with the former, that of interweaving the peculiarities of her persons with the conduct of her piece, and making them, without forgetting for a moment their personal consistency, conduce to the general lesson which she undertakes to inculcate. In order to appreciate exactly the merit of this latter power, we must recollect how seldom it has been successfully employed. Even in the drama, whose particular province it is to combine the varieties of human character into one action, to draw them, as it were, into the vortex of one interest, and to produce, by means of conflicting passions, one common object, Shakespeare (we think we may say) alone, has been able to solve this great problem. Other dramatists have chosen their characters and their objects with a direct reference to one another, and arranged their whole chain of moral causes and effects with a precision, which being easily foreseen, is not easily admired. He alone takes men and women as he finds them in nature, and, blending their powers yet discriminating their motives, without difficulty, and apparently without effort, moulds the vast variety to the great purpose for which he had designed them. Among the novelists, (whose duties, though of an inferior rank, are of a similar kind,) we cannot immediately recollect one who has this merit. In Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and Amelia, we have a most accurate and vivid picture of real life; but it is, if we may venture to say so, too real. A novel, which is not in some degree a lesson either of morals or conduct, is, we think, a production which the world might be quite as well without, and, it must be admitted, that the personages of the (otherwise) excellent works which we have mentioued, are brought together, without any such leading object in the association-without reference to any particular principle, and without inculcating any specific system of moral duty. Towards the close, indeed, of the last volume of this class there is usually some attempt at moralizing the tale,' and executing a lame and tardy justice on the prominent offenders; but this produces little beneficial effect on the mind; there is generally no kind of relation between the punishment inflicted and the crimes of those upon whom it is visited, and the errors of the heroes and heroines have as little to do with the annoyance which they suffer, as their virtues with the happiness to which they are ultimately, and for the most part, undeser vedly dismissed. This, we admit, is no more than occurs in the great book of the world; but the more accurately that book is copied, the less inclined we should be to recommend to young and ardent minds the perusal of the transcript. We doubt whether the ridicule of Thwackum and Trulliber, or the exposure of Squire Gam aud Blifil, have ever stifled the seeds of brutality or vice in any mind; mind; but we are convinced that the gay immoralities, the criminal levities, and the rewarded dissipation of Tom Jones and Peregrine Pickle have contributed to inflame, and we will venture to add, to debauch many a youthful imagination. Another class of novelists, of later date and humbler pretensions to wit and powers of intellect, are nearly the antipodes of the former. Nothing in their drama is real; their scenes are fancy, and their actors mere essences. The hero and heroine are generally paragons of courage, beauty, and virtue; they reside in such castles as never were built, in the midst of such forests as never grew, infested by such hordes of robbers and murderers as were never collected together. In the small number of these novels which have any plan or meaning, all is modelled on a certain principle, and every event predisposed to conduce to a certain object. Virtue is to be always persecuted, never overpowered, and at the close invariably rewarded; while vice, on the other hand, triumphant through all the previous scenes, is sure to be immolated in the last by the sword of retribution. This kind of novel is as useless, as the former may be pernicious; the lessons it teaches are mere enthusiasm and romance: for the every day occurrences of life there is inculcated a magnanimous contempt; and the mind, taught to neglect or despise the common duties of society, is either wound up to a pitch of heroism which never can be tried, or fixed in erroneous principles of morality and duty from which it is not easily reclaimed. Between these extremes, Miss Edgeworth, with great ability and proportionate effect, holds her way. Her characters are as natural as those of the class of novel writers to whom we first alluded, and they contribute to the object she has in view as regularly as those of the latter: her virtue and her vice, though copied exactly from nature, conduce, with perfect ease, to a moral conclusion, and are finally punished or rewarded by means, which (rare as retribution in this world is) appear for the most part neither inconsistent nor unnatural. Having thus endeavoured to state what, in addition to our former observations, has occurred to us onthe more prominent beauties or defects of Miss Edgeworth's stile, we shall proceed to a hasty sketch of the contents of the volumes now before us; not with the intention of making our readers acquainted with what they undoubtedly will read, or have already read in Miss Edgeworth's own words, but rather to direct the attention to the moral object of each tale, with reference to the machinery by which that object is accomplished. The first, occupying the whole of the fourth volume, is entitled Vivian,' a story intended, as Mr. Edgeworth informs us, (in (in a preface which he contributes to this publication,) to 'expose one of the most common defects of mankind.' "To be infirm of purpose,' he continues,' is to be at the mercy of the artful, or at the disposal of accident. Look round, and count the numbers who have within your own knowledge failed from want of firmness. An excellent and wise mother gave the following advice with her dying breath; "My son, learn early how to say, No!" This precept gave the first idea of the story of Vivian.' (p. 2.) Vivian is a young man of good family and of large estate, who having lost his father while yet an infant, had the good fortune to find in his mother, Lady Mary Vivian, who, though a woman of fashion, is remarkably well informed and domestic,' a sensible and affectionate guardian, and the very paragon of tutors in the Rev. Mr. Russel; but unhappily Vivian's disposition is of too ductile a nature to retain permanently the excellent impressions which these accomplished instructors endeavour to give him. Their precepts cling to his memory indeed, but only to occasion remorse at the facility with which he on all occasions departs from them. Lady Mary's notions on education, though perhaps pretty well fitted for general use, were rather ill-adapted to the weak, jealous, and nervous disposition of her son. She over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed him with her mature lessons of prudence-so he gave up hearing with his ears, and seeing with his eyes, till she at length discovered that he had