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long sensible of, and keenly alive to, an isolated position, finds an object on which the longing affections have a right to rest. Her identity is established by Miss D'Albert and Darcy.

"Alas!' he replied, 'I cannot rejoice for her, that she is proved to belong to those who are unworthy of her! to the sinful and the sorrowing-to a home without a hearth, a home on which no blessing has ever lighted, around which no happy and confiding love has ever clung! Cornelia, dear Cornelia, how shall I welcome thee?' "She will bring a blessing there. Only love her-cherish her as she has been loved and cherished!' and the good Miss D'Albert turned away; and hiding her face from him, wept mingled tears.

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"Love her!' murmured Darcy; 'love and cherish her! ah, only too dearly! Has not my heart yearned to her, longed for her, doted on her already? And God be thanked! yes, His great name be blessed for ever, who hath kept this love pure and undefiled!'

"He clasped his hands—he could have knelt in earnest and prayerful gratitude. Miss D'Albert, occupied with her own feelings, took no note of his—they were each, as it were, alone.

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Spirit of my mother,' still Darcy's heart spoke on, 'now redeemed and blessed, praise Him for his great mercy! Look down upon me; upon thy children, once more to be re-united on earth, be with us ever, and witness now my true and loving acceptance of this sacred charge!"

"He was raised beyond himself, into the pure air of a holy and religious devotion; and it seemed to him that the peace of heaven I met him there. * * * * * It is needless to recount all

*

that passed that evening with Miss D'Albert and Cornelia. After they had talked long and earnestly, Cornelia, exhausted with the excitement of blended emotions, sat silent by the window. She leaned her arms on a little table, and gazed up into the evening sky, as we have described her mother ere their parting. Large tears that left the lashes bright,' were standing on her cheeks; her heart throbbed, the pulses of her head were swollen too, and beat heavily. 'My mother! my brother!' she said, 'and is there one I may call father?-will he own me? And oh, aunty, she who has been so good to me; she, so afflicted, so suffering, so injured, she will never love me more! To her I stand in the dark shadow of the dreadful past, one of its terrible things-never shall I see her again, never! I know it. We must bear our lot;-I can bear anything with him, with my brother. Where is he? he will, he will love me-he does. already with that precious love. he should come to me!'

Will he not own me? Oh yes,

God has inspired our hearts Let me go to him-can I? No,

"He will come. He said he would come this evening, if he might be allowed to see you, my love. Fear nothing dear child.' "I do not fear; but all seems so strange, so new ! '

"Mr. Darcy came. As his footstep was heard on the stairs, Miss D'Albert glided from the room. And the brother and sister, clasped in each other's arms, tasted the sweetness of a love for which they long had yearned in vain.

"My sister, my beloved, my lovely sister!' he whispered, seating her beside him, fondly, while she held his hand in both hers, and again and again pressed it to her lips, murmuring the dear word, Brother!"

"Bless her!' he said, 'bless her, heaven,-bless her, mother! Cornelia, my darling, new-found treasure, look at me with those dear eyes, tell me you are glad; let me see the face of my sister!'

"She raised her eyes and looked upon him; and a smile, beautiful as an angel's joy, irradiated that face; and in his, too, glowed the happiness of new hope and new affections."

And with this we will conclude our notice of an author, who, though she may not possess the passionate fervour of the highest genius, has a spirit quick to penetrate the secrets of life, and the realm of noble and tender affections, and a faculty finely discriminating and powerful, wherewith to clothe in the apprehensible flesh of the poet's conception, more of those shadowy yet real inhabitants, who live not in earth or in sea or sky, but move with serene or troubled demeanour through the stirred imaginations and peopled memories of men.

ART. VI.-PUSEYITE NOVELS.

Amy Herbert. By a Lady. Edited by the Rev. W. Sewell, B.D., Preacher at Whitehall. New Edition.

fcap. 8vo.

Gertrude. A Tale. Ditto, ditto.

Margaret Percival. Ditto. Fcap. 8vo.

2 vols.

Laneton Parsonage. A Tale for children, on the practical use of a portion of the Church Catechism. Edited by Rev. W. Sewell, B.D. New Edition, 3 vols. fcap.8vo. The Earl's Daughter. A Tale, &c. Ditto, 2 vols. 8vo.

London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.

