ought to carry with him into such an office; or on the important measures of legislation which were needed for the public weal. All these things were immaterial,

cient diligence, and showed themselves right upon 'the shoe-heel and egg questions.'

I was struck with the contrast between the views which two minds (both more than ordinarily enlightened), took, of the probable extent of human improvement, and the probable permanence of popular Government. One of them had small hopes, and no very strong wishes, on these subjects. He revolved the advances and retrogressions in society:-he thought of Nineveh-Egypt-Jerusalem-Tyre-Carthage

sary. The names only, were reversed. There was the same unqualified approbation of all upon his own side: the same undiscriminating anathema of all upon the other side. He held it the plainest dictate of reason, | if they practised the arts of electioneering with suffithe first duty of man, the sternest injunction of patriotism, to disbelieve every fact asserted in the "Clarion of Freedom;" to contemn all its doctrines and arguments; to denounce all the men it advocated: and, as implicitly, to confide in the "Star of Liberty." Even facts and opinions he had himself once maintained,arguments he had once held unanswerable, he now repudiated, in obedience to the 'presto, change!' of his party leaders.—Each of these two partisans appeared utterly ignorant of the great mass of facts and reason ings, by which the other's mind was influenced; or in- Greece-Rome-Venice-Florence;-of the Ages of capable of appreciating their truth or weight, because they had always been presented to him in such a light as to seem untrue, or in such a connexion as to shock his preconceived ideas. Each of them also, I could perceive, regarded the neutral who sat between them, with distrust and dislike. Each suspected him of attachment to the opposite party, and of standing aloof ostensibly from both, only to conciliate both; or with the view of joining that which should ultimately prove the stronger. "He is a trimmer"-thought they. I saw, that if he had chosen neutrality with any hope of securing his peace or strengthening his interest, he had made a wide mistake. He was exposed to the fire of both parties: he had effectually cut himself off from the sympathies, and incurred the fixed displeasure, of both. He was in the most uncomfortable of positions; unless the consciousness of rectitude, and the conviction that he had reason and justice on his side, could support and cheer him.

Pericles and Augustus,—and then of the Gothic night which followed :-of France, and her vain spasms of freedom, ending in a full return of Bourbon despotism; of Holland and Switzerland, with their brief mockery of republican forms, and briefer enjoyment of actual republican Liberty ;-of England, perpetually boasting of her freedom, yet presenting, with it, the strangest medley of oppression and corruption, and seeming ready, for half a century, to be shivered by the fearful elements that have been at work in her system. Finally, he thought of the United States: and here, despondence took possession of his mind. He saw the people so often duped—such a mass of ignorance in them, and so frightful an amount of depravity in their leaders and agents-the paths to preferment trodden so much more successfully by impudence, cunning, and contempt for principle, than by modest worth-such blind surrenders of individual opinion to party dictation, and such proneness to be infuriated by party bigotry;-all this, The times were prolific of such political aspirants, too, in the very childhood of our institutions ;-that to as the morbid state of public feeling which I have ex- his view, this vaunted "experiment" of ours was already emplified, might be expected to produce. The keeper at an end. Its failure was demonstrated. "It is idle," of a tippling shop, who, partly by selling, and partly thought he, "to hope that five-sixths of mankind will not by giving away his liquors, had risen high in favor always remain in darkness, and in slavery. How small with the topers around him;—a merchant, not much a proportion of the earth is occupied by nations that better, who had treated his customers till they ran can pretend to be called civilized! And of these, how largely in his debt, and through fear as well as through few individuals are not sunk in ignorance! Five sixths,— liking, were ready to give him their votes;-a deputy did I say? I might have said, ninety nine hundredths. sheriff, who had been for three years courting popu- Then, as to slavery,-how much fewer nations are larity by the most loose-handed performance of his free, than are civilized! And among the pitiably few duties;—and an attorney who, finding that none would that enjoy the name of FREE, how large a number of entrust him with practice, had "quitted the law," and persons does poverty, ignorance, vice, or some other set up for a politician;-all these candidates for a seat allotment of their destiny, make virtual if not actual in the Legislature were now subjected to my observa- slaves!-Can the blind partisan, who shapes all his tion. Parties in that district were not very nearly opinions by those of his newspaper editor, and casts his balanced: one of them had a clear and decided prepon- vote after the bidding or example of party file-leaders,derance. Our candidates therefore knew they must be be deemed a freeman? Or the tippler,-who, with no of that side: and they were now considering how opinions at all, votes as he is desired by the neighboring they might evince their loyalty most clearly, and turn grog-seller, or for the candidate who gives him the it to the best account. They were all conning over the most whiskey: Is he a freeman ?-Human society, and favorite doctrines of the ruling party,-studying the the human intellect, are constantly revolving in cycles. strongest words whereby to express their devotion to In every country, after Freedom comes Anarchy; then its chiefs, and repeating to themselves the main Despotism; then Freedom again; and so on, forever. test-words of orthodoxy,-so that (as a statesman Despotism has the longest turn, except where Freedom of Lilliput would say) they might make it evident is mitigated by a large infusion of monarchy, or aristothat their shoe-heels were of the proper height,' and cracy: then, she may be saved, for centuries, from that they broke their eggs at the right end.' I could perishing by her own excesses. Very similar are the not discover that one of them bestowed a thought on fluctuations in literature and science."-On the whole, the extent of knowledge, the powers of mind, the I perceived that he was (to use the mildest epithet) a habits of industry, or the skill in business, which he conservative,-averse to all reforms in society, especially

