age in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Ferrars, | few who have excelled in the difficult art of Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, portraying characters in which no single and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of feature is extravagantly overcharged. the upper part of the middle class. They If we have expounded the law soundly, have all been liberally educated. They all we can have no difficulty in applying it to lie under the restraints of the same sacred the particular case before us. Madame profession. They are all young. They are D'Arblay has left us scarcely any thing but all in love. Not one of them has any hob- humors. Almost every one of her men byhorse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not and women has some one propensity deone has a ruling passion, such as we read veloped to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for of in Pope. Who would not have expected example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips them to be insipid likenesses of each other? without some allusion to his own birth and No such thing. Harpagon is not more un- station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allulike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more sion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. unlike to Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every Hobson, without betraying the self-indulone of Miss Austen's young divines to all gence and self-importance of a purse-proud his reverend brethren. And almost all this upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering is done by touches so delicate, that they some sneaking remark for the purpose of elude analysis, that they defy the powers currying favor with his customers; or Mr. of description, and that we know them to Meadows, without expressing apathy and exist only by the general effect to which weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without they have contributed. declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skippur-ping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, asfin the character of Monckton we do not think that she succeeded well.

A line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists of this class, and those poets and novelists whose skill lies in the exhibiting of what Ben Johnson called humors. The words of Ben are so much to the pose, that we will quote them :—

"When some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluxions all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humor." We are, therefore, forced to refuse to There are undoubtedly persons, in whom Madame D'Arblay a place in the highest humors such as Ben describes have attained rank of art; but we cannot deny that, in the a complete ascendency. The avarice of rank to which she belonged, she had few Elwes, the insane desire of Sir Egerton equals, and scarcely any superior. The vaBrydges for a barony to which he had no riety of humors which is to be found in her more right than to the crown of Spain, the novels is immense; and though the talk of malevolence which long meditation on each person separately is monotonous, the imaginary wrongs generated in the gloomy general effect is not monotony, but a very mind of Bellingham, are instances. The lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots feeling which animated Clarkson and other are rudely constructed and improbable, if virtuous men against the slave-trade and we consider them in themselves. But they slavery, is an instance of a more honorable are admirably framed for the purpose of exkind. hibiting striking groups of eccentric charSeeing that such humors exist, we can-acters, each governed by his own peculiar not deny that they are proper subjects for the imitations of art. But we conceive that the imitation of such humors, however skilful and amusing, is not an achievement of the highest order; and, as such humors are rare in real life, they ought, we conceive, to be sparingly introduced into works which profess to be pictures of real life. Never. theless, a writer may show so much genius in the exhibition of these humors, as to be fairly entitled to a distinguished and permanent rank among classics. The chief seats of all, however, the places on the dais and under the canopy, are reserved for the

But

whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon,
and each bringing out by opposition the
oddities of all the rest. We will give one
example out of many which occur to us.
All probability is violated in order to bring
Mr. Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and
Mr. Albany into a room together.
when we have them there, we soon forget
probability in the exquisitely ludicrous ef
fect which is produced by the conflict of
four old fools, each raging with a monoma-
nia of his own, each talking a dialect of his
own, and each inflaming all the others anew
every time he opens his mouth.

Madame D'Arblay was most successful in not have been wise even if she could have comedy, and indeed in comedy which bor- imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesdered on farce. But we are inclined to in- worth did. But such imitation was beyond fer from some passages, both in Cecilia and her power. She had her own style. It was Camilla, that she might have attained equal a tolerably good one; and might, without distinction in the pathetic. We have form- any violent change, have been improved into ed this judgment, less from those ambitious a very good one. She determined to throw scenes of distress which lie near the catas-it away, and to adopt a style in which she trophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, and the parting of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest Baronet thinks himself dying.

It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame D'Arblay rests on what she did during the earlier half of her life, and that every thing which she published during the forty-three years which preceded her death, lowered her reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the time when her faculties ought to have been in their maturity, they were smitten with any blight. In the Wanderer, we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the Memoirs of her Father, there is no trace of dotage. They are very bad; but they are so, as it seems to us, not from a decay of power, but from a total perversion of power. The truth is, that Madame D'Arblay's style underwent a gradual and most pernicious change-a change which, in degree at least, we believe to be unexampled in literary history, and of which it may be useful to trace the progress.

When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her early journals, and the novel of Evelina, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most submissive worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that the style even of his best writings was by no means faultless, and that even had it been faultless, it might not be wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology which is proper in a disquisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a Dictionary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. Old gentlemen do not criticise the reigning modes, nor do young gentlemen make love, with the balanced epithets and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, a skilful writer may use with happy effect.

In an evil hour the author of Evelina took the Rambler for her model. This would

could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney; it was not so easy to become Samuel Johnson.

