condition of society which, under such attractive representations, they depict, is one different from what we are to move in, and one, which for our patriotism's sake, as well as for the credit of our good judgment, we ought not to learn to love. It is unfortunate that the imaginations of our young people should be excited by it, even if the effect should be no worse than to make them look upon our far preferable institutions of republican equality and freedom, as comparatively a homely thing, and divert and abate in any degree the enthusiasm with which we ought to be trained to regard them. It is unfortunate that the merchant's daughter and the farmer's boy should get their heads too full of the Young Duke and May Dacre: there is real danger that, when such dreams are dreamed in every fifth or tenth house throughout the country, the affection with which our more venerable frame of society ought to be regarded, will be in some degree distracted and unsettled; and this would be a serious evil in a country where everything rests on the basis of opinion-where that patriotism, which is the life of our national being, looks to this only for its food. In our opinion, there is scarcely a better service of patriotism than is to be rendered by the multiplication of works in this department, in the tone of some of those in which the upright genius of Miss Sedgwick has kindled the sympathy of readers in the virtues that befit the American citizen, and awakened their veneration and love for that essential dignity and charm which every man and woman in this nation may aspire to wear. We do think, that whoever has been reading Woodstock, with a genuine surrender of himself to the artist's power, is in such peril of finding himself inoculated with the subtle virus of that man-worship, named loyalty, that he will do well presently to apply Live and Let Live, or some such generous febrifuge, to restore a republican sanity to his distempered blood. Works in this tonethe more abundant and more highly wrought the better-instructing the common mind of this nation to appreciate its privilegesforming it to discharge, and winning it to love, the duties of its position-will go further than any parchment Bill of Rights to perpetuate our political blessings. They must be written in America; they can be produced nowhere else. And when rulers come a little to a sense of their own duty, they will take care to provide some encouragement for the production of such works. If on every shelf in the American States, where now lies a copy of Pelham, we could substitute one of Home, or of The Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor Man, we hesitate not at all to say, that there would forthwith be a most substantial effect produced on the respectability of the national character, and the stability of the national institutions. Works of similar character, in much greater number—and for aught we know, of much higher order-there will be, when the grave and reverend guardians of the nation's welfare in Congress assembled, shall be disposed to attend to their duty in the premises. Readers cordially greet such works, but authors must live while they write them; and this they will have no security for doing, till legislatures

shall have made that easy provision, which depends on them, for the encouragement of a literature instinct with the spirit of republican virtue.'

A clergyman, Dr Belknap, as we have remarked in our account of literature before the year 1800, made the first inroad on that prejudice against prose-fiction which had been cherished by the Puritans of New England and other colonies in early times. He was followed by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), whose novels have been noticed. The increasing taste for fiction was gratified by the works, now almost forgotten, of Mrs Foster of Massachusetts, author of The Boarding-school and The Coquette; Mrs Rowson, who wrote, besides other tales, Charlotte Temple, a very popular novel in its day; and Royal Tyler (died in 1825), who wrote, besides some dramas, a successful romance, entitled The Algerine Captive.

WASHINGTON ALLSTON, the celebrated painter (1779-1843), must be numbered among the early writers of prose-fiction. He produced the tale of Monaldi in 1820, though it was not published until 1841. It was written for Mr Dana's periodical, The Idle Man, and was laid aside when that publication was discontinued. The style of the romance is good; but the interest depends rather on the metaphysical analysis of passion than on a well-developed story. It is too commonly supposed, that the great artist in music or painting must be deficient in general intellectual power and wide culture.

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING (born 1779) first appeared as an author in concert with Washington Irving, and wrote several of the papers in Salmagundi-a humorous and satirical miscellany, noticeable because its success had probably some influence in leading Irving away from law and commerce to a life devoted to literature. This periodical was brought to a close because the publisher, who found it very profitable, refused to give any share of his gains to the writers. Paulding, however, persevered in writing; and after giving to the public several minor pieces, produced in 1816 his Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan— an allegorical account of the quarrel between Great Britain and America. This was followed by Letters from the South, containing sketches of scenery and manners; and in the course of a few years, the industrious writer produced several other works, including a second series of Salmagundi; a poem entitled The Backwoodsman; Koningsmarke, a novel; The Book of St Nicholas, a series of tales said to be translated from the Dutch; and

H

The New Pilgrim's Progress, a humorous and satirical work. In 1831, The Dutchman's Fireside, commonly esteemed as the best of Paulding's novels, was published. Its scenes are laid in the district of New York, and its portraitures of the early settlers have been praised for their fidelity; but the humour of this and other tales by the same author, has not been so well appreciated in England as in America.

Westward Ho! the next novel by Paulding, has its scenery in Kentucky, and introduces several rather formidable humorists of the backwoods, especially an extravagant planter, who retreats into the forests, to escape from law and civilisation, or, as he says, 'to live independent, where there's no law but gentlemen's law, and no niggers but black ones.' There are some pleasant traits and lively descriptions in these, as in other tales by Paulding; but the humour often descends to coarseness, and the treatment of the story is commonly rambling and without unity.

It cannot be denied that the numerous writings of this author have national characteristics and contain many graphic sketches; but their value is lessened by a want of good taste and artistic treatment. In The Dutchman's Fireside, the story of a nightadventure among the Indians is as lifelike as anything of the kind in Cooper's best romances. Several of the characters in Westward Ho! are original, and strongly though perhaps rather coarsely drawn; and Koningsmarke has its lively scenes of new-year's revelling and other incidents of the old settlements on the Delaware. To introduce the following extract from Westward Ho! it must be observed that the speaker is a settler in the backwoods, who finds civilisation pressing too close upon him when a gentleman with a white servant calls at his house.

