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abodes of demons and the damned; of fiery gulfs ready to yawn beneath our feet.-All these tales were told to the doleful accompanyment of the mountain's thunders, whose low bellowing made the walls of our convent vibrate." Vol. I. p. 122.

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He revisits his family, is repelled by them, and destined for the cloister. But he has now seen the beauty of the Italian landscape, and has tasted of freedom; he makes his escape, and after some wanderings, is protected by a celebrated painter; here comes the crisis of his passions.

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Among the various works which he had undertaken, was an historical piece for one of the palaces of Genoa, in which were to be introduced the likenesses of several of the family. Among these was one entrusted to my pencil. It was that of a young girl, who as yet was in a convent for her education. She came out for the purpose of sitting for the picture. I first saw her in an apartment of one of the sumptuous palaces of Genoa. She stood before a casement that looked out upon the bay; a stream of vernal sunshine fell upon her, and shed a kind of glory round her, as it lit up the rich crimson chamber. She was but sixteen years of age and oh, how lovely! The scene broke upon me like a mere vision of spring, and youth, and beauty. I could have fallen down and worshipped her. She was like one of those fictions of poets and painters, when they would express the beau ideal that haunts their minds with shapes of indescribable perfection. I was permitted to sketch her countenance in various positions, and I fondly protracted the study that was undoing me. The more I gazed on her, the more I became enamoured; there was something almost painful in my intense admiration. I was but nineteen years of age, shy, diffident, and inexperienced. I was treated with attention by her mother; for my youth, and my enthusiasm in my art, had won favour for me; and I am inclined to think that there was something in my air and manner that inspired interest and respect. Still the kindness with which I was treated could not dispel the embarrassment into which my own imagination threw me when in presence of this lovely being. It elevated her into something almost more than mortal. She seemed too exquisite for earthly use; too delicate and exalted for human attainment. As I sat tracing her charms on my canvas, with my eyes occasionally rivetted on her features, I drank in delicious poison that made me giddy. My heart alternately gushed with tenderness, and ached with despair. Now I became more than ever sensible of the violent fires that had lain dormant at the bottom of my soul. You who are born in a more temperate climate, and under a cooler sky, have little idea of the violence of passion in our southern bosoms.

"A few days finished my task. Bianca returned to her convent, but her image remained indelibly impressed upon my heart. It dwelt in my imagination; it became my pervading idea of beauty. It had

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an effect even upon my pencil. I became noted for my felicity in depicting female lovelines: it was but because I multiplied the image of Bianca. I soothed and yet fed my fancy by introducing her in all the productions of my master.-I have stood, with delight, in one of the chapels of the Annunciata, and heard the crowd extol the seraphic beauty of a saint which I had painted. I have seen them bow down in adoration before the painting; they were bowing before the loveliness of Bianca." Vol. I. p. 136.

He obtains her love; but the death of his elder brother, and the sudden return of his father's affections to him, compel him to leave Genoa for Naples, where a large inheritance awaits him.

"My parting with Bianca was tender-delicious-agonizing. It was in a little pavilion of the garden which had been one of our favourite resorts. How often and often did I return to have one more adieu, to have her look once more on me in speechless emotion; to enjoy once more the rapturous sight of those tears streaming down her lovely cheeks; to seize once more on that delicate hand, the frankly-accorded pledge of love, and cover it with tears and kisses! Heavens! there is a delight even in the parting agony of two lovers, worth a thousand tame pleasures of the world. I have her at this moment before my eyes, at the window of the pavillion, putting aside the vines that clustered about the casement, her light form beaming forth in virgin light, her countenance all tears and smiles, sending a thousand and a thousand adieus after me, as, hesitating, in a delirium of fondness and agitation, I faltered my way down the avenue.

"As the bark bore me out of the harbour of Genoa, how eagerly my eye stretched along the coast of Sestri till it discovered the villa gleaming from among trees at the foot of the mountain. As long as day lasted, I gazed and gazed upon it till it lessened and lessened to a mere white speck in the distance; and still my intense and fixed gaze discerned it, when all other objects of the coast had blended into indistinct confusion, or were lost in the evening gloom." Vol. I. p. 152.

At Naples, he lingers away two years! in attendance on his father; who at length dies, and sets him at liberty to love and marry, as he may please. But "les absens ont toujours tort," in Italy as well as elsewhere; he finds Bianca married to his faithless friend, kills the friend, and is, at the period of the tale, about to quiet his conscience by giving himself up to justice at Genoa. Our female readers will probably conceive that two years was too long a probation, and certainly the distance between Naples and Genoa might have allowed of an occasional visit to clear the enthusiast from the imputation of hav

ing grown cold. The truth is, that Mr. Irving's talent does not lie in the construction of his stories. Yet it is in foreign romance that we, by no means, like the author least. There, he may revel away in the full luxury of blue skies and purple vintages, irresistible brunettes, and cavaliers memorable for the magnificence of their mustachios, and the sentimental sadness of their visages. There, the colours are mixed by many a preceding hand, and the fashionable artist has only to dip his pencil with common dexterity. There, too, we think, Mr. Irving finds the most natural indulgence for the tenderness, simplicity, and graceful animation of his taste; for all these he possesses, in a very enviable degree. But his descriptions of London life are decidedly unfortunate; for the double reason that, as the picture of the past age, they are not original, and, as of the present, they are not true. He thus adventures on that exhausted subject of all the essay writers and magazine contributors of the last century, a literary dinner; which he (with rather more direct poignancy than usual) assumes to have been given at the Messrs. Longman's.