In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But in Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy ; and the passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive, are few. There were people who whispered that Johnson had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy. Miss Burney's real excellences were as much beyond the reach of Johnson, as his real excellences were beyond her reach. He could no more have written the Masquerade scene, or the Vauxhall scene, than she could have written the Life of Cowley or the Review of Soane Jenyns. But we have not the smallest doubt that he revised Cecilia, and that he retouched the style of many passages. We know that he was in the habit of giving assistance of this kind most freely. Goldsmith, Hawkesworth, Boswell, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among those who obtained his help. Nay, he even corrected the poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had never seen. When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, he promised to give her his best counsel, though he owned that he was not particularly well qualified to advise on matters relating to the stage. We therefore think it in the highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with him, would have brought out an important work without consulting him ; and, when we look into Cecilia, we see such traces of his hand in the grave and elevated passages, as it is impossible to mistake. Before we conclude this article, we will give two or three examples.

When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world as a writer, she was in a very different situation. She would not content herself with the simple English in which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened the style of

Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson's man- This is not a fine style, but simple, per ner without Johnson's aid. The conse-spicuous, and agreeable. We now come to quence was, that in Camilla every passage Cecilia, written during Miss Burney's intiwhich she meant to be fine is detestable; macy with Johnson; and we leave it to our and that the book has been saved from con- readers to judge whether the following pasdemnation only by the admirable spirit and sage was not at least corrected by his force of those scenes in which she was con-hand :tent to be familiar.

But there was to be a still deeper descent. and, though a deep wound to pride, no offence to "It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, After the publication of Camilla, Madame morality. Thus have I laid open to you my whole D'Arblay resided ten years at Paris. During heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my those years there was scarcely any inter-vain-glory, and exposed with equal sincerity the course between France and England. It was sources of my doubts and the motives of my deciwith difficulty that a short letter could oc- sion. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know casionally be transmitted. All Madame D'-not. The difficulties which are yet to encounter I Arblay's companions were French. She must have scarce courage to mention. My family, misfear to enumerate, and the petition I have to urge have written, spoken, thought, in French. taking ambition for honor, and rank for dignity, Ovid expressed his fear that a shorter exile have longed planned a splended connexion for me, might have affected the purity of his Latin. to which, though my invariable repugnance has During a shorter exile, Gibbon unlearned stopped any advances, their wishes and their views his native English. Madame D'Arblay had immoveably adhere. I am but too certain they carried a bad style to France. She brought make a trial where I despair of success. I know will now listen to no other. I dread, therefore, to back a style which we are really at a loss to not how to risk a prayer with those who may silence describe. It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, me by a command." a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas, which the gibberish of the Negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords. Sometimes it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest parts, of Mr. Galt's nov els; sometimes of the perorations of Exeter "He was assaulted, during his precipitated reHall; sometimes of the leading articles of turn, by the rudest fierceness of wintry elemental the Morning Post. But it most resembles strife; through which, with bad accomodations and the puffs of Mr. Rowland and Dr. Goss. It innumerable accidents, he became a prey to the merciless pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumamatters not what ideas are clothed in such tism, which barely suffered him to reach his home, a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Ba-ere, long and piteously, it confined him, a tortured con united, would not save a work so writ-prisoner, to his bed. Such was the check that alten from general derision.

It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our readers to judge how wide. ly Madame D'Arblay's three styles differed

from each other.

The following passage was written before she became intimate with Johnson. It is from Evelina :

"His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a foolish overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his close attention to business and love of money, though he seems himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, very goodnatured."

Take now a specimen of Madame D'Arblay's later style. This is the way in which she tells us that her father, on his journey back from the Continent, caught the rheu

matism :

most instantly curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of entering upon a new species of existence-that of an approved man of letters; for it was on the bed of sickness, exchanging the light wines of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothe carics' Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with enjoyment!"

Here is a second passage from Evelina:"Mrs. Selwyn is very kind and attentive to me. She is extremely clever. Her understanding, indeed, may be called masculine; but unfortunately her manners deserve the same epithet. For, in studying to acquire the knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness of her own. In regard to myself, however, as I have neither courage nor inclination to argue with her, I have never been personally hurt at her want of gentleness-a virtue which nevertheless seems so essential a part of the female character, that I find myself more awkward and less at ease with a woman who wants it than I do with a man."

This is a good style of its kind; and the following passage from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless one. We say with confidence-Either Sam Johnson or the Devil:

that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor ast could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of "Even the imperious Mr. Delvile was more supMadame D'Arblay's later works, without portable here than in London. Secure in his own finding flowers of rhetoric like these. Nocastle, he looked round him with a pride of power thing in the language of those jargonists at and possession which softened while it swelled him. whom Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the His superiority was undisputed; his will was with-language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approachout control. He was not, as in the great capital of es this new Euphuism. the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. No rivalry disturbed his peace; no equality mortified his greatness. All he saw were either vassals of his power, or guests bending to his pleasure. He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his haughtiness, and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of condescension."

