been able to cover his retreat amid such a cloud of | diluted down to her standard of utility and safety. beauties; and to attach an interest, almost human, and even profound, to a being whom we cannot, in our wildest dreams, identify with mankind. The whole tale is one of those hazardous experiments which have become so common of late years, in which a scanty success is sought at an infinite peril; like a wild-flower, of no great worth, snatched, by a hardy wanderer, from the very jaws of danger and death. We notice in it, however, with pleasure, the absence of that early levity which marked his writing, the shooting germ of a nobler purpose, and an air of sincerity fast becoming more than an air. But a religious novel, in the high and true sense of the term, is a noble thought: a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out as it were in flowers: a principle, old as Deity, wreathed with beauty, dramatized in action, incarnated in life, purified by suffering and death. And we confess that to this ideal, we know no novel in this our country, that approaches so nearly as "Zanoni." An intense spirituality, a yearning earnestness, a deep religious feeling, lie like the "soft shadow of an angel's wing," upon its every page. Its beauties are not of the "earth earthy." Its very faults, cloudy, colossal, tower above our petty judgment-seats, towards some higher tribunal. Best of all is that shade of mournful grandeur which rests upon it. Granting all its blemishes, the improbabilities of its story, the occasional extravagancies of its language, let it have its praise, for its pictures of love and grief, of a love leading its votary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and reminding you of that which made angels resign their starry thrones for the "daughters of men ;" and of a grief, too deep for tears, too sacred for lamentation, the grief which he increaseth that increaseth knowledge, the grief which not earthly immortality, which death only can cure. The tears which the most beautiful and melting close of the tale wrings from our eyes, are not those which wet the last pages of ordinary novels: they come from a deeper source; and as the lovers are united in death, to part no more, triumph blends with the tenderness with which we witness the sad yet glorious union. Bulwer, in the last scene, has apparently in his eye the conclusion of the "Revolt of Islam," where Laon and Laone, springing in spirit from the funeral pile, are united in a happier region, in the "calm dwellings of the mighty dead," where on a fairer landscape rests a “holier day," and where the lesson awaits them, that In saying that "Zanoni" is our chief favourite among Bulwer's writings, we consciously expose ourselves to the charge of paradox. If we err, however, on this matter, we err in company with the author himself; and, we believe, with all Germany, and with many enlightened enthusiasts at home. We refer, too, in our approbation, more to the spirit than to the execution of the work. As a whole, as a broad and brilliant picture of a period, and its hero, "Rienzi" is perhaps his greatest work, and "that shield, he may hold up against all his enemies." "The Last Days of Pompeii," on the other hand, is calculated to enchant classical scholars, and the book glows like a cinder from Vesuvius, and most gorgeously are the reelings of that fiery drunkard depicted. The "Last of the Barons," again, as a cautious, yet skilful filling up of the vast skeleton of Shakspere, is attractive to all who relish English story. But we are mistaken, if in that class who love to see the Unknown, the Invisible, and the Eternal, looking in upon them, through the loops and windows of the present; whose footsteps turn instinctively toward the thick, and the dark places of the "wilderness of this world;" or who, by deep disappointment, or solemn sorrow, have been driven to take up their permanent mental abode upon the perilous verge of the unseen world, if "Zanoni," do not, on such, exert a mightier spell, and to their feelings be not more sweetly attuned, than any other of this writer's books. It is a book not to be read in the drawing-room, but in the fields-productions, we may mention one or two "dearer not in the sunshine, but in the twilight shade not in the sunshine, unless indeed that sunshine has been saddened, and sheathed by a recent sorrow. Then will its wild and mystic measures, its pathos, and its grandeur, steal in like music, and mingle with the soul's emotions; till, like music, they seem a part of the soul itself. No term has been more frequently abused than that of religious novel. This, as commonly employed, describes an equivocal birth, if not a monster, of which the worst and most popular specimen, is" Colebs in Search of a Wife," where a perfect and perfectly insipid gentleman goes out in search of, and succeeds in finding a perfect and perfectly insipid lady. It is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious part of her book. Holding it with a half shudder, and at arm's-length, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in the other and the other infusion of prose criticism, commonplace