old gentleman who had been once attached to her mother. After his death it was discovered that he had made a singular and astonishing will, which involves Justina in much unmerited misery.

But is it right to anticipate the reader, or satiate his mind with the tale previous to reading it? I know it is a task for doing which for myself, I should thank no person. What we have here given is a very imperfect skeleton, which cannot be filled up but in the entire language of the work.

This novel has strong claims to the patronage of the public. It is completely national, entirely American in its characters, its scenery, and its spirit. Those who read merely for present gratification, will find in it many passages of an interesting description, well calculated to keep up that delectable excitement of feeling, which like high spiced viands, stimulate the palate, producing pleasure in proportion to their pungency.

To those whose designs are more rational, and who seek to be instructed while they are gratified, we would give those volumes a strong recommendation. It is impossible to read them without exclaiming concerning riches and honours.

"The earth has baubles, as the water hath,

And these are of them!"

We would claim little sympathy with the heart that can read these volumes, and not feel some holy emotions-some detestation of that pride of heart which exalteth its possess, or like Haman of old, upon a gibbet of his own erection, where he hangs the miserable victim of his own folly and infatuation. How forcibly do they portray that want of order and regularity so lamentably prevalent in the education of children! and what bitter and caustic satire are the characters of Miss Mortimer and Miss Delway, on many young ladies whose names are familiar to our lips, and whose giddy frivolous countenances are visible to our imaginations. The greatest curse that can befall such, is to have handsome faces; beauty of countenance makes them the more remarkable, and the more they are known, the more they are despised. Like a lamp in a tomb, it allures us to a place we might otherwise have passed, and, where, when we have arrived, it serves only to exhibit the deformity with which it is surrounded.

We feel sorry that our bounds forbid us to make many extracts from the work; yet such is the coincidence of our sentiments with our heroine, in speaking of those seduced and erring creatures of her own sex, for whom women in general exhibit so little sympathy, while they can caress the seducer, that we cannot deny ourselves nor our readers, the gratification of giving it in the

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author's words. When the accomplished Ferdinand Cavendish was exhibiting penitence for crimes of the above description, he asked Justina if the "austerity of her virtue allowed of no pity to penitent offenders?" Hear her reply. My pity," said Justina, is not for you; you have nothing farther to do, than to throw from your sated and faithless heart, and banish from your presence, the victim and partner of your guilt; efface from your conscience and memory all that is past, in order to come forth accepted and even applauded by the world for so doing. My pity is reserved for those whom the world pursues with a scorn which never relents. Unable to earn their bread by honest industry, for want of character; forbidden by the laws of society, even to approach the virtuous; driven by despair from crime to crime, their closing days are famine and wretchedness of every kind, and their only refuge is the grave. It is these, sir; it is the victim and partner of your guilt, and not you that I pity."-Page 43, Vol. 2.

These are ideas which are honourable to the female character, and were such a feeling more cultivated, the language of the noble bard would not be as true as it is elegant:

"And every wo, a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame-"

But to some readers, nay, we believe to many, the chief recommendation is as yet unnoticed. It will immediately appear to a reader of even limited powers of apprehension, that our author is strongly opposed to Unitarianism; that she is a devoted believer in the divinity of the Saviour. On this part of the subJect we do not intend to dilate, leaving the work to speak for itself, believing, from our own impressions, that its influence must be considerable on the side of orthodoxy. Of religion, in general, however, we are constrained to say, that the writer is an amiable advocate of that which is taught in the Gospel, and which purifies the heart and warms it to benevolence. Her pure pages all flow agreeably to that vital practical godliness, which to an awakened sinner is as much superior to the fashionable religion of the day, as to a hungry man, a feast is preferable to the form of the viands reflected in a mirror.

We are almost tempted to call our amiable author to the field of honour, to answer for her severe satire contained in this work upon our sex. There is not a gentleman of any interest in the work, who cannot apparently change his attachments with as much ease as his dress. We trust that this pliancy of affection is not as general in the drama of life as in these volumes. Elmore changes and re-changes, and after all makes an accepta

ble and tolerably romantic lover. The grave and dignified Arlington, loves and changes his love, with a very graceful ease, and still is apparently no prodigy. Cavendish burns with the purest affection, and yet in a few weeks transfers his love with all its ardour and enthusiasm to another. Our first reflection on this subject was that our author intended that the notable sarcasm of Shakespeare, should read

"Frailty, thy name is-man."

But this impression was effaced by the character of Mrs. Mortimer, and his daughter-Miss Midway and Mrs. Grafton.

We were also disposed to question the consistency of Mrs. Islington's character, as we confess we scarcely recognised in the warm defender of the christian character, the polite Mrs, Islington whose numerous cards of invitation, called forth so much vanity, and whose splendid ball gave so much giddy pleasure to the butterflies of fashion. Indeed the contrast is so great, that we feel much hesitation in subscribing to the identity of the characters. We now take leave of our author, with an assurance of our thanks for the pleasure she has afforded us, and of our readers, with a strong recommendation of the principles inculcated in this work. both moral and religious, to their attentive perusal, and assiduous attention.

