exalted. Godwin, on the other hand only teaches us bitterly to mourn the evil which has been cast on a noble nature, and to regard the energy of the character not as inseparably linked with vice, but as destined ultimately to subdue it. He makes us everywhere feel that crime is not the native heritage, but the accident, of the species of which we are members. He impresses us with the immortality of virtue; and while he leaves us painfully to regret the stains which the most gifted and energetic characters contract amidst the pollutions of time, he inspires us with hope that these shall pass away for ever. We drink in unshaken confidence in the good and the true, which is ever of more value than hatred or contempt for the evil!

"Caleb Williams," the earliest, is also the most popular of our author's romances, not because his latter works have been less rich in sentiment and passion, but because they are, for the most part, confined to the developement of single characters; while in this there is the opposition and death-grapple of two beings, each endowed with poignant sensibilities and quenchless energy. There is no work of fiction which more rivets the soul-no tragedy which exhibits a struggle more sublime, or sufferings more intense, than this; yet to produce the effect, no complica ted machinery is employed, but the springs of action are few and simple, The motives are at once common and elevated, and as purely intellectual, with out appearing for an instant inadequate to their mighty issues. Curiosity, for instance, which generally seems a low and ignoble motive for scrutinizing the secrets of a man's life, here seizes with strange fascination on a gentle and ingenuous spirit, and supplies it with excitement as fervid, and snatches of delight as precious and as fearful, as those feelings create which we are accustomed to regard as alone worthy to enrapture or to agitate. The involuntary recurrence by Williams to the string of frenzy in the soul of one whom he would die to serve the workings of his tortures on the heart of Falkland til CATHENEUM VOL.8.

they wring confidence from him-and the net thenceforth spread over the path of the youth like an invisible spell by his agonizing master, surprising as they are, arise from causes so natural and so adequate, that the imagination at once owns them as authentic. The mild beauty of Faikland's natural character, contrasted with the guilt he has incurred, and his severe purpose to lead a long life of agony and crime, that his fame may be preserved spotless, is affecting almost without example. There is rude grandeur even in the gigantic oppressor Tyrel, which all bis disgusting enormities cannot destroy. Independently of the master-spring of interest, there are in this novel individual passages which can never be forgotten. Such are the fearful flight of Emily with her ravisher-the escape of Caleb Williams from prison, and his enthusiastic sensations on the recovery of his freedom, though wounded and almost dying without help-and the scenes of his peril among the robbers. Perhaps this work is the grandest ever constructed out of the simple elements of humanity, without any extrinsic aid from imagination, wit, or memory.

His

In "St. Leon," Mr. Godwin has sought the stores of the supernatural ;but the "metaphysical aid" which he has condescended to accept is not adapted to carry him farther from nature, but to ensure a more intimate and wide communion with its mysteries. hero does not acquire the philosopher's stone and the elixir of immortality to furnish out for him a dainty solitude, where he may dwell soothed with the music of his own undying thoughts, and rejoicing in his severance from his frail and transitory fellows. Apart from those among whom he moves, his yearnings for sympathy become more intense as it eludes him, and his perceptions of the mortal lot of his species become more vivid and more fond, as he looks on it from an intellectual eminence which is alike unassailable to death and to joy. Even in this work, where the author has to conduct a perpetual miracle, his exceeding earnestness makes it difficult to believe him a

fabulist. Listen to his hero, as he expatiates in the first consciousness of his high prerogatives:

"I surveyed my limbs, all the joints and articulations of my frame, with curiosity and astonishment. "What!" exclaimed I," these limbs, this complicated but brittle frame shall last for ever! No disease shall attack it; no pain shall seize it; death shall withhold from it for ever his abhorred grasp ! Perpetual vigour, perpetual activity, perpetual youth, shall take up their abode with me! Time shall generate in me no decay, shall not add a wrinkle to my brow, or convert a hair of my head to grey! This body was formed to die; this edifice to crumble into dust; the principles of corruption and mortality are mixed up in every atom of my frame. But for me the laws of nature are suspended, the eternal wheels of the universe roll backward; I am destined to be triumphant over Fate and Time! Months, years, cycles, centuries! To me these are but as indivisible moments. I shall never become old; I shall always be, as it were, in the porch and infancy of existence; no lapse of years shall subtract any thing from my future duration. I was born under Louis the Twelfth ; the life of Francis the First now threatens a speedy termination; he will be gathered to his fathers, and Henry his son will succeed him. But what are princes, and kings, and generations of men to I shall become familiar with the rise and fall of empires; in a little while the very name of France, my country, will perish from off the face of the earth, and men will dispute about the situation of Paris, as they dispute about the site of ancient Nineveh, and Babylon, and Troy. Yet I shall still be young. I shall take my most distant posterity by the hand; I shall accompany them in their career; and, when they are worn out and exhausted, shall shut up the tomb over them, and set forward."

This is a strange tale, but it tells like a true one! When we first read it, it

seemed as though it had itself the powof alchemy to steal into our veins, and render us capable of resisting death and age. For a short--too short! a space, all time seemed opened to our personal view-we felt no longer as of yesterday; but the grandest parts of our knowledge of the past seem ed mightiest recollections of a far-off childhood:

"The wars we too remembered of King Nine, And old Assaracus, and Ibyeus divine."

