easily trace the growth of the intellect as we can often the formation of material substances, observing from what germ every particular feature originates, and what conduces to nourish and mature it, the task we have proposed to ourselves would not be so very difficult.

We conceive of four principal objects, one or the other of which men usually seek in their reading--namely, pleasure, knowledge, culture--whether of intellect or taste and moral improvement. With regard to some of these objects, we believe novel reading to be entirely useless or actually injurious; and though with respect to others the end proposed may be attained, we shall endeavor to show that there are other means of accomplishing it, which answer equally well and even better, without any of the objections that attend this.

By far the greater number of that class who are accustomed to spend their time in perusing works of fiction, profess to have no other object in view than the mere pleasure of the moment. Perhaps some seek recreation, and would unbend the mind from severe studies and pursuits over some amusing though trivial tale; regardless whether injury or profit result therefrom. Leisure hangs so heavily upon the hands of others, that they gladly rid themselves of Time's burthen by any means in their power; and resort to light literature for much the same purpose that others do to the grog shop, for artificial stimulant and excitement. Others again, endeavor thus to beguile the weary hours of bodily sickness, even though thereby they are sowing the seeds of disease and death in the immortal mind.

Had life no other object than the mere passing the present moment agreeably, was there no dissipation to the mind, unfitting it for more important duties; no injury to the morals; there would not be the objections to such means of relaxation that now exist; though even then it would be a matter of doubt whether it does not require a polluted taste to relish such productions; and whether to the unvitiated palate there is not greater delight in the study of those sciences which contemplate important truths; delight too unalloyed with pain and which is removed far above satiety and disgust. At least where recreation for the mind is desired, it is far more natural and far better to seek it in some employment that shall give necessary exercise and health also to the body. This purpose might be fulfilled by walking abroad amid Nature's scenes, which inspire feelings of no ordinary pleasure, but pleasure that excites no morbid passion, no disquietude or unhealthy sensibility.

We believe the most strenuous advocate of novel reading, never claims for them the propagation of any thing more than a sort of negative knowledge. Their very design is to make Fancy wear the garb of Truth. The amount of direct information they contain, though christened with the name historical, and affecting to portray the light and transient shades that flit upon the surface of society; those evanescent hues which otherwise they say would soon pass off and be forgotten, is at best small and without authenticity. Generally written long after the times they profess to describe, and relying mostly upon the fancy of the author for those facts and scenes that they set forth, they seldom give a very correct idea of men and things. The false impres

sions they thus usually produce, little entitle them to be called the hand-maids of History. Biography can much more justly claim this distinction. It is the province of this to descend to all the minute details that History overlooks. In painting the lives of individuals it is its business to give also the less important scenes and influences among which they moved, and which must have tended to color their minds and give bent to their character. Not only do these furnish a substitute for novels in delineating the manners of society, but the autobiographies of eminent men which are becoming so common at the present day, serve an additional purpose which novels can seldom reach. They show what may have been the peculiar habits and manner of thinking, belonging to those who from their genius or station exerted an extended influence upon their country and age; and what relates to them is of far greater moment than the more general and more obvious features of the mass.

The knowledge of human nature too, that their clamorous supporters often assert, is derived from works of fiction, is by far too slight and imperfect to warrant the benefit claimed in that respect. We apprehend an impartial examination would rather prove that they tend to teach false views of life; that they fill the already too romantic mind with expectations so high, that this rough world of ours is altogether unable to realize them; and as a necessary result, that they produce bitter disappointment and despair. It is better, far better, that he who would know the bright and the dark side of man's character, should gain his knowledge from actual observation by buffeting the rude waves of the world and mingling among his fellow beings in the busy scenes where they congregate. The experience thus obtained is based on no false assumption, and shall be a clear guidance in the dark day of trouble-a support that shall not prove treacherous in the hour of need. Or shrinks he from such trials, let him study the drama, and he shall find in those master productions of human genius, even which our own language contains, all the intricate passions and minutest traits of man's character unfolded far truer and better than in any external description which has ever dropped from the most brilliant pen of the most talented novelist that has ever existed.

