much honour from the transaction. Perverted taste, and insensibility to merit, are in themselves no small blots in the scutcheon of a hero of romance; but the heir of Brambletye, in addition, first trifles with the affections of the noblest character in the book, and then marries and lives on her bounty, leaving her to take the veil, with her "constant, loving, noble nature" unchilled and unaltered, because it seems she could not be happy and preserve the dignity of a heroine. Thus our interest is entirely abstracted from the married couple, and accompanies the solitary lady to her retirement; a state of matters judiciously avoided in Ivanhoe and Waverley, by the interposition of obstacles not existing in the present case.

The merits of the two plots are as different as were obviously the purposes of the authors in forming them. In Woodstock, the attention is confined to a few leading characters, and one or two absorbing subjects of interest. In Brambletye House, it is intended to give a lively chronicle of the principal events and personages of the time, sufficiently connected by a tale, to fix them in the memory. In the one case, the whole action is brought within the compass of a few days; in the other, spread over several years. The one novel resembles an historical picture, consisting of a few figures, marked by strong lights and shades, where nothing interferes to break the unity and breadth of the design or divert the eye from the principal group. The other more reminds us of a long perspective of many hundred objects, ingeniously grouped, and vividly portrayed, but rather distracting the eye with their numbers. The desire to omit nothing characteristic of a marked era of our history has led Mr. Smith rather too much into detail on some points with which we are already familiar, and on others rather too trivial to be recorded. Nothing can improve upon Defoe's description of the plague, which in real home-felt horror is only paralleled by Brown's picture of the yellow-fever at Philadelphia; the particulars of the fire are equally impressed on our recollections, and the king's touching for the evil might surely have been left out without detriment. It is true that most of the court scenes, particularly the chatter of Lady Babington, the catastrophe of the Virtues, and the witty vagaries of Rochester (whose character is kept up to the life), are sketched in the true Waverley taste. But it seems considered necessary, that Milton, Ashmole, Izaak Walton, and other worthies, should all make their successive entries, say something short and appropriate, and walk off the stage again, like the characters in Garrick's Jubilee. By thus dividing his forces, the author of Brambletye weakens their effect; insomuch,

that it is perfectly possible to lay the book aside for the calls of business or exercise, or even to bear the delay of the third volume's arrival, without the same impatience with which we hurry to the conclusion of Woodstock.

The masterpiece of Brambletye House, and the part in which it will least shrink from a comparison with the Waverley novels, is the whole establishment of Adrian Beverning, with his Dutch Sancho, Winky Boss, alias Wouter Weegschaal, who, like Lady Handy's quondam husband, steps in just opportunely to remove "Madame de Trop." The scene of the burgomaster's house and its appurtenances fills up, as well as a Dutch or Flemish picture of the higher class, the ideas with which we people the old gableended brick edifices of the Netherlands, with their multitudinous windows-day-dreams of the times when, as honest Grimstone's emblazoned black-letter saith,

The Muses, Neptune, Mars, and Mercurie,

Did take their seates up in Lower Germanie.

We fancy the clasped folio on a table covered with a gorgeous Persian carpet, opening at some quaint legend or occult science, and marked with a Levantine chain of Zeeckin gold; a sword and theorbo hanging on the wall, a handful of Roman medals scattered on the floor, alchymical retorts mingling with musty bonds upon the shelves, a parroquet on the perch, breaking the chiaro oscuro of the massy oaken roof, and a long perspective of rich galliots and argosies glittering, with their high-carved sterns, through the latticed casement. In the centre, stands the worthy Hoogenmooghen himself, with his Spanish cloak and jewelled agraffe, his peaked beard, and diamond ring, just such a portly figure as Rembrandt delighted to draw, and answering perfectly to our ideas of the magnanimous prince-merchant of the days of De Witt and Van Tromp. Good judgment is shewn in not infusing too great a tinge of Medicean elegance into his ambassadorial importance, his pedantry, and his vertù; which, however, are free from any character of boorishness. Though educated late in life, he is made as much of a high-minded gentleman as Sir Henry Lee himself would have been, if born and bred in a Dutch countinghouse. Even his purse-pride, blended as it is with loftier traits, has nothing selfish or vulgar in it. Money is merely valued by him as the test and gauge of his success in life, and the means of performing liberal actions; as a sort of Dutch honour, of which he resents being robbed of a particle, as an insult on his vigilance, while he gives away thousands voluntarily. The following dia

logue, or rather monologue, introduces us characteristically to the potentate of nutmegs and ducatoons :

"You may see that time has taken me by the beard, a touch that turns every thing to grey, to show us that the evening of life is coming on. You would have been welcome, Sir, without the Alderman's autograph, if there be truth in Seneca's averment, that personal comeliness is a letter of recommendation. Even merit is enhanced by it; Petronius Arbiter was right. Gratior est pulchro veniens è corpore virtus.' You see, Sir, I am giving you credit beforehand, for when I look at you I can never believe you will justify the exclamation applied to Ovid's larva-O quale caput, at cerebrum non habet.'

66

Just as he had finished this somewhat unnecessary and pedantic display of his classical lore, Jocelyn observed that the window was darkened by a bale which was being craned up to the warehouse above, at sight of which the Burgomaster, putting his head to the window, bawled out-' Double S in a diamond. No. 278,-what is the weight!' A voice from below gave the necessary information, which the merchant entered in a book before him, and then turning to Jocelyn, inquired, Are not those delightful nutmegs ?'