to those which aimed at liberalizing its institutions: [ and upon them as a basis, the establishment of rationally and cherishing, almost unconsciously, in the recesses of free political institutions. His delineation of his plans his mind, a desire to see that 'infusion of monarchy or and of their results, was not more crude, vague, or unreaaristocracy,' which he thought necessary to restrain the 'excesses' of Freedom. I further discovered, that he had lately been defeated in a great political contest; and that he was much afflicted with dyspepsia.

sonable, than were the ideas of the Marquis of Worcester, 150 years ago, about the steam engine; or more shocking to the skeptical, conservative minds of this day, than those ideas were, to the "practical" plodders of the Marquis's time. At all events, he seemed to me far more worthy of envy and esteem than his neighbor: and I could not scan the noble, well balanced developments of all his faculties and feelings, without cordially agreeing with the poet, that the energies of elevated and generous Hope ever "burn the brightest in the purest heart ;" and with a clever contemporary authoress,* that they grow most vigorously in the strongest mind. I peeped into the sconce of a young man whose chief reading had been in Novels. He was fancying himself mounted upon a proud charger, bearing down whole squadrons in a field of battle. His imagination de

vast and gorgeous Legislative Hall, crowded with statesmen and fair ladies. This august and brilliant assembly he held enchained for hours, by a strain of eloquence such as had never been heard there before, even from Randolph, or Clay, or Ames.-Curious to know who it was that indulged in these sublime cogitations, yet not knowing where to look for information,-I chanced to aim my glass at a worthy Tailor in the same pew. He was thinking of his cabbage-drawer, and of a good-for-nothing journeyman who had left it open the day before, by which means a rogue of a servant had been enabled to steal a whole week's plunder. I found that this journeyman was the warrior and

Far different was the tenor of the other's reflections. His wishes were ardent, and his hopes earnest, that Mankind might advance, not indeed to perfection, but almost infinitely far towards it, in knowledge, and virtue; and upon those foundations, build an edifice of free government, which might last as long as Time. He looked back over History, as searchingly and intelligently as the conservative did: but while he saw much there to appal, he saw likewise much to cheer him. He acknowledged nearly the same cycles in mind and in government: but he remarked, that no relapse had gone back to so low a point of depression, as that, whence the preceding advance had begun; and that every on-picted glistening bayonets, waving banners, booming ward bound which IMPROVEMENT took, had overgone cannon-balls, smoke, dust and blood; through all of her previous ones, so that on the whole, ground was which he was borne unhurt and victorious, till the enemy gained. "Greece and Rome," thought he, "were at once were driven out of the field. The scene then changed freer and more intellectual than any people who had to a splendid parlor, where sat his "Ladye-love:" at gone before them: This age is equally far superior to whose feet, of course, he laid his laurels. Scarcely had Greece and Rome. Written constitutions-represen- I time to see that she received them with a gracious tative government-well devised checks and balances-smile, when his thoughts transferred him suddenly to a separate departments for the exercise of different functions-Jury Trial-the Art of Printing-a code of International Law, not generally binding, 'tis true, but persuasively operating to assuage the horrors of War, and to make intercourse more liberal and profitable in peace,-enlarged ideas of Commerce-Inventions and discoveries in Physical Science-Improvements in Machinery-to say nothing of Christianity, and the moral benefits it has brought in its train-all these create, in modern Times, an amount of Freedom, knowledge, and happiness, which Greece and Rome, or any former age, never knew. Nor, thanks to the Press-can things ever fall back quite to the condition, in which they were during the Middle Ages.-Undoubtedly, a great, a deplorable ignorance prevails. But that can be removed. Nearly all human beings are capable of instruction: and the DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE is one of the most unfailing of human traits. Attempts to diffuse knowledge have never been properly made, without success. It is at this moment, spreading, surely and steadily, if not rapidly and every moment, its course is quickened; for every mind that receives, immediately longs to impart it. At some propitious juncture, from among the millions who are now enjoying its influences, there will arise some happy genius, to devise a plan which will leave no cottager without his modicum of intellectual pleasures; his needful share of moral principle and political knowledge, to guide his conduct as a man and a citizen. 'Tis only for a few of the master spirits of the time to will it, and that glorious consummation might even now come quickly to pass. Once have a stock of educated and virtuous parents, imbued with those rational ideas about the rearing up of youth, which are now beginning to be current, and much may be done towards guarding their children from passion and vice."-It would be too long, to copy all of his reverie. In brief-he anticipated a nearly universal diffusion of knowledge and virtue, and by their means,

