esting to most readers. Few persons, under the excitement produced by strange incidents and an intensely interesting narrative, ever stay to contemplate beauties of style or sentiment. The work is usually hurried over, with the utmost rapidity, to reach the catastrophe and be relieved of suspense. No one can read a well-told story without becoming interested in the actors, and this interest increases as the plot becomes more complex, till, at length, it becomes even painful. In such a state of feelings the amateur novel-reader heeds not the beauties of style, or thought. He omits the long and prosy introductions which usually embody the grave reflections of the author, and are exhibited in his best style, and hastens on to the narrative. An exciting story is the first, second and third requisite of a popular novel. Style is a secondary consideration. It is a rare thing to see a polished style in prose works of fiction. Such attractions are far less sought than stirring incidents, unexpected reverses, hair-breadth escapes and triumphant love. In most of the popular novels we find a loose, slipshod style, adapted to the ephemeral character of the work. Barbarisms, anomalies and solecisms constitute the law of such compositions rather than the exception. When a large work is thrown off, in a few weeks, and volumes succeed each other as rapidly as articles of merchandise from a mechanic's shop, we can expect nothing better. Men who write so rapidly must write carelessly. The works of Dickens are celebrated for their "matchless wit," and yet there is scarcely a repartee or jeu d'esprit of his that one would wish to repeat in a drawing-room. As he has generally chosen his characters from humble life, his most amusing descriptions and his best displays of humor, his Wellerisms, are better suited to the bar-room than the parlor. He is decidedly the most popular novelist of the age, and yet he has less to recommend him, in point of style, than most of his contemporaries in the same department of literature. The truth is, men care very little about style, if they can find stimulus for the passions, strong excitement. Novel-reader never ask whether a new work is well written, but the first inquiry is, is it interesting? If it can soothe sorrow, make the debtor forget his duns, the voluptuary his pleasures, and help the idle "to kill time," it is pronounced good, though it be no better than the "Pirate's Own Book" or the " Three Robbers." The young," says Mr. Alison, " judge of composition not by its merits when compared with other works, or by its approach to any abstract 66 SECOND SERIES, VOL. IX. NO. II. 9 66 or ideal standard, but by its effects in agitating their imaginations, and leading them into that fairy land, in which the fancy of youth has so much delighted to wander. It is their own imagination that has the charm, which they attribute to the work that excites it; and the simplest tale or the poorest novel is, at that time, as capable of awakening it, as afterwards the eloquence of Virgil or Rousseau." While the attention of the reader is absorbed in the conduct of the story, the incidents and the fate of the actors, the beauties and blemishes of style and thought are forgotten. After Richardson had published the first four volumes of his Clarissa, which were devoured with the utmost eagerness by the famished crowd, it was reported that the catastrophe, in the forthcoming volume, would be unfortunate. The reading public were greatly excited by it. They had become so interested in these imaginary persons that they could not bear to part with them in a tragical manner. Remonstrances were poured in upon him from all quarters. Old Cibber, says Scott, raved about it like a profane bedlamite, and one sentimental young lady, eager for the conversion of Lovelace, implored Richardson to save his soul, as though there were a living sinner in the case, and his future destiny depended upon the decision of the author. This incident shows how strongly the sympathies may be excited for fictitious characters, and how greatly young affections may be modified by the contemplation of such unreal beings. In this lies the secret of the novelist's power. He sits enthroned in the feelings. The feelings are blind, and yet they either lead or drive a majority of the human race. Females are generally supposed to possess warmer hearts and keener susceptibilities than males, hence novelists find their warmest admirers among women. They are the first to kindle with the fires of love and sentiment, that glow upon the pages of romance. Their incense feeds the flame; and the author and his readers continue to act reciprocally upon each other. Richardson had unknown female correspondents who secretly lavished upon him the most fulsome panegyrics. Richter frequently received the most flattering communications from unknown ladies: indeed one young lady actually committed suicide under the excitement of a maddening passion conceived for this author simply from reading his books. An event very similar to this occurred also in Goethe's history. Richter owed his success, in Germany, to the applause of ladies. He was first encouraged by them to write, and afterwards elevated, upon the wings of their love, to the very pinnacle of fame. He was first invited to Weimar by an unknown female friend. "Immediately upon his arrival," says his American biographer, who, by the way, is a lady also, "he visited his unknown correspondent, Madam Von Kalb, and through her was his presence made known to the distinguished literary characters of the day. All wanted to see this wonderful man. The men received him with open arms, the women with beating hearts. They vied with each other in their attentions to him; even the Dutchess Amelia, who had given orders that they should immediately inform her of his arrival, flattered