Will give us their unruly, restless nature;

We whirl and whirl; and where we settle, Fazio,
But he that ruleth the mad winds can know.

If ye do drive the love out of my soul,
That is its motion, being, and its life,
There'll be a conflict strange and horrible,
Among all fearful and ill-visaged fiends,

For the blank void; and their mad revel there

Will make me-oh! I know not what--hate thee!

Oh, no!--I could not hate thee, Fazio."-Act ii. sc. 3. p. 4.

"Bianca. Mad! mad!-aye, that it is!—aye, that it is!

Is't to be mad to speak, to move, to gaze,

But not know how, or why, or whence, or where ?
To see that there are faces all around me,
Floating within a dim, discolored haze,
Yet have distinction, vision, but for one?
To speak with rapid and continuous flow,

Yet know not how the unthought words start from me?”
Act iii. sc. 2. p. 67.

SCENE, a Street— Morning twilight.

"Bianca. Where have I been?—I have not been at rest-
There's yet the stir of motion in my limbs.
Oh! I remember-'twas a hideous strife
Within my brain: I felt that I was hopeless,
Yet would not credit it; and I set forth

To tell my Fazio so, and dared not front him

With such cold comfort. Then a mist came o'er me,
And something drove me on, and on, and on,
Street after street, each blacker than the other,
And a blue axe did skimmer through the gloom-
Its fiery edge did waver to and fro-

And there were infant voices, faint and failing,
That panted after me. I knew I fled them;
Yet could not choose but fly. And then, oh then,
I gazed and gazed upon the starless darkness,
And blest it in my soul, for it was deeply
And beautifully black-no speck of light;
And I had feverish and fantastic hopes,
That it would last for ever, nor give place
To th' horrible to-morrow.-Ha, 'tis there!
'Tis the grey morning light aches in my eyes-
It is that morrow!-Ho!-Look out, look out!
With what a hateful and unwonted swiftness
It scares my comfortable darkness from me!-
Fool that I am!-I've lost the few brief hours
Yet left me of my Fazio! Oh, away,
Away to him! away!"

Act v. sc. 1. p. 88..

245

ART. III.—Rhoda: A Novel. By the Author of "Things by their Right Names," "Plain Sense," &c. Second Edition. In three vols. London: Colburn. 1816. pp. 1256.

We do not suffer ourselves to be biassed by the current rumour of the day, or that réputation de salon, which some books obtain from a variety of causes incidental to the name, the family, the fortune, the friends, or perhaps the personal graces of their authors. We have not found that, in literary concerns, the vox populi is always with reverence to be worshipped. Like Thomas Paine, we are almost inclined to maintain the seeming paradox, that all questions should be decided by the minority, since the wise men are always greatly outnumbered by the dunces of society :" nor do we see any thing ridiculous in our old friend Dr. Primrose, in comforting himself that his Essay on Monogamy was read only by "the happy few." With these sentiments and opinions of the value of popular and fashionable report, and of the c: iteria by which books are to be estimated, we sat down to the perusal of Rhoda, and are now ready to exclaim with Lord Foppington, Faith! the town is in the right on't!"

This work possesses, in an eminent degree, all the requisites for an interesting and even serviceable novel: when read with a right disposition of mind, it must do good. It is sufficiently serious to lay hold upon the heart; and competently gay to amuse the attention. The story bears some faint resemblance to that of Miss Edgeworth's Almeria, though the heroine is not an heiress, and does not die an old maid. She is a lively, warm-hearted, fascinating woman, fond of flattery and dominion, but more fond of confidence and affection, and not discerning enough to learn from her own experience, nor yet humble enough to be taught by that of others, that notoriety in fashionable circles is incompatible with domestic happiness, and that all derelictions of virtue are succeeded by retributive remorse even in this world. Rhoda loves, and is beloved; and is carried away by the dissipations of life. Her faults are fostered by flattery, and magnified by envy. She becomes imprudent in her external behaviour; but still retains the purity, as well as the pride of virtue. Her happiness is destroyed, and her reputation sullied, by the perfidy of pretended friends; and without having intended or incurred any actual guilt, she finds herself the victim of calumny and the cause of crime. Such is the

story of Rhoda, and such too the story of many a lovely female who,

"Once had wept at innocence distrest,"

and brought to the chequered scenes of life, a pure heart and a mind untainted. The systematic attempt at the seduction of a married woman formis a conspicuous feature in the narrative. The annals of our courts of justice afford sufficient evidence that such things are; but we hope that a lady of rank coolly resolving upon the ruin of a friend who heaps obligations upon her and loves her with sincere affection, merely from her satanic disgust at witnessing her happiness with a man whom she had herself refused, is an object that very rarely exists in real life. The dark Malay and the crafty Canadian transmit the memory of an affront as an heir-loom from generation to generation; but in these middle regions, we neither love nor hate to desperate extremes, save only-in the pages of romance. Envy finds its aliment in the success and fame of the person envied, and dies of itself when all competition is removed by the misfortune or disgrace of that person. Among the vulgar, the ebullitions of jealousy work themselves off by scolding and swearing: among the polished population of the country, the same thing is effected by polite sarcasm and innuendo. We challenge to combat, because we burn with sudden resentment for recent injuries; but we fight only because we know the world expects it of us.

