A sense of beauty seldom found
Where all within is darkly fraught,
But often trampled to the ground,
And mercilessly set at nought
By those who in their selfish power
Treat as the weed what is the flower.

"Yet brighter days begin to dawn;
The weeds of prejudice and pride,
Tho' slowly, yet are surely drawn,

From bosoms where they used to hide :
And thou, poor scorn'd and wither'd flower,
With wealth and grandeur unallied,

Shalt see ere long the happy hour,

When men, from falseness purified,
Shall learn to estimate the worth

Of all the toiling sons of earth."

We will undertake to say that few of our most popular female poets have written better than this at the commencement of their career, and we trust Miss Young's success in the present instance will be such as to stimulate her to a still more intimate acquaintance with the Muses.

Royal Gems of the Galleries of Europe. By S. C. Hall, F.S.A. Parts I. and II.

THE public are indebted to Mr. Virtue for some of the most valuable and most beautifully-illustrated works which have ever made their appearance in this country. Few men have done more to inspire and extend a taste for the fine arts. It would be a curious item of information to learn the amount which he has, from first to last, paid to artists and engravers. The sum must be immensely large. His illustrated works have not been confined to England; Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, the Canadas, the United States, and even Turkey, have all had their "Beauties" described by the pens of Mr. Virtue's authors, and portrayed by the pencils of his artists. We have here a new illustrated work, on a still more extensive and expensive scale than any that have gone before it. The plan of the "Royal Gems" is, to single out the best national pictures of the great masters, and cause them to be engraved in the first style of the

art.

The literary department is confided to Mr. S. C. Hall, and it could not have been entrusted to better hands; for there is no subject in which Mr. Hall feels more at home than in one connected with the fine arts. When a few more parts have made their appearance, we shall recur to the "Royal Gems," and report progress, at considerable length.

Lionel Deerhurst.

Edited by the Countess of Blessington.

Three Vols. London: Richard Bentley.

THE prevalence of novel-writing and novel-reading is a characteristic of the present busy age, to which philosophers have as yet paid too little attention. Prose fiction is rendered one of the great moral instruments of the nineteenth century; as is apparent when we reflect how great a mass of the population are thrown wholly upon novels for mental cultivation. Our wives and daughters, especially, receive a tone from the teeming contents of Circulating Libraries; and though, perhaps, most men have little inclination, and less time, to become novel-readers, they notwithstanding indirectly feel the influence of this class of literature through woman, who "humanizes and moulds us to her will." Nay, start not, ye self-complacent pedants, or shortsighted speculators in social philosophy! great effects often flow from little causes. Think how insignificant a being is that which rears from the depths of ocean those formidable reefs, on which the wise man's argosies are wrecked, and the deep calculations of the worldling are baffled! The novelist in his garret, who blots the crumpled paper which reflects the brilliant coruscations of his heaven-born genius, as the tears wrung forth by grinding penury fall quicker than the "thronging fairies" of his brain, that poor, despised, and broken-hearted novel-writer may yet have his revenge, when the gall of his pen smarts and convulses with shame those against whose selfishness or secret vices he puts the world on their guard—the Cutes and Pecksniffs of their age. Or he who, already appreciated by the public, in his luxurious studio, dashes off the glowing sketches of human life, or ideal pictures of imagined excellence, may feel he contributes as much to help forward his generation as any coroneted visitor he boasts of, or any intimate, neck-high deep in the waters of diplomacy. The novelist may often boast of effecting what preachers and moralists attempt with almost equal certainty of failure. They find a ready ingress into regions which are forbidden ground to holier and better works. The glowing images of fancy beguile from sin and selfishness, hearts in which fierce and fearful occupants would else be domiciled. They hold "converse sweet" with the outlaws from humanity, and mediate, as it were, between them and their offended race. In bosoms long since insensible to every higher feeling, they often strike a chord, which ceases not to vibrate till all be still. They excite abhorrence. They inspire admiration. They often purify where all was else impure. They awaken recollections of long-lost innocence, and thus point out the heavy forfeit at which gratification is purchased. They may be made, and are made, in master-hands, the channel to unwilling

