tance you may espy a village. It looks like a fortification-all blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere loopholes. A square church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have you seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding, it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed trees-these formal square lines of huge edifices-these banks and braes, varying in hue from the gray of the dust to the red of the rock-why, they are precisely the backgrounds of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France and Italy.

With his various tasks and incessant labour, the health of the young littérateur gave way. Mental disease prostrated him, and for the last two years of his life he was helpless. One eminent and generous man of letters-Mr Thackeray-by special lectures and personal bounty, contributed largely to the comfort of the sufferer; and another -Mr Shirley Brooks-undertook, and for many months cheerfully fulfilled, some of his friend's literary engagements. The Literary Fund also lent assistance. It is gratifying to note these instances of sympathy, but more important to mark the warning which Mr Reach's case holds out to young literary aspirants of the dangers of over-application.

MR ALBERT SMITH (1816-1860), born at Chertsey, is best known for his illustrated lectures or amusing monologues in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in which he described a visit to Constantinople, the ascent of Mont Blanc, and a trip to China in 1858-9. Of these tours he also published accounts. Mr Smith studied medicine both in London and Paris, but began early to write for the magazines, and threw off numerous tales and sketches-as The Adventures of Mr Ledbury, The Scattergood Family, Christopher Tadpole, The Pottleton Legacy, several dramatic pieces, &c. His lectures-somewhat in the style of Mathews's 'At Home,' but with the addition of very fine scenery-were amazingly successful: 'Mont Blanc' was repeated above a thousand times, and almost invariably to crowded houses.

MRS ELLIS.

This lady is the Hannah More of the present generation. She has written fifty or sixty volumes, nearly all conveying moral or religious instruction. Her principal works are- -The Women of England, 1838; A Summer and Winter in the Pyrenees, 1841; The Daughters of England, 1842; The Wives of England and The Mothers of England, 1843; Prevention Better than Cure, 1847; Hints on Formation of Character, 1848. Several short tales and poems have also been published by Mrs Ellis. This accomplished and industrious lady (née Sarah Stickney) was in 1837 married to the distinguished missionary, the Rev. William Ellis, author of Polynesian Researches in the Society and Sandwich Islands, four volumes, 1832.

MISS C. M. YONGE-MISS SEWELL-MISS

JEWSBURY.

A not less voluminous writer is CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE, a native of Hampshire, born in 1823. Her novel, The Heir of Redclyffe, 1853, at once established her reputation. She had, however, previous to this date written several other

tales-Henrietta's Wish, Venneth, and Langley School, 1850; The Kings of England, The Two Guardians, and Landmarks of Ancient History, 1852; &c. The popularity of The Heir of Redclyffe induced the authoress to continue what may be called the regular novel style; and in Heart's Ease, 1854; Daisy Chain, 1856; and Dynevor Terrace, 1857, we have interesting, wellconstructed tales. Since then she has produced several other works-The Young Stepmother, Hopes and Fears, The Lances of Lynwood, Clever Woman of the Family, Prince and the Page, &c. The children's books of Miss Yonge have also been exceedingly popular; and all her works, like those of Mrs Ellis, have in view the moral improvement of the young, more particularly those of her own sex. Miss Yonge is said to have given £2000, the profits of her tale Daisy Chain, towards the building of a missionary college at Auckland, New Zealand, and also a portion of the proceeds of the Heir of Redclyffe to fitting out the missionary ship Southern Cross, for the use of Bishop Selwyn.

ELIZABETH MISSING SEWELL, a native of the Isle of Wight, born in 1815, is authoress of various works of what is called 'High Church fiction,' but works affording moral instruction, blended with delicate womanly pictures of life and character. The best known of these are Amy Herbert, 1844; Gertrude and Sketches, 1847; Katherine Ashton, 1854; Margaret Percival, 1858; &c. Miss Sewell has written various religious works, sketches of continental travel, &c. GERALDINE JEWSBURY is more ambitious in style, but not always so successful. Her works are Zoe, 1845; The Half-Sisters, 1848; Constance Herbert and Right or Wrong, 1859; &c. Of these, Constance Herbert is the best, both for the interest of the story and its literary merits. Miss Jewsbury has written a story for children, Angelo, or the Pine Forest in the Alps, 1855. The elder sister of this lady, Maria Jane, wife of the Rev. W. Fletcher, accompanied her husband to India, and died at Bombay in 1833; she was an amiable, accomplished woman, authoress of various essays, sketches, and poems, including two volumes, Phantasmagoria, 1829, which Professor Wilson characterised as 'always acute and never coarse.'