him by many expressions of sympathy and admiration." "This wonderful man wrote somewhat less than one hundred volumes of novels and miscellanies, all in a style which none but a madman or transcendentalist would imitate; and, in a language which native Germans cannot understand without a new dictionary or glossary. In all his novels, he has repeated the changes of his own variegated life, and made himself, his relatives and friends the heroes of his epics; so that the Germans, with the help of a new lexicon, and foreigners, by learning a new language and wading through half a hundred volumes of fiction, may learn what a strange and "wonderful man" Jean Paul Richter was. 7. Novels, it is said, ought to be encouraged because they increase the sum of human happiness, by the real pleasure which they afford to the reader. To the cultivated mind, the best novels, when viewed as works of art, furnish a high intellectual treat. The pleasure is of the same kind as that derived from the contemplation of a finished statue, a beautiful picture, or a sublime poem. This pleasure is innocent. It is also invigorating to the intellect and taste; but to the reader who seeks only excitement from the story, the perusal of the most unexceptionable novels is enervating and demoralizing. It is not desirable to excite strong sympathy for imaginary beings. The mind having nothing to act upon, like a surcharged musket, recoils upon itself. When the heart is warmed with pity for real wo, it is made better; when its best feelings are wasted upon mere phantoms, it either becomes callous, or prematurely sensitive. When there is no real object for the excited affections to cling to, the moral constitution is usually enfeebled and the sensibilities blunted, and a more pungent stimulus is required at every successive excitation. The effect of this unnatural activity of the emotions upon the soul, is similar to that of narcotics upon the body. In both cases, the nervous energy is exhausted. Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, distress the young reader with imaginary terrors. When we read Mrs. Radcliffe's wild and fearful tales, the real world seems to disappear, and we live in an enchanted region of her own creation, "where mouldering castles rise conscious of deeds of blood," where deep vaults and lonely halls echo with the tramp of the disturbed dead. Few men can enjoy quiet slumber after reading, late at night, the " Mysteries of Udolpho," or the "Romance of the Forest." The timid reader trembles, in his solitary couch, at the creaking of a shutter, expecting, every moment, to see the midnight assassin enter from some concealed passage. The spectres and ghosts, with whose history he has become so familiar, come uninvited to the dormitory of their new acquaintance. They clank their chains and utter their dismal groans in his hearing, to confirm the truth of the horrid history to which he had devoted his waking hours. Few young persons can read tales of such terrific interest, without being haunted with "thick coming fancies," by day, and troubled dreams, by night. 8. Novels, it is said again, afford to the mind a relief from severer employments. This is sometimes true. But it is far oftener the case, that the novel-reader neglects all his appropriate duties for this amusement. The class of minds which absolutely need re laxation from severe application is very small. Such men seldom read novels. They have no time to devote to such recreation. They generally seek their solace in works that can instruct, as well as please. The sober, strong-minded man has little love for fiction. Those scholars who are passionately fond of novels in their youth, generally lose all relish for them when they have acquired a taste for solid learning. There is so much to be learned, and so much to be done, in this short life, that few men who justly appreciate their duties, and the worth of time, will come down from their high vocations to seek pleasurable excitement in fictitious tales, or turn aside from the wants of the suffering poor, "who are always with them," to shed unavailing tears over imaginary wo. It is the excitable, the gay, the idle, the devotees of fashion, who seek new stimulus for their exhausted sensibilities in works of fiction. It is not those who "think too much," but those who think too little, the absolutely thoughtless herd, that waste time in this species of beggarly day dreaming, in which, says Mr. Coleridge, "the mind of the dreamer furnishes nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is supplied, ab extra, by a sort of mental camera obscura, manufactured at the printing-office, which, pro tempore, fixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of a hundred other brains, afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose." It is sometimes regarded as a sufficient vindication of novels, that they furnish employment for vacant minds; that they occupy the thoughts of the idle and dissolute, who would else be plotting mischief. Theatrical amusements, public spectacles, and games of chance, have probably served the same noble end. Miller, in his "History Philosophically Illustrated," has shown us that card-playing, when it was first introduced, was greatly useful in quelling the turbulent passions of ferocious knights, and turning their thoughts from lust and sensual indulgence. Will Christian philosophers advocate the continuance of card-playing and gambling, to prevent crime, and refine libertines and epicureans? When men have become so debased as to derive an upward impulse from reading Paul Clifford or Jack Shepard, or any of those numerous 66 splendid fictions," which show to the astonished world that an adventurous warfare upon all that men hold dear, is the most glorious, as well as the shortest road to romantic immortality, then it is |