minds, of moral and historic knowledge, to edify and enlighten. When religion and morality are alike silenced in the mad din of self-enjoyment, and repelled as unwelcome intruders, their functions may be delegated to the able novelist, and their ends be indirectly carried out. They are catholic in their operations,— being read by all classes, from the marchioness to the milliner; and produce results alike important and unpretending. The amusement created by them is generally proportioned to the necessity which subsists for it, whether arising from weariness or ennui. A good novel idealizes what is too real, of the "earth earthy;" and makes sensible what is purely sentimental, of the air airy. Charles Dickens, for example, has taught a lesson in the artificial regions of Belgrave-square, which the parish ministers would have in vain inculcated. The inmates of those enchanted palaces, who breathe, as it were, an atmosphere composed of other elements than the rest of men, and wot not of any enemy to repose, save their own evil genius ennui, have, thanks to his master-pen, been startled from their dreamy state, and taught a lesson not easily forgotten. In ancient days poetry, and later, the drama, were the great organs of moral instruction; as refinement advanced, these primitive mentors were supplanted, and it was found necessary to bring human profligacy under the ferule of satire. Just now, however, poetry is not the fashion: more is the pity. The drama, too, is at a discount, save for its sensual elements and satire, as represented by a spurious offshoot, "the Burlesque," which is formidable without reforming. Novel Literature may be made subservient to the purposes for which their elder sisters are now inappropriate. A good novel may, at once, idealize, realize, and satirize; and every good novel should combine these three elements. A work whose conceptions were purely imaginative, as "Vathek" or "Rasselas," and have no antitypes in nature, can be appreciated only by a few. If, on the other hand, a tale is too close to the original society, like a Daguerréotype likeness, it is sure to disappoint. We do not care to read, without any qualification, in a novel, what we hear and see going on around us every day, as in the "Sense and Sensibility" of Miss Austin. Again, if human nature be too much caricatured, however we may be obliged to laugh at its oddities, we lack the excitement which can only be produced by enlisting our sympathies in the tale; and if the inimitable Pickwick has any fault, this, surely, is that solitary want; and this consideration brings in, at last, the subject of the present review, "Lionel Deerhurst," edited by Lady Blessington. Though, perhaps, not equal to any of those works which we have particularized, it does certainly exhibit a combination of the real, ideal, and satiric, in no ordinary perfection. The incidents are such as might befall any one, and no deus ex machinâ

is hauled in to eke out the catastrophe. We may too readily trace resemblances to the leading traits and vices of the characters in society around, while, at the same time, the halo of imagination is thrown around them, which, without destroying the verisimilitude, relieves the vulgarity of the picture. Withal, there runs throughout a deep vein of Swiftian satire, in which we trace the object of the story-to hold up to ridicule the foibles and vanities of fashionable life under the Regency.

The morality is, perhaps, of too deep and recondite a character, but very bilious-such as is conveyed by the pencil of Hogarth, or the envenomed pen of Savage. It is, some may think, left too much to the reader to draw his own moral from the occurrences of the tale; and no effort is made, as is usual in what we term moral stories, to contrast good and evil, and perpetually ring changes on the old schoolboy's theme, "Honor est præmium virtutis." "Lionel Deerhurst" is certainly not a moral tale, in the same sense as the exemplary stories of "Tom and Harry," or "Right and Wrong;" but it does strike us as conveying, in its own peculiar way, a grave and solemn warning against the fatal effects of vanity. A book is not the less instructive for not spreading out its moral in every page, or, as in old-fashioned stories, winding up with an apothegm. Just as the paintings of the great masters require not the little scrolls which, in primitive days, used to be drawn as issuing out of the mouths of the characters, but by excellence of their execution convey the necessary information. The style is easy and unambitious, except that one or two scenes are rather overwrought; while, again, others betray too great an absence of art. The plot is by no means perfect, if measured by the strict rules of criticism, as it wants unity, and divides itself into two branches: but the interest of the reader is sustained throughout; and it is one of those books which we cannot lay down without an effort. There is an air of originality about the production, as if the author had felt with Boileau

"Malheureux mille fois celui dont manie

Veut aux règles de l'art asservir son génie."

But the reader is, doubtless, curious to learn something of the story itself. He, whose life is the subject of the moral, is the issue of an imprudent marriage, which proves the means of disuniting his parent from Sir Roger Deerhurst, a wealthy nabob, and the heir's grandfather. The quarrel between Deerhurst's father and grandfather, at the outset of the story, is described with great brevity and spirit:

"As the time of Lionel's departure drew nigh, and the prospect of being rid of his irksome presence appeared more certain to Sir Roger, he softened, considerably, in his manner, and gave unto him several