neither ears, eyes, or understanding of his own.' Then in a sudden panic, lest he should grow too yielding and undecided, she hurried him away from the soft discipline in which he lived, and plunged him at once into the cold bath of a public school, where his home-breeding and his school-breeding (assimilating but ill together) increased by their counteraction the weakness of his character. And here we must complain a little of the bold ignorance with which Miss Edgeworth selects Harrow as the school in which she represents Vivian as made ' ashamed of every thing valuable he had learned at home, and as there learning every thing bad and nothing good.' (p. 5.) If there is any school of which less perhaps than of another this charge can be truly made, it is, we believe, Harrow. From an author of less reputation in didactics, we should have treated this charge with contempt; but the authority of Miss Edgeworth, and the still graver authority of Mr. Edgeworth, who sanctions, by his imprimatur,' his daughter's judgment of a school of which she at least knows nothing, obliges us to express our disapprobation of such flippant injustice-of such inconsiderate depreciation of an institution, to which we look, with affectionate reverence, as the seminary of some of the best, the ablest, and the most eminent men that our country has ever produced. Vivian, Vivian, however, has the ill luck to be spoiled by every thing that constitutes the highest advantages of other persons,-through the whole course of his life, a similar fatality attends him. The first thing of importance which he does, is to fall desperately in love with Miss Sidney, a beautiful, accomplished, and prudent young woman, who engages his affections as long his affections as long as her want of superior rank and fortune indispose Lady Mary Vivian to the match; but the moment the spring of his mother's opposition is removed, Mr. Vivian's passion relaxes very gradually, and he becomes, by every new incident, more and more indifferent to Miss Sidney, who, very fortunately for herself, escapes this higher alliance, and appears in the close of the volume as destined to the sober happiness of a union with Mr. Russel. Close to Mr. Vivian's good modern house, a certain Earl of Glistonbury has an old gothic residence. Some dæmon whispers, Vivian, have a taste,' and Vivian, with great diligence, betakes himself to dissipating a fine estate, in spoiling a good house, and converting Vivian Hall into Vivian Castle. He next stands for his county, and is returned, much to his personal triumph, and to his pecuniary inconvenience. The former naturally produces a proud, and, as he thinks, honest desire of public character, which the latter, after a thousand struggles, induces him to forfeit. He associates himself in politics with men 'whom he cannot esteem, and he elopes with the wife of his friend, a woman whom he despises, and almost hates. He recovers, however, as is but too natural, from the effects of this disgraceful transaction, but only to be cast into new perplexities; he becomes, by mere irresolution, an inmate of Lord Glistonbury's family, who, for poor Vivian's sins, has two daughters of the most opposite characters: with Lady Julia, lively and enthusiastic, he soon becomes enamoured, but with Lady Sarah, cold, formal, and repelling, he is, by a series of weaknesses, driven into a reluctant marriage. His noble father-in-law, who, as well as Vivian, has hitherto been in opposition to the government, now finds an occasion for joining the standard of the minister, and a marquisate is to be the reward of his lordship's and Vivian's defection from their party. After a bitter struggle between vanity, (which he thinks integrity,) on the one side, and his own wants and Lord Glistonbury's importunities on the other, his apostacy is accomplished; and stung with internal remorse, and exasperated by the contempt of the world, he becomes involved in a personal quarrel with one of his former political associates, whose wit had ensnared, whose arts corrupted, and whose hand at last terminates the existence of the unhappy Vivian. Our readers cannot fail to see in this outline ample opportunities for strong discrimination of character, and they will observe the the art by which every shade of Vivian's disposition, and every incident of his life is rendered applicable to the lesson which the author intends to give us. The story is throughout (we had almost said painfully) interesting, and the persons are skilfully drawn:if we have any objection upon this point, it is to the Earl of Glistonbury, whose talents appear to us rather too mean, and whose manners are certainly too vulgar and frivolous for the part which he has to perform. Weak and flexible as Vivian is, we yet think that his abandonment of his party and his principles, would have been much more naturally and adequately accounted for, if Lord Glistonbury had deserved and possessed a greater influence over him: to be the puppet of such a man as Lord Glistonbury now appears, is not merely weakness, it is absolute imbecility, and not quite reconcileable with the general powers of discernment attributed to Vivian. We must also own that we are not a little disgusted with the infamous and incredible profligacy of the husband, who assists his wife in the seduction of his friend, and contrives their clopement in the mere prospect of plunder. There was no necessity for this horrible machinery; the frailty of human nature requires unhappily no plot or contrivance to surprize and betray it; and with the option of two causes, the one obvious and natural, and the other odiously improbable, we cannot but regret, that to the manifest injury of her own design, Miss Edgeworth should have chosen the latter. It has happened that this incident has been lately attempted on the stage; but the natural good taste and good sense of the public refused to tolerate so disgusting a conception. On the story of Emilie' we shall not have much to observe; • it is one of those sketches of manners and temper to which the pencil of Miss Edgeworth alone could give any degree of value; and we have already hinted our disapprobation of the catastrophe of the piece. Emilie and her mother the Countess de Coulanges, driven from their country by the revolution, find in an English lady, to whom they have a letter of introduction, (though it seems they had formerly known her a little,) a friend so extraordinarily kind and generous, that she receives them even into her family, and provides, not for their comforts merely, but for their luxuries, in a style of profuse liberality, which to us appears incredible. This hot friend has, however, with all her nobleness of mind, the infirmity of a jealous and fretful temper; and with the struggles between Mrs. Somers's generosity and ill-humour, and Emilie's grati tude and pride, about two hundred pages are occupied, may we venture to say, somewhat tediously. The character of Mrs. Somers, with all the ebbings and flowings of her temper, is most accurately delineated-the laborious effort after misery-the anxious search for unhappiness-the affected |