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THE universal and intense interest of Fiction consists in the simultaneous exhibition of the external and internal history of human life, in the display to a single glance of the inward forces, and the outward fate. The most powerful of human interests are centred on the doubtful problem how capacity and circumstance will fit, how energy and effort, and desire and merit, will correspond with the incidents upon which they fall, or briefly, in the grotesque language of Carlyle, how moral "potentialities realized or spoiled. Hence only the doubtful portions of life, where fates are changing, and risks are great, are fit for the subjects of fiction. Where no chances are visible, and minds are only tranquilly maturing under the same external influences, so that the meeting-line between character and circumstance follows an obvious and regular law, there is no sphere for Fiction, since our delight in it is rooted in our sympathy with those vehement hopes and fears which men direct towards a changeful fortune, in our desire to see how Providence and man reconcile the external life with the living wants and powers and merits of the soul within. Fiction alone enables us to look at once on both sides of that barrier which usually divides men's visible and invisible life, so as to fill actions with all their intended meaning (generally perceived only in their single. relation to ourselves), and exhibit their various effect on the several characters pourtrayed.

Only the simultaneous display of these divided worlds of

act and feeling, and of their reciprocal influence in moulding human lots, arouses the universal interest of men. A mere biographic outline that should neither express nor suggest the internal history of the mind, however marvellous it may be, excites no permanent interest even in the external imagination of a child. And a history of inward thought and feeling that remains unillustrated by reference to the wants and efforts and actions of our external existence, falls lifeless and heavy, because presenting no reality to the thought. It is on the constant transition from the world within to the world without, and the gradual determination of a regular path of life skirting both at once, that human attention is fixed in interest and awe; and this, we suspect, is the reason, why the highest drama, when only read, is so much less popular than biographic fiction. With persons of only average imagination, it is not easy to pass from the words in which men speak themselves, to the interior world of thought and feeling conceived by the poet's mind. A dramatist makes copious use, in his delineations, of conceptions and experiences which he does not explain, and it requires something of his own power, to retrace his path, and pass from the dramatic exhibition, to the hidden world it is intended to pourtray. In other works of fiction, in novels and romances, this is all done ready to the hand. The author has the privilege of explaining the moral nature and moral perplexity of his hero in one page, and in the next delineating the actions which are its result. An acted drama requires even less imagination to interpret, because explaining itself in the familiar language of glance and gesture.

Now these considerations may, we think, at once explain and remove a very popular antipathy to religious novels. The province of all such fiction is to display the mutual influence of mind and circumstance in shaping our human destinies; and wherever, then, there is a double life, outward and inward, with its two distinct spheres not in harmony, but only striving to be so, there is a natural and clear field for this kind of delineative skill; and whether it be by the secret power of human or of divine affections in the soul, in their endeavour to direct and change the course of the external fate, that this double life is created, does not touch in the least its essential fitness to be a

theme for fiction. Only it requires that Religion, if that be the inward principle striving to realize itself in Life, should be exhibited as a spring of conduct, a moving force influencing external circumstance, not as a theological system, or a didactic code. The only reason that human affections, such as love, fear, resentment, ambition, are so much oftener made the centres of interest, is that these cannot but affect the outward career, while Faith is too often held passively like a distinct branch of science, and wholly latent as a guiding principle of life. When then, in religious fictions, the religion is entirely sundered from the history, and lies alone like the bitter, kernel within the sweet shell of tempting incident, there is reason enough for general disgust. The combination is purely artificial, and deserves no better fate than that of amusing lesson-books, from which all wise children glean the fun, and drop the prose. But where, on the contrary, Religion is a motive power, changing all the aspects of thought and action, there cannot be a higher task for art than to delineate its career, as it gradually subdues or yields to the power of circumstance, until, either by strength or weakness, harmony of life with thought is reached. The existence of Religion in the soul can only be dimly and partially discerned through external conduct; and the risks or conflicts which only occasionally disturb the course of human desires and affections, must, of necessity, chequer the progress of a spiritual life; and hence, both in laying open the hidden character of a Religious mind, and in the vital importance of its interests and dangers, there is rich material for exercising the legitimate functions of creative fiction. And the only inferiority of these themes as subjects for fiction, lies in this,—that the crises they introduce, though more frequent, are seldom so well-defined and ultimate, as those which mark or close the course of human passions. The various eras of a religious life are not usually as distinct and hard in outline, or so immediately marked in their bearings on the fates of others, as the vicissitudes of ambition or of love, which form the usual themes of moral fiction; but Religion leads no hermit life of her own unmingled with these lower affections; and her claim to regulate and judge them, may be made the means of uniting the interests of spiritual conflict

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