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

This distinguished American author was born on the 4th July 1804-the American Independence Day. He was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, and was early in the field as a contributor to periodical literature. Two volumes of these pieces were collected and published under the title of Twice-told Tales (1837 and 1842.) In 1845 appeared Mosses from an old Manse, and in 1850 The Scarlet Letter, which may be said to have given its author a European reputation. He afterwards joined with some friends in a scheme like the contemplated Pantisocracy of Southey and Coleridge-a society called the Brook Farm Community, from which Arcadian felicity and plenty were anticipated, but which ended in failure. In 1851, Mr Hawthorne produced The House of the Seven Gables, and in 1852 The Blithedale Romance. He published also a Life of General Pierce, and A Wonder Book, a second series of

and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid as they were a month ago; and yet, in every breath of wind and in every beam of sunshine, there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. A breeze cannot stir without thrilling me with the breath of autumn; and I behold its pensive glory in the far, golden gleams among the huge shadows of the trees.

The flowers, even the brightest of them, the golden rod and the gorgeous cardinals-the most glorious flowers of the year-have this gentle sadness amid their pomp. Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of every one of them. I have felt this influence earlier in some years than in others. Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of July. There is no other feeling like that caused by this faint, doubtful, yet real perception, or rather prophecy of the year's decay, so deliciously sweet and sad at the same time. . . .

I scarcely remember a scene of more complete and lovely seclusion than the passage of the river through this wood [North Branch]. Even an Indian canoe, in olden times, could not have floated onward in deeper solitude than my boat. I have never elsewere had such an opportunity to observe how much more beautiful reflection is than what we call reality. The sky and the

clustering foliage on either hand, and the effect of sunlight as it found its way through the shade, giving lightsome hues in contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tints-all these seemed unsurpassably beautiful when beheld in upper air. But on gazing downward, there they were, the same even to the minutest particular, yet arrayed in ideal beauty, which satisfied the spirit incomparably more than the actual scene. I am half convinced that the reflection is indeed the reality, the real thing which Nature imperfectly images to our grosser sense. At any rate the disembodied shadow is nearest to the soul. There were many tokens of autumn in this beautiful picture. Two or three of the trees were actually dressed in their coats of many colours —the real scarlet and gold which they wear before they

put on mourning.

Sunday, September 23.—There is a pervading blessing diffused over all the world. I look out of the window, and think: 'O perfect day! O beautiful world! O good God!' And such a day is the promise of a blissful eternity. Our Creator would never have made such weather, and given us the deep heart to enjoy it, above and beyond all thought, if He had not meant us to be immortal. It opens the gates of heaven, and gives us glimpses far inward.

The English Lake Country-Grasmere.

I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as England-this part of England at least on a fine summer morning. It makes one think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright universal verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flowerbordered cottages-not cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the labouring poor; such nice villas along the roadside so tastefully contrived for comfort and beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and afterthought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel as if their children might live in them also. And so they plant trees to overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against their walls-and thus live for the future in another sense than we Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes everything moist and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as human life and vegetable life are so apt to be with us. Certainly, England can present a more attractive face than we can, even in its humbler modes of life to say nothing of the beautiful lives that might be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose gateways, with broad, smooth, gravelled drives leading through

them, one sees every mile or two along the road, winding into some proud seclusion. All this is passing away, and society must assume new relations; but there is no harm in believing that there has been something very good in English life-good for all classes-while the world was in a state out of which these forms naturally grew.

MRS STOWE.

