New Year's Day publications to which I have a strong dislike. In past years we have seen Books of Beauty' and 'DrawingRoom Scrap-books,' containing scores of fulsomely complimentary verses to ladies, written by other ladies. It gives one the qualms to see such an unnatural style of writing. Can one woman, within the recesses of her heart, really feel towards another of her own sex, the raptures which she pretends to feel, according to the glowing tenor of her verses? Every person who knows anything of human nature, and who chooses to reflect for a moment, of course knows that it is all ridiculous nonsense. Such things cannot be. And why should they? Goodness me! are there not men enough in the world who might be retained to perform such an office, and from whom the compliments would come naturally enough? There is a something peculiarly disagreeable in the pretended passionate admiration contained in these female stanzas laudatory of the dimples, or smiles, or complexion, or bright eyes of some beauty of rank, or fashion, or riches and especially so, when we recollect that few women ever survey the personal attractions of another without a secret feeling of jealousy and envy. In order to account for such an unnatural state of things, we are driven to assume that there must be some ulterior motive, apart from spontaneous admiration."

"Your assumption is a curious one."

"Perhaps; but it is not mine only. Apropos ; why are female writers so fond of the term self-abnegation'? You may see it in scores; but Miss Pardoe has been particularly joked for it. Hush, Wordsworth-aside again :-You have doubtless read her amusing Confessions of a Pretty Woman.' Of course it has occurred to you who the pretty woman is who makes these charming Confessions.' Ay? Hold your tongue."

"I think, Southey, you ought to hold your tongue, by the way you are going on."

"Nonsense; I mean no harm."

"I hope not, I am sure. Perhaps the works of Miss Hendricks have come under your observation?"

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They have, and they have pleased me much. She has fought on perseveringly, through some little difficulties at first, until I hope she is beginning to feel herself established as a growing favourite with the public. She tries earnestly to succeedand she deserves to succeed. I have been pleased also with the power with which Miss Costello has written her Gabrielle.' But why does she so much seek to excuse the profligate gaieties of Ninon de l'Inclos?"

"May she not defend a frail sister?"

"Certainly, and with credit; particularly if the frail one is inexperienced in her errors, or if she has been led into them Jan., 1847.-VOL. XLVIII.—NO. CLXXXIX.

H

through deception, or if she was tempted stronger than she could resist, or if she has been duped, or deceived, or betrayed, and afterwards regrets what has happened. I fear this was not the case with Ninon. I am afraid she did not much grieve over her errors, or feel many pangs of remorse. Hence it is difficult to defend her, and especially hazardous for a woman to gloze over her gaieties.' I never would condemn a woman for her fall, because I am too well convinced in my own mind, that her tempter is the one on whom the blame and the execration ought to be hurled. I would not begin to condemn her until I see her continue in a course of error, when she has the opportunity within her reach of relinquishing it, and returning to the paths of virtue. Was this Ninon's case? I doubt. I would never denounce a woman until I am convinced that she prefers to go on in the practice of iniquity when she need not from necessity. I would not judge her harshly until I perceive her glory in her sin, or continue in it from choice. It is time enough to condemn then; for it is charitable to excuse the unfortunate." "That is rightly said."

"Mrs. Loudon," proceeded Southey's statue, "possesses a remarkable style of composition for a female writer. Her language is terse and nervous, her precepts are excellent, and they are enforced with a logical determination that is unusual in a lady."

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Exactly," was the reply; "and her daughter is rising up pleasingly under her tutorage. Her recent work is amiably written as is the Dream' of the Misses Hersee. The Life of a Beauty' is an admirable title, but it is not so admirably worked out. Our female writers have produced an extraordinary deal of varied talent during the last quarter century, whether we take science, under Mrs. Somerville, F.R.S., history under Miss Strickland and others, prose fiction under Mrs. Gore and dozens besides, or poetry under Mrs. Norton and the scores who bleed in the same vein."

"Alas! for this latter vein-the poetic," cried Southey's effigies, with a stronger sense of feeling than is usual in statuary marble-" Alas for this vein! The public care not to open it. They delight no longer in such phlebotomy. Time was when such a warm stream was the very life, and the only life, of the universal palate: but Byron catered such a banquet of luxuries, as everybody feasted on to repletion; so that until a few more years shall have elapsed to complete digestion, there will be no hunger again for a fresh supply. We began life in a fortunate age. We had a fancy for the manufacture of verse; and luckily for us, this was just the victuals for which man and womankind were hungering. It is a mistake to suppose that it was the excellency of our numbers that made our fortunes. No excellency

in poetry since the passing of the Reform Bill has ever attracted attention; and you may be sure that had we begun our struggle for fame since the first railroad was opened, we should never have been heard of anywhere but in the workhouse. A man one day is ravenous for a mutton-chop at dinner, another day he cannot dine unless he is humoured with a beef-steak. It is the same in literature. It was all poetry in our time-not because all the poetry supplied was good, but because people's appetites yearned for that species of aliment, and so it was thought savoury. When a person fancies a mutton-chop for dinner, he has no relish for a beef-steak, however tender and good it may be; and now the public love to peck at trifling morsels of light prose; no poetry, however highly seasoned, can find favour between their plates and covers. Writers, consequently, in order to get read, must not altogether consult their own tastes in what they will supply: they must consult the taste of the public who are to be their patronizers. What sways tradesmen in the choice of such species of stock with which they fill their stores and shops-their own fancy, or the fancy which they think lies in the public? Surely the latter. No shopkeeper would be fool enough to fill his shop-windows with satins, when he knows that people are buying nothing but silks. Each season has its fashion; and he must in some degree humour that, if he would thrive. The same in literature. Many of the inexperienced put literature above analogy with such a mercantile train of argument; but I suspect that it is only because they are inexperienced that they do so. They think it is base to discuss the penning and publishing of the sublime idealisms of heroic verse, by the same arguments with which we talk of bartering moist sugar, treacle, and legs of mutton. The whole of it, however, comes under the principle of supply and demand.”

