SKETCH OF CHARACTERS.

In Waverley, the characters of the brave and devoted Vich Ian Vhor,' the eccentric and kind-hearted Baron Bradwardine, with his bears and boot-jacks,the poor idiot David Gellatley, with his leal cunning; the two dogs, Ban and Busker, with the glorious and soul inspiring loyalty and self-devotion of Flora M'Ivor, are master-touches and dear to our recollection. Then Dominie Sampson, with his learning and his simplicity -poor Meg Merrilies, with her supernatural energies, and her simply natural feelings (we could almost cry now at the remembrance of the exquisite pathos with which she laments the loss of her humble cottage)Dick Hatterick with his stern, and Gilbert Glossin, with his sly villanies; Paul Pleydell, that prince of advocates; and Dandie Dinmont, that prince of honest hearts and iron frames-the living images of Guy Mannering: and our good friend Monkbarns, with his veneration for the press, sanctifying in our eyes, all his whims in prætoriums, old coins, and old ladles-the fisherman at the funeral, old Edie Ochiltree full of good humored craftiness, the high-spirited young Highlander and the seal, together with the aristocratic Baronet, and his charlatan Dunsterswivel, in the Antiquary.

Then, in our opinion, the chief production of all, Old Mortality, abounding with incident and delineation-the period of the covenant, when Scotland would not tamely endure a corrupt kirk, and an arbitrary king -Balfour of Burley, with his fearlessness and desperate fanaticism the maniac Mucklewrath, the sonorous Kettledrumle, the gallant but bloody Claverhouse; the crafty clown Cuddie, and his crafty help-mate,-the old Lady Bellenden, with the eternal déjeuner-the unfortunate Calf Gibbie, Cuddie's mother, with her love for the cause, sadly battling in her mind with the fears

of her son; and the finest character of all, the young preacher Macbriar, dying in a consumption, yet still animated with divine energy in the cause of his God,— here, however, we must stop, or we shall fill this chapter with a mere catalogue of portraits, painted with all the freshness of Teniers, all the richness of Rubens, all the coloring of Titian, and all the splendor, power, and boldness of Raphael.

Sensible, however mighty and teeming the imagination, that there is a point beyond which it cannot soar, the distinguished author who, with confidence and intrepidity for a course of years, not courted, but commanded the approbation of the public, and kept, as it were, caprice stationary-he who regularly spread before us an annual banquet, without any lack of relish, or exhaustion of means, procured, for every successive performance, an additional measure of praise, and after having given the most unequivocal proofs that can be required of extraordinary genius, began at length to discover symptoms of an over-wrought and exhausted mind, worn out by its own incessant liberality.

There is a time when, in the selection of characters fitted to command the sympathetic curiosity of the greatest number of those who are likely to be readers of similar productions, the mind must become exhausted, original characters cannot always be invented. All that's bright must fade,' and the brightness of our Aurora Borealis began to diminish, more or less, with many an intervening corruscation, with the Monastery and the Abbot. The Redgauntlet is rather a prosing tale; the Bride of Lammermuir, and the Legend of Montrose, contain more incident, in one volume and a half, than it does in three. There is moreover no description-the salmon-striking scene is nothing, compared to a similar one in Guy Mannering. Allan Fairford and his father are a thousand degrees beneath Paul Pleydell. Old Trumbell is an unnatural and un