This was the happy extravagance of an hour; but it is ever the peculiar power of Mr. Godwin to make us feel that there is something within us which cannot perish!

"Fleetwood" has less of our author's characteristic energy than any other of his works. The earliest parts of it, indeed, where the formation of the hero's character, in free rovings amidst the wildest of nature's scenery, is traced, have a deep beauty which reminds us of some of the holiest imaginations of Wordsworth. But when the author would follow him into the worldthrough the frolics of college, the dissipations of Paris, and the petty disquietudes of matrimonial life-we feel that he has condescended too far. He is no graceful trifler; he cannot work in these frail and low materials. There is, however, one scene in this novel most wild and fearful. This is where Fleetwood, who has long brooded in anguish over the idea of his wife's falshood, keeps strange festival on his wedding-day-when, having procured a waxen image of her whom he believes perfidious, and dressed a frightful figure in a uniform to represent her imagined paramour, he locks himself in an apartment with these horrid counterfeits, a supper of cold meats and a barrel-organ, on whcih he plays the tunes often heard from the pair he believes guilty, till his silent agonies give place to delirium, he gazes around with glassy eyes, sees strange sights and dallies with frightful mockeries, and at last tears the dreadful spectacle to atoms, and is siezed with furious madness. We do not remember, even in the works of our old dramatists, any thing

of its kind comparable to this voluptuous fantasy of despair.

"Mandeville" has all the power of its author's earliest writings; but its main subject the developement of an engrossing and maddening hatred-is not one which can excite human sympathy. There is however, a bright relief to the gloom of the picture, in the sweet and angelic disposition of Clifford, and the sparkling loveliness of Henrietta, who appears" full of life, and splendour and joy." All Mr. Godwin's chief female characters have a certain airiness and radiance-a light, a visionary grace, peculiar to them, which may at first surprise by their contrast to the robustness of his masculine creations. But it will perhaps be found that the more deeply man is conversant with the energies and the stern grandeur of his own heart, the more will he seek for opposite qualities in woman.

Of all Mr. Godwin's writings the choicest in point of style is a little essay " on Sepulchres." Here his philosophic thought, subdued and sweetened by the contemplation of mortality, is breathed forth in the gentlest tone. His "Political Justice," with all the extravagance of its first edition, or with all the inconsistencies of its last, is a noble work, replete with lofty principle and thought, and often leading to the most striking results by a process of the severest reasoning. Man, indeed, cannot and ought not to act universally on

its leading doctrine-that we should in all things seek only the greatest amount of good without favour or affection; but it is at least better than the low selfishness of the world. It breathes also a mild and cheerful faith in the progressive advances and the final perfection of the species. It was not this good hope for humanity which excited Mr. Malthus to affirm, that there is in the constitution of man's nature a perpetual barrier to any grand or extensive improvement in his earthly condition. After a long interval, Mr. Godwin has announced a reply to this popular sys. tem-a system which reduces man to an animal, governed by blind instinct, and destitute of reason, sentiment, imagination and hope, whose most mysterious instincts are matter of calculation to be estimated by rules of geometrical series !-Most earnestly do we desire to witness his success. To our minds, indeed, he sufficiently proves the falsehood of his adversary's doctrines by his own intellectual character. His works are, in themselves, evidences that there is power and energy in man which have never yet been fully brought into ac tion, and which were not given to the species in vain. He has lived himself in the soft and mild light of those pure and unstained years, which he believes shall hereafter bless the world, when force and selfishness shall disappear, and love and joy shall be the unerring lights of the species. T. D.

"In the evening he invited me to the marriage, and being glad of such an opportunity of seeing their customs, I went at eight o clock. I found two rooms full of men singing and drinking; the women were all retired together in another room, from which the men were excluded. After drinking for two hours the men, at half past eight, descended into the court-yard, where they were met by the women, and such as wished to dance formed a ring, in

which I counted forty of them. The music played slow time, and they all danced round a blazing mangahl (pan of charcoal) which one man staid in the middle to replenish occasionally. Had the dance been of the sprightliest tune, they were so crowded that they could only move very slow: but, without any doubt, the romaïka is the stupidest dance ever invented. The dancers move slowly round, making alternately one step forward and another backward; the men sung as they moved round, but the women remained quite silent and looked excessively melancholy. A party of Greeks, all in their holiday array, and assembled in the air among beautiful and romantic scenery, must always have an interesting and picturesque appearance; and it is only on this account (and on considering the general passion for praising any thing foreign), that I can imagine how any traveller can have expressed any applause of so stupid a dance as the romaika. On my observing the gloomy appearance of the women, a Greek near me told me that they would think it a shame to laugh or talk in the presence of men. Men and women were all dressed in their holiday clothes, in which I saw no difference from those

of their countrymen in Constantinople and elsewhere, except that some of the women wore red gowns embroidered with gold, which finery they would not dare to show in the capital; and that all of them protruded from under these splendid robes, a foot without a stocking, though decorated with an embroidered shoe. I distinguished two pretty women among them, one thirteen and the other fourteen years old both married; indeed there were much younger wives. There two children ten years old, one of whom had been married six months, and the other a year. Nay, there was one ten years old, who had been married two years; the father of this latter one would not give his consent, but her lover gave 100 piastres to the Aga, and by his assistance seized her by force." Proceeding chiefly along the coast of Anatolia, the author's observations are more entertaining, and his remarks

were

on antiquities, theatres, &c. possess greater novelty; but we can only copy the annexed.

