a sketch otherwise than wholly disgusting, an able hand is required; and this point is undoubtedly effected. Without enquiring, however, whether such unmixed worthlessness be not somewhat unnatural, we must remark that we cannot see the purpose which Fenella's rope-dancing probation, as devised by her father, is intended to answer; when his own instructions might have so much better prepared her for a life of self-command and dissimulation. The cool reckless self-possession of Christian's manner, indicative of civil courage and steady purpose, is well imagined.

Charles and Buckingham are characteristically drawn, as far as they go. The latter we are the more inclined to bebelieve a faithful portrait, as we contemplate it with unmixed disgust. The former, whose merits and vices were those of ordinary life, and have been already made familiar to us in various ways, must have presented few marked features to the historical novelist, but these few have been well seized.

Though the author's chief attention has been directed to character and incident, yet the book is not deficient in the vivid and picturesque descriptions which enlivens his more early productions. We have already quoted the morning ride of Sir Geoffrey, and the reception of the Puritans, to which we might add the whole of the feast at Martindale Castle, the assault of Bridgnorth's house, (which strongly reminds us of the skirmish and fire in Rokeby Hall) the rencontre with the fencing-master, and lastly, the entrance into Newgate; from which last we extract the following description of the surly jailor.

"The resemblance did not end here; for in this small vaulted apartment, the walls of which were hung round with musketoons, pistols, cutlasses, and other weapons, as well as with many sets of fetters and irons of different construction, all disposed in great order, and ready for employment, a person sat, who might not unaptly be compared to a huge bloated and bottled spider, placed there to secure the prey which had fallen into his toils.

"This official had originally been a very strong and squarebuilt man, of large size, but was now so overgrown from overfeeding perhaps, and want of exercise, as to bear the same resemblance to his former self which a stall-fed ox still retains to a wild bull. The look of no man is so inauspicious as of a fat man, upon whose features ill nature has marked an habitual stamp. He seems to have reversed the old proverb, and to have thriven under the influence of the worst affections of the mind. Passionate we can allow a jolly mortal to be; but it seems unnatural to his goodly case to be sulky and brutal. Now this man's features, surly and

tallow coloured; his limbs swelled and disproportioned; his huge paunch and unwieldy carcase, suggested the idea, that, having once found his way into this central recess, he had there battened, like the weasel in the fable, and fed largely and foully until he had become incapable of retreating through any of the narrow paths that terminated upon his cell; and was there compelled to remain, like a toad under the cold stone, fattening amid the squalid airs of the dungeons by which he was surrounded, which would have proved pestiferous to any other than such a congenial inhabitant." Vol. III. p. 254.

The same lively and faithful character is perceptible in the illustrations from nature and animal life, which occur. The sun beams in Newgate committed to jail; the smile on Bridgnorth's face like the momentary glimmer of a sexton's torch on a church-yard wall; the comparison of Blood to a daunted wolf, and an owl pursued by small birds, as well as that of the English people to the sleath-hound, appeased by the first blood shed in his path are instances of this sort.

The active bustling nature of the plot excludes any very considerable share of feeling; but those pathetic passages which do occur are in the author's best style, as may be inferred from one or two former quotations. To these we may add the interview between Bridgnorth and Lady Peveril in the avenue; and as an extract of a more cheering nature, the whole scene at Goddard Crovan's stone, (the Godred of Chatterton perhaps) The latter is an instance, among several, of the author's just conception of love as existing in superior and elevated minds, and as contrasted with the mawkish madness of over-grown children, which has proved the flavouring attraction of so many second-rate of novels.

A few sly truths are scattered in a terse and playful manner, for which we refer our readers to pages 34 and 128 in the second volume; page 76 in the first, and 147 in the third.

If it were worth while to cavil at smaller errors of the pen, we might notice, that Alice's eyes change colour twice, resuming fortunately their original blue at the second change; that Lance, in his hurry to fly to his master's aid, changes Aunt Ellesmere into Aunt Whitaker; and that Chiffinch, in equal haste for his dinner, turns Stephen Ganlesse into Diccon Ganlesse. Nor can we exactly see the reasons which induce Buckingham to converse aloud with his accomplice Christian in the presence of the aforesaid Chiffinch, in whose custody he was at the time.

It may also savour somewhat of hyper-criticism to remark, that the conclusion wants the full harmonious close which is

analogous to the return to the key-note in music, and which distinguishes the author's earlier productions. Though we will admit, that it is something to have brought the lovers together under the same roof, and secured the consent of the honest Knight, and though we have no wish to see revived the obsolete and tiresome prettinesses of a Grandisonian wedding, still we think that something satisfactory might have been added at the expence of retrenching from other parts, a little of the political intrigue and slang. We are sorry to bid adieu to our favourite Lady Peveril so abruptly, and to see Sir Geoffrey and the worthy Bridgnorth part without an express reconciliation. Christian, it is true, could not conveniently have been hanged without involving Buckingham; but surely Fenella, who deserves a better fate than to wander with a ruined and branded miscreant, might have been assigned as the companion of her opulent uncle, with comfort to both parties, and to the reader's satisfaction.

