peared in so mysterious a manner from the side of the As I stepped past him, however, hurrying to the door, pit at the Owl-Roost, was carried off by one Dr. Feuer- with a vague idea that the sooner I reached it the better, teufel, a German, who happened to be in search of sub- his lips were unlocked, and his feelings found vent in a horrible exclamation-"Der tyfel!" which I believe jects for dissection, and whose assistants were the danc-means the devil-"Der tyfel! I have empalm him too ing spectres in the church yard, which so terribly dis- well!" concerted our hero when on his way to the beech-tree. He is finally about to be hung, when a negro who was busied in preparing the gallows, fortunately breaks his neck in a fall, and our adventurer takes possession of his body forthwith.

In his character of Nigger Tom, Mr. Lee gives us some very excellent chapters upon abolition and the exciting effects of incendiary pamphlets and pictures, among our slaves in the South. This part of the narrative closes with a spirited picture of a negro insurrection, and with the hanging of Nigger Tom.

Our hero is revived, after execution, by the galvanic battery of some medical students, and having, by his sudden display of life, frightened one of them to death, he immediately possesses himself of his person. As Mr. Arthur Megrim, he passes through a variety of adventures, and fancies himself a coffee-pot, a puppy, a chicken, a loaded cannon, a clock, a hamper of crockery ware, a joint stock, a Greek Demi-God and the Emperor of France. Dr. Feurteufel now arrives in the village with a cargo of curiosities for exhibition-among which are some mummies. In one of them our hero recognizes the identical long missed body of Sheppard

Lee.

The sight of my body thus restored to me, and in the midst of iny sorrow and affliction, inviting me back, as it were, to my proper home, threw me into an indescribable ferment. I stretched out my arms, I uttered a cry, and then rushing forward, to the astonishment of all present, I struck my foot against the glass case with a fury that shivered it to atoms-or at least the portion of it serving as a door, which, being dislodged by the violence of the blow, fell upon the floor and was dashed to pieces. The next instant, disregarding the cries of surprise and fear which the act oocasioned, I seized upon the cold and rigid hand of the mummy, murmuring "Let me live again in my own body, and never-no! never more in another's!" Happiness of happiness! although, while I uttered the word, a boding fear was on my mind, lest the long period the body had remained inanimate, and more especially the mummifying process to which it had been subjected, might have rendered it unfit for further habitation, I had scarcely breathed the wish before I found myself in that very body, descending from the box which had so long been its prison, and stepping over the mortal frame of Mr. Arthur Megrim, now lying dead on the floor.

Indescribable was the terror produced among the spectators by this double catastrophe-the death of their townsman, and the revival of the mummy. The women fell down in fits, and the men took to their heels; and a little boy who was frightened into a paroxysm of devotion, dropped on his knees, and began fervently to

exclaim

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Sheppard Lee now makes his way home into New Jersey (pursued however the whole way by the German Doctor, crying "Mein Gott! Ter Tyfel! and stop mine mummy!") and is put to bed and kindly nursed after his disaster by his sister Prudence and her husband. It now appears (very ingeniously indeed) that, harassed by his pecuniary distress, our hero fell into a melancholy derangement, and upon cutting his foot with the mattock, as related, was confined to bed, where his wonderful transmigrations were merely the result of delirium. At least this is the turn given to the whole story by Prudence. Mr. Lee, however, although he partially believes her in the right, has still a shadow of doubt upon the subject, and has thought it better to make publie his own version of the matter, with a view of letting every body decide for himself.

We must regard "Sheppard Lee," upon the whole, as a very clever, and not altogether unoriginal, jeu d'esprit. Its incidents are well conceived, and related with force, brevity, and a species of directness which is invaluable in certain cases of narration-while in others it should be avoided. The language is exceedingly unaffected and (what we regard as high praise) exceedingly well adapted to the varying subjects. Some fault may be found with the conception of the metempsychosis which is the basis of the narrative. There are two general methods of telling stories such as this. One of these methods is that adopted by the author of Sheppard Lee. He conceives his hero endowed with some idiosyncracy beyond the common lot of human nature, and thus introduces him to a series of adventure which, under ordinary cir cumstances, could occur only to a plurality of per

sons.

