his favourite writers, which he repeats on all occasions, without intermission and without mercy. To instance only one: "As she issued smiling from her father's door, or sat in her screner loveliness in the kirk on the sabbath-day." Lights and Shadows, p. 3. "What their eyes saw, or their souls felt, they knew not in the mystery of that magnificence." p. 68. "She was lying down to sleep in her innocence." 130. p. Maids, and wives, and matrons, who had come thither in the mystery of their hearts.” p. 202. "A heart made happy in the power of its purity and innocence." p. 329. "Something had touched her brain in the mystery of that dreaming disease." Margaret Lyndsay, p. 9. 66 We had intended to point out those of the present tales which seemed to us particularly worthy of perusal; but they are all so excellent, that it would be difficult to name any one as possessing peculiar merit. If there are any exceptions to this general character, they occur in the few stories founded on gloomy or revolting subjects. Amidst so many exquisite pictures of touching beauty, were we compelled to make a selection, we should specify the Lily of Liddesdale, the Twins, the Poor Scholar, Blind Allan, the Rainbow, Consumption, and Helen Eyre, as peculiarly delightful sketches: the last is remarkable for the just feeling it displays on the subject of certain prejudices, which deserve severer reprobation than is bestowed on them by the kind-hearted author. The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay may be considered as a continuation of the Lights and Shadows, which it resembles both in purpose and manner of execution; the principle difference is, that the interest, which in the former was divided among a number of detached stories, is here concentrated into one, and the characters accordingly exhibited more in detail. It is the history of a young female in the lowest rank of life, one such as the author delights to describe, mild, affectionate, and unpretending, who is represented as passing through a series of temptations and calamities in the strength of religious principle, and rewarded at last by the happiness which her patient endurance and unshrinking sacrifices procure for those who are most dear to her. The length to which our observations on the Lights and Shadows have extended, leaves us little to say on Margaret Lyndsay. The heroine herself is one of the most fascinating of the author's creations, and casts a sweet and tranquillizing light of her own over the groups with whom she is successively associated. The incidents are well imagined, and all is in admirable unison with the grand purpose of the drama. We forbear giving an abstract of the story, which we consider as an injudicious practice, except in particular cases, and unjust to the author. The extract we shall make, though not the best, has been selected as one which will bear detaching from the main story. It describes Margaret's visit to an old relation whom she had never seen. With a beating heart, she stopt for a little while at the mouth of the avenue, or lane, that seemed to lead up to the house. It was much overgrown with grass, and there were but few marks of wheels; the hedges on each side were thick and green, but unclipped, and with frequent gaps; some thing melancholy lay over all about; and the place had the air of being uninhabited. But still it was beautiful, for it was bathed in the dews of a rich midsummer gloaming, and the clover filled the air with fragrance that revived the heart of the solitary Orphan, as she stood, for a few minutes, irresolute and apprehensive of an unkind reception. At last she found heart, and the door of the house being open, Margaret walked in, and stood on the floor of the wide low-roofed kitchen. An old man was sitting, as if half asleep, in a high-backed arm-chair, by the side of the chimney. Before she had time or courage to speak, her shadow fell upon his eyes, and he looked towards her with strong visible surprise, and, as she thought, with slight displeasure. "Ye hae got off your road, I'm thinking, young woman, what seek you here?" Margaret asked respectfully if she might sit down. "Aye, aye, ye may sit down, but we keep nae refreshment here-this is no a public-house. There's ane a mile west, in the Clachan." The old man kept looking upon her, and with a countenance somewhat relaxed from its inhospitable austerity. Her appearance did not work as a charm or a spell, for she was no enchantress in a fairy tale; but the tone of her voice, so sweet and gentle, the serenity of her face, and the meekness of her manner, as she took her seat upon a stool not far from the door, had an effect upon old Daniel Craig, and he bade her come forward, and take a chair "farther ben the house." "I am an orphan, and have perhaps but little claim upon you, but I have ventured to come here-my name is Margaret Lyndsay, and my mother's name was Alice Craig." The old man moved upon his chair, as if a blow had struck him, and looked long and earnestly into her face. Her features confirmed her words. Her countenance possessed that strong power over him, that goes down mysteriously through the generations of perishable man, connecting love with likeness, so that the child in its cradle may be smiling almost with the self-same expression that belonged to some one of its forefathers mouldered into ashes many hundred years ago. "Nae doubt, nae doubt, ye are the daughter o' Walter Lyndsay and Alice Craig. Never were twa faces mair unlike than theirs, yet yours is like them baith. Margaret-that is your name-I give you my blessing. Hae you walked far? Mysie's