On the whole, however, we have seldom perused any one of the brilliant series of the Waverley novels, better calculated to stand the test of criticism than the present. If inferior in situations of thrilling interest, in pathos, and in humour, to those earlier tales where the author exercised the freshness and force of his imagination on Scottish subjects, it is evenly and well-written throughout, and free from those vagaries into which that sportive imagination has seduced him on other occasions. No rhyming and romping ghost is introduced to quiz a taylor, souse a sexton, and burn the hero's fingers; no thread-bare jest, like Monkbarns's eternal "phoca," pesters us in every page; and no Caleb Balderstone keeps us on the tenter-hooks by his distressing buffoonery on a piteous subject. The merits of the work will be appreciated highly by those who understand the difficulties which were to be contended with in its composition. To fill up the mere outlines which history has left us, into vivid portraits, perfect in character and costume, to introduce to our familiar acquaintance persons of whose species the very traces have vanished; to impart an interest to a dull period of history, by means consistent with historical truth, and to stimulate us to the investigation of all details connected with that period, is an arduous task, and in no instance better performed than in the present novel, which, if not, at the first glance, the most striking of the author's works, will keep up his reputation undiminished.

VOL. XIX. MARCH, 1823.

T

ART. VI. Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, discoverable in Modern Italy and Sicily. By the Rev. John James Blunt. Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge; and late one of the Travelling Bachelors of that University. 8vo. pp. 310. 9s. 6d. Murray. 1823.

CONYERS MIDDLETON's well known Letter from Rome, though highly vaunted by its admirers, was never, we confess, very much to our taste; and inasmuch as it imputed Paganism to Popery, we always thought it a lamentable failure in argument. In many points, no doubt, the modern Italians resemble their forefathers; and it would rather, on the other hand, be a matter of surprise if they did not do so; for it is not easy to believe, that the lapse even of eighteen centuries can so far have altered the course of nature, as utterly to have eradicated from the dominions of the Sovereign Pontiff all manners and customs which were once practised in Imperial, or even in Consular Rome:

In longum tamen ævum

Manserunt, hodièque manent vestigia.

The identity of place, climate, and national temperament will necessarily preserve many traces of similarity in inhabitants of the same countries, however distant their generations may be from each other: and it is clearly not a little unjust to attribute to any fancied coincidence between the genius of two distinct religions, certain likenesses and connexions which, with greater fairness, may be assigned to more universally operative causes. We shall not be suspected of any particular bias in favour of the Romish superstition; but we do contend that our good Protestants in the North of England, might as justly be accused of observing the mysterious celebration of the Saxon Medrœnack, when they place their Yule Coal on the Christmas fire; or that the orthodox peasant of Gloucestershire, in banqueting upon cyder and carraways on Twelfth Night, might be supposed to eat and drink in commemoration of the Danish Frega and Niordus, as that most of the religious ceremonials of the Italian Papist are to be charged upon an adulterous intercourse between the ex-mythology of the heathen Jupiter, and the existing corruption of the Babylonish

woman.

Mr. Blunt, in the little volume before us, has, we think, treated the subject with greater justice and greater judgment: qualities for which, by the way, the writer we have

above alluded to, was by no means distinguished. In a tour through Italy and Sicily, in the years 1818-19, Mr. Blunt's attention was naturally drawn to the frequent parallelisms between that which he had read in his classical studies, and that which he saw in his classical travels: and the notes of these coincidences which he entered in his journal, soon grew from paragraphs to pages.

"The result has been the little book that is here offered to the public; to which, though popular spectacles, agriculture, domestic economy, and other topics, furnish their contingent, yet the religion of Italy and Sicily certainly occupies a prominent place in it; not from any superior anxiety on my part to discover points of similarity between pagan and Christian times under this department of my subject, but from the intimate and visible union which the forms of religion maintain with all the events of private life in those countries. It is to protect myself from any charge of illiberality in what I have to say under this head, that I have been induced to write this short preface; afraid lest that should be taken for a polemical, which was only intended for a literary essay. I feel the more desirous that this should be clearly understood, because otherwise it might be supposed that I am about to renew the warfare against the Church of Rome, which Dr. Middleton waged so vigorously in his celebrated Letter." My present aim is perfectly distinct from his. I mean no attack upon that Church; and if I were to attack it, I should do so on more general, and, as I conceive, stronger grounds. I have lived much amongst its members, and have experienced from them many personal civilities. That their faith is erroneous, of course I believe; but I believe that the faith of him who would oppose it with uncharitable bitterness and invective, is no less so. In tracing, however the vestiges of a classical age which still exist in Italy and Sicily, it is impossible not frequently to refer to the rites and ceremonies of paganism, or to avoid remarking the close connection which they often have with those at present in use. Many such customs are innocent in themselves, and therefore may be retained by the Church of Italy without censure. Some few are more than innocent, they are meritorious, and therefore may be retained with praise. But others, it must be confessed, and those no small class either, are unquestionably superstitious and idolatrous, and therefore ought to be abolished. Of this the enligthened Romanist himself is no less conscious than those who hold the reformed faith; for he cannot defend, nor do I think he would be desirous of attempting it, the gross abuses which fraud or credulity or inveterate custom has engrafted upon the fundamental tenets of his Church. Many of these abuses, however, it was necessary to introduce in order to complete my picture; nor had I any reason for passing over unnoticed objects which are familiar to all who travel through Italy. Where I have discovered then any points of conformity between the religion of ancient and