" that Miss Edgeworth was first introduced to the public, and took at once her place in the foremost rank of female novelists. Though the eminent personages of her chronicle might very possibly not really be more individual than Miss Burney's Braughton's, or Madame Duval, or Briggs, or the "tonish" people (as the authoress called them) in Cecilia," they arrested English attention by their strange over-sea air. It was at once felt that we of Britain have nothing so charming, so savage, so humorous, so pathetic, so endearing, and so provoking, as the society and manners depicted. Most curious, too, is it now to read the apology of the Artist for offering such a picture, on the plea that Ireland must, owing to the Union, presently lose its identity, and that the Sir Kits and Thadys must become, like other British subjects, dull, thriving, country gentlemen, and tame followers. Most curious!-seeing that there is no more puzzling sign of the times-their intellectual enlargement and gracious benevolence consideredthan the revival, in every exasperated form, of all the obsolete prejudices and animosities of race,--than the cherishing prepense of all those jealousies, peculiarities, and barbarisms which keep asunder Saxon from Celt, Slave from German, the South from the North. But though-in part, because-Miss Edgeworth's prophecy runs small chance of being fulfilled in our life-time, fifty years or more have done nothing to tarnish the brightness of her delineations, or to give them an obsolete or washed-out air. And her Irish tales and characters are among her best-witness "Ennui,"-witness "The Absentee,"-witness the persona of her Comic Dramas,-to whom we especially call attention because we think they have been unfairly overlooked. We have Sir Walter Scott's own warrant for saying, that it was the freshness and vivacity of their nationality, and the success of their characteristic dialogue, which led him to adventure those tales in the "language of Burns," which, (in spite of its being criticised, on its first utterance, as a dark dialect of Anglified Erse,") metamorphosed the Fiction of Europe. We have the warrant, too, of one of Mr. O'Connell's tail, Mr. O'Neill Daunt, for the assertion that the Liberator was aggrieved at the novelist, because she never directly espoused the cause of Catholic Emancipation. It is something to have shown the way to the genius of Scott, and to have been counted as a stumbling-block by the Arch-(let Orangeman or Repealer fill the blank each for himself) of Derrynane Abbey ! Once having begun and been acknowledged, Miss Edgeworth could not but proceed in her pleasure-giving labor, (for who gives so much pleasure as the Story Teller?) We by no means profess to enumerate her novels -but must mention the "Moral Tales," the "Popular Tales," the "Tales of Fashionable. Life," the insulated stories, "Leonora,” "Belinda," "Patronage," "Harrington and Ormond;" that inimitable sarcastic sketch "The Modern Griselda ;" and the stories for children, which will never lose their hold. We are acquainted with wiser men than ourselves, and burdened, to boot, with graver burdens, (if that could be,) who are still glad of an excuse to read again" The Cherry Orchard," and "The Purple Jar," and "Simple Susan." There are few such books for children in any other language, as we English possess and that is one reason why there are few such men and women as English men and women! For the pleasure of children of a larger growth, it would be hard to specify in the picture-gallery of men and manners which novelists have given, scenes of greater power and emotion, characters of more vivacity and variety, finer touches of humor, than exist in the Edgeworth Library. Let us mention "Vivian," with its deep overmastering interest and exquisitely painful close,-" To-mor," "Out of Debt out of Danger," as stories, the end of which is announced in the row, very 66 66 66 titles thereof, without the interest and mon walks of men,-bound by our responsipain being thereby in the least lessened. bilities, agitated by our cares: loving, fearing, Let us recall the post-boy Lanty's letter, sacrificing itself, serving others as we (should) winding up The Absentee" with a verita- do! But enough of aphorism, and let us ble "trot for the Avenue,"-recollecting the for a moment exclusively regard the light in while that the same hand wrote Sir Philip which Miss Edgeworth was studied and anaBaddeley's description of the fête at Frog-lyzed by a philosophical and refined critic. more, in "Belinda." Let us instance as masterly studies of foible in female form, (all how distinctly marked, all how different!) Almeria, Mrs. Somers in Emilie de Coulanges," Mrs. Beaumont, the policizer in Manoeuvring," and the Frankland girls in "The Contrast," who rejoiced over their newly acquired wealth, because now "they could push Mrs. Craddock in the street." A brightness, a truth, and clearness animate these, and one hundred similar examples which could be collected-which, of themselves, would suffice to give the author her due rank with the initiated. As an artist in detail, whose hand has embraced a range of sub-of benevolence? Certainly not. Where, jects and characters, very nearly as wide as society, there are very few of either sex who have surpassed Miss Edgeworth. Let us now consider the whole of which the above form merely parts. The taste and tendency of Miss Edgeworth's works have been too widely discussed for us also not to enter into the question a little diffusely, as the most important part of our task. While some of her panegyrists have, peradventure, exalted her too high as a moralist, another section of her critics has perversely considered her as a sort of teaching-machine, opposed to everything beautiful, fanciful, poetical, to all, in fact, which a Goethe loves to observe, as making up "eine Natur." No greater amount of short-sighted and wilful misconception has been perpetrated on any argument than this. Generally speaking, indeed, it has always seemed to us that the quarrel betwixt Utilitarianism and Imagination, is one of words rather than realities. For it will be owned as abstract propositions, that Beauty without discretion is, insomuch, Beauty without sympathy, and thus far, Beauty imperfect: that Vice hath as much coldness as warmth as much cruelty as indulgence towards others. Again, it will be agreed that the power in passion theory (to coin words in the new-fashioned manner) bore with a tyrannic and extinguishing harshness upon the feeble, the delicate, the humbly-gifted, and those to whom Nature had denied pleasant attractions. Small is the imagination required to invent a monster: great and truthful the magic which can interest us in a heart, moving