and that long remorse, which are here so ably depicted. But the sanctity of the clerical character, owing to many causes, is in Scotland a part of the national belief and feeling; and such violation of it as Adam Blair is guilty of, necessarily involves the perpetrator in almost irremediable ruin, and gives a shock to the whole moral and religious associations of every mind in the country. In Scotland, therefore, such a crime committed by a minister of religión, be the circumstances what they may, is a sufficient ground on which to build up a story, terminating in the most fatal and rueful catastrophes. We make this remark, because, with out insinuating in the most remote degree, that such a crime is held light in any other civilized and Christian country, yet it is certain, that even in England, for example, a country of which the clergy are, generally speak ing, a most moral class of men, and where no immoral clergyman can escape contempt, the banishment and sufferings of Adam Blair will be consider ed by many as too great for his sin; whereas, in Scotland, his sin will be considered by many as too great to justify his restoration to his sacred office, even after years of humiliation and repentance. Unless it be deeply and truly felt that the crime of which Adam Blair has been guilty must have produced in his mind an incurable and overwhelming remorse, and also utterly ruined and degraded him in his sacred profession, this book cannot powerfully affect the reader, for it must then appear to give an exagger ated account of an unnatural state of mind. But to all who feel otherwise, its character must be tragic. To them it will seem, with a just representation of human nature in the abstract, to combine much that is interesting, pathetic, and beautiful, in individual character and situation in life. Just as cowardice is a vital sin in a soldier, they will feel incontinence to be so in a minister of religion; but while the character of the first, once degraded and disgraced, seems irretrievable, even in imagination, that of the latter may outlive its shame and its guilt, and reappear, after a due period of penitence, as pure and more solemn than before, combining the melancholy and mournful associations of human temptation, trial, and trans gression, with those of renovated hope, meek faith, and humble piety. To awaken such feelings, and to imprint such impressions, seems to have been the aim and object of the author of "Adam Blair;" and although we think he has occasionally failed in the subordinate details, in the main he has been eminently successful... Adam Blair, the actor and sufferer in this little volume, is a Scottish clergyman, settled in his small quiet Manse, in a small quiet parish. He has been married for ten years to the woman whom he tenderly loved, and who was worthy of his love. He has been perfectly happy and we may say, perfectly virtuous. But his chil dren die one by one of consumption→→ all but his sweet Sarah; and the mother, from whom they inherited that beautiful and fatal disease, soon follows them to the grave. Then a new and a different life lies upon Adam Blair-a life of gloom, sadness, silence, and desolation, instead of light, glee, music, and happiness. Hitherto he had been supported on the wings of hap piness in the calm air of peace; but now he must support himself. Hither. to his soul was calm, but now there are waves; and he perceives and feels that a man's nature is not known to him until it has been tried in affliction as well as enjoyment. But Adam Blair is a sincere believer in that Christianity which he has taught; and there fore, though sad and dejected, even miserable at times, and in despair, yet his soul is strengthened by devotion; and when he looks on his only young and beautiful daughter, he is willing to face the light, and to endure existence. The first chapters of the volume describe this bereavement, this agony, and this resignation. They de scribe it beautifully and well; nor do we know where could be found united so much tenderness and so much passion. The author gains our hearts at the first meeting; and we feel-not that we have formed an acquaintance, but that we have found a friend, who has an original and interesting character, and will soon possess a close hold on our affections. : While the widower is in this state of mind, and in solitude, one whom he had known in former happy days, and who had been bride's-maid to her he has lost, offers a visit, and comes to the Manse of Cross-Meikle. This s Mrs Campbell, the wife of a High land gentleman and soldier. When Charlotte Bell, a young, sparkling, gleesome, and beautiful girl, she had loved-truly loved, Adam Blair's wife; and it would seem, in her heart, Adam Blair himself; but this was but