KENTUCKY HOSPITALITY.

""You must know, colonel, not long after you went away, there came a man riding along here that I calculate had just thrown off his moccasins, with another feller behind him in a laced hat, and for all the world dressed like a militia officer. Well, I hailed him in here, for you know I like to do as you would in your own house; and he came to like a good feller. But the captain, as I took him to be, hung fire, and stayed out with the horses. So I went and took hold of him like a snapping-turtle, and says I: 'Captain, one would think you had never been inside of a gentleman's house before." But he held back like all wrath, and wouldn't take anything. So says I Stranger, I'm a peaceable man anyhow, but maybe you don't know what it is to insult a feller by sneaking away from his hospitality here in Old Kentuck.' I held on to him all the while, or

he'd have gone off like one of these plaguy percussion-locks that have just come into fashion. Captain,' says I, 'here's your health, and may you live to be a general.'Captain!' says the other; 'he's no captain; he's my servant.' 'What!' says I, 'one white man be a servant to another! make a nigger of himself! come, that's too bad!' and I began to feel a little savage. I asked one if he wasn't ashamed to make a slave of a feller-cretur, and the other if he wasn't ashamed to make a nigger of himself; and they got rather obstropolous. I don't know exactly how it came about, but we got into a fight, and I licked them both, but not till they got outside the door, for I wouldn't be uncivil anyhow. Well, what do you think? instead of settling the thing like a gentleman, the feller that had a white man for his nigger, instead of coming out fine .... ·9 if he didn't send a constable after me! Well, I made short work of it, and licked him too, anyhow. But I can't stand it here any longer. Poor old Snowball1 slipped her bridle the other day, and went out like a flash in the pan; so I'm my own master again, with nobody to stand in my way at all. I must look out for some place where a man can live independent; where there's no law but gentlemen's law, and no niggers but black ones. I sha'n't see you again, colonel, it's most likely, so good-by all. I expect you'll be after me soon, for I look upon it to be impossible for a man in his senses to live here much longer, to be hoppled like a horse, and not go where he pleases." And away he marched, with a heart as light as a feather, in search of a place where he might live according to his conscience.'

TIMOTHY FLINT (1780-1840), a native of Massachusetts, was educated for the Christian ministry, and for ten years laboured as a missionary in the Valley of the Mississippi. His first book, giving recollections of his mission, was published and well received in 1826, and subsequently the failure of his health made him dependent on literature. His next work was a novel, Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Patriot; and was followed in 1828 by Arthur Clenning, a very hazardous attempt to write one more Robinson Crusoe. The last of his novels, The Shoshonee Valley (1830), has little merit in its portraiture of character or development of a story, but its landscapes have the freshness of the writer's recollections. It is curious that Flint, who must have been well acquainted with the realities of Indian life, should choose to give a mere visionary account of it in his Shoshonee Valley.

His powers of description were more happily employed in his work on The Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley (1827)—an important contribution to American geography. It

1 A servant who had died.

was reprinted with a condensed survey of the whole continent. During the later years of his life, Flint was engaged as editor of the Western Monthly Magazine, and wrote numerous magazine tales and essays, besides an historical and critical account of American Literature, published in the London Athenæum. In 1840, while passing through Natchez, on his way from Louisiana to New England, he was overtaken by the tornado which desolated that city, and for some hours remained buried under the ruins of a house. This accident seriously affected his feeble health; and after a lingering illness, he died in his native place, Reading, in his sixtieth year. His literary career, often interrupted by indisposition, was commenced when he was forty-five years old, and when failing health had disqualified him for other duties. An extract from his last novel may afford a specimen of his descriptive passages :—

COUNTRY OF THE SEWASSERNA.

"Their free domain comprised an extent of 500 leagues. The country of their compact and actual settlement is a vale, than which the earth can shew none more beautiful or more secluded-the vale of the Sewasserna. This stream, in which the poets would have placed the crystal caves of the Naiads of the ancient days, comes winding down in a clear, full, strong, and yet equable and gentle tide, from the mountains. Up its pure and ice-formed waters ascend, in their season, countless numbers of the finest salmon; and in its deep and circling eddies play trout, pike, carp, tench, and all the varieties of fish of cold mountain-rivers. The Indian, as he glides down the stream, sees the shining rocks at the bottom, covered with tresses of green waving moss, at the depth of twenty feet. This circumstance, along with its transparency, furnishes the etymology of its name, which imports the sea-green river. Streaked bass, shiners, gold-fishes, and beautiful and undescribed finny tribes, dart from their coverts along the white sand, flit from the shadow of the descending canoe, or turn their green and gold to the light, as they fan, as it were, with their purple wings, or repose in the sunbeams that find their way through the branches that overhang the banks..

The glossy gray mallard, the beautiful blue-winged teal, the green-crested widgeon, the little active dipper, the brilliant white diver; the solitary loon, raising his lugubrious and ill-omened note in unsocial seclusion; the stately swan, sailing in his pride and milky lustre slowly along the stream; the tall sand-hill crane, looking at a distance like a miniature camel; the white pelican, with his immense pouch in front; innumerable flocks of various species of geesein short, an unknown variety of water-fowls with their brilliant, variegated, and oiled vestments, their singular languages and cries,