CCXXV.

George Balcombe, we are induced to regard, upon the whole, as the best American novel. There have been few books of its peculiar kind, we think, written in any country, much its superior. Its interest is intense from beginning to end. Talent of a lofty order is evinced in every page of it. Its most distinguishing features are invention, vigor, almost audacity, of thought-great variety of what the German critics term intrigue, and exceeding ingenuity and finish in the adaptation of its component parts. Nothing is wanting to a complete whole, and nothing is out of place, or out of time. Without being chargeable in the least degree with imitation, the novel bears a strong family resemblance to the Caleb Williams of Godwin. Thinking thus highly of George Balcombe, we still do not wish to be understood as ranking it with the more brilliant fictions of some of the living novelists of Great Britain. In regard to the authorship of the book, some little conversation has occurred, and the matter is still considered a secret. But why so?-or rather, how so? The mind of the chief personage of the story, is the transcript of a mind familiar to us-an unintentional transcript, let us grant-but still one not to be mistaken. George Balcombe thinks, speaks, and acts, as no person, we are convinced, but Judge Beverly Tucker, ever precisely thought, spoke, or acted before.

FIFTY SUGGESTIONS.

L

Ir is observable that, while among all nations the omni-color, white, has been received as an emblem of the Pure, the no-color, black, has by no means been generally admitted as sufficiently typical of impurity. There are blue devils as well as black; and when we think very ill of a woman, and wish to blacken her character, we merely call her "a blue-stocking," and advise her to read, in Rabelais' "Gargantua," the chapter "de ce qui est signifié par les couleurs blanc et bleu." There is far more difference between these "couleurs," in fact, than that which exists between simple black and white. Your "blue," when we come to talk of stockings, is black in issimo-"nigrum nigrious nigro "-like the matter from which Raymond Lully first manufactured his alcohol.

II.

Mr., I perceive, has been appointed Librarian to the new Athenæum. To him, the appointment is advantageous in many respects. Especially :-"Mon cousin, voici une belle occasion pour apprende à lire !”

III.

As far as I can understand the "loving our enemies," it implies the hating our friends.

IV.

In commencing our dinners with gravy soup, no doubt we have taken a hint from Horace

Da, he says, si grave non est,
Quæ prima iratum ventrem placaverit isca.

V.

Of much of our cottage architecture we may safely say, I think, (admitting the good intention,) that it would have been Gothic if it had not felt it its duty to be Dutch.

VI.

James's multitudinous novels seem to be written upon the plan of "the songs of the Bard of Schiraz," in which, we are assured by Fadladeen, "the same beautiful thought occurs again and again in every possible variety of phrase."

VIL

Some of our foreign lions resemble the human brain in one very striking particular. They are without any sense themselves, and yet are the centres of sensation.

VIII.

Mirabeau, I fancy, acquired his wonderful tact at foreseeing and meeting contingencies, during his residence in the stronghold of If.

IX.

Cottle's "Reminiscences of Coleridge" is just such a book as damns its perpetrator forever in the opinion of every gentleman who reads it. More and more every day do we moderns povoneggiarsi about our Christianity; yet, so far as the spirit of Christianity is concerned, we are immeasurably behind the ancients. Mottoes and proverbs are the indices of national character; and the Anglo-Saxons are disgraced in having no proverbial equivalent to the "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Moreover-where, in all statutary Christendom, shall we find a law so Christian as the "Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur" of the Twelve Tables? simple negative injunction of the Latin law and proverb-the injunction not to do ill to the dead-seems, at a first glance, scarcely susceptible of improvement in the delicate respect of its terms. I cannot help thinking, however, that the sentiment, if not the idea intended, is more forcibly conveyed in an apothegm by one of the old English moralists, James Puckle. By an ingenious figure of speech he contrives to imbue the negation of the Roman command with a spirit of active and positive beneficence. "When speaking of the dead," he says, in his "Gray Cap for a Green Head," "so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence."

X.

I have no doubt that the Fourierites honestly fancy "a nasty poet fit for nothing" to be the true translation of "poeta nascitur non fit."

XI.

There surely cannot be " more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of" (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis !) "in your philosophy."

XII.

"It is only as the Bird of Paradise quits us in taking wing," observes, or should observe, some poet, "that we obtain a full view of the beauty of its plumage ;" and it is only as the politician is about being "turned out" that-like the snake of the Irish Chronicle when touched by St. Patrick-he "awakens to a sense of his situation."

XIII.

Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to those of the Deities in "Walhalla," who cut each other to pieces every day, and yet get up perfectly sound and fresh every morning.

XIV.

una

As far as I can comprehend the modern cant in favor of " dulterated Saxon," it is fast leading us to the language of that region where, as Addison has it, "they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English."

XV.

The frightfully long money-pouches-"like the Cucumber called the Gigantic "--which have come in vogue among our bellesare not of Parisian origin, as many suppose, but are strictly indigenous here. The fact is, such a fashion would be quite out of place in Paris, where it is money only that women keep in a purse. The purse of an American lady, however, must be large enough to carry both her money and the soul of its owner.

XVI.

I can see no objection to gentlemen "standing for Congress "— provided they stand on one side-nor to their "running for Congress "-if they are in a very great hurry to get there--but it would be a blessing if some of them could be persuaded into sitting still, for Congress, after they arrive.

XVII.

If Envy, as Cyprian has it, be "the moth of the soul," whether shall we regard Content as its Scotch snuff or its camphor?

XVIII.

goes

M-, having been "used up" in the "Review," about town lauding his critic-as an epicure lauds the best London mustard-with the tears in his eyes.

XIX.

"Con tal que las costumbres de un autor sean puras y castas," says the Catholic Don Tomas de las Torres, in the preface to his "Amatory Poems," "importo muy poco qui no sean igualmente severas sus obras:" meaning, in plain English, that, provided the personal morals of an author are pure, it matters little what those of his books are.

For so unprincipled an idea, Don Tomas, no doubt, is stil. having a hard time of it in Purgatory; and, by way of most pointedly manifesting their disgust at his philosophy on the topic in question, many modern theologians and divines are now busily squaring their conduct by his proposition exactly conversed.

XX.

Children are never too tender to be whipped:-like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them the more tender they become.

XXI.

Lucian, in describing the statue "with its surface of Parian marble and its interior filled with rags," must have been looking with a prophetic eye at some of our great moneyed institutions."

XXII.

That poets (using the word comprehensively, as including artists in general) are a genus irritabile, is well understood; but the why, seems not to be commonly seen. An artist is an artist only by dint of his exquisite sense of Beauty-a sense affording him rapturous enjoyment, but at the same time implying, or involving, an equally exquisite sense of Deformity of disproportion. Thus a wrong-an injustice--done a poet who is really a poet, excites him to a degree which, to ordinary apprehension, appears disproportionate with the wrong. Poets see injustice-never where it does not exist-but very often where the unpoetical see no injustice whatever. Thus the poetical irritability has no re