an unmitigated rascal. He takes the idea of a man with a sharp intellect and great capacity, whose whole nature is under the dominion of selfish passion,-gives the idea a name, and intermingles it with the machinery of his plot. This criminal appears regularly in every novel, and labors assiduously to overthrow the hero and heroine. He is something like Gammon, in "Ten Thousand a Year." He has the advantage over goodness until nearly the end of the volume, and is then dismissed to proper punishment. This type of character is the most forcible of the author's attempts; but Rashleigh Osbaldistone, or Varney, throws it into the shade. Whenever Mr. James aims to draw humorous persons, to fill in the spaces of his narrative, he never succeeds. He cannot even make them say witty or humorous things.

We might extend these remarks to other personages in our author's novels; but it is needless. If we are correct in the view we have taken, it is proved that Mr. James, in several high qualities of romance, is deficient. Yet he is compared, by many of his admirers, with Scott. Their reasoning to support so singular a conjunction must be drawn from the stores of honest Fluellen. Mr. James chooses historical events as the basis or auxiliary of his plot, and pours forth novels as other men do essays; Sir Walter Scott did the same; therefore, they bear a surprising resemblance to each other as novelists. This is the old argument; "There is a mountain in Wales, and there is a mountain in Macedon." In truth, no two writers have less in common, in the essentials of their art, than Scott and James. Scott's marvellous range of character, the fertility with which he created or painted individual beings, his genial sympathy with

his race, his remarkable objectivity of mind, his open sense to all outward objects, would alone constitute a great gulf between him and James. He did not repeat himself in his novels. He wrote fast, because his mind produced quickly. In the poorest of his novels, he always gives us some characters whom we ever remember with pleasure. Mr. James's knowledge of history, great as it is, and much as he draws upon it, is used without any of the peculiar power of imagination with which Scott gave life and hue to what were before mere names, and made his readers contemporaries with the past. A king, a man-at-arms, or a tournament, delineated by the author of " Waverley," is presented to our minds as vividly as real personages or events which have passed before our own eyes. To this pictorial imagination Mr. James has little claim. He gives to his scenes the vividness of history, not that of reality

or romance.

A writer who chooses great subjects and personages for his theme often obtains that rank in general estimation which should be held only by those who treat them with eminent ability. Mr. James is considered by many to be a greater man than Mr. Dickens, because he delineates kings and nobles; describes battles; shows a minute acquaintance with history; makes all his characters mathematically moral or immoral; strains ever to obtain a certain stilted elevation of thought and sentiment; is careful never to wound the most fastidious delicacy with any words which may convey or suggest unpleasant and vulgar images; and speculates dubiously on government, nature, the arts, religion and destiny. We are quite sick of hearing him praised for his attempts, instead of being judged by his execution. One

of Mr. Dickens's coachmen is more worthy of admiration than one of Mr. James's kings. A cardinal, or a pope may be a loftier personage than a poor parish priest; to delineate the former, "from the heart outwards, and not from the flesh inwards," may be a greater triumph of art than to succeed in portraying the latter; but still Parson Adams "bears the gree" from all the clerical dignitaries of romance. The nature of the man should not be confounded with his name or his garb. To call a personage a bishop, and to represent him in the dress of his order, is not to delineate a bishop. Beneath all externals, there are a human heart and brain, and an individuality distinguishing him from every other bishop. To exhibit him dramatically, either in play or novel, it is indispensable that these characteristics should be preserved.

It may be asked, why it is, if Mr. James is thus deficient in the higher qualities of the novelist, that his works are so popular. Are they not read and admired by thousands? They are read, admired, and forgotten. They are not read a second time. By the time one has passed from the memory, another flows into it, which, in its turn, gives place to a third. No characters or incidents adhere to the mind, and become to it a possession forever. After we have studied them all, we find that they have only given us general ideas, or furnished us with historical knowledge. We love and remember none of his personages for themselves alone. They are all insensibly resolved into their original abstractions. We recollect one of his few types of character, as we remember a proposition in Combe's Constitution of Man.

But it may still be asked, Whence comes it that his novels are read at all? We might here avail ourselves

of a New England privilege, and answer this question with another equally pertinent: Why are the productions of fanaticism, quackery, bad taste, and sentimentality read? Why do melodramas draw larger audiences than Macbeth? But we have no wish to evade difficulties by insisting strongly on the rights derived from our local position. We answer, therefore, by acknowledging, that, though the test of merit is not success, yet there must be some reason in the construction of a popular book to account for its popularity; and, in Mr. James's case, this public favor is owing to the intricacy and interest of his plots.

The incidents in his novels are brought together with much cunning skill. Every person who begins one of his books desires to get through it as quickly as possible. To many this may appear the highest praise, and to settle the question at once. To us it appears to do no such thing. Although the power of creating incident, and of skilfully linking one event to another, is an important element of a good novel, yet it is not the most important, nor is it one in which Mr. James enjoys preeminence. When we discover the secret of his method of storybuilding, our admiration decreases greatly. We acknowledge that his novels are interesting, that they awaken and fix attention; but we discriminate between the kind of interest they excite, and the interest of "Tom Jones 99 or "Ivanhoe." We perceive that his plots are pieces of machinery, constructed according to the law's of mathematics. Their intricacy, and not their naturalness, is the source of their hold upon our minds. The characters seem not to have free play. They are puppets, moved by the scheming brain of the author. We know that the hero and the heroine will enjoy no felicity

or peace until the conclusion of the third volume, and we hasten to the consummation as fast as our eyes can carry us. The world to which we are introduced is not a free, common world, where there are chances in favor both of vice and virtue, but a fenced park, full of mantraps and spring-guns. A sort of iron necessity conducts everything. We do not feel ourselves safe, until we have come to the conclusion. A sort of feverish, unhealthy excitement is the feeling we experience as we read. There is always some murder, forgery, or other dark crime, in the past or the future, which we have a natural desire to expose and punish. The good characters are entangled in such a web of evil; there is such a provoking succession of premeditated accidents which seem untoward; they are walking so long on the verge of a deep gulf, into which the slightest false step may precipitate them; that our feelings of philanthropy are enlisted in their behalf, and the common axioms which forbid cruelty to animals impel us to wish them speedy death or happiness.

Mr. James is also a spendthrift of human life. When he has done with a character, or thinks it necessary to enhance the interest of his story by something awful, he strikes his pen into one of his dramatis persona, without the slightest mercy, and literally blots him from existence. He knows well that murder and violence are popular in romance, and he is desirous, like a sagacious book merchant, to make the supply equal to the demand. Whether he has any compunctious visitings of conscience, after gratifying, in this manner, his murderous thoughts, we are unable to determine; but we think the carelessness with which he slays evinces the feebleness with which he conceives. If his personages were real