No work of fiction, perhaps, ever had so large an immediate sale as the American story of Uncle

Tom's Cabin, by MRS HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Washington National Era, 1850; and when comIt first appeared in parts in a weekly journal, The pleted, it was published in a collected form, and in less than a year 200,000 copies are said to have been sold in the United States. It was soon imported into this country, and there being no restraining law of international copyright, it was issued in every form from the price of a shilling upwards. At least half a million copies must have been sold in twelve months. So graphic and terrible a picture of slavery in the Southern States of America could not fail to interest all classes; and though Uncle Tom' may have been drawn too saint-like, and Legree, the slave-owner, too dark a fiend, it is acknowledged that the characters and incidents in the tale are founded on facts and authentic documents. To verify her statements, Mrs Stowe, in 1853, published a Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she had collected advertisements of the sale of slaves, letters from the sufferers, and arguments in support of slavery from newspapers, law reports, and even sermons.

Mrs Stowe visited England the same year (1853), and was received with great distinction. In London she received an address from the ladies of England, presented to her in Stafford House-the residence of the Duke of Sutherland-by Lord Shaftesbury. She afterwards travelled over the country, and from England she proceeded to France and Switzerland. An account of this European tour was published by Mrs Stowe, under the title of Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. There are some pleasant passages of description in this work, but on the whole it is unworthy of the authoress. So much tuft-hunting, vanity, and slipslop criticism could hardly have been expected from one who had displayed so much mastery over the stronger feelings and passions of our nature, and so much art in the construction of a story. Receptions, breakfast-parties, and personal compliments make up a large portion of these Memories, but here is one pleasing extract:

English Trees-Warwick Castle.

When we came fairly into the court-yard of the castle, a scene of magnificent beauty opened before us. I cannot describe it minutely. The principal features are the battlements, towers, and turrets of the old feudal castle, encompassed by grounds on which has been expended all that princely art of landscape gardening for which England is famous-leafy thickets, magnificent trees, openings and vistas of verdure, and wide sweeps of grass, short, thick, and vividly green, as the velvet moss we sometimes see growing on rocks in New England. Grass is an art and a science in England-it is an institution. The pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling, and otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the misty breath and often falling tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be appreciated. So again of trees in England.

of our

Trees here are an order of nobility; and they wear their crowns right kingly. A few years ago, when Miss Sedg; wick was in this country, while admiring some splendid trees in a nobleman's park, a lady standing by said to her encouragingly: 'O well, I suppose your trees in America will be grown up after a while!" Since that time, another style of thinking of America has come up, and the remark that I most generally hear made is: 'Oh, I suppose we cannot think of shewing you anything in the way of trees, coming as you do from America!' Throwing out of account, however, the gigantic growth western river-bottoms, where I have seen sycamore trunks twenty feet in diameter-leaving out of account, I say, all this mammoth arboria-these English parks have trees as fine and as effective, of their kind, as any of ours; and when I say their trees are an order of nobility, I mean that they pay a reverence to them such as their magnificence deserves. Such elms meadows of Andover, would in England be considered as of a value which no money could represent; no pains, no expense would be spared to preserve their life and health; they would never be shot dead by having gaspipes laid under them, as they have been in some of our New England towns; or suffered to be devoured by canker-worms for want of any amount of money spent in their defence. Some of the finest trees in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in the Psalms, 'Excellent as the cedars.' They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the king-maker. These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are themselves a living, growing, historical epic. Their seed was brought from the Holy Land in the old days of the Crusades; and a hundred legends might be made up of the time, date, and occasion of their planting.