The style of Rhoda is always correct, and sometimes elegant. It has not the point, the classic allusion, and fine embellishment of Miss Edgeworth, the exquisite reality of Mrs. Dorset, or the pathos of Mrs. Opie: but we are persuaded that style has been a secondary object with the author, whose principal aim seems to be to fulfil the promise and profession contained in the motto in the title-page. The beginning of the work is singularly good it reminds us of an affecting story in the Adventurer; and is not the worse on that account. The winding-up is equally fine. No sudden and improbable transitions from total misery to perfect happiness are represented to us. In the heroine, we find a just sense of sorrow and compunction; but no renunciation of all society in a perennial paroxysm of grief, like some of the heroines of the fascinating Madame de Genlis, whom she makes weep, and sigh, and soliloquize, and glide about their chosen solitudes in deep mourning with "long veils," and hang their houses with emblematic furniture, and converse only with cherished portraits for years and years, without losing one atom of their grace, beauty, or usage du monde, from this severe discipline, this punishment drill to the bodily and men

tal spirits. Rhoda feels her afflictions to be the consequences of her follies, and she feels them deeply: she is however at last restored to comfort and to credit, and affords not only a warning by her faults, but an example by her good qualities. After sustaining well through three volumes (the one consisting of two parts) the interest of a story, without the aid of descriptions of scenery, episodes, and personalities, the author concludes her work with these rational sentences.

"Restored to reputation, in the enjoyment of affluence, the cherished object of friendship, that solace and splendor of private life; was it vet possible that Rhoda should escape the consequences of the past? Could any lengthened period of prosperous existence erase from her memory the impression, that to the being who had loved her with passion, and cherished her with kindness, she had been the instrument of evil-of irreparable-it might be (awful thought!) of immortal evil? "The follies which she had abjured, and the virtues that she culti vated, alike forbad such forgetfulness. She felt that the promise of her youth was blighted, the exercise of her talents circumscribed, the affections of her heart deadened.

"Yet not for this did she murmur. She bowed with meek submission to the chastisements of her heavenly Father, and gratefully enjoyed the blessings which his hand still preserved to her.

"Such is the history of Rhoda! If it have afforded an innocent amusement to any, I shall be glad. If it shall have exemplified that much guilt may be incurred where little was intended,-that vanity is not a venial frailty, nor self-confidence and love of distinction safe counsellors, that nothing but a preferable love for a husband can sanctify the marriage-bond, and that chastity alone will not make a good wife; and if such exemplifications shall lead the steps of one individual from the ways of worldly wisdom and vain glory, into the paths of Christian morality, or retain them there, I shall have had my reward !"

ART. IV. Tales of Fancy. By S. H. BURNEY, Author of

Clarentine, Geraldine Fauconberg,' and Traits of Nature. Vol. I. containing The Shipwreck. London, Colburn, 1816. p. 400.

THE same taste for romantic and improbable adventures, which is so conspicuous throughout the pages of The Wanderer,' seems to characterize the Tales of Fancy, for which we are indebted to the sister of the celebrated Madame d'Arblay. In the volume now before us, the marvellous in narrative blending with the natural in sentiment, creates a charm, which, on young and unsophisticated minds, will act with the fascination of a spell; and that strict regard for modesty in the portraiture Aug. Rev. VOL. II. R

NO. XI.

of feelings, and rectitude of principle in developing the spring of actions, which we are sorry to say is not invariably the characteristic of the female pen, will render the lessons of virtue, thus veiled in the decorations of fiction, unusually effective.

While we contemplate the desolate and heart-chilling situation of the survivors of the Shipwreck; while we reverence the filial piety and maternal solicitude which console, and the pure and Exalted passion which embellishes their seclusion, we lose sight of all the tame and cold realities of real life; and send back our thoughts and feelings through the dimly seen vista of revolving ages, to the Theagenes and Clariclea, the Pericles and Sigismonda of former days, of which the vestiges are now fading from memory or crumbling to decay.

of

The Shipwreck" does not indeed electrify us by any those highly-wrought exhibitions of passion, those deep and intuitive views into human nature, which fasten upon the recollection of congenial readers, and fill the soul with an emotion which one-tenth of the world exquisitely feel, and the rest praise by hearsay :-We never lay down the book to exclaim"What an eloquent passage! what a sublime image!" but we hang over it with the earnestness of rivetted attention, and close it with sentiments of gratitude and approbation.

We predict that all our female readers will infallibly fail in love with Miss Burney's hero, Fitz Aymer. He is all that female wishes can desire, or female virtue deserve. The heroine is, like all other heroines, beautiful, gentle, and disinterested: the negative virtues are easy to describe; but difficult to practice!

The story of the volume is briefly this: Lady Earlingford and Viola her daughter, passengers in an outward-bound Indiaman, are wrecked and cast away upon an uninhabited island in the Indian ocean. Here, by the exertion of great fortitude and the exercise of pious resignation, they manage to exist for some weeks, not knowing that their insulated asylum affords shelter to any other human being. At last, and in a very interesting manner, they make the discovery of a friend, companion, lover, and guardian, all in one; for they find Fitz Aymer, the generous, the warm-hearted Fitz Aymer, who had been thrown ashore on a different part of the coast, and has taken charge of a child, the supposed orphan of a friend and brother officer, whom he rescued from the waves. We are fully disposed to believe that Fitz Aymer and Viola, having tempers and dispositions quite consonant, would certainly have fallen in love with cach other, had they met among the scenes of civilized life.