a dream. Charlotte Bell had made a runaway marriage with a young Englishman, who, soon ceasing to be enamoured, and deserting her, had been, by the accommodating law of Scotland, divorced. Young Mrs Arden lost no time in marrying Captain Campbell; but neither did this union prove happy; and at the time she visits the Manse of Cross-Meikle, she comes before us in a somewhat mysterious and doubtful character. We: feel that no good is to attend the visit of this woman to the Manse. Evil seems to hover round her, and there is foreboding of sin and distress. Now and then she is painted in the early stage of the story, with almost dis agreeable and repulsive traits; yet, somehow or other, the author, by the inexplicable power of genius, contrives to render her not only alluring and captivating, but it may be said, interesting and amiable. Her personal beauty her warmth of heart-her compassion-her misfortunes-her. wrongs, and her dimly hinted errors, all combine in so strange union, that we scarcely know whether to like or dislike, to love or hate, to suspect or trust, to pity or condemn, this Mrs Charlotte Campbell; and we can readily suppose that poor Adam Blair, who knew her in the days of her undisturbed happiness and innocence, but who also knew her indiscretion, levities, and follies, must have felt the presence of such a woman, in the silence of his solitary and widowed dwelling. She came to bring comfort to his afflicted spirit-she loves the memory of her he loved-and she, who has no children of her own, lavishes the prodigality of a mother's tenderness on the golden locks of little Sarah Blair, dear to her for the child's own sweet sake, for that of its dead parent, and for that, it may be, above all, of him who has been left desolate. Mrs Campbell resides some months in the Manse; and we are led to imagine the gradual influence of something like a vague, undetermined, and unconscious attachment towards her in the heart of Adam Blair, and of a love to wards him in hers, suppressed by the hopelessness of her condition, and yet cherished in her passionate we may say weak principled, though we must not say unprincipled nature. The life of Adam Blair is cheered by this beau tiful, kind, and dangerous visitor; and to whatever causes it may be owing, his spirits are gladdened, and even happiness may be said once more to exist in the Manse of Cross-Meikle. In this part of the book there is great liveliness and spirit-a very ele gant and graceful style of merriment and badinage even; and nothing can exceed the truth and verisimilitude of all the minute details and descriptions with which every page is embellished. We find ourselves in a pleasant and cheerful oasis in the desert and miserable wilderness of feelings and passions with which we are surrounded. Wel look back to the mournful scenes of decay, and death, and despair-gląd that we have been removed from them; but we also look forward with a dim anticipation to the future blackness which we see lowering on the edge of the distant horizon. In this state of things, Captain Campbell hears that his wife is residing at the Manse of Cross-Meikle; and hears, at the same time, many idle and gossiping tales respecting her conduct there. Though cold and indifferent to her, he is not so to his own honour; and accordingly sends his law-agent, Mr Duncan Strahan, to the Manse, to bring Mrs Campbell away to his old castle, or hall, or house, or tenement, or building, or stone-edifice, or by whatever name more appropriate the places of shelter are called, inhabited by the gentlemen on the banks of LochFyne. She is obliged to obey, and leaves the Manse, it need not be said with what reluctance, and Adam Blair, troubled, irritated, perplexed, and grieved. Mrs Campbell and Mr Strahan are wheeled off in a post-chaise, Adam is no more in Paradise. and Adam Blair, who has known, from the brutal, and coarse, and malignant taunts of Mr Strahan, as well as the whispering gossip of the neighbourhood, and, indeed, from the kindly admonition of an old brother of the Presbytery, that Mrs Campbell's visit to the Manse was deemed one of guilt or indiscretion, now receives a letter from her, lamenting the separation of such affectionate friends, and sending her blessing to little Sarah This letter, from one whose kindness he had felt alleviating his sorrows, and who had, he knew, suffered in dignity and dishonour on his account, greatly affects him; and, after a few days of feverish and disturbed alienation of mind, he suddenly conceives the purpose of going to Uigness, the Highland prison, in which he understands Charlotte is immured, to assure her of his sympathy for her, under such unjust aspersions, and by that kindness to encourage her to support her seclusion and