G.

FOR THE AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

INCIDENTAL REMARKS

ON

ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS.

Continued from page 364.

PASSIVE IMPRESSIONS AND ACTIVE PRINCIPLES.

*** BUT unhappily for that satisfaction, this reception is generally such as to displease and disappoint, to rebuke and to rebuff -melancholy and chagrin, united at first with something of presentiment, is the almost necessary consequence; and it is as imVOL. I.-No. VI.

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possible to answer for the conduct of the man, whose mind is under the combined influence of those powerful and subduing emotions, as it is impossible to answer for the conduct of the man who is without a home." This seems to be the only solution of the difficulty of supposing a naturally virtuous mind retaining to the last, the impressions and the forms, the inspirations and the emblems of virtue, yet yielding with a facile flexibility to the seductive allurements and temptations of vice. There is perhaps another circumstance to be considered in cases of this sort, because it tends in a considerable degree to account for, and at the same to excuse, at least to palliate the apparent inconsistency we have been supposing. It is admitted on all hands, that the capacity for good or evil, for happiness or misery. is greater and more powerful in a mind of acute sensibility, than in one of a contrary temperament. The temperament of that mind whose powers are in the degree which constitutes genius. is one morbidly predisposed to intense emotion. Such a mind is possessed of an appetite for profound feeling, a yearning after those situations of the heart which involve directly and decisively its nearest and its dearest interests; and which present the alternatives of life and death, as it were to its immediate option. The moral cravings of a mind of this cast must be satisfied: it feeds, no doubt, on bitter fruits, but these become in time to be its nutriment; as like the Pontic king. whose daily food consisted of poisonous herbs, a mind thus constituted will not only convert the most wholesome nourishment into actual poison. but will in time subsist upon it. This morbid temperament of mind, we say, is not easily administered to, while, at the same time, it is forever reaching after extremes in feeling and situations; and like a moral Procrustes it proceeds always to adjust these extremes by a forced action, whereby they are accommodated to its desires and suited to its dimensions. These extremes in feeling and situation, are not to be found in ordinary life; least of all are they the objects of desire to a mind that has been sobered down by habits of practical and virtuous exertion. The man of morbid temperament, therefore, must either feign or create them for himself. He does in fact both one and the other-as is implied first. in the force of his passive impressions, and next. in the rejection as it were of those impressions, when they were attempted to be submitted in practice to the world. We say, he both feigns and creates these fatal extremes: first, he feigns them, when previous to the confirmation of his passive impressions, these extremes may be said to figure in the imagination as mere fictions of feeling, but fictions at the same time, which, like those of imaginary history, accommodate the shapes of things to the desires of the mind. And next, he creates them, when after the confirmation of his active

principles, having made an effort, of which he is seldom conscious, to put these principles into practice, but finding to his cost that their tendency is not practical, he sets about to retaliate the injustice which he conceives himself to have sustained in the rejection of those principles by the practical part of the world, the only portion of it to which they can prove offensive. We say he creates these extremes when he sets about to retaliate the injustice he conceives himself to have suffered, because this retaliation can be effected only in one way; not in requiting the evil society has done him, with good to that society, but with evil to himself. This as we have said before, is no doubt a melancholy mode of retaliation ;* and "sweet revenge grows bitter" in the end; but still it is sweet while obtaining, and even for some time after it is obtained, to the person who conceives himself injured, and who therefore seeks and desires it. Thus is the man of morbid constitution, abandoned to the swing of fiery instincts, that hurry him into excesses that seem to compensate by their intensity, for the want of that more rational, though somewhat dull and uniform enjoyment which would have resulted from the early and steady exercise of the active principles of our nature.

Although in a case of this kind, the party which suffers most is undoubtedly the individual, yet, as we have said before, society is also a sufferer in its moral interests, and to a greater degree perhaps than it is generally supposed to be. It may be objected to our theory, that it is too abstract; perhaps it is, we know not however whether it be wholy so. The chief admission we take for granted, that the constitution of certain minds is precisely such as we have been supposing, the main argument that ensues from this admission, as to the effects resulting from such a constitution of mind, and the process by which these effects are brought about, may have been carried too far-this however remains to be shown. It may be retorted upon us, if a man bring with him into society, fantastic and far-fetched notions upon points of vital interest to that society, if he presume to set up a standard of his own as the sole and alternate criterion of right and wrong, and the infallible test of the moral worth of those around him, is it either strange or unjust that society should reject such notions, and along with them the person himself whose conduct is perhaps but a bad illustration of a worse theory? This however would be to suppose what never has happened or can happen. No man was guilty of the preposterous error of believing himself capable of making a convert of society to his

It is certainly retaliation upon society in the end, because society suffers to a certain degree from the vices of individuals.