The chief source of interest in such narrative is, or should be, the contrasting of these varied events, in their influence upon a character unchanging—except as changed by the events themselves. This fruitful field of interest, however, is neglected in the novel before us, where the hero, very awkwardly, partially loses, and partially does not lose, his identity, at each transmigration. The sole object here in the various metempsychoses seem to be, merely the depicting of seven different conditions of existence, and the enforcement of the very doubtful moral that every per

son should remain contented with his own. But it is clear that both these points could have been more forci. bly shown, without any reference to a confused and jarring system of transmigration, by the mere narrations of seven different individuals. All deviations, especially wide ones, from nature, should be justified to the author by some specific object—the object, in the present case, might have been found, as above-mentioned, in the opportunity afforded of depicting widely-different conditions of existence actuating one individual.

In short, the agitation was truly inexpressible, and fear distracted all. But on no countenance was this passion (mingled with a degree of amazement) more strikingly depicted than on that of the German Doctor, who, thus compelled to witness the object of a thousand A second peculiarity of the species of novel to cares, the greatest and most perfect result of his won- which Sheppard Lee belongs, and a peculiarity which derful discovery, slipping off its pedestal and out of his hands, as by a stroke of enchantment, stared upon me is not rejected by the author, is the treating the with eyes, nose and mouth, speechless, rooted to the whole narrative in a jocular manner throughout (inasfloor, and apparently converted into a mummy himself. much as to say "I know I am writing nonsense, but

then you must excuse me for the very reason that I William Hazlitt, upon his decease in 1830, was 52 know it") or the solution of the various absurdities by years old. He was the youngest son of the Reverend means of a dream, or something similar. The latter William Hazlitt, a dissenting Minister of the Unitarian method is adopted in the present instance-and the idea persuasion. At the age of nine he was sent to a dayis managed with unusual ingenuity. Still-having read school in Wern, and some of his letters soon after through the whole book, and having been worried to this period evince a singular thirst for knowledge death with incongruities (allowing such to exist) until in one so young. At thirteen, his first literary effort the concluding page, it is certainly little indemnification was made, in the shape of an epistle to the "Shrewsfor our sufferings to learn that, in truth, the whole mat-bury Chronicle." This epistle is signed in Greek capiter was a dream, and that we were very wrong in being tals Eliason, and is a decently written defence of Priestworried about it at all. The damage is done, and the ley, or rather an expression of indignation at some outapology does not remedy the grievance. For this and rages offered to the Doctor at Birmingham. It speaks other reasons, we are led to prefer, in this kind of wri- of little, however, but the school-boy. At fifteen, he ting, the second general method to which we have al- was entered as a student at the Unitarian College, luded. It consists in a variety of points-principally in Hackney, with a view to his education as a dissenting avoiding, as may easily be done, that directness of ex-minister, and here his mind first received a bias towards pression which we have noticed in Sheppard Lee, and philosophical speculation. Several short essays were thus leaving much to the imagination-in writing as if written at this time-but are lost. Some letters to his the author were firmly impressed with the truth, yet as- father, however, which are printed in the present votonished at the immensity, of the wonders he relates, and lume, give no evidence of more than a very ordinary for which, professedly, he neither claims nor anticipates ability. At seventeen, he left College (having abancredence-in minuteness of detail, especially upon points doned all idea of the Ministry) and devoted himself to which have no immediate bearing upon the general the study of painting as a profession--prosecuting his story-this minuteness not being at variance with indi- metaphysical reading at spare moments. At eighteen, rectness of expression-in short, by making use of the he commenced the first rough sketch of a treatise “On infinity of arts which give verisimilitude to a narration— the Principles of Human Action." At twenty, accident and by leaving the result as a wonder not to be accounted brought him acquainted with Coleridge, whose writings for. It will be found that bizzarreries thus conducted, and conversation had, as might be expected, great inare usually far more effective than those otherwise man- fluence upon his subsequent modes of thought. At aged. The attention of the author, who does not depend twenty-four, during the short peace of Amiens, he visited upon explaining away his incredibilities, is directed to Paris with a view of studying the works of art in the giving them the character and the luminousness of Louvre. Some letters to his father written at this petruth, and thus are brought about, unwittingly, some of riod, are given in the volume before us. They relate the most vivid creations of human intellect. The rea- principally to the progress of his own studies in art, der, too, readily perceives and falls in with the writer's and are not in any manner remarkable. After spending humor, and suffers himself to be borne on thereby. On a year in Paris he returned to London, abandoned, in the other hand what difficulty, or inconvenience, or dan-despair, the pencil for the pen, and took up his abode ger can there be in leaving us uninformed of the im- temporarily, with his brother John, in Great Russell portant facts that a certain hero did not actually dis-Street, Bloomsbury. His treatise "On the Principles cover the elixir vitæ, could not really make himself in- of Human Action,” a work upon which he seems to visible, and was not either a ghost in good earnest, or a have greatly prided himself, (perhaps from early assobonâ fide Wandering Jew? ciations) was now completed, after eight years of excessive labor. He was not, however, successful in finding a publisher until a year afterwards-he being then twenty-eight. This was in 1805. In 1806, he published a pamphlet with the title of "Free Thoughts on Public Affairs." In 1807, he abridged to one volume Tucker's large work in seven-the "Light of Nature," and wrote for Messrs. Longman and Co. a "Reply to Malthus's Works on Population." In 1808, he married Miss Stoddart, sister of the present Chief Justice of Malta. By this lady, who still lives, he had several children, all of whom died in early childhood, except the Editor of these "Remains." Shortly after his marriage, he went to live at Winterslow, in Wiltshire. An English Grammar, written about this period, was published some years afterwards. In 1808, he also published a compilation, entitled "The Eloquence of the British Senate, being a selection of the best Speeches of the most distinguished Parliamentary Speakers, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I to the present time." We are told also, that in the autumn of this same year he was "engaged in preparing for publica. tion his 'Memoirs of Holcroft'"-the first seventeen chapters of this work were written by Holcroft himself.