imprisonment. We believe that this journey of Blair to Uigness, is considered, very generally, indelicate or unnatural; and perhaps it is. For our own parts, we decidedly thought so, on its first perusal, and we half incline to think so still. But, at the same time, although authors must not be capricious altogether in their books, yet men will often be capricious altogether in their actions. This journey of Adam Blair was certainly neither judicious, nor prudent, nor like a man of sense, or of the world. But we suspect that Adam Blair loved Charlotte Campbell better than he ought to have done; and, if so, he might have felt himself suddenly impelled to undertake this very foolish and fatal journey by many mixed motives, partly creditable, and partly pardonable, and wholly natural, which the author, not being a professed metaphysician, has not attempted to analyse, and perhaps so much the better. However, be his journey to Uigness natural or unnatural, no such cavilling will apply to the conduct of the infatuated man in that dreary and lone some dwelling. Passion, guilt, crime, shame, remorse, and conscious degradation, now possess his soul. There the writer puts forth his strength, easily and triumphantly, and the heart is oppressed with an almost miserable interest in the fallen man. Driven by the desperation of guilt, as by a storm, he is borne off before our eyes into the silence of the desert, and sits down, with horrid and sickening fancies of suicide in his heart, on a stone, by the margin of a black sullen pool, in a hollow among the mountains. Charlotte, who has followed him into this wild place, stops his steps as he is about to plunge into the tarn, and after some broken and insane words of horror, remorse, and wrath, he flies up the mountain, and then de scends into a remote glen. The part ner of his guilt traces him to a small hut, where she finds him lying on the floor, oppressed with a burning fever, and, in its delirious wanderings, eyeing her with glaring and reproachful eyes, and then hiding his face with a shudder of horror, as if deeply conscious of his guilt and his ruin. The cottagers make a sort of litter of wythes for the sick and seemingly dying man, and he is conveyed to the Castle of Uigness. For several days Adam Blairlies struggling between life and death, delirious and raving,-and poor Mrs Campbell keeps watch by his bedside. The fever abates, and he recovers his senses, with a dim, and indistinct, and wavering recollection of his crime, his remorse, his illness, and of many sad and mournful and terrible things seen or imagined there and among the hills. He thinks that he remembers a vision of three boats rowing silently, and as if on some sad occasion, across LochFyne, and that he heard over the waves and in the sky mournful music, dirgelike and funereal. Charlotte is dead! And in one of those boats had her corpse been carried across the Loch to the place of burial. She had tended him till the fever shot into her own veins ; and poor, frail, erring, unfortunate, warm-hearted, and beautiful Charlotte Bell, or Arden, or Campbell, or Blair, was now in her shroud, and the turf above her head. This, we think, is one of the most finely conceived incidents to be found in any fiction,-it reminds one of some of the wild things in the old dramatists, and confounds the heart with a strange and incomprehensible pathos. Adam Blair, weak and worn out with despair, preyed upon by remorse and grief, conscious that he is guilty before God, and for ever lost, fallen, ruined, and degraded before men, leaves Uigness in company with old John Max well, one of his Elders, (a character admirably sketched,) who had followed him to the Highlands. The Presbytery are assembled in the choir of the Cathedral near Glasgow, to consider the "fama clamosa" now loud against him; and Adam Blair, pale, emaciated, and with his young head made grey with grief, stands up in the midst of them, and confesses his guilt. He is deposed from his sacred office, another minister chosen in his stead, and his foot enters not the door of the Manse of Cross-Meikle. Grief does not often kill. Adam Blair retires to a small cottage with his child, and lives for a good many years in utter seclusion. His repentance is sincere and profound; and peace and tranquillity have again visited his heart. His sin, remembered by himself, is almost forgotten by others; he is pitied, forgiven, and respected; and the church of CrossMeikle, being now vacant by the removal of his successor to another parish, such is the power of his repent ance and lowly virtues over the minds of all in the parish and neighbouring bounds, that a deputation of the Presbytery wait upon him in his cottage, and solicit him to resume his sacred profession. He