"It was given by a great bookseller, or rather a company of booksellers, whose firm surpassed in length that of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego.

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I was surprised to find between twenty and thirty guests assembled, most of whom I had never seen before. Mr. Buckthorne explained this to me by informing me that this was a business dinner, or kind of field-day, which the house gave about twice a year to its authors. It is true they did occasionally give snug dinners to three or four literary men at a time; but then these were generally select authors, favorites of the public, such as had arrived at their sixth or seventh editions. There are,' said he, 'certain geographical boundaries in the land of literature, and you may judge tolerably well of an author's popularity by the wine his bookseller gives him. An author crosses the port line about the third edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the sixth or seventh, he may revel in champagne and burgundy.'"Vol. I. p. 184.

In this frivolous and improbable manner, he proceeds and settles the precedence of the guests.

"A popular poet had the post of honour; opposite to whom was a hot-pressed traveller in quarto with plates. A gravé-looking antiquarian, who had produced several solid works, that were much quoted and little read, was treated with great respect, and seated next to a neat dressy gentleman in black, who had written a thin, genteel, hot-pressed

octavo on political economy, that was getting into fashion. Several three volume duodecimo men, of fair currency, were placed about the centre of the table; while the lower end was taken up with small poets, translators, and authors who had not as yet risen into much notoriety." Vol. I. p. 186.

One of the partners is represented as regularly "set on a roar" by the witticisms of a pet poet, of "independent fortune," a feature which Mr. Irving seems to consider as a chief component in the bookseller's perception of his wit. The other partner laugheth not at all, but carves steadily. This he accounts for by saying, that the business of one of those personages is to attend to the joints, and of the other to the jokes!

The guests of the lower end of the table are described as too much in awe of those formidable publishers to joke at all, till the "wine began to circulate." Even then they were but ill patronized, for even " the laughing partner did not think it necessary to honour them with a smile," on the ground that those authors were not sufficiently popular !

The next scene is in the same unhappy style.

"After dinner we retired to another room to take tea and coffee, where we were reinforced by a cloud of inferior guests,-authors of small volumes in boards, and pamphlets stitched in blue paper. These had not as yet arrived to the importance of a dinner invitation, but were invited occasionally to pass the evening in a friendly way.' They were very respectful to the partners, and, indeed, seemed to stand a little in awe of them; but they paid devoted court to the lady of the house, and were extravagantly fond of the children. Some few, who did not feel confidence enough to make such advances, stood shyly off in corners, talking to one another; or turned over the portfolios of prints, which they had not seen above five thousand times, or moused over the music on the forte-piano.

"The poet and the thin octavo gentleman were the persons most current and at their ease in the drawing-room; being men evidently of circulation in the west end. They got on each side of the lady of the house, and paid her a thousand compliments and civilities, at some of which I thought she would have expired with delight." Vol. I. p. 189.

This is all silly; and doubly so, as a matter of the author's grave selection; for he found it in Goldsmith, and his copy is inferior to the original. What might have been partially true fifty years ago, and even then required Goldsmith's wit to make it amusing, is now the direct reverse, and has as little amusement as reality. And then comes the identical story of

"Mr. Tibbs," whom this merciless plunderer of British good: things calls the "poor devil author!"

With a volume of Goldsmith in his pocket, Mr. Irving might have written this, and all that he hazards on London manners, in the central swamp of the Illinois.

The American stories are infinitely the best in this work, and upon these the author must found all his rational hopes of popularity. We have had a host of writers upon all the approved topics of banditti, ghosts, interesting lunatics of both sexes, and castles, Gothic, Spanish, and Saracen. But America has hitherto wanted a recorder of her fictions, and here she has found him. The quaintness which is so stiffly applied to modern English life, the dry humour which mixes so reluctantly. with the description of good society, and the fondness for: humble detail, which is so liable to betray the writer into coarseness, are in their natural place in the rude yet fantastic, the simple yet eccentric remembrances of early America. The Indian, the Quaker, the smuggler, ready alike for barter or bloodshed, the settler embosomed in the wilderness, and the religious emigrant, from England or Flanders, full of the sternest spirit of his austere time, all have the interest of novelty, of strong contrast of character, and of a most picturesque and impressive location. To Mr. Irving we would say, Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna.' Cultivate the soil of your country. Collect the narratives of its ancient settlers, and abandon altogether portraitures of Europe, and peculiarly of England. We give some fragments of a fragment of one of those stories. "The Black Fisherman."

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"He was in a light skiff, and being well acquainted with the currents and eddies, he had shifted his station, according to the shifting of the tide ; but in the eagerness of his sport he did not see that the tide was rapidly ebbing, until the roaring of the whirlpools and eddies warned him of his danger; and he had some difficulty in shooting his skiff from among the rocks and breakers, and getting to the point of Blackwell's Island. Here he cast anchor for some time, waiting the turn of the tide to enable him to return homewards. As the night set in, it grew blustering and gusty. Dark clouds came brindling up in the west, and now and then a growl of thunder, or a flash of lightning, told that a summer storm was at hand. Sam pulled over, therefore, under the lee of Manhattan Island, and coasting along, came to a snug nook, just under a steep beetling rock, where he fastened his skiff to the root of a tree that shot out from a cteft in the rock, and spread its broad branches, like a canopy, over the water. The gust came scouring along; the wind threw up the river in white surges ;