666

Really, Sir, I cannot say,' he replied, as I never tasted them.' "Tasted them!' exclaimed the Burgomaster, with an expression of some contempt; 'cannot you judge by the smell? They are just arrived from Amboyna.'

"Our hero declared that the odour was delicious, and indeed the whole house was perfumed with the fragrance of spices, over which not even the smoke of its master's pipe could predominate.

"Did you see my noble vessel in the river?' continued the merchant, de Vrouw Roosje; the Lady Rose, the richest ship that ever entered Rotterdam. These bales are just brought up from her in lighters, for she is yet too deep in the water to come into the harbour. And yet she has nothing in her but spices. Aha! young man, think of that!' He evidently thought a good deal of it himself, for his whole figure expanded with delight as he took the pipe from his mouth for a moment, inflated his capacious cheeks till they resembled those of Boreas, and deliberately puffed out the smoke with another interjection of Aha! young man, think of that!'

"One of the fragrant bales was again passing the window, when, instead of contemplating it with the same complacency as the former, his countenance was marked with anger as he called out in a loud voice- Peterkin Voorst! Peterkin Voorst!'

"Ja, mijn heer, ja,' replied some one from below.

"Who is in the lighter, repairing the bales ?'

6

"Wouter Vanwangen,' was the reply. Dismiss him instantly,' cried the wrathful Burgomaster; he has left a hole in the last bale, and three of the nutmegs have already fallen out. Stop yonder varlet of a boy, he has picked up one of them. Donder ende blixem! are we to be ruined by such careless knaves?'

"As if not to notice this act of meanness in so important a character

as the richest Burgomaster of Rotterdam, Jocelyn had fixed his eyes upon one of the pictures in the apartment, which his host observing, exclaimed, Aha! that is a curious picture; it was painted by Rembrandt, while yet a younker in his father's mill, which only admitting the light from above, imparted to his pencil that peculiar depth of light and shade from which he never afterwards deviated. Next to it is the portrait of his maid servant, which he placed in the window of his house, and for several days deceived the good folks of Amsterdam, who mistook it for a real figure. I gave two hundred double ducats for the pair. But if you are an admirer of these things, look at yonder gem, the shrimp-man, by Frans Miers. It cost me fifteen hundred florins. Aha! think of that!"—Vol. ii. p. 243-247.

It is astonishing that an author possessing Mr. Smith's keen tact and sense of the ridiculous, should have carried his imitation of the Waverley novels so far, as to adopt a worn-out piece of machinery which their author has discarded. Mrs. Mary Lawrence, the mad nun who meets us at every turn, is one of those specimens of anile omnipotence which, since the days of Meg Merrilies, have overrun the regions of fiction to an alarming extent, numerous enough to people Tam o'Shanter's haunted barn, and strong and fleet enough to run down his "gude grey mare, Maggie," in her full career; impervious to all physical wants, and in most instances, invulnerable. True it is, that the latter characteristic is spared us in Dame Lawrence, who is at length blown up in the den where she had, like the toad,

"Under the cold stone

Sweltered venom sleeping got."

While on the other hand it is by no means explained how the bullet passed through the solid person of Jocelyn Joliffe into the pannel, without doing him the least injury. But standing on the high ground which the success of his present work has secured for Mr. Smith, a success achieved under circumstances which would have thrown many an author of merit into the shade, he really might dispense with the aid of these potent old women.

183

ART. XI.-British India.

1. The Political History of India, from 1784 to 1823. By MajorGeneral Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B., K.L.S., F.R.S., &c. &c. &c. In 2 vols. London, Murray, 1826.

2. The History, Design, and Present State of the Religious, Benevolent, and Charitable Institutions, founded by the British in Calcutta, and its vicinity. By Charles Lushington, Esq. of the Bengal Civil Service. Calcutta, 1824.

If anything can be more extraordinary than the British empire in the East, it is the apathy with which that empire is regarded by its possessors. This nation has proclaimed itself lord paramount of the peninsula of India-it has assumed the actual government of half of that immense territory, and is virtually master of the rest. From the Indus to the Ganges, and from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, “ through all that vast extent of country there is not a man who eats a mouthful of rice, but by permission of the East India Company." And yet the great body of the nation, the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, the mass of their most intelligent and influential constituents, the lights of the law and the church, the ornaments of either university, our eminent merchants, our historical and political students, know very little more of the East Indies than of Pekin or Timbuctoo. It seems, at first sight, that there is an obstinate determination in the public mind to continue in this ignorance. Circumstances have repeatedly occurred which were calculated to direct universal attention to this interesting quarter of the world. It was on the Indian field that the great statesmen of the last age contended for popularity and power;-that Mr. Fox was irreparably defeated, and the triumph of Mr. Pitt secured. It was on the same field that Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan astonished their contemporaries with eloquence which has never been surpassed, and enriched our language with its most elaborate oratory. It was here, too, that the success of our negotiations and our arms afforded a bright and encouraging relief, when there was nothing to be seen in other parts of the globe but disgrace, disaster, and dismay. It was here that the jealous eye of rival nations, and even the penetrating glance of Buonaparte was fixed, as the spot where English power was most assailable; as the theatre on which, if the part that we had played was a part of ambition and injustice, which they could not consistently condemn, it was a part, likewise, of well-sus