orator.

I also saw the thoughts of a novel-reading young lady. She fancied herself the wife of a great General. A splendid coach, with four white horses-an immense apartment, decked for a ball, at which she was the presiding deity-chairs and ottomans, covered with skyblue satin---chandeliers of imperial magnificence--music, ravishing enough to "take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium"-obsequious colonels, and proud, envying ladies—were the images pictured on her brain.

Not a few were mentally passing judgment upon the characters of their acquaintance: and some, took occasion to exhibit their estimate of human nature in general. The kindly tempered and upright, I found, invariably leaned towards the favorable side, in these judgments. On the other hand, I saw Dr. Johnson's indignant saying completely verified, that "He who accuses all men of Knavery, convicts at least one :" for in whatever brain I read willing sneers at the folly, or assurance of the wickedness, of any large portion of mankind, I discovered also a lurking wish to take advantage of that folly, or to league with that wickedness.

But far the most generally absorbing themes of untold thought were Love, Courtship, and Matrimony. I

* Characteristics of Women-"Portia."
VOL. III.-41

policy.' It has proved the worst, to me. Had I decked myself off in false colors,-practised airs and graces which Nature never gave me,-feigned a smooth, soft speech,-and assumed that courteous bearing which no husband long maintains,-my fate might have been very different. The boy in the story, who showed the bruised side of his melon, was a fool: and the author who made him succeed in spite of that folly, showed her ignorance of the world. No, no-honesty is not the best policy. As fraud is necessary to success in jockeyship, so are disguises in courtship.”—He did not consider, that dress and manners being the usually received signs of character, it was natural that he should be judged by them. How could the lady know, that as he, while a lover, seemed far inferior to other lovers, he would not as a husband be proportionally inferior ?— One of the most deeply smitten swains that I saw, was a reputed cynic-a perpetual sneerer at love and matrimony. Swift's "Receipt for Courtship" ("Two or three dears, and two or three sweets," &c.) had been always on his lips. But his time came at last: he was ensnared by the greatest coquette in the neighborhood; and I saw in his brain several very tolerable stanzas of an

off, was seriously thinking of suicide: and another was resolving to join the pending struggle in Texas, where, should he fall, he hoped "she" would hear of it, and pity him.

Some of the fair ones who caused all this trouble being present, I looked, to see how they were affected by the agonies of their lovers; not doubting, that compassion, sympathy, or perhaps even gratitude for such kind regards, would create at least a sort of involuntary return of affection. No such thing. In some, I perceived only a feeling of contempt or of hatred, towards their despairing swains: others sat, like Epicu