does so-once more lives in the Manse, and preaches in the Kirk of Cross-Meikle, and dies, leaving behind him a memory stained by one great transgression, but redeemed by many useful and unpretending vir tues. Such is an outline of the story of the Life of Adam Blair. Several other characters besides him and Charlotte Campbell are introduced; and they are depicted with great truth and vivacity. This writer often shews more of a person's character by one happy expression, or one single trait, than an ordinary writer could do by the most elaborate portrait. Mrs Semple of Semplehaugh, Mr Jamieson, Captain Campbell, Duncan Strahan, and old John Maxwell the Elder, are all excellent. Indeed the latter is perfect, and equal to any thing in Mackenzie. We shall now present our readers with a few extracts, which will amply justify all that we have said of this very bold, powerful, and original production. But its charm lies in the continued force of the stream of passion, and to feel that, the book itself must be read. It is a single volume; and few, we believe, who take it up, will lay it down till they have come to the beautiful lines of Wordsworth, that give the moral at its close. Let us give three extracts,-one describing the griefs of Adam Blair when he was innocent,-one describing his remorse when guilty, and one describing his peace and penitence when restored. "It was the custom of the house, that a servant rung a bell every morning at eight o'clock, to assemble all the family for prayers. That morning the old man, whose common duty this was, did not venture to perform it; but not many minutes had elapsed beyond the accustomed hour, it was heard, entered the parlour with their ere the bell was rung, and all, so soon as Bibles in their hands. When they came in they found that Mr Blair had already taken his seat, and had the book lying open upon the table before him. Little Sarah was sitting on her stool close beside him, and his left hand rested upon her shoulder, while the right was occupied in turning over the leaves of the Bible. The child's eyes were red, but she too was com posed; she too was handling her book, and turning over its leaves. As for Mr Blair, he did not look up when he heard his ser vants enter, but as soon as they had taken their seats, he uttered his usual preliminary petition much in his usual manner, and then proceeded to read aloud the lines of the 121st Psalm, I to the hills will lift mine eyes From whence doth come mine aid," &c. in a tone of serenity and firmness, that fill ed the hearts of those who heard him with a mixed sentiment of surprise and veneration-surprise at the strength exhibited, and veneration for that deep sway of religious feelings, by which, as they rightly judged, such strength in weakness had been produced. They had not witnessed the struggle, but they guessed something of what had been; and they, simple as they were, had sense enough and wisdom enough to revere the faith which had pass→ ed through such fires, to come forth purified, not tarnished. After the Psalm had been sung, he read the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St John, and concluded with a prayer, such as none, most surely, but a sorely chastened heart, could have conceived, although throughout the whole of it there was no express allusion to the particular situation of the person by whom it was uttered. Once or twice the voice faltered, but he soon recovered himself; and when the service was over, and all had once more arisen from their knees, I believe the countenance of the young bereaved Minister bore fewer traces of trouble than any other counte nance in the room. "Even in the house of sorrow, the ordinary matters of life go on, for the most part, in their ordinary course; and I will confess, that to me this has always appear ed to be one of the most truly affecting things in the world. The cloth is laid, the meal is prepared, the bottle is brought up table all these affairs go on just as duly from the cellar, the family sit around the the day that the mistress or the master of a family is dead, as any other day in the year. Grief, even the sincerest and deep est grief, occupies, after all, when the first triumph of its energies is over, no more than a place in the back-ground. The front of life is as smooth as ever. "All this was so within the Manse of Cross-Meikle; of course still more so round about its walls. Servants passed to and fro about the occupations of the house, inquiring friends and acquaintances came and went, the little motherless girl was seen from time to time busied in the garden among the few lingering flowers of the autumn. Mr Blair himself was not visible to any but his own family, and to them only at the hours when the family were accustomed