doun at the Rashy-riggs wi' milk to the calf, but will be in belyve. Come, my bonny bairn, take a shake o' your uncle's hand." Margaret told, in a few words, the principal events of the last three years as far as she could, and the old man, to whom they had been almost all unknown, heard her story with attention, but said little or nothing. Meanwhile Mysie came in an elderly, hard-featured woman, but with an expression of homely kindness, that made her dark face not unpleasant. She was the only servant, and, after the first surprise, did quietly what she was bid, and set out the evening meal. While Daniel Craig closed his eyes, and lifted up his hands to bless it, Margaret could not but think the grey-headed man, in spite of the character she had casually heard of him, must have a heart that might incline towards her, and she partook cheerfully of what was set before her, and with a good appetite after her long journey. When supper was over, Daniel told the servant, who had ate at the same board, to get ready the bed for the young woman,- for my niece, Margaret Lyndsay." Mysie held up her hands with pleasure. "The dochter o' Elspy Craig, as I am a sinner! Fair fa' your bonny face-I'll mak the bed soft and sweet, if feathers and thyme sprigs will do't," and forthwith set about her business. Margaret felt herself an inmate of her uncle's house, and her heart began already to warm towards the old grey-headed solitary man. His manner exhibited, as she thought, a mixture of curiosity and kindness; but she did not disturb his taciturnity, and only returned immediate and satisfactory answers to his few short and abrupt questions. He evidently was thinking over the particulars which she had given him of her life at Braehead, and in the lane; and she did not allow herself to fear, but that, in a day or two, if he permitted her to stay, she would be able to awaken in his heart a natural interest in her behalf. Hope was a guest that never left her bosom—and she rejoiced when, on the return of the old domestic from the bed-room, her uncle requested ber to read aloud a chapter of the Bible. She did so,—and the old man took the book out of her hand with evident satisfaction, and, fastening the clasp, laid it by in the little cupboard in the wall near his chair, and wished her good night. We have left ourselves but little room to discuss the merits of Adam Blair; and our readers have already heard and read so much about this performance, that they are probably somewhat tired of the subject. We shall simply observe, therefore, that it is a tale of lawless passion and poignant remorse, delivered in a vigorous and lively, but coarse and slovenly style; and that its chief value consists in its least ambitious and most intelligible passages. Of the power of the author, or his intellectual character, as deducible from the work, nothing discriminative can be said; there being no prominent features to distinguish him from the herd of men of talent, who, without any great originality of thought, compass of design, or skill in the construction of a story, have nevertheless contrived to excite a temporary interest, by poignant sketches of manners, interspersed with vivid, but glaring and somewhat inflated, pictures of mental excitement, or striking touches of description; much like the dramas of which Horace speaks : "Interdum speciosa locis morataque recte Fabula, nullius Veneris, sine pondere et arte, We do not think, indeed, that he is to be measured by the work before us. He is obviously out of his element; and though nothing that he writes is likely to be wholly without power, he is surely made for something better than running up tawdry and flimsy articles for the Literary Bazaar. The parts most to our taste are those in which Dr. Muir, old John Maxwell the Elder, and Lady Semplehaugh, bear a part. There is one point, however, relative to this work, on which it will become us to be a little more copious, as it has been so much and so warmly canvassed; we mean its moral tendency. The warmth with which this question has been debated on both sides can hardly be explained, except on the ground of party feelings. One critic goes so far as to compare it with the Monk; while another thinks it absolutely wicked to start a doubt as to its moral purpose. Now, if novices like ourselves, who have scarcely served our apprenticeship either in criticism or in ethics, may venture" within the wind of such contest," we would humbly suggest a doubt as to either party being in the right. That it is a moral work, in the true sense of that word, we do not mean to assert; we think it, however, pretty plain, that the writer had no other than a good end in view; as good a one, at least, as the majority of modern novelists. There are, indeed, some passages which cannot be reconciled with the contrary supposition. And while we join with the first-mentioned critic in condemning the work, we must, at the same time, express our opinion that much of the clamour which has been raised against it, has originated in causes very different from a regard for morality. There is a factitious delicacy, closely connected with impurity of mind, which, while it shrinks from gross indecency, can tolerate the foulest sensuality, so long as it is expressed in refined language. It is its own image only that it hates; it cannot endure to see its own thoughts clothed in the language appropriate to them. It is to his infringement on this morbid species of decorum, in the case of the thirty ill-omened stars which frown at the commencement of the fourteenth chapter, that our author owes the outrageous