Again, of what use are novels in intellectual culture? Do they expand the mind, improve the style or give a command of language? We cannot but believe that their efficacy in all these respects has been much overrated. An easy and flowing diction is not obtained by the hasty perusal that works of this kind usually receive. It is rather acquired by the habitual and patient study of the choicest productions, ancient and modern, that can be found in the literature of the world; productions in which the strength of thought-the purity of style-the delicate touches of fancy, and the bold figures of the imagination sending every sentiment with force to the heart, shall repay a frequent and careful reading. It is such works, and such only, that give spirit to the mind, and a ready, fluent and graceful expression to ideas. Nay, more, novel reading is not merely negative in regard to this, but it is actually detrimental. Its votaries acquire such facility at despatch that they run through

with equal haste all other productions, whatever their subjects and whatever their merits. The effect of such a habit is to deprive them selves of all the advantage which long dwelling upon and familiar acquaintance with works of worth is calculated to give; nor think this an inconsiderable loss. For with compositions of merit at least, Wisdom's fruits hang in plenty only upon the boughs of sheltering contemplation, and are never found upon those of barren, unproductive superficiality.

The efforts of a few devoted to the study of the severer sciences, may have prevented the worst results among us; but would we know how little intellectual culture novel reading imparts, or even how powerful it may be to retard all advancement in science, it can be learned, we think, from the stationary condition that China has held for so many ages. Though this nation more than twenty-five centuries ago reached a degree of refinement, which in some respects has not been surpassed even by the most enlightened of the present day; though learning is held in the highest respect and made the passport to the honors and offices of state; though the elementary studies are in the reach of all, and pursued by all, yet they have scarcely passed the threshold of knowledge, and since the time of Confucius, the cotemporary of Herodotus, have made no perceptible improvement. Though acquainted with the art of paper-making more than seventeen hundred years ago, and of printing nine hundred years before it was discovered in Europe, they have never produced a printed book that an American would deign to read. And though the Mariner's Compass was invented by them twelve centuries ago, they have never applied it to its most appropriate use, that of navigation, but creep along their shores from headland to headland, like the most ignorant of barbarous tribes. At first view it seems truly surprising that they should have thus stopped midway in the progress of civilization, and fallen into a lethargic sleep which no stimulant can make them throw off. But when we learn that nearly all their literature, of which they have an untold quantity, is nothing but novels; that the lives of their scholars are of course spent in reading these, and the wisdom of their philosophers derived from this source alone, our wonder is much lessened, or rather we wonder that they have accomplished so much. It is true other causes may have contributed to retard civilization among them. The easy dispositions of the people and the peculiar influences of their government have no doubt had some effect; yet, had their minds been made vigorous by the decipline of mathematical studies and philosophical pursuits, instead of the erratic flights of imaginative geniuses, is it too much to say it would in a great measure have counteracted these and advanced them long ere this to a much higher standard of intellectual excellence? We might contrast with the Chinese, had we time, the high perfection which Grecian and Roman literature reached while such a thing as fictitious narrative was hardly known among them; and it would be an inquiry well worth making if the very absence of such productions did not contribute somewhat to that high perfection; but we hasten on to another division of our subject, and would inquire whether novels have any efficacy in cultivating the plastic powers of the mind?

We are willing to admit that good taste is susceptible of the highest improvement, by the habitual contemplation of whatever is beautiful in the works of nature or the creations of art; but we deny to the major part of novels, at least any power that tends to that result. They are apt rather to be of a low and debasing character. Their effect is to pollute from contact with impurity and vice. But their supporters contend that even though they have an immoral tendency, yet for all this, they may extend the excursive powers of the mind; that they may benefit and strengthen the imagination.

We know that man's mind is contracted within narrow bounds; that he cannot often frame conceptions to equal the soul's high desires; that even his hopes, when they endeavor to sustain themselves aloft, want consistency, and like pillars of smoke in the thinner air

"Melt and dissolve and are no longer seen."

