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finally taken, and condemned, but saved from execution by the influence of Edward, who in the sequel marries Ellen.

The descriptions of the proceedings of the insurgents, while in arms, are graphic and interesting. We read this part of the book with pleasure, and this is all we can say in praise of it. The remainder is indifferent. The characters of O'Halloran, Ellen, and Edward, the proceedings of the latter in obtaining the pardon of the former, and several other circumstances in the conduct of the tale, are imitated from similar circumstances in Waverley. Peg Dornan is Meg Merrilies diluted. The author thus compels us continually to draw comparisons, which must necessarily be unfavorable to him. The story is spun out long after the proper catastrophe. It should have been closed as briefly as possible, after the pardon of O'Halloran, who, after all, is the principal person. The episode of Sir Geoffrey Carebrow, a brutal wretch, who carries off the heroine, that she may be rescued by Edward, and who afterwards bequeaths her his fortune, is badly managed, and in some instances disgusting. There is also an occasional grossness of allusion, which is offensive. The grave dialogue is dull. The speakers talk too long, and too much in set terms. The subject and materials of this novel are excellent; its defects are in the execution.

Goslington Shadow.—We take up this book with feelings analogous to those of the philosopher, when he exclaimed, on an occasion not very dissimilar, 'Courage, my friends, I see land.' The scene of Goslington Shadow is laid in Scotland; the time being about five or six years since. The title of the novel, or, as the author prefers calling it, the romance, is also the name of the hero, who is the son of a Scotch farmer. Goslington is sent to the university against the inclination of his father; goes through the usual routine of education; is introduced to the acquaintance and favor of Lord Ringsdale, and falls in love with his daughter. Matthew Shadow, the father, acquires a large fortune by the death of a relation, and is discovered to be the rightful heir to the title and estates of Ringsdale. The work concludes with the marriages of Goslington with Lady Rosa Ringsdale, and of his sister Peggy with a young American, who turns out to be of Scotch lineage. Such is the most complete abstract of the story, which our limits will permit. The truth

is, that the book is rambling and discursive in the extreme. The author introduces a great variety of characters, and strings their adventures together, without seeming to care much about the manner of their connexion. Of course the interest of the story is nearly lost. Some of the characters are extremely well done, especially that of Matthew Shadow; others are crude and faulty. The dialogue on some occasions is excellent, and then it becomes feeble or tedious. We shall best illustrate our views of this performance, by comparing it with some other well known work. Such a one occurs to us in Sir Andrew Wylie, by the author of Annals of the Parish. Goslington Shadow resembles this in many particulars, and is nearly on a par with it in point of merit. The constant use of the Scotch dialect, and the evident intimacy of the author with Scotch manners and customs, so far as we can judge from the perusal of the modern secondary Scotch novels, show that he is either a native of Scotland, or a person who has resided at some time, and for a considerable period, in that country. Perhaps we were disposed to give the dialogue quite as much credit as it deserved, from the circumstances of its being carried on in a dialect, which, as we have already observed, has of itself a strong hold on our agreeable associations.

We have one remark to make, which applies to all these novels. They are uniformly deficient in taste and skill in the selection of mottos for their chapters. These scraps form an important part of a novel, and require more attention and knowledge, than the authors of most of them seem to be aware. The mottos of those, which we have now noticed, are far too frequently either hackneyed, pointless, or without sufficient bearing on the subject of the chapter. There is sometimes an affectation of quoting from the Old Play, to which, however, we are certain, that for anything which as yet has appeared, no one has ever had access, but the author of Waverley.

We have thus concluded a task, which the public may possibly think has been performed too leniently, whilst the authors and authoresses will doubtless agree in this, if in nothing else, that we have been economical of praise, lavish of censure, totally deficient in discrimination, and probably in taste and judgment. But we live not in their report. We have endeavored to show in our remarks, that, with some excep

tions, we do not attach high merit to these books, while we have been anxious to avoid those sweeping and sneering denunciations, which are neither valuable nor difficult, though unfortunately they are apt to obtain more credit than they deserve, with those who measure the weight of criticism by its flippancy, or its bitterness. We have uttered our thoughts, and desire them not to pass for more than they are worth. As to the future literary projects and doings of the writers, who have now passed under our notice, we take it not upon us to exhort or advise. While they keep within the bounds of good morals and decorum, let them write on, if they feel moved to this exercise, and are willing to run the risk of laboring sometimes in vain. Those persons, who waste their time in reading poor novels, or, if our readers please, any novels, would probably waste it in some other way not more innocent, if novels were not to be had. If cards and the theatre languish in this age of novel reading, the public morals are not likely to suffer by this change of amusement, and, in short, a man may as well employ himself in writing, or reading a novel, as in cutting a diamond into an indifferent figure, or wearing it after it is done.