as adorn the streets of New Haven, or overarch the

In 1856, Mrs Stowe published another novel written to expose the evils of slavery and the state of Southern society in America—namely, Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, a work much inferior to Uncle Tom. Before the period of her European fame, the authoress had contributed tales and sketches to American periodicals, the most popular of which was The May Flower, or Sketches of the Descendants of the Pilgrims, 1849; a number of children's books, religious poems, and anti-slavery tracts have proceeded from her fertile pen. Among her late separate works may be mentioned The Minister's Wooing, 1859-an excellent novel, descriptive of Puritan life in New England; The Pearl of Orr's Island, 1862; Agnes of Sorrento, 1862; Little Foxes, or the Insignificant Little Habits which mar Domestic Happiness, 1865; Light after Darkness, 1867; Men of our Times, or Leading Patriots of the Day, 1868; Old Town Folks, 1869; Little Pussy Willow, 1870; My Wife and I, 1871; Pink and White Tyranny, 1871; Old Town Fireside Stories (humorous little tales), Palmetto Leaves, 1873; &c. One publication of Mrs Stowe's which appeared simultaneously in America and England-The True Story of Lady Byron's Life, 1869-excited a strong and painful interest. This was a narrative disclosing what the authoress termed a terrible secret' confided to her thirteen years before by Lady Byron. The secret was that Lord Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister, Mrs Leigh, to whom he had dedicated some of the most touching and beautiful of his verses. So revolting an accusation called forth a universal burst of indigna

tion. When examined, the statement was found to be inaccurate in dates and in some of its leading features. Letters written by Lady Byron to Mrs Leigh in terms of the warmest affection, after the separation of the poet and his wife, were produced, and a formal contradiction to some of the principal allegations was given by the descendants and representatives of both Lord and Lady Byron. Mrs Stowe attempted a vindication next year, but it was a failure. No new evidence was adduced, and her defence consisted only of strong assertions, of aspersions on the character of Byron, and of extracts from the most objectionable of his writings. The whole of this affair on the part of the clever American lady was a blunder and a reproach. No one, however, ventured to think she had fabricated the story. Lady Byron was the delinquent; on that subject Lady Byron was a monomaniac. Her mind was not a weak one, but she had impaired it by religious speculations beyond her reach, and by long brooding over her trials, involving some real, and many imaginary wrongs. She could at first account for her gifted husband's conduct on no hypothesis but insanity; and now, by a sort of Nemesis, there is no other hypothesis on which the moralist can charitably account for hers; but there is this marked difference in their maladies-he morbidly exaggerated his vices, and she her virtues' (Quarterly Review). This seems to be the true view of the

case.

We add a few sentences from The Minister's Wooing.

A Moonlight Scene.

Mary returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick boughs of the apple trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and sad, and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often sounds as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to superior beings. There the little, hoarse, black wretches were scraping and creaking, as if life and death were invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little wind shivered among the boughs, and brought down a shower of white petals which shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a ray touched some small head of grass, and forthwith it blossomed into silver, and stirred itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint just awaking in Paradise. And ever and anon came on the still air the soft eternal pulsations of the distant sea-sound mournfullest, most mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea-the deep, eternal sea-the, treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea.

Love.

It is said that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighbourhood of a well, its roots, running silently under ground, wreath themselves in a network around the cold clear waters, and the vine's putting on outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So those loves are most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with unheeded quietness, every thought and fibre of our life twines gradually around some human soul, to us the unsuspected well-spring of our being. Fearful it is, because so often the vine must be uprooted, and all its fibres wrenched away; but till the hour of discovery comes, how is it transfigured by a new and beautiful life!

There is nothing in life more beautiful than that

trance-like quiet dawn which precedes the rising of love in the soul, when the whole being is pervaded imperceptibly and tranquilly by another being, and we are happy, we know not and ask not why, the soul is then receiving all and asking nothing. At a later day she becomes self-conscious, and then come craving exactions, endless questions-the whole world of the material comes in with its hard counsels and consultations, and

the beautiful trance fades for ever.

...

Do not listen to hear whom a woman praises, to know where her heart is; do not ask for whom she expresses the most earnest enthusiasm. But if there be one she once knew well, whose name she never speaks; if she seem to have an instinct to avoid every occasion of its mention; if, when you speak, she drops into silence and changes the subject-why, look there for something!-just as, when getting through deep meadow-grass, a bird flies ostentatiously up before you, you may know her nest is not there, but far off under distant tufts of fern and buttercup, through which she has crept, with a silent flutter in her spotted breast, to act her pretty little falsehood before you.