moralizing, sage aphorism &c., till it is fairly "Virtue though obscured on earth, no less Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness." Amid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other than the rest." The "Student," from its disconnected plan, and the fact that the majority of its papers appeared previously, has seemed to many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless collection of its author's study-sweepings. This, however, is not a fair or correct estimate of its merits. It in reality contains the cream of Bulwer's periodical writings. And the New Monthly Magazine, during his editorship, approached our ideal of a perfect Magazine; combining as it did impartiality, variety, and power. His "Conversations with an Ambitious Student in ill health," though hardly equal to the dialogues of Plato, contain many rich meditations and criticisms, suspended round a simple and affecting story. The word "ambitious," however, is unfortunate; for what student is not, and should not be ambitious? To study, is to climb "higher still, and higher, like a cloud of fire." Talk of an ambitious chamois, or of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an ambitious student. The allegories in the "Student," strike us as eminently abandoned: but we are very doubtful if that time fine, with glimpses of a more creative imagination, has yet arrived. than we can find in any of his writings, save "Zanoni." We have often regretted, that the serious allegory, once too much affected, is now almost obsolete. Why should it be so? why should not more heads be laid down upon John Bunyan's pillow, to see more visions and dream more dreams? Shall truth no more have its mounts of transfiguration? Must Mirza no more be overheard in his soliloquies? And is the road to the "Den," lost for ever? We trust, we trow not. In the 66 Student," too, occurs his far-famed attack upon the anonymous in periodical writing. We do not coincide with him in this. We do not think that the use of the anonymous either could, or should be relinquished. It is, to be sure, in | some measure relinquished, as it is. The tidings of the authorship of any article of consequence, in a Review or Magazine, often now pass with the speed of lightning, through the literary world, till it is as well known in the book-shop of the country town, or the post-office of the country village, as in Albemarle or George Street. But, in the first place, the anonymous forms a very profitable exercise for the acuteness of our young critics, who become, through it, masters in the science of internal evidence, and learn to detect the fine Roman hand of this and the other writer, even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots of his i's. Besides, secondly, the anonymous forms for the author an ideal character, fixes him in an ideal position as it were, projects him out of himself; and hence many writers have surpassed themselves, both in power and popularity, while writing under its shelter. So with Swift, in his "Tale of a Tub ;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter Scott; Addison, too, was never so good as when he put on the short face of the Spectator. Wilson is never so good, as when he assumes the glorious alias of Christopher North. And, thirdly, the anonymous, when preserved, piques the curiosity of the reader, mystifies him into interest; and, on the other hand, sometimes allows a bold and honest writer, to shoot folly, expose error, strip false pretension, and denounce wrong, with greater safety and effect. A time may come, when the anonymous will require to be In pursuing, at the commencement of this paper, a parallel between Byron and Bulwer, we omitted to note a stage, the last in the former's literary progress. Toward the close of his career, his wild shrieking earnestness, subsided into Epicurean derision. He became dissolved into one contemptuous and unhappy sneer. Beginning with the satiric bitterness of "English Bards," he ended with the fiendish gaiety of "Don Juan." He laughed at first that he "might not weep ;" but ultimately this miserable mirth drowned his enthusiasm, his heart, and put out the few flickering embers of his natural piety. The deep tragedy dissolved in a poor pickle herring," yet mournful farce. We trust that our novelist will not complete his resemblance to the poet, by sinking into a satirist. 'Tis indeed a pitiful sight that, of one who has passed the meridian of life and reputation, grinning back in helpless mockery, and toothless laughter, upon the brilliant way which he has traversed, but to which he can return no more. We anticipate for Bulwer a better destiny. He who has mated with the mighty spirit, which had almost reared again the fallen Titanic form of republican Rome; whose genius has travelled up the Rhine, like a breeze of music, "stealing and giving odour;" who in "Paul Clifford," has searched some dark bosoms," and not in vain, for pathos and for poetry; who in "England and the English," has cast a rapid but vigorous glance upon the tendencies of our wondrous age; who, in his verse, has so admirably pictured the stages of romance in Milton's story; who has gone down a "diver lean and strong," after Schiller, into the "innermost main," lifting with a fearless hand, the "veil that is woven with Night and with Terror;" and in "Zanoni," has essayed to relume the mystic fires of the Rosicrucians, and to reveal the dread secrets of the spiritual world; must worthily close a career so illustrious. May the clouds and mists of detraction, against which he strove so long, not fail, (to use the words of Hall,) "to form, at evening, a magnificent theatre for his reception, and to surround with augmented glories, the luminary which they cannot hide!" 66 A STUDENT'S FANCY. OH! could I write as I can think, No worldly song should wake my lyre, GLANCE AT THE WORKS OF MACKINTOSH.* BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. cloudiness, I am not at all sure but he might have answered as well as the Grecian Heracleitus, as Spinosa the Jew, or even as Schelling the Teutonic Professor. His plantations were quite as thriving as theirs; but the three foreigners fell upon happier times, or at least (as regards the last of them,) upon a soil more kindly, and a climate more hopeful for metaphysical growths. Not only has the editor done that which he ought not to have done, but too often he has left undone that which he ought to have done. The political tracts of the third volume require abundant explanations to the readers of this generation; and yet the notes are rare as well as slight. THIS collection comprehends, with one exception, (viz., the History of England, which is published separately,) all that is of permanent value in the writings of Sir James Mackintosh. The editor is the writer's son; and he, confident in powers for higher things, has not very carefully executed the minor duties of his undertaking. He has contributed valuable notes; but he has overlooked some important errors of the press, and he has made separate errors of his own. At page 387, vol. ii., Charles VII. is described as King of Sweden, meaning clearly King of Denmark. At page 557, of the same volume, Sir James, having referred to "a writer now alive in England," as one who had "published doctrines not dissimilar to There is no need, at this time of day, to take those which Madame de Staël ascribes to Schel- the altitude, intellectually, of Sir James Mackinling," the editor suggests that probably the person tosh. His position in public life was that of in his eye was Mr. William Taylor of Norwich. Burke ; he stood as a mediator between the world This is the most unaccountable of blunders. Mr. of philosophy and the world of moving politics. Taylor of Norwich was among the earliest English The interest in the two men was the same in kind, students of German, and so far his name connects but differently balanced. As a statesman, Burke itself naturally with a notice of the De l'Allemagne. had prodigiously the advantage; not only through But, on the other hand, he never trespassed into the unrivalled elasticity of his intellect, which in the fields of metaphysics. He did not present any that respect was an intellect absolutely sui generis, "allurements" in a "singular character," nor in but because his philosophy was of a nature to ex"an unintelligible style;" neither was he the press and incarnate itself in political speculation. author of any "paradoxes." The editor is pro- On the other hand, Sir James was far better bably thinking of Taylor the Platonist, who was qualified, by nature as well as by training, for the far more distinguished for absurdity, and is now culture of pure abstract metaphysics. It is someequally illustrious for obscurity. But that either times made a matter of regret that Burke should of these Taylors, or both, or even nine of them, have missed the Professor's chair which he sought. acting with the unanimity of one man, ever could This is injudicious: as an academic lecturer on have founded "a sect," is so entirely preposter-philosophy, or a speculator in ontological novelties, ous, that the accomplished editor must pardon my stopping for half a minute to laugh. The writer, whom Sir James indicated, was probably "Walking Stewart;" a most interesting man whom personally I knew; eloquent in conversation; contemplative, if that is possible, in excess; crazy beyond all reach of hellebore; three Anticyra would not have cured him; yet sublime and divinely benignant in his visionariness; the man who, as a pedestrian traveller, had seen more of the earth's surface, and communicated more extensively with the children of the earth, than any man before or since; the writer also who published more books (all intelligible by fits and starts,) than any Englishman, except perhaps Richard Baxter, who is said to have published three hundred and sixty-five, plus one, the extra one being probably meant for leap-year. Walking Stewart answers entirely to the description of Sir James's unknown philosopher; his character was most "singular" his style tending always to the "unintelligible;" his privacy, in the midst of eternal publication, most absolute; his disposition to martyrdom, had any body attempted it, ready and cheerful; and as the "founder of a sect," considering his intense Burke would