But is it true that this can be remedied and the imagination formed by culture? Has man the ability to throw around himself this chain,

"Woven of flowers and in sweetness dipped?"

Can he by his own exertions raise his thoughts till he holds high communion with all existence in earth and heaven? If so, why does this power prevail more in youth than in manhood? Why does the child of nature surpass the inhabitant of cities? or ruder periods of society the more cultivated? Or even granting it can be strengthened, is the studied phrase, the rounded period, the poor and vapid thoughts of novels to do it? Those repetitions wearisome of sense

"Where soul is dead and feeling has no place?"

We answer, no; but that this spirit, if caught at all, must be caught from nature's scenes in their rude majesty and sublimity; from the bright visions and lofty dreams of poetry; or from the inspired language of the prophets, spoken from lips of coal in words leaping like bolts from the brooding tempest.

But there yet remains the more momentous consideration with regard to our subject, the immoral influence of novels; though it is so obvious as to require but a passing glance. It is well known that the most hasty perusal of any written production leaves a lasting impression upon the heart for good or for evil, which Time itself cannot obliterate. Especially is this true, when what we read coincides with the vicious propensities of our own corrupted natures. Man cannot abstract himself so as to be wholly insensible to extraneous influences. His mind is not like a mirror; it cannot reflect what is impure and contaminating, and be itself unpolluted. It cannot, like the moonbeams, dance upon a dung-hill and retain its original purity and brightness. Such being its condition, it becomes a matter of vital importance, that nothing but what is virtuous be brought in contact with it. And how seldom can we

assert this of novels. It is one of the means by which they excite interest, to contrast virtue and vice. The character stained with every crime and every sin that the author's fruitful brain could conceive of, is compared with a being so perfectly good and angel-like, that all must

despair of ever imitating such excellence in their daily life and conversation. Nor is this all. However difficult it may be to handle immoralities in such a manner that they shall not infect; yet the manifestation of an honest indignation by the author will do much towards it. Did he treat vice with such rebuke and severity, that while the reader was walking in the burning furnace of temptation, we could feel it might serve as a guardian angel to shield and protect him, the case would not be as bad. But how different from this is the fact! The crimes of the hero or heroine are usually so softened down by the glowing sophistry of the writer; their enormities are set off with so many palliating circumstances, that we are ready to forgive them all, and even pronounce them virtues. Surely our own good resolutions are shaken, we more feel our inability to toil up the steep and rugged path of virtue, when we are taught to believe that iniquity is rewarded; that every praiseworthy quality is overcome with defeat, and its possessor tortured with misfortune, till finally relieved by death.

However great the injury of novels as a class, that sentimental kind introduced by modern refinement, is even the most pernicious of them

Conceived by the perverted imaginations of French libertines and English debauchees, it is the high embellishment with which they cover and adorn sin, that seduces and deceives the heart. Pretending to lead vice forth to sacrifice upon the altar of virtue, they decorate the victim in such rich and guady garbs as completely to hide her repulsiveness. By such abuse of their powers, they make their minds flaming volcanoes, ravaging and devastating the world with the lava of destruction far more fatal in its effects than any of the burning eruptions of Ætna. The pernicious influence of these productions, hanging like a mildew on the healthful springtide of the soul, is even now felt by thousands upon thousands in the world. Many an inhabitant of prisons, if not occupant of the gallows, can trace their first onset in the career of crime to the impressions left upon their minds by reading Paul Clifford; the whole aim and tendency of which is to subvert the foundation of all law and government. And what may be the effects upon the glowing imagination of childhood, of reading even our own Cooper-comparatively harmless as he may be-one of the most gifted of our young countrymen dangling from the masthead of the Somers, executed for a crime at which humanity shudders, bears witness.

If such then are the effects of romance in one form and another, let it teach us caution. With such light to guide, let us not risk our health in that region of the world of literature, which even though it produces fair flowers, has them in close proximity to noxious weeds and poisonous plants.