HAZLITT'S REMAINS.

Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt, with a Notice of his Life by his Son, and Thoughts on his Genius and Writings, by E. L. Bulwer, M. P. and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M. P. New York: Saunders and Otley.

There is a piquancy in the personal character and literary reputation of Hazlitt, which will cause this book to be sought with avidity by all who read. And the volume will fully repay a perusal. It embraces a Biographical Sketch of Mr. H. by his son; "Some Thoughts on his Genius" by Bulwer; "Thoughts on his Intellectual Character," by Sergeant Talfourd; a few words of high compliment contained in a Letter to Southey from Charles Lamb; a Sonnet, by Sheridan Knowles, on Bewick's portrait of the deceased; six other sonnets to his memory, by "a Lady ;" and twenty-two Essays by Hazlitt himself, and constituting his "Literary Remains." The volume is embellished with a fine head of the Essayist, engraved by Marr, from a drawing by Bewick.

fully than is here said, need be said, on the character, on the capacities, or on the works of Hazlitt, and nothing possibly can be said more happily or more wisely.

Of the Essays which constitute the body of the book before us, all have a relative-most of them a very high

The ideal is not a negative, but a positive thing. The leaving out the details or peculiarities of an individual face does not make it one jot more ideal. To paint history is to paint nature as answering to a general, predomibeauty, action, passion, thought, &c.; but the way to nant, or preconceived idea in the mind, of strength, do this is not to leave out the details, but to incorporate the general idea with the details; that is, to show the same expression actuating and modifying every move ment of the muscles, and the same character preserved does not consist in omitting the parts, but in connecting consisten ly through every part of the body. Grandeur

In 1811, Mr. Hazlitt removed to London and "tenanted | accurate thinking and fine writing. The article of a house once honored in the occupation of Milton." In Bulwer, indeed, seems to be a compulsory thing-an 1813, he delivered at the Russell Institution, a series of effort probably induced by earnest solicitation-and no "Lectures upon the History and Progress of English labor of love. Hazlitt, moreover, was personally unPhilosophy." Shortly after this he became connected known to him. Sergeant Talfourd, on the contrary, with the public press. For a short time he was engaged appears to write with a vivid interest in the man, and with the "Morning Chronicle" as a Parliamentary Re-a thorough knowledge of his books. Nothing more porter-but relinquished the occupation on account of ill health. He afterwards wrote political and theatrical criticisms for the "Champion," the "Morning Chronicle," the "Examiner," and the "Times." It was about this period, if we understand his biographer, that the collection of Essays appeared called "The Round Ta-positive value. To American readers Hazlitt is prinble." Of these, forty were written by Mr. Hazlitt, and cipally known, we believe, as the Dramatic Critic, and twelve by Leigh Hunt. In 1813, his Theatrical Criti- the Lecturer on the Eider Poetry of England. Some cisms were collected and published under the title of of the papers in the present volume will prove the great "A view of the English Stage." In this year also, he extent and comprehensiveness of his genius. One on delivered at the Surrey Institution a series of Lectures the "Fine Arts" especially, cannot fail of seizing public on the "Comic Writers, and the Poets of England," attention. Mr. Hazlitt discourses of Painting, as Chorand on the "Dramatic Literature of the age of Eliza-ley of Music. Neither have been equalled in their way. beth." These were subsequently published in single A fine passage of Hazlitt's on the ideal commences thusvolumes under their respective titles. In 1819, the whole of his Political Essays appeared in one volume. His next published work was the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." In 1823, Mr. Hazlitt was divorced from his wife under the law of Scotland-shortly before this epoch having given to the world "Liber Amoris," a publication for many reasons to be regretted. In this same year appeared a "Critical Account of the Principal Picture Galleries of England"-also the first series of "Table-Talk," in two volumes, consisting of Essays on various subjects, a few of which had previ-all the parts into a whole, and in giving their combined ously appeared in the “London Magazine." In 1824, Mr. H. married Isabella, widow of Lieut. Col. Bridgewater, a lady of some property; proceeding, after the wedding, on a tour through France and Italy. "Notes" of this journey appeared in the "Morning Chronicle," and were afterwards collected in a volume. In 1825, appeared the second series of "Table-Talk," and the "Spirit of the Age," a series of criticisms on the more prominent literary men then living. In 1826, the "Plain Speaker" was published, and another edition of the "Table-Talk." At this period, and for some years previous, Mr. Hazlitt was a frequent contributor to the "Edinburgh Review," the "New Monthly," "Monthly," and "London" Magazines, and other periodicals. In 1829, he published "Selections from the British Poets," and in 1830, "Northcote's Conversations," the "Life of Titian," (in which Mr. Northcote had a large share, and whose name, indeed, appeared as author on the title-page) and his chief work, "The Life of Napoleon," in four volumes. In August of this year he was attacked by a species of cholera, and on the 18th of September he died. We are indebted for the facts in this naked outline of Mr. Hazlitt's life, principally to the memoir by his son in the volume before us. The Memoir itself bears upon its face so obvious and indeed so very natural an air of the most enthusiastic filial affection and admiration, that we are forced to place but little reliance upon the critical opinions it advances.

The "Thoughts on the Genius of William Hazlitt," by Mr. Bulwer, differ in many striking points from the "Thoughts" by Sergeant Talfourd, on his "Intellectual Character." We give the preference unhesitatingly to the noble paper of Talfourd-a brilliant specimen of

and varied action; abstract truth or ideal perfection does not consist in rejecting the peculiarities of form, but in rejecting all those which are not consistent with the same general idea of softness, voluptuousness, the character intended to be given, and in following up strength, activity, or any combination of these, through every ramification of the frame. But these modifica tions of form or expression can only be learnt from ra ture, and therefore the perfection of art must always be sought in nature.

"The Fight" will show clearly how the writer of true talent can elevate even the most brutal of themes. The paper entitled "My first acquaintance with Poets,” and that headed "Of Persons one would wish to have seen," have a personal interest apart from the abilities of the writer. The article "On Liberty and Necessity," that "On Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding,” and that "On the Definition of Wit," bear with them evidence of a truth but little understood, and very rarely admitted that the reasoning powers never exist in perfection unless when allied with a very high degree of the imaginative faculty. In this latter respect, Hazlitt (who knew and acknowledged the fact) is greatly deficient. His argumentative pieces, therefore, rarely satisfy any mind, beyond that of the mere logician. As a critic-he is perhaps unequalled. Altogether he was no ordinary man. In the words of Bulwer, it may justly be said that "a complete collection of his works

is all the monument he demands."

The illness of both Publisher and Editor will, we hope, prove a sufficient apology for the delay in the issue of the present number, and for the omission of many promised notices of new books.

The RICHMOND, FREDERICKSBURG AND POTOMAC RAIL ROAD COMPANY, in connection with the other Rail Road and Steamboat Companies on the route, havé adopted, the following Schedule, by which the daily Mail is now carried.

The whole time required between Blakely and New York, being Northwards, 54 hours; Southwards, 57 hours. Between New Orleans and New York, Northwards, 12 days and 13 hours; Southwards, 13 days and 8 hours. Of the whole distance between Blakely and Baltimore, 126 miles is travelled upon Rail Roads, and 50 miles by Steamboat.

The Stage Travelling, which is conducted by Messrs. J. WOOLFOLK & Co. and Messrs. J. H. AVERY & Co. in the handsomest manner, being now only 57 miles, is becoming rapidly reduced by the extension of this Rail Road.

the line.

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Carriages and Horses are safely and expediticusly transported; enabling those travelling in them, with the additional use of the Potomac Steamboat, and the Petersburg Rail Road, to accomplish, without fatigue to their horses, the journey between Washington and Blakely, N. C. in two days.

The Mail Train leaves Richmond at 5 o'clock, A. M.; returning, leaves the Mattapony at 10 o'clock, A. M. The alternate Train for Passengers and Freight, leaves Richmond at 9 o'clock, A. M. and the Maitapony as 2 o'clock, P. M.

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