within the com In my first enthusiasm of admiration," says Sir James Mackintosh, (following out a defence of the use of imagination, illustrated by a comparison of Raffaelle with Hogarth,) "I thought that Miss Edgeworth had first made fiction useful; but every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues, and the fictions which taught them were, therefore, of the highest, though not of unmixed utility. Miss Edgeworth inculcates prudence, and the many virtues of that family. Are these excellent virtues higher or more useful than those of fortitude, then, is Miss Edgeworth's merit? Her merit, her extraordinary merit, both as a moralist and as a woman of genius,-consists in her having selected a class of virtues far more difficult to treat as the subject of fiction than others, and which had, therefore, been left by former writers to her." Thus, then, it seems, according to the estimate of Mackintosh, that we are in Miss Edgeworth's case, also, dealing with a poetess working up materials which had been found by her predecessors hard to break and bend; and her title as such, therefore, unfairly questioned or misunderstood by those belonging to a different congregation. Question and misunderstanding were rendered critically and personally exclusive by the fact, that, shortly after Miss Edgeworth's success was established, arose that singular and fascinating school of writers, whose denunciation of the selfishness of Virtue (while, in re-, ality, they were illustrating the selfishness of Vice,) so strangely for a time affected our literature. During the reign of the Poetry of Passion, it was totally forgotten-it was indignantly denied--that self-restraint could have any poetry,-that there was any benevolence in sparing pain to others, by providing honestly for their happiness in one's own. No--the unfaithful wife was to be pitied; the husband she wronged, the children she demoralized, were both to be forgotten, forsooth, in the bitterness of her sufferings! The extravagant spendthrift was pardoned, and the wreck and ruin brought by him on a thousand homely and ungracious folks utterly forgotten, because of his charming smile, and because "he wouldn't sell Uncle Oliver's picture!" The grandeur, the beauty, the mystery of crime, were to be dwelt upon as objects of allurement and sympathy, power and diseased passion combined, were to be pitied, because they could not rule the world; and "hardness," "selfishness," and other branding epithets, were flung about on those whom such a code of moral monstrosities revolted. It may be well for England that the end of this epidemic came many years ago! The above granted, let us own that the assignment of an egotistic and mechanical spirit to Miss Edgeworth's works may be in part chargeable, not upon her peculiarities as a moralist, but upon her manner of working as an artist. This she has herself so pleasantly described in her "Memoirs of her Father," that it has naturally-necessarily-a place here: "My father wrote but little; but I may be permitted to say how much, as a critic, he did for me. Yet, indeed, this is out of my power fully to state to the public-only that small circle of our friends, who saw the manuscripts before and after they were corrected by him, can know or imagine how much they were improved by his critical taste and judgment. I “Whenever I thought of writing anything, told him my first rough plans, and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose. 'Sketch that, and show it to me.' These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate upon it in the sketch; but to this he always objected:'I don't want any of your painting-none of your drapery! I can imagine all that; let me see the bare skeleton.' "It seemed to me sometimes impossible that he could understand the very slight sketches I made, when, before I was conscious that I had expressed this doubt in my countenance, he always saw it. "Now my dear little daughter, I know, does His to write on.' His skill in cutting, his decision in * hints for invention furnished me by the incidents "Were it worth while, I could point out many and characters which my father had met with in his youth." 66 Those who are curious whether as to char acter or the manner of working which distinguishes a Van Eyck from a Pietro Perugino, or a Teniers from a Wilkie, can hardly do better than compare the above passage with Miss Burney's revelations of the fevers of confidential modesty, in which she laid her Cecilia," and a certain defunct comedy, before the Streatham Sanhedrim of wits and critics-the Thrales, the Johnsons, the Murphys, the Montagus-her more stubborn counsellor, Daddy Crisp of Chesington, and her animated, accomplished father, the historian of music and the biographer of Metastasio! 66 Now, it is hardly within nature and possibility that such a manner of writing as Miss Edgeworth reveals, should not produce a certain stiffness and over-anxious finish, because of which superficial or impulsive readers have been apt to rebuke the matter of her tales, and the argument of their purnot believe that I understand her.' Then he pose. Difficulties solved by the active ingewould, in his own words, fill up my sketch, paint nuity of another brain than the inventor'sthe description or represent the character intended, incidents clipped, dove-tailed, and chiselled, with such life, that I was quite convinced he not by a revising hand-subjects felt to be unonly seized the ideas, but that he saw, with the happily chosen," which were still to be prophetic eye of taste, the utmost that could be wrought out for consistency's sake-these made of them. After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the filling it up till it had phenomena can hardly consist with ease, been worked upon for a week or a fortnight, or and flow, and the appearance of inspiration. till the first thirty or forty pages were written. There must be also evident under such a disThen they were read to him, and if he thought pensation, a certain consciousness on the part them going on tolerably well, the pleasure in of the writer: a complacent and careful layhis eyes, the approving sound of his voice, even ing-out of plots and plans, of utilizing every without the praise he so warmly bestowed, were episodical incident and accessory figure:sufficient and delightful excitements to go on and and these are calculated to disturb, if finish. When he thought that there was spirit in what was written, but that it required, as it often not to distract, the reader, by drawdid, great correction, he would say, 'Leave that ing his attention from the beauty of the to me; it is my business to cut and correct-yours | fabric to the art of the machinery. Those |