"Your ideas," rejoined the bust of Wordsworth, "are decidedly much less sentimental now than when you wrote 'Roderick,' and 'The Curse of Kehama." "

"I find," said the other, in reply, " that one's notions change as time goes on. A mutton-chop to-day, a beef-steak to-morrow; verse in youth, prose in age; Matilda Sophia before twenty, but plain, honest Mary after. It appears, also, that the age of the world has grown older than heretofore, and thus been led to relinquish its ten-syllable iambics for sober prose; or else it has exchanged its idealism for steam and utilitarianism."

Aye," cried the alabaster of Wordsworth, "steam and utilitarianism are coming upon us at too rapid a rate. They are, on all sides, ruthlessly plunging through every romantic glade in the country; carrying fire, smoke, and screaming whistles into the retired glens, where nothing has been heard from time immemorial but the sweet warbling of the linnet and the nightingale :

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and they are impertinently invading the picturesque recesses of the forest, where poetry and heavenly contemplation have ever loved to dwell. You may remember what a fluster I was in, a year or two ago, when there was a talk of sending a railway through the heart of the Lake District?"

"Do I?-don't I?"

"Well, I protested against it—”

"You did in the Morning Post:' and your protests availed just about as much as protests avail, when one monarch protests to another against foreign marriages, the violations of existing treaties, or the seizing on free cities."

"Not much more, I am afraid; as the events, in all cases, have proved."

"Romantic glades," said Southey's statue," are giving way to cuttings and embankments; the woodland songs of linnets and nightingales to the despairing scream of steam-whistles; levellers and navies are scaring away the hare from her form and the partridge from her nest; and heavenly contemplation has turned to earthly share-dealing."

"All this," rejoined Wordsworth's bust, "is miserable to think of."

“I am afraid you are getting pathetic,” observed the other speaker.

"It is enough to grieve one," said the former.

"That is the reason why I died," added Southey's marble. "Truly, it is lamentable to witness the wreck of everything hallowed around one by a generation of levellers. This is a levelling age, if it is not a republican one. I feel like a cavalier

in Cromwell's time, or a legitimist in Robespierre's. I witness the overthrow of all that was time-honoured by levellers.' I 'protest' against the revolution; but I only get the answer that was returned on another occasion: Protest, and

this is most afflicting."

6

All

"My dear bust, do hold your tongue. It is enough to melt a heart of stone. I fear you will liquify like a wax image before the fire, if you thus give way to the melting mood."

Good-bye, for the present, then."

"Good-bye."

LITERATURE.

NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

Lucretia; or, The Children of Night. By the Author of "Rienzi," &c., &c.

AGAIN has Sir E. B. Lytton taken up a pen, with which he has so often charmed the world. Again has he woven one of those enchantments, which at once fascinate and enthral the heart and mind. Again has he manifested that engrossing and peculiar influence, which the mysterious power of his own imagination, the elevation of his fancy, his comprehensive sympathy with all that is tender, terrible, and sublime, in this creation, and with all that is exquisite in nature, have endowed him.

If we take a retrospect of all Sir E. B. Lytton's works, we shall find them alone in one particular, their versatility. Unlike other authors, he has never trodden even in his own footsteps. True, he himself is the same individual, whether he dives into the Alsatia of thieves and vagabonds, to sound the depth of their humanity, or soars on "moonbeam," or "starbeam," to reckon the mysterious links which unite the universe. He is still the same, though he carry us through scenes as opposite as the poles and hence the greater marvel of his vast variety. In no instance has Sir E. B. Lytton repeated himself; and this truth was never more strongly exemplified than in "Lucretia." Here he has entered on a new study, and a new arena of human passions; the last, novel, diversified, painted with the highest artistic skill; the first, vast, profound, comprehensive, but with an intensity so fearful, that, like the mysteries of Isis, there is need of the sternest courage for the contemplation. We wish we could have been permitted to believe that this work was a grand ideal. But no. Sir E. B. Lytton assures us, that life has sat to his canvas; and thus, instead of being presented with a great conception of the sublimity of Satan, we are compelled, with admiring terror, to gaze on the certified portrait of our own humanity. We know not, indeed, whether it manifests higher power to conceive the ideal, or to grasp the actual; but we know that the combined capacity can but belong to the most gifted genius and the most capacious mind; and both of these powers are stamped on the execution and conception of " Lucretia."

Fiction ought not to be the servant of the imagination alone, to paint its changing pictures, no matter how dazzlingly tempting the views which it displays; for just because the mind can never