have failed. Not so Mackintosh. As to him, the regret would be reasonable: by detaching him from the cares of public business, a chair of philosophy would have widened the sphere of those higher speculations which, under his management, could not have been less than permanently profitable to the world. To review so extensive a collection is clearly impossible within any short compass. I content myself with a flying glance at those papers which are likely to prove the most interesting. MACKINTOSH ON STKUENSEE. The case of Count Struensee is to this hour wrapped in some degree of darkness: but, even under those circumstances of darkness, it is full of instruction. The doubts respect Struensee himself, and the unhappy young queen, Matilda ; were they criminal in the way alleged by their profligate enemies? So far there is a cloud of mystery resting on the case: but, as to those enemies, as to the baseness of their motives, and the lawlessness of their acts, there is no doubt at all, and no shadow of mystery. This being so, *The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by Robert James Mackintosh, Esq. In Three Volumes, 8vo. London: Longman & Co. it being absolutely certain that the accusers were the vilest of intriguers, and unworthy of belief, for a moment, when at any point they passed the boundary line of judicial proof, certified to Christendom by public oaths of neutral parties,-it follows, that the accused are every where entitled to the benefit of any doubt, any jealousy, any umbrage, suspicion, or possibility, against the charge which has arisen, shall arise, or ought to arise, in the brain of the most hair-splitting special pleader. They, that ruined better people than themselves by the wickedest of special pleading, cannot have too much of it: let them perish, as regards history and reputation, by the arts which they practised. King Christian, the Seventh of Denmark, came over to London early in the reign of George the Third: "It was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid." * He came by contract, to fall in love with our Princess Matilda. But he had the misfortune to be "imbecile," which is a word of vague meaning; in fact, he was partially an idiot, and, at times, a refractory madman. It has been remarked, in connexion with Mr. Galt's excellent novels, that at one time, (of course not the present time,) too large a proportion of the Scottish lairds were secretly, and in ways best known to their households, daft; and in such a degree, that, if not born gentlemen, they would certainly, by course of law, have been cognosced. Perhaps the same tendency, and developed in part by the same defects of training, at that time affected the royal houses of Europe. Christian VII. if, instead of being a king, he had been a Scottish labourer, would certainly have been "cognosced." Amongst other eccentricities, that recoiled eventually upon others, he insisted on his friend's thumping him, kicking him, knocking him down, and scratching him severely and, if his friend declined to do so, then he accused him of high treason. Really you had difficult cards to play with this daft laird of Copenhagen. If you positively refused to thump him, then you were a rebel: an absolute monarch had insisted on your doing a thing, and you had mutinously disobeyed. If you thumped him, and soundly, (which was the course taken by his friend Brandt,) then you were a traitor; you had assaulted the Lord's anointed, and were liable to question from the lex majestatis. To London did this madman come; perhaps on the principle laid down by the grave-digger in Hamlet-that in England all men are mad; so that madness is not much remarked. The king saw London; and London saw him. But a black day it was for some people, when he first set his face towards St. James's. The poor young princess Matilda, sister to George III. and then only seventeen years old, became his unhappy wife; and Struensee, a young physician, whom he had picked up at Altona, about the same time received the fatal distinction of becoming his favourite, and his minister. The frail personal tenure of such a situation, dependent on the caprices of a man, imbecile, equally as regarded intellect and as regarded energy of will, suggested to a cabal of court rivals the obvious means for overthrowing and supplanting the favourite. To possess themselves suddenly of the king's person, was to possess themselves of the state authority. Five minutes sufficed to use this authority for the arrest of Struensee,-after which, as a matter of course, followed his close confinement, with circumstances of cruelty, now banished every where, even from the treatment of felons; to that succeeded his pretended trial, his pretended penitence, his pretended confession, and, finally, his execution. Sir James Mackintosh notices the external grounds of suspicion applying to the publications against Struensee, and particularly the doubtful position in respect to the conspirators of Dr. Munter, the spiritual assistant of the prisoner. This man was employed by the government: was he not used as a decoy, and a calumniating traitor? That point is still dark. He certainly published what