calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths? Not to vain-glory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts from all society.' We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly praised on this account by Johnson. 6 The last of men,' says Madame D'Arblay,' was Doctor 'Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by nullifying the labours of talents.' The club, Johnson's club, did itself no honour by rejecting on political grounds two distinguished men, the one a Tory, the other a Whig. Madame D'Arblay tells the story thus:- A 'similar ebullition of political rancour with that which so difficultly had been conquered for Mr Canning, foamed over the 'ballot-box to the exclusion of Mr Rogers.' 6 6 An offence punishable with imprisonment is, in this language, an offence which produces incarceration.' To be starved to death is, to sink from inanition into nonentity.' Sir Isaac Newton is, the developer of the skies in their embodied movements; and Mrs Thrale, when a party of clever people sat silent, is said to have been provoked by the dulness of a taci' turnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, pro'duced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a ' dearth the most barren of all human faculties.' In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of Madame D'Arblay's later works, without finding flowers of rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of those jargonists at whom Mr Gosport laughed, nothing in the language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approaches this new Euphuism. It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That her later works were complete failures, is a fact too notorious to be dissembled; and some persons, we believe, have consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first an over-rated writer, and that she had not the powers which were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which good-luck and fashion had placed her. We believe, on the contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on writing in her mother-tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristophanes to edite Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his head that the Blind Fiddler and the Rent-Day were unworthy of his powers, and challenged competition with Lawrence as a portrait-painter. Such failures should be noted for the instruction of posterity; but they detract little from the permanent reputation of those who have really done great things. Yet one word more. It is not only on account of the intrinsic merit of Madame d'Arblay's early works that she is entitled to honourable mention. Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. The Female Quixote is no exception. That work has undoubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade; but, if we consider it as a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule. Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Evelina, were such as no lady would have written; and many of them were such as no lady could without confusion own that she had read. The very name of novel was held in horror among religious people. In decent families which did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling, on the part of the grave and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist, having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious people, took without scruple liberties which in our generation seem almost incredible. Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with broad comic humour, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble province of letters. Several accomplished women have followed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honourably distinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of Madame D'Arblay have equalled her; two, we think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed, gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for in truth we owe to her, not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and the Absentee. NOTE to the Article, in last Number, on the New Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. We have been informed that in mentioning, in the above Article, the Biographical Dictionary of the late Dr Aikin, we committed a mistake in stating that it was not completed, which we now very willingly correct. We had said that it stopped with letter S, on the conclusion of its eighth volume; whereas we find that it was actually completed, and a Supplement added, by Dr Aikin;— the whole extending to ten volumes, of which the two last were published in 1814 and 1815. But though a valuable, it is not by any means a universal Biography, being professedly limited to lives of eminent persons,'-a very different sort of undertaking from one that aspires to notice every individual who has done any thing either in Letters or Art, or in any line likely to attract the curiosity of mankind, whether eminent or not. 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