year our prospects were not half as good, and we got in abundance.' I see, my friend, we do not understand one another yet; I meant it was a handsome country, as you call it, I believe; look how finely the land waves just under that mountain.' Yes, sir; the water runs off as if it was all drained; but its mighty bad for the plough.' Well, my friend, I suppose I must say that it is an elegant country. What an elegant view we have just now to our right. Yes, sir; that belongs to Mr. that you're going to to-night; it's

and

right elegant land, and would bring 50 dollars an acre to-morrow, he has 1500 acres, all near as handsome, under wheat and corn.””. Vol. I. p. 304.

On the interesting subject of emigration, Mr. Hodgson discusses the relative claims of Canada and the United States; recommending the former, yet mentioning some formidable obstacles, thrown, we cannot conceive why, in the way of the settler upon his arrival. The practice of exacting fees, which never were foreseen or thought of by the emigrant, seems particularly oppressive and injudicious.

There is a good deal amusing in the tourist's description of an assemblage of provincial legislators. But we agree with Mr. Hodgson, that such things were to be expected; we may easily imagine that when our burghers were first summoned to attend the great council, scenes occurred as ludicrous as any of those which turn the laugh upon the infant States of America.

Mr. Hodgson's picture of the state of religion in America, is, on the whole, discouraging. He represents the preachers as of a Calvinistic turn, and too apt to mingle politics with religion. His description of the progress of Unitarianism, indicates the approach of a period, when it will require all the vigour of the orthodox church to withstand the torrent.

This is one of the unhappy consequences of being wise beyond the wisdom of experience and reason. The Americans boast of their diversity of sects, of their religious freedom, and of the meagre provision of their clergy. "They have no Established Church,-no bishops in their stalls,-no prohibitory law on piety;" and the direct result is, an extravagance of sectarianism, a bitter and furious bigotry, contrasted with a chill and contemptuous disregard of Revelation, unexampled in any community in Europe. America is, on the one hand, the very sanctuary of the Shakers, the Jumpers, the Tremblers, the Memnonites, the Divers, the Swedenborgians, the Dunkers, the whole multitude of that unnameable and nameless religious rabble which sickens common sense as much as it insults sincere piety. To America flies every mad missionary, inflated with vanity, and impudent from his very ignorance; every per

nicious blacksmith, tired of his forceps; every hair-brained tonsor ambitious of glory; and in America finds a willing and perfectly fitting congregation. On the other hand, in the high places of America, the fashion is FREETHINKING! a well-behaved civility to Christianity, and as well-behaved a rejection of all its characteristic doctrines; a frigid alienation from its life and knowledge, and hope. Who does not know that the first University of America, the Oxford of the New World, is all but professedly UNITARIAN? And who but the little rotund personage that sits in all his sacred swathes in the front of his own caricature of the Epistles of St. Paul, as proud as any. Episcopus that ever sat within his cathedral, will venture to call Unitarianism Christianity?

On the whole, Mr. Hodgson's book does credit to his observation and his taste. Going to America as a merchant, he has not encumbered it with the trading details that would have beset a tourist of less judgment among his natural cotton packs and tobacco hogsheads. With an evident feeling for landscape beauty, he has not overwhelmed us with that passion of all fine writers, and plague of all readers, the picturesque; and with the evident means of inflicting vengeance upon us in a pair of quartos, he gives his knowledge in the simplicity of

octavos.

The Americans have abused him and his book with the usual activity, and charged him with the offence of noting among them such things as a distinction of ranks, and the slave population. But Americans are not easily pleased, and, after all, we believe Mr. Hodgson.

The Inheritance. By the Author of Marriage. 3 vols. 12mo.. Edinburgh. Blackwood. London. Cadell. 1824.

In the opinion of our best informed political economists the merits of the Scottish novels have never been properly estimated. Ale and appeals, till within the last few years, were the chief articles of export from Edinburgh, but the value of the romance trade, whether considered with reference to the revenue, and the employment of capital and labourers, is moderately computed to exceed both the brewer's and the lawyer's. Perhaps it may be said that directly, the ale pays to the shipping interest more freight than the novels, but we suspect

VOL. II. NO. V.

D d

that the novels, in the shape of legend-loving passengers by the smacks and steam-boats, are indirectly of much more consequence in a general estimate of the returns of water-borne commodities.

Whether, as an article of productive industry, the appeals from the Court of Session to the House of Lords may in any one respect be compared with the novels, has given rise to some controversy. That the appeals consume as much paper, thereby equally stimulating the circulation of capital and increasing the value of labour, may be admitted for the sake of argument, and when the duty on the foreign hair used in the construction of the wigs of the advocates and barristers employed in the causes is added to that on the paper, perhaps in the books of the Exchequer the appeals may stand as high as the novels. But nevertheless it is forming a very narrow estimate of these celebrated manufactures, to consider them only with reference to their productiveness as exciseable articles. We shall presently show, by a brief enumeration of the number of industrious hands to which they give steady work, that their importance may vie, we shall not say with the cotton trade, because hitherto the powers of the steam engine have not been employed directly in their production, but assuredly with any other branch of national industry, not assisted by furnaces, flyers, and pistons.