"It is curious to observe the gradual disuse of Greek among the Greeks, produced by the change of their residence. In Greece the Turks speak only Greek; in Constantinople the Greeks speak both Greek and Turkish, but only the former to each other; in Asia Minor, along the coast, they can speak Greek when addressed in it, but talk Turkish to each other, as they did here at Ooliabat. And in the interior parts of Asia Minor they know no other language than Turkish."

The addenda must supply our remaining extracts: it is thus introduced.

"A traveller gathers some information, and meets with some incidents which he cannot weave into the narrative of his journal: I have therefore kept this chit-chat to place it at the end, having always written it down on the spot where it excited my attention, I shall begin with what I observed of the Turks, then detail what struck me of the Arabs, and finish with what I saw and heard of the Greeks."

From the Turkish anecdotes we select the following.

"If a baker sell light bread, for the first offence he is forgiven, or but slightly punished; for the second he is bastinadoed, and for the third beheaded; if the master be not found, his apprentice suffers."

“If a butcher sell bad meat, be is nailed by the ear to his own door-post from sun-rise to sunset: I remember seeing a Greek butcher nailed thus, and the fellow had the impudence to say to me- You see me tormented as our Saviour was.'

·

"The Turks lately punished a pirate by flaying him alive; they began at the head and when they came to the breast, the man died with the agony."

"A Turk was lately beheaded at Buyukdereh (by order of the Grand Vizier, who was walking about in disguise) for having sold, for twenty-four paras, a quantity of chesnuts, of which the price was fixed at twelve paras.”1812.

"The Turks wash a corpse before

they bury it, supposing that it is to appear before its Creator, and ought therefore to be quite clean. When it is in the grave, the Imaum (priest) addresses it and tells it which road it is to take to arrive in Paradise, and advises it to follow the suggestions of its good genius and reject those of its evil one." The Turks acknowledge the existence of Christ as a prophet, and even detail some of the miracles he perform ed. They call us infidels because we have not the same faith in Mahomet, who,say they, is the prophet foretold by Moses in the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy (verse 15.) and the Comforter promised by Christ in the 16th chapter of St. John, 7th verse. The Greeks, on the contrary say that Mahomet is the prophet described in the 19th chapter of Revelation, 20th verse."

"At the Courban Bairam (which happens a mouth or six weeks after the Ramazan) they sacrifice rams and lambs every man one and the rich eighteen or twenty: these are afterwards eaten or given to the poor. F's pun was excellent, I suppose that is the reason they call it the buy ram.'

"There is an amusing account in the Koran of Solomon's interview with the Queen of Sheba, which states that the King, being anxious to see her legs, covered the floor with grass placed over water in which were fish; this made her Majesty lift up her robe, to avoid wetting it, and the king thus discovered that her legs were covered with hair." -Sales' Koran, chap. 27.

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church-door open, and I thought any body might go into a church. I have not been into one for three years before, and me if I ever go into one again, if I can't do so without turning Turk.' It was not without great difficulty that the Turks were dissuaded from putting a turban on him by force."

"They (the Turks) account thus for an earthquake: in the bowels of the earth is deposited, say they, a huge fish, and when the Deity is incensed by the crimes of mankind, he gives this fish a violent blow on the tail, which makes it jump about, and the force of its motion agitates the earth."

"The Turks allow that their Emperor may kill, every day, fourteen of his subjects with impunity and without impeachment of tyranny, because,say they, he does many things by divine impulse, the reason of which it is not permitted to them to know. I have been told that a pasha of three tails is authorized by law to cut off five heads a day, a pasha of two tails three, and a pasha of one tail one."

"A mollah (judge) of Jerusalem, being disturbed at night by dogs, ordered all those animals in Jerusalem and its environs to be killed, and thus excited a mutiny among the people, who are forbidden by the Koran to kill any beast unless it be hurtful, or necessary for the nourishment of man. Having, however, by the authority of the Multi, his father, succeeded in obtaining obedience to his orders, he was emboldened to issue another still more capricious. The flies being very troublesome to him during the heat of the summer, he ordered that every artizan should bring him every day forty of these insects on a string under a pain of a severe fine, and he caused this ridiculous sentence to be severely enforced."

"When a Grand Vizier is favourably deposed (i. e. without banishing him or putting him to death) it is signified to him by a chiaonx from the Sultan, who goes to his table and wipes the ink out of his golden pen; this he understands as the sign of his dismissal : if his fate be more severe, he receives an order from the Sultan to await his