never, before, fully believed in the universality of Love's dominion. "The court, the camp, the grove," I knew he ruled but the Church I had supposed to be exempt from his sway. He seemed aware, however, that the ground was holy; and trod it with a softness, purity, and reverence, becoming the Sanctuary. I confine my narrative to a few of the rarest forms in which the agency of this all-conquering passion appeared to me. It seemed, like Caligula, to delight in showing its power by the strangest, as well as the most cruel caprices. EQUALS were never mutually smitten, except where both were but ordinary in mind, person, or character. The beautiful were commonly enamored of the ugly; the dwarfish, of the tall; the clever, of the simple; the meek, of the turbulent and fierce. I saw not a single woman of uncommon talents, who (if she loved at all) did not love a weak man.-I read a plausible solution of this phenomenon that day, in the brain of a philosophic and speculative, though rather conceited fellow, whose addresses had that very morning been utterly repelled by a lady of confessedly fine intellect an intellect, as he fancied, nearly equal, and of temper, tastes, and sentiments exactly congenial, to his own. "It is all owing to their love of sway:" said he, pet-impassioned ode to her dimple.—A poor fellow not far tishly. "They think a husband of inferior mind will always be submissive, dutiful, and admiring; will always look to his wife for orders, and even for ideas. Now, apart from the hatefulness of this unnatural inversion, they do not reflect that 'the greater the fool, the more stubborn the mule.' Besides,-how can they expect their talents to be duly appreciated, except by men of talents? Then, how far nobler a gratification it is, to enjoy the love and admiration of an equal or a superior, than of a dolt !"-In one respect, the penchant for inequality seemed not to prevail. The rich were not often in love with the poor; and in some honorable instances, the poor could not be captivated by the rich.—|rean deities, wrapt in the serene light of Beauty, and I was a good deal touched by the case of a young lady, whose affections had been engaged by a swain now gone to make the tour of Europe. His father, being averse to their union, had taken this means to prevent it. With his son, the stratagem succeeded: he forgot his vows, amid the whirl of travel and the varying glare of novelty and the forsaken girl was at this moment dwelling, with a hidden anguish that threatened her life, upon the news of his intended marriage to a foreign woman. Instead of the execrations his falsehood deserved, she invoked Heaven's forgiveness and blessings upon him!-I was next attracted by the chagrin of a plain-sailing fellow, who in boyhood had been so struck with Dr. Fothergill's counsel to a wooer-"my advice to thee, friend, is, to court in thine every day clothes" that he resolved to follow both its letter and spirit: believing, that he should thus at once fulfil the dictate of honesty, in showing himself to the mistress as he There was a surprising number of persons engaged must daily appear to the wife; and avert the disap-in examining the elevations and depressions in the pointment and bitterness which he supposed too apt to result from a married pair's beholding each other free from the disguises of courtship. Accordingly, he waited upon the lady of his choice, not only in his shabby working clothes, but in his work-day manners: nay, in the exuberance of his honesty, he even put on ill manners that were unnatural to him. He was discarded, of course; and I traced these reflections in his perturbed brain: "Let no one hereafter say 'Honesty is the best

:

absorbed in the contemplation of their own felicity; insensible alike to the prayers, the sufferings, and the sacrifices, of mortals. But though thus unkind or indifferent to those who were dying for them,—they, too, were not wholly exempt from the power of the universal conqueror. I might here disclose many curious discoveries I made; tending to throw much light on the obscure and interesting subject to which they relate. But it would be ungenerous-perhaps not honorableto publish female weaknesses, which I learned only through female agency: the Sylph's confidence in me must not be violated: so I shall be silent.

Many other singular phenomena came under my notice; which I forbear mentioning, lest my readers be wearied with the length of my narration. At last my vision was terminated in a manner as whimsical as its commencement.

skulls of those around them, and thence inferring what qualities dwelt within. My glass enabled me to test the accuracy of these inferences. They were nearly as often right, as wrong: and in the former case, were generally aided by recourse to the countenance, or to the observer's previous knowledge of the observed. It is fair to confess, however, that I saw no case in which, when the bump-monger knew beforehand the existence of any particular quality, he failed to find a bump for

Appended to these notices was the following from the Metropolitan Magazine :

"We cannot too strongly recommend these facetious works. They are perfect pictures of the morals, manners and habits of a great portion of English society. It is hardly possible to conceive a more pleasantly reading miscellany-delightful from the abundance of its sly humor, and instructive in every chapter. * Taken altogether, we have rarely met with works that have pleased us more, and we know that our taste is always that of the public."

*

color in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not becoming to water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mud

fog is rather impaired, even by this trifling circumstance. Mudfog is a healthy place--very healthy ;--damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that. It's quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best in damp situations, and why shouldn't men? The inhabitants of Mudfog are unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people on the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious contradiction of the vulgar error at once. So, admitting Mudfog to be damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious."