MRS LYNN LINTON-MRS HENRY WOOD.

MRS ELIZA LINTON, a popular novelist, is a native of the picturesque Lake country. She was born at Keswick in 1822, daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite in Cumberland. In 1858 she was married to Mr W. J. Linton, engraver. Mrs Linton appeared as an authoress in 1844, when she published Azeth the Egyptian, which was followed by Amymone, a Romance of the Days of Pericles, 1848; Realities, 1851; Witch Stories, 1861; Lizzie Lorton, 1866; Patricia Kemball; and other works of fiction, with various piquant essays and critical contributions to the periodical press. Mrs Linton has also published an account of The Lake Country,' with illustrations by Mr Linton. The novels of this lady represent, in clear and vigorous English, the world of to-day. All the little frivolities, the varieties, the finesse of women, all the empty pretence and conscious self-deception of men, she paints with real power and with a peculiar tinge of cynicism, which is so regularly recurrent as to make the reader a little doubtful of its genuineness. In Patricia Kemball she lays bare the hollow hearts and secret vices of society; the real heroine, Dora, is insincere, and instigates to crime, yet is represented as 'a girl of the period.' Mrs Linton has real constructive faculty, with descriptive and satirical power. Her earlier novels are healthier in tone and feeling than her later ones. She appears to be passing into sensationalism and love-stories based on intrigue; and though professedly she would by these teach a high moral, we doubt if the bulk of her readers will draw the lesson she intends. The History of Joshua Davidson sufficiently shews that Mrs Lynn Linton has latterly been exercised in seeking a solution of the great social problems of the day-the 'enigmas of life.' Her book cannot be regarded otherwise than as a rejection of Christianity as a creed impossible of application to our complex modern society, or as applicable only in the form of an undisguised communism.

MRS HENRY WOOD (née Price), born in Worcestershire in 1820, has written a great number of novels (twenty are enumerated in Bentley's catalogue), beginning with Danebury House, 1860; East Lynne, which was published in 1861, and met with great success; The Channings (1862); Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, Verner's Pride, Bessy

A series of novels, most of them cast in an antique autobiographical form, commenced in 1850 with The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mrs Milton, an ideal representation of Milton's first wife, written and printed in the style of the period. This has been followed by The Household of Sir Thomas More, 1851; Edward Osborne, 1852; The Provocations of Madame Palissy, 1853; Chronicles of Merrie England, 1854; Caliph Haroun Alraschid, 1855; Good Old Times, 1856; a Cottage History of England, Masque of Ludlow, &c., 1866. These works are stated to be written by a lady, Miss ANNE MANNING.

MISS RHODA BROUGHTON has constructive talent, combined with no ordinary knowledge of society, with little sentiment and some defianceat least disregard-of conventionalisms. Her novels are-Nancy; Good-bye, Sweetheart; Red as a Rose is She; Cometh up as a Flower, &c. Not unlike Miss Broughton is MRS EDWARDS, who has written Steven Lawrence, Yeoman, Archie Lovell, &c. Mrs Edwards's heroes are of the masculine sort, and in her Archie Lovell (which was very popular) she has delineated some of the features of the fashionable Bohemianism of the day. HOLME LEE (whose real name is Harriet Parr) is one of the purest and brightest of the domestic school of novelists, and also a writer of some excellent essays. She has but slight skill in plot, but has a firm hold of certain ranges of character, and superior analytical faculty. The unwearying industry of Holme Lee' has enabled her to reside on a small property of her own in the Isle of Wight. Her novels are-Against Wind and Tide, Sylvan Holt's Daughter, Kathie Brande, Warp and Woof, Maude Talbot, The Beautiful Miss Barrington, &c. MRS RIDDELL made a reputation among the novel-readers by her novel, George Geith, a really powerful fiction. In her later works she has gone too far in the direction of plot and sensation merely. In 1875 an anonymous novel, Coming through the Rye, became at once popular, and various authors were named. At length it was found that it was written by MISS MATHER, a lady known as the author of some poems.

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