abuse which he has incurred from many, whose sense of propriety was probably not in the least startled by the scene of the rescue, and one or two other passages. Our condemnation rests on different grounds. We disapprove of the work, not because it contains a single indecent passage, but because its general tendency is to inflame the passions, or, at least, to promote a taste for morbid excitement. We appeal to every unsophisticated mind, whether some of the leading incidents, and the manner in which they are told, have not this tendency; by their judgment we would stand or fall. The first question, indeed, which occurs on the perusal of a work of this kind, is not, whether the book is a moral one or the contrary, but why such a subject should have been chosen at all? Were there not a thousand others equally calculated to exercise the writer's powers? It is an officious piece of impropriety—a mere gratuitous obtrusion of what is wrong. As to the paltry plea, that justice is, in the end, administered to all parties, it is surely too contemptible to deceive even those who set it up. We could say more on this subject, but we fear we have already exhausted the patience of our readers. In order to do justice to the author, we will quote one of his most characteristic passages :— It was long ere Mr. Blair fell asleep that night, but exhausted nature at last sunk under the burden of reflection; and, for several hours, he lay buried in slumber as profound as had ever visited his eyelids. He awoke, sitting bolt-upright in his bed, his hands clenched violently together, his night-cap off, his hair on end, and the sweat standing in big and palpable drops upon his forehead, and the sound of his own screaming voice in his ear. He clasped his brows, and staring wildly about him in the dim chamber, strove instinctively, rather than consciously, to retrace the outlines of what he now felt to be nothing but a dream, although he was still too much agitated with its delusions to be able to enjoy the sense of reality and repose. Everything, however, as he looked back, seemed to become darkened the moment his mental eye approached it;-every strong and distinct image seemed to vanish, and leave but a vapour behind it, and it was in vain he endeavoured to make out any consistent or intelligible notion of what had passed-although a sort of confused and distorted cloudland' of terrible things still continued to lour above the whole surface of his imagination -the black river-the sob of his child-the water gushing into his eyes and ears, and then closing with a rushing sound over his head-the agony of mortal terror-the joy of sudden deliverance-the tears of joy-these had all been with him, and he felt that they had been with him as vividly as during the waking hours of the eventful day before. But other images had followed these, some of them as dark and as terrible, but the whole texture of which seemed now to elude the grasp of his remembrance. He had a sort of obscure sense of having been fighting, wrestling, combating fiercely, hand in hand, with some strong adversary ;-whether he had stood or fallen he could not tell, but there was such a mixture of the feelings of wrath and sorrow, that this was as nothing : "Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all!- Life's stifling fear-soul stifling shame." What did not diminish, but much increase and strengthen the pain and horror of all this, was, that a sort of voluptuous, languid, sultry air, seemed to hang over the whole mass of the retrospect: red setting sunsbroad, calm, purple skies-mighty trees, loaded with leaves and blossomsthese were the strange accompaniments-strangely jumbled together and ill defined, it is true-of screams, and battles, and headlong peril, and blood, and death, and misery. Beautiful women's shapes, smiling eyes, and burning blushes, darted in glimpses here and there from amidst the thickest of tumults. Everything was waxing every moment obscurer and dimmer, as he gazed back upon it. Dii meliora piis! Before we conclude, it will, perhaps, be expected that we should say something on a work, published some time ago, by the author of Adam Blair, but totally unconnected with it in subject; we mean Valerius. It is an attempt to embody in fictitious narrative, after the manner of the modern romance, the manners, passions, opinions, and occupations of ancient Rome; differing, however, from Sismondi's Julia Severa, and other works of this class, inasmuch as it professes to be a narrative of events by a contemporary and eye-witness. To this supposition the style of the work is carefully accommodated, being thickly interwoven with Latin idioms, which give it an air of stiffness resembling that of a literal translation, so as to produce a novel, and frequently impressive effect. Valerius, the hero and narrator of the story, is a sort of Roman Francis Osbaldistone, a native of Britain, but born of Roman parents, who visits the city of his ancestors, sees the lions, (we do not mean merely those of the amphitheatre,) falls in love with a fair Christian neophyte, becomes a convert himself, marries her, and returns to Britain. The subject possesses great capabilities to a scholar and a man of genius. The thousand high associations connected with Rome-its architectural splendour-its imposing ceremonies, sacred and profane-its manners, differing in so many striking points from our own-the various schools of philosophers, answering, in a great measure, to our religious sects-the mighty conflict of opinions accompanying the promulgation of the new faith—are among the most obvious of the |