ART. V.-A Dissertation on the Nature and Extent of the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, being a Valedictory Address, delivered to the Students of the Law Academy, at Philadelphia, at the Close of the Academical Year, on the 22nd of April 1824. By PETER S. DU PONCEAU, Provost of the Academy. To which are added a Brief Sketch of the National Judiciary Powers Exercised in the United States, prior to the Adoption of the present Federal Constitution. By THOMAS SARGEANT, Esq. Vice Provost. And the Author's Discourse on Legal Education, delivered at the Opening of the Law Academy, in February 1821. With an Appendix and Notes. 8vo. pp. 254. Philadelphia, Abraham Small,

1824.

It is a remarkable circumstance, that, from the earliest antiquity of the law, at least after it began to assume the form

of a science, there have been two schools of construction, the one contending for a literal adherence to the text, and the other supporting a more liberal principle of interpretation, and allowing greater latitude to the spirit of an enlightened juridical philosophy. This division among the professors of the Roman law, of which we have an agreeable history by Heineccius, commenced under the administration of Augustus, and continued until the reign of good Aurelius; the students of law generally arranging themselves as disciples of one sect or the other, although it was some time before they assumed the permanent appellations, by which they were afterwards distinguished, of Proculeians, and Sabinians, or Cassians. The lawyers of the latter reign, according to Claude Ferrière, translated by the learned Dr Cooper, affected neither party in particular, for at different times they dispassionately approved the opinions of either sect, as they judged them more or less agreeable to justice and right reason, and they generally endeavored, by an equal temperature, to avoid the absurdities into which both parties, by reason of their great dislike and opposition to each other, had frequently fallen.' The division may be deemed to have died away during the dark ages, when the books of the law were lost, like those of Livy. The subject was revived, and this question made a conspicuous figure in the discussion of the Code Napoleon; and, singular as it may seem to those, who are familiar with the sturdy spirit of the old common law, something of this difference has actually crossed the channel into England; although, as Mr Butler observes, 'the good sense of English lawyers has prevented them from forming into sects.' There is, however, one instructive and nvaluable reading, on a subject of this kind, to which we are referred among the relics of the philosophical mind of Burke, in a report of his on the trial of Warren Hastings, namely, 'whether in cases for which neither the written nor unwritten law of a nation had provided, courts of law might make a provision for it, by conforming existing laws and principles to it, or by subtracting from their operation?' But this is going a length, to which we have no inclination to be enlisted. And we are moreover aware, that the topic, on which Mr Du Ponceau is engaged, is one about which the public, or at least that portion of it, which enters into the spirit of such VOL. XXI.-No. 48.

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subjects, and concerns itself the most with the genius of the system, is somewhat at a stand;,and we believe there are some of the fairest, and most intelligent minds in the country, that have not been quite able to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

We are not left in the dark to trace the origin of our jurisprudence. In seeking to find it by the light of history, we are naturally led back to the municipal institutions of our mother country. These are the gentis incunabula nostræ. It has always been considered the privilege of colonies to carry with them the laws of the mother country, from the time of Thucydides, to the time of Sir Walter Raleigh; and it is delightful to reflect, that our principles of colonisation, in this respect, were actually drawn from the undefiled fountains of Grecian Jurisprudence, in their present state, as they were exhibited and illustrated in those beautiful images of Greece herself, which successively arose among her offspring in the Archipelago, and were reflected on the coasts of Asia Minor and Græcia Magna. It is rather an interesting coincidence, that the publication of the great work of Grotius, in which these principles were unfolded, was nearly coeval with the colonisation of this country; and we consider it quite plain, that the English establishments on this continent were formed more after the model of the Grecian, than the Roman colonies, though it was equally a fact, that the laws of Rome extended with her empire.

The points of difference, it does not fall within our present province to define, nor to defend the analogy to which we allude. Upon the soundest principles of public jurisprudence, the colonists considered the law of England as their patrimony. They claimed the common law as their birthright. The same rule of common sense prevailed in regard to this subject, on both sides of the Atlantic; and the doctrine was recognised in Westminster Hall as it was held here, that the common law of England extended to these colonies, precisely so far as it related to their circumstances. It is perfectly evident, however, that the original constitution of England did not contemplate the extension of its internal jurisprudence to such exterior establishments, as they could not have been foreseen to form component parts of the empire. This was a case, that arose unexpectedly out of

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