Dr. Adam Smith, in his " Wealth of Nations," has given an account of the sub-divisions of labour in the construction of a pin, by which it appears that the labourers employed in producing that article, until it is in a condition to be applied to the purposes of the toilet, are fourteen. The number, however, of labourers employed in producing a Scotch novel, until it is in a condition to be applied to the purposes of the circulating library, is not less than seventeen; and therefore in estimating the sources of our national wealth, we must admit that the value of a Scotch novel exceeds that of a pin by not less than the employed productiveness of three productive labourers.

How few of the innumerable customers to the Scotch novels are aware of the various forms in which human industry is employed in preparing the commodity for the market, or are at all sensible in what way the skill and power of the seventeen classes of productive labourers are divided. We shall enlighten them on this interesting branch of political economy. First, then, (to go no farther back into the elements of literature) there is the whole train busied in making the linen, which, made into its more precious shape of rags, makes the paper. How seldom does it occur to the fancy of a reading customer

that he may himself perhaps have indirectly contributed to the most interesting passages of" Waverley," or the "Spaewife," by the process of wearing shirts. But to proceed; after the ragmaker, that is, the shirt-wearer, come successively, the paper capitalist, the stationer, the chronicler or the oral historian, from whom the raw material of the story has been preserved, the partner in the firm of authorship, by whom the raw material is converted into romance, the printer, the printer's devil, and the bookseller, by whom the manufactured article is urged upon the consumer; and last and mightiest, the Reviewer by whom, as he is whig or tory, or dips his pen in ink north or south of the Tweed, the article is lauded or vilified, exalted to the third heaven of invention, or crushed and trampled into the irrevocable property of snuff-shops, cheesemongers, and hebdomadal criticism.

It is curiously deserving of remark, that in all these various subdivisions of the labour requisite to the production of a Scotch novel, there is but one opportunity afforded for the introduction of any female artizan, and that is in the spinning stage of the process. Sometimes, no doubt, a female may be substituted in the author's department with advantage, as in the present instance; for we understand that the author of the "Inheritance" is a lady; but, generally speaking, a Scotch novel is a thing of such masculine stuff, and has so much of the coarser and stronger qualities of our nature in its tissue, as to be unfit for the delicacy of the lily hand. It is, in fact, properly and distinctively remarkable for the representation of passions and of characters which it were uncharitable to suppose the gentle sex have opportunities to study. There are indeed labours in which ladies cannot be tolerated. We may allow men to practice the semi-sex vocation of the tailor and the mercer, but a woman blacksmith who could endure!

A female barrister would, with her natural talents for the art, be among the most formidable animals in creation. As the poet says,

""Twere but the poisoning of a dart,

Too apt before to kill!"

But in thus discussing the commercial importance of the Scotch novels, we have almost forgotten that our present task, ought rather to have had regard to the peculiarities of this new work, "The Inheritance." It certainly must be regarded as of the Scotch factory, and in point of story and carefulness of diction it is not inferior to the approved productions of the

Edinburgh press. But it differs from the others in this essential respect, that while they exhibit the inward and peculiar anatomy of individual mind, it presents the pattern of outward manners, and the hues and forms of general behaviour.

It is not our intention to give the story of these volumes. They have already circulated so largely, that to a majority of readers it would be superfluous, and the others we will not deprive of the indulgence to be found in being alternately miserable and happy through a thousand pages of disappointment and love. We shall give a few casual extracts, as examples of the powers of a writer, who has improved largely since her novel of " Marriage ;" and who is entitled to hold a valuable rank among the writers of her period.

The following description of a vain and guilty mind revisiting the scene of early innocence, after a career of artifice, is drawn with truth and power.

"It was with these mingled emotions Mrs. St. Clair found herself at the door of that mansion she had quitted thirty-three years ago. It was the house in which she had first seen the light-where her parents had dwelt-and where she had left them surrounded by a numerous family-but all were gone save the brother she had just seen, and two sisters, now its sole tenants. Even the most artificial characters still retain some natural feelings, and as Mrs. St. Clair crossed the threshold of her once happy home, and the thoughts of the past rushed over her, she exclaimed with a burst of anguish―

"Would to God I had never left it!" and, throwing herself upon a seat, she wept without control.

"There is something in real emotion that always carries conviction along with it. Although well accustomed to the ebullitions of her mother's character, Miss St. Clair saw and felt the depth of her present feelings, and sought by her tender and affectionate sympathy to soften her sense of sorrow. But, with a look and gesture, expressive only of abhorrence, her mother repelled her from her. At that mo

ment a lady approached, and, throwing herself into her arms, Mrs. St. Clair sobbed in bitterness of spirit, while her sister mingled her tears with hers. Miss Black was the first to regain her composure, and she said in a voice, which, though still tremulous with emotion, was yet soft and sweet,

You

"I love those feelings, my dear Sarah, they are so natural. miss all those you left behind, and you are thinking what a happier meeting this might have been, had it pleased God to have spared them to us-but I trust there is a happy meeting yet in store for us.' "Oh, no, no!' sobbed Mrs. St. Clair almost convulsively, as she leant her head on her sister's shoulder." Vol. I. P. 122.

Mrs. St. Clair sees some of the early presents of one with