It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That her later works were complete failures, is a fact too notorious to be dissembled; and some persons, we believe, have consequently taken up a

We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, that no such paragraph as that which we have last quoted, can be found in any of Madame D'Arblay's works except Cecilia. Compare with it the fol-rated writer, and that she had not the powers lowing sample of her later style:

notion that she was from the first an over

which were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which good-luck and fash"If beneficence be judged by the happiness which ion had placed her. We believe, on the it diffuses, whose claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, from the muni- contrary, that her early popularity was no ficence with which she celebrated her annual festi- more than the just reward of distinguished val for those hapless artificers who perform the merit, and would never have undergone an most abject offices of any authorized calling, in be-eclipse, if she had only been content to go ing the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vain-glory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts from all society."

We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly praised on this account by Johnson.

"The last of men," says Madame D'Arblay," was Doctor Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by nullifying the labors of talents."

The club, Johnson's club, did itself no honor by rejecting on political grounds two distinguished men, the one a Tory, the other a Whig. Madame D'Arblay tells the story thus: "A similiar ebullition of political rancor with that which so difficultly had been conquered for Mr. Canning, foamed over the ballot-box to the exclusion of Mr. Rogers."

on writing in her mother-tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguish

ed men.

Newton failed when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristophanes to edit Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his head that the Blind Fiddler and the Rent-day were unworthy of his powers, and challenged competition with Lawrence as a portrait-painter. Such failures should be noted for the instruction of posterity; but they detract little from the permanent reputation of those who have really done great things.

Yet one word more. It is not only on account of the intrinsic merit of Madame An offence punishable with imprisonment D'Arblay's early works that she is entitled is, in this language, an offence "which pro- to honorable mention. Her appearance is duces incarceration." To be starved to an important epoch in our literary history. death is, "to sink from inanition into non- Evelina was the first tale written by a woentity." Sir Isaac Newton is, "the develo- man, and purporting to be a picture of life per of the skies in their embodied move-and manners, that lived or deserved to live. ments;" and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of The Female Quixotte is no exception. That clever people sat silent, is said to have been work has undoubtedly great merit when "provoked by the dulness of a taciturnity considered as a wild satirical harlequinade;

but, if we consider it as a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule.

Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Evelina, were such as no lady would have written; and many of them were such as no lady could without confusion own that she had read. The very name of novel was held in horror among religious people. In decent families, which did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling, on the part of the grave and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist, having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious people, took, without scruple, liberties which in our generation seem almost incredible.

Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humor, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters. Several accomplished women have followed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies, form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D'Arblay have equalled her ; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed, gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for in truth we owe to her, not only Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla, but also Mansfield Park,

and the Absentee.

CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

THAT Our ground of quarrel with the Chinese was not such as should satisfy reasonable and conscientious minds, has, we believe, been very generally felt, and we hes itated not, on a former occasion, to declare that we were ourselves under that persuasion. By the bungling incapacity of our Whig rulers we were involved in a series of angry disputes with the Chinese authorities, by whom the trade in opium was interdicted, and who sought to enforce their interdict after a fashion of their own. There can be no doubt whatever that our smug. gling merchants persevered in the forbid den traffic, long after an authoritative denouncement of it had been officially promul gated, which ought, in all propriety to have been treated with respect. Under the old system of trade, as in operation during the monopoly of the East India Company, due provision would have been made against any infraction of subsisting regulations. But under the new system of free trade, there was no power in the superintendent to exercise any effective control over the conduct of individuals, who were all too intent upon private gain to be much concerned for the public safety. Accordingly the work of smuggling went perseveringly on. The Canton river was crowded with vessels which only awaited their opportunity to land their pernicious drug upon the Chinese shores; until the extreme measure was resolved on, of surrounding the building in which our residents resided, and compelling them, under a threat of starvation, or even some more ignominious death, to deliver up all the opium of which they were the proprietors in the river, and to pledge themselves against persevering in a traffic which had so deservedly incurred his celestial majesty's high displeasure.

It is then, we think, demonstratively clear, that had a prudent and provident gov ernment directed our councils, the opium disputes would either never have occurred, or have been easily settled without proceeding to open war.

Undoubtedly what now occurred rendered a vindication of our outraged merchants, criminal though they may have been, a matter of state necessity. No nation should submit to such an insult without redress, because no nation could submit to such an insult with safety. It was, therefore, indis pensably necessary that the Emperor of China should be made to feel that we were possessed of a power of self-vindication;