In this place lives a man who, by quiet industry, bas raised himself from poverty to wealth, and in due seaThus admonished, it behooved us, who live by the fa-son is chosen mayor of the town. He has just before vor of the public, and whose duty it is to minister to witnessed a Lord Mayor's procession in London, and the public taste, to avail ourselves of this opportunity | determines to have a pageant of his own. In this atto improve our acquaintance with it. Instead of being tempt he makes himself ridiculous of course. In the called upon by the master of ceremonies to aid in eject-hands of Mr. Boz, to whom nothing is ridiculous that ing the intruder, behold he is introduced to us by the is not preposterous, and nothing absurd merely because manager himself, as a gentleman of the first fashion, it is unnatural or impossible, the thing is so managed, whom not to know would argue ourselves unknown. that we can hardly conceive how it could provoke a smile, except from one to whom the highest of all en

of the joke is, that Tulrumble gets a suit of brazen armor, and dresses up in it a fellow who gets drunk, and behaves like a drunkard, and so the pageant ends. Tulrumble attempts reforms, and becomes unpopularthen gives up the attempt and recovers his standing. This is the whole story. The drunkenness of the man in armor is the only incident.

We are always ready to defer to authority, though we cannot lay aside our tastes. We determined, there-tertainments would be a grinning match. The cream fore, to man ourselves to the task, and to make the acquaintance of the grotesque stranger. Yet we had our misgivings, and wished to qualify ourselves, on the easiest terms, to say that we were acquainted with this very popular and much admired Mr. Boz. Observing that in each of the volumes before us there was one tale, and one only from his pen, and finding that one of these consisted of eighteen, and the other of twenty-five pages, small duodecimo, we took up the volumes with a light heart, and went to work with something like the same consolation with which Fergus M'Ivor went to the scaffold. "Let them spin out the business as they will," said he, "they cannot make it last much over half an hour."

Oliver Twist is a boy born in a workhouse, of a mother, (a nameless vagrant,) to whom his birth is fatal. It seems that this is but an introductory chapter, consisting of sneers at the poor laws and their ministers, and a history of what Oliver did and what he did not eat. The only incident is, that he once ventured to ask for more. The story stops short, without telling the consequence of this interesting and important occurrence.

Such are the tales. For the manner and execution, we refer to the passage quoted above. We are not sure that these are not the worst stories in the two volumes. But the rest, with one exception, are nearly of the same character, and if they are not equally bad, it would seem to be because the writers could not make them so. They certainly strove hard to do it.

Thus it was that we became acquainted with the "Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble,” and the "Progress of Oliver Twist, the Parish Boy." The result of this was, that we were not only confirmed in our suspicions of the true character of the writer, but that our indignation was strongly excited against the critic who had palmed him on our notice. We felt called upon to expose the one and denounce the other as proper objects for the contempt and indignation of the public. To qualify ourselves for this duty, and to secure ourselves against any possibility of injustice, we undertook and faithfully accomplished the loathsome task of reading these volumes through. Having completed it, we determined that if, from this time forth, any of our read-one or two pages. Such of them as are worth telling ers suffers himself to be cheated out of his money or his time by Mr. Boz himself, or any of his associates, aiders and abettors, it shall not be our fault. The first of the tales, from the pen of Boz himself, Take this for example: is introduced by the following passage:

They all have this common quality of being the worst told stories that we ever read. There is scarcely one of them of which a marginal abstract would not be decidedly better than the tale itself as told-not one that would not be improved by being condensed into

at all, might be told over a bottle at midnight, and a good story teller would not give five minutes to one of them. Many would be best told in one sentence.

"Richie Barter was a merchant's clerk, who ruined

"Mudfog is a pleasant town--a remarkably pleasant town-himself by marrying his master's widow, thinking he situated in a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which had left her 40,000, when her whole legacy was 500L" river, Mudfog derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and Is that the whole story? Yes. No incident? None. rope-yarn, a roving population in oil-skin hats, a pretty steady No character? Nothing like it. The writers of this influx of drunken bargemen, and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a good deal of water about Mudfog, and school have no idea of character, beyond the grand diyet it is not exactly the sort of town for a watering place, either. vision of fools and knaves-bullies and cowards. Of Water is a perverse sort of element at the best of times, and in any modifications and minglings of qualities, they seem Mudfog it is particularly so. In winter it comes oozing down the to have no conception. Of such at least they make no streets and tumbling over the fields,-nay, rushes into the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavish prodigality that exhibition, though personages are occasionally intromight well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer weather it duced, which we may suppose (as the contrary is not will dry up, and turn green; and although green is a very good | made to appear,) to be men and women such as God