probable hypocrite, and not half so well drawn as Gilbert Glossin. Redgauntlet, as a political enthusiast, comes far short either of Claverhouse on the one side, or Balfour on the other. Foxley, the justice, is a cypher compared with justice Ingleby in Rob Roy, as his clerk is to Jobson in the novel; and wandering Willie must hide his diminished head before Edie Ochiltree. The letters in the first volume are somewhat tedious and wire-drawn. The narrative in the other two is disconnected and made up in the way of common novel writers-leaving off just when the interest is excited, to begin another long story. These are the main faults in the work, and which, but for the many redeeming characters of the author, were in our opinion sufficient to damn it. There are, however, beauties-flights which could only proceed from the bow of the northern Ulysses. The character and tale of Nanty Ewart, the smuggler, are admirable and original;-a smuggler now and a pirate formerly: not the villanies of his present profession, nor the horrid barbarities of his late one-nor continued intoxication, nor habitual blasphemy, can efface from his conscience one ever-gnawing feeling, arising from the seduction of a young female, who, her chastity gone, lost her remaining virtues, became a thief and was sent to the plantations-her poor mother turned out of doors and dying in a workhouse. Though there were no aggravating circumstances in the seduction—yet, still her former innocence, and her present fate, her mother's happiness and her mother's end, were ever before the eyes of the drunken and blaspheming smuggler and pirate-he was dying with the worm within, and the cankerings of his heart are well delineated.

The Bride of Lammermoor' in the Tales of my Landlord, is full of irresistible humor, of ingenious and ludicrous caricaturing, and of the most interesting views of the human heart; it bears, nevertheless, like

those that precede it,* the clearest marks of haste and inattention, both in regard to the structure of the story and the composition of its language. On this subject we have just room to remark, in the way of the unreflecting reader who may have observed such defects, and wondered how they could have found their way into the works of a genius, that the march of our ordinary mind is slow, cautious and considerate, from a feeling of debility, or a fear of falling; it moves along a path that has often been trod, and where is little likelihood of impediment or overturn; but, always desultory, eccentric and impetuous, the progress of genius lies over paths that never were explored. Self-sufficiency and a consciousness of power urge on its career. Galloping, stumbling and errror, must therefore characterise its movements. The scene of this tale is also laid in the reign of Charles I, and the incidents are as follows:

Ravenswood, the hero of the tale, is a Scottish royalist, intrepid, haughty, and revengeful. The best part of his patrimony, handed down through a course of ages, has fallen, by no fair means, he thinks, into the hands of Sir William Ashton the Lord Keeper, a crafty, weak-minded, temporizing politician, against whom the master of Ravenswood had directed all his hate, as the cause of the downfall of his house. He dwells in poverty and proud seclusion, in his now only residence of Wolf's Hope,' with but two domestics, one of whom a faithful old Butler, Caleb Balderstone, struggles most virtuously, without food, furniture or comfort, to maintain an appearance of affluence; and in no crisis nor emergency, can he be found without some ludicrous shift to uphold the fallen dignity of his patron. Accident led our hero to save the life of the object of his hate, the Lord Keeper, and that of his only daughter,

Miss Lucy. This circumstance generated in the romantic and susceptible bosom of the heroine the warmest gratitude gratitude brought on an acquaintance, an acquaintance love the most pure and ardent on both sides. This mutual felicity, however, and the incident that led to it, occurred during the absence in England of Lady Ashton, an unbending sprig of the house of Douglas, a woman of a masculine temperament, bold, ambitious, and overbearing, and deeming no sacrifice too dear for the enhancement to her family's power. To her, the name of Ravenswood was particularly odious; and on hearing of the acquaintance that commenced between him and her daughter, she hurries homeward with the celerity of a dragon; and to the dismay of Lucy, and of the weak Lord Keeper, (who had, in a great degree reconciled the fiery master of Ravenswood), appears unexpectedly in the midst of them, orders away our indignant hero, who, but for his love to Lucy, would have awfully punished this blow to his dignity.

He soon after gets an appointment to an eligible situation abroad, through the influence of the Marquis of Argyle, a powerful political engine in those times. In his absence, Lady A. urges on a match between Lucy, and a young, joyous, open-hearted debauchee, of property and power, whom she supposed a proper instrument for aiding her plans of aggrandizement. All communication between Lucy and her beloved Ravenswood was carefully and cunningly prevented; and, at the same time, every effort was made to persuade her that the silence of Ravenswood was owing to an estrangement of affection.

Persecuted by her father's repinings, the taunts of an imperious brother, and above all, by the effective machinery of Lady A. our heroine became dejected and gloomy, and, in this state, was compelled to sign the marriage bond. Scarcely had she written her name,