to be together. At other times he was in his chamber alone, or with his orphan by his side the accustomed volumes lying about him-to the eye the same quiet, grave man, or nearly so, that he had been a week or a month before. The closed windows of the chamber in which the body lay, furnished the only outward and visible sign that death was in the house. * *Mr Blair was sitting by himself on the evening of the third day; apparently he had been reading, but the light had deserted him, and his book had been laid down on the table near him, when the door of his room was opened, and some one, as if hesitating to go farther, stood just with in the threshold, with his finger on the handle of the door. Mr Blair did not observe, for a minute or two, that the door of his room had been opened, but at last his eye happened to travel in that direction, and he perceived that John Maxwell, one who had for many years been the old est among the elders of his parish, was come to visit him in his affliction. could have been expected from so young a sufferer as he, while John Maxwell shew. ed himself worthy of holding the rank he did in the church of Christ. The minister and the elder laid their hearts open to each other; they wept, they prayed, and they took sweet counsel together. John had been more than once nerved, softened, and renerved again, ere he at length took courage to whisper into Mr Blair's ear, that his presence was wanted in the chamber. Mr Blair understood perfectly what John meant. He arose at once, and walked towards the place where his wife's remains were about to be closed up for ever from all human view. C 1 It is the rule in Scotland, that no male, except it be a husband, a father, or a brother, can be permitted to remain in the room while the coffin-lid is screwed down upon a female corpse. John Maxwell attended his minister to the door, therefore, but no farther. Within, three or four village matrons only, and the female servants of the family, were assembled. Mr Blair entered, and found them in the midst of all the fearful paraphernalia with which it was (and is) the custom of Scotland to deepen the gloom of the most sad of all possible occasions. Well as he was acquainted with all the habitudes of his country-folks, he had never before brought fully home to his imagination all that now met his view. The knots, the ribbons, the cushions, the satin, the tinsel all that melancholy glitter turned his soul sick within him, and once more he yielded; not, however, as before, nor to the same enemies. Sadness, weariness, heart-sickness these were now his visitants. He stood pale and feeble, while the "Come in, John,' said he; C so old a tears flowed over his cheeks in utter silence. friend may come at any time; I am glad One of the old women thought that a sight to see you sit down, John; and in say- of his wife's face might bring him, through ing so, he had taken the worthy man by emotion, to himself again, and she lifted the hand, and was leading him towards the the veil. But even this was of no use, and seat from which he himself had just arisen. to no purpose. The man was altogether "The Lord is gracious, Mr Blair-the unnerved the strong-souled Adam Blair Lord is very gracious. It is HE that giveth, was in that hour a weanling, and he wept and it is HE that taketh away. Blessed on as silently, and not a whit more bitterbe his holy name! Oh, sir, I thought the ly than before. They led him, unresistLord would never surely leave your faing, to his room; he allowed himself, for ther's son, and I see he has not left you.'the first time of his life, to be undressed "The old man meant to speak words by hands other than his own. After he of comfort, but ere he had done, his voice had been put to bed, John Maxwell stood failed him, and the tears were gushing over against him for some minutes, sayover his cheeks as he looked in his young ing, minister's face, and wrung the hand that had been extended to him. It was no wonder, surely, that the afflicted man sympathized with his comforter, or that some minutes had elapsed before either of them was in any condition to renew the conversation. "Nor shall we trouble the reader with any needless detail of it. Let it be sufficient to know, that on the part of Mr Blair, it was all that could become any man af'flicted as he was, and much more than 6 Wae's me, wae's me.' He then commanded all the rest to retire, and, kneeling by the bedside, began to pray aloud in the old sublime simplicity of the true village worthies of Scotland. The priest felt in his soul the efficacious piety of the elder of Israel. "Good night, John Maxwell.' "God bless you-God strengthen you!" and so they parted. "The next day, no worldly work was done in the parish of Cross-Meikle. At |