until the debt is levied, or the debtor's interest in the land is expired. Afterwards, by statute 13 Edward I., a merchant might cause his debtor to appear before the mayor of London, &c., and there acknowledge his debt. This was called a recognizance. If this recognizance was forfeited, by non-payment, at the time appointed, the body, lands and goods of the debtor were to be delivered to the merchant creditor, in execution. This process was called an extent, because the sheriff was bound before he delivered them to the creditor, to have them appraised at their full or extended value. By the 27 Edward III. a similar remedy was granted to those whose debts were acknowledged before the mayor of any of the towns where the staple was held. These securities are generally called statutes merchant and statutes staple. They were, at first, confined to the commercial part of the community, and it was not until the 23 Henry VIII. that a similar remedy was extended to all other classes of the community by a recognizance in the nature of a statute staple. This makes good the assertion of Dalrymple, (p. 116) "that as the voluntary alienation of land was first freely introduced among trading people in boroughs, so the involuntary alienation of it was first freely introduced among the same people in the same places." The bankrupt laws, in England, have proceeded upon the same principle, making the land property of merchants and other traders generally liable, while, with respect to debts due by other persons, the old distinction introduced by the feudal law, still prevails, with some qualification, even at this day.That is, that whilst the assets, in the hands of the executor, are liable for all the obligations of what kind soever, the assets in the hands of the heir are liable only to debts of record and debts by specialty, in which the heir is named-to the former, because the process of the court creates a lien on the lands themselves; to the latter, because the heir is comprehended, by fiction of law, in the original contract. For the ancestor's debts, by simple contract, the heir still remains not liable. We shall conclude with the following passage of an ingenious writer, to whom we acknowledge ourselves very much indebted in the course of the preceding remarks: "The feudal law," says Dalrymple, "carries with it not only a system of private rights, which swallow up all others, wherever it comes; it involves too, in giving effect to those rights, a system of forms which remain even when the original rights are no more. Nor is this all, for some of these rights, by the force which each gave once to the other remain, even when most of the forms have perished too; but the day will probably come, when all land becoming allodial, and the more complete and easy attachment of it becoming necessary, the rule of the Roman empe ror laid down in the Pandects, and made when the feudal relations and the bar to the alienation of land property consequent upon them were unknown, will be the law of the world." Lib. 15, ff. de re judicatá, 2, 3. "By that law it was ordered, that a portion of the moveables equivolent to the debt, should first be sold; but if these did not suffice, that an equivalent portion of the land should be sold, and if no purchaser appeared, that the subject offered for sale should become the property forever of the creditor." We need not add, that in most of these States, there are not even these moderate and reasonable restraints upon the involuntary alienation of land. ART. II.-Kleine Romane von Friedrich, Baron DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 1er. 2er. & 3er. Theile. Berlin, 1812-1814. WHAT is Taste? is a question, which, even in the present period of universal illumination, seems to be as far from a satisfactory solution as the more important one-What is Truth? The learned mob appear, in their decisions concerning works of judgment or of fancy, to be much in the same condition as the peasant, who constructs his habitation without the aid of compass, line or plummet, and yet presumes to admire its site, and to laud its proportions; adopting them as standards by which similar edifices are to be guaged, not measured, to be affected or avoided, not valued and approved. The only orthodox tenet in the empire of taste, the Canon Mirificus, to whose authority all defer, is, that it is a thing, concerning which nothing can be known, and, therefore, nothing be disputed or determined. Now we are very willing to allow that this offuscated vision of the sublime and beautiful, is quite sufficient for those whose business it is to see the show, but quite wide of the mark for such as desire to be workmen themselves, or expect to teach others to become so. The guests of Louis the XIV. who partook of the delicious ragout prepared from his majesty's anointed slippers, doubtless chuckled in the supremacy of their own discernment, and were much in the right to confine the cook to his own occult science. His posterity of the kitchen, however, can never sufficiently deplore their loss of the items which composed that Apician banquet. We make no apology for these familiar allusions to the mysterious science of good eating, since it is quite plain that taste, with all its heavy and light-armed retainers, continues, to the present hour, to avouch their fealty to this lord paramount. Sir Walter Scott is fine, and so are his poems and novels fine. Who can say more, even of crimped cod and champagne ? We may be sure that words used in such opposite senses will, in the mouths of most people, be nothing more than words. It were desirable to chain this Proteus within the limits of an ascertainable identity, so that "the form of beauty, smiling at the heart," might, on all occasions, afford something more than momentary glimpses to the entranced inquirer. Unfortunately, this is not the place for so redoubtable an encounter, and the merits of a discussion which has occupied the world for so many ages, would require a volume, and not an essay, for its developement. A few cursory observations, however, designed as the basis of the opinion which we shall pass on a foreign writer of great merit, may, perhaps, demand and receive indulgence. Works of fiction, so far as the cast of their invention is concerned, admit of being distinctly arranged into southern, northern, oriental and mixed. The first, consisting of the ancient classics, and of the works formed upon a purely classical model. The next, deriving its substance from a period of antiquity equally remote, but receiving its form independently of, and at an era considerably posterior to the former. The third, presenting, through every age, nearly the same wild and exaggerated fea tures, and standing in bold relief, singular and apart. The last compounded of the first two, and admitting the oriental only in minute and inappreciable elements. How comes it that in the midst of this marked diversity and opposition, they should all please in their turn, and all equally secure immortality to those illustrious geniuses who have successfully adopted any one of them? The sacred poetry of the Hebrews; the Lays of Homer and Milton; of Virgil and Racine; the dreams of Sophocles and Shakspeare and Schiller; the tales of the Arabians; the novels of Richardson and Fielding and Smollett, and the romances of Scott and Fouqué, all wing their shafts homeward to the heart. Yet how different are they in their structure, their language and embellishments! Will it solve the difficulty to say, that all this is the effect of Taste? We apprehend not, for the question still returns-what is Taste? We suppose that little will be got by saying with the ancients, that it is the sense of the beautiful, or with the moderns that it is the capacity of receiving enjoyment from the beauties of nature and art, or that it is the effect of the feelings of man, associated with, and diffused over external objects. These are, indeed, elements of taste, but not taste itself. Like the term constellation, taste does not represent a single idea nor a composition of ideas, but only an abbreviation of terms designating ideas, which occur simultaneously. It is in relation to the heart and to those senses of discipline, the eye and the ear, what judgment is in reasoning, and honour in morals—the rapid perception of those ultimate results, which repeated developement has so completely ascertained, as to render it no longer necessary to expand and exhibit their elements in detail. On a subject which is familiar to him, an acute and practised reasoner decides instantaneously, and to the uninitiated, the conclusion appears oracular and even marvellous. Still he himself is at no loss to trace out the ladders and the scaffolding, which enabled him, gradually, to reach the vantage ground of truth. A man of honour, and we may add, a woman of honour too, rejects a dishonest proposal with an electric repugnance, which, to a Baotian bystander, might appear the effect of some new and particular faculty, expressly designed to afford infallible security to the probity of gentlefolks. Such worthies, however, know full well that their treasure abides in earthen vessels, and that it has only been by superinducing the wicker work and iron bands of discretion and discipline, that they have succeeded in rendering it proof against every assault. In like manner, the phrensied eye of the poet embraces, at a glance, a multitude of nice appliances, linked together on a chain of gossamer, which no orb, untouched with euphrasy, can detect, distinguish or detail. It is much less by what he expresses, than by what he suggests, that the writer of genius expects to unlock the gushing fountains of the heart, and to conduct their crystal waters over the sunny spots and verdant places of life. Experience furnishes the man of genius with a knowledge of his own sensations and passions, and of the objects by which they are gratified or disappointed, together with a knowledge of the causes which obstruct their uniformity. Observation soon convinces him that the sources of good and evil; of pleasure and pain, are the same in others as in himself. How to excite or allay; to enhance or depress them: how to combine, and when to present them singly, is the great art, we had almost said the sole art, of the inventor of fiction. Just as the artist in ordinary VOL. III.-No. 5. 5 stone and mortar, knows that these materials are necessary to the elevation of the fabric, but, that without care in arranging them, they must forever remain a shapeless and confused mass. In short, to awaken interest, and to inspire passion in the degree which nature has allotted to them in the subject, which a writer proposes to illustrate and adorn, is the highest praise to which genius can aspire. There may be power exhibited in the generation of associations, and yet the artist, whether poet, painter or sculptor, be entitled to small commendation. Ideas, like remedies in medicine, must be administered to us, always with a special attention to the when, the where and the how.— Hence, we cannot help regarding a strong addiction to the romantic as a capital defect in many modern works. The reader is continually remanded to his liorn book, to acquire the requisite knowledge, or must have his deficiences perpetually bolstered up with notes, commentaries and dissertations. In what respect is such a work as the Curse of Kehama, honourably distinguished from the works of Donne, or the pedantic effusions of Darwin. As a kind of technical aid to the memory of the reader, they may properly be ranked with the labours of Dr. Gray, or those of the renowned authors of As in præsenti. What musician would be tolerated, who should demand of his hearers an exact knowledge of thorough bass, or who should continually interrupt the delicious flow of sweet sounds, by demonstrating the accuracy of his calculation of time. We repeat it, that the materials of invention in the arts are common, obvious and accessible to the whole human race. The pleasure derived from a picture or a poem is not so much in the images themselves, as to be referred to their power over the heart. Abating our want of familiarity with the original language, what commentary does the lowest capacity require, even at the present day, in order to relish the beauties of Homer? The task of his auditors simply consisted in listening and being delighted! Widely different is the toil and the torture of the modern votary of the Muses. There is the stout battery of Greek and Roman literature to be mounted, flanked by a variety of irregulars, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and (Dii vostram fidem) perhaps Icelandick and Russian. But this is not all: the enthusiast, whether writer or reader, must be master of all possible sciences, when, perhaps, he may reach the altitude of comprehending an ode, a sonnet, or a tale. Indeed, it is almost too indulgent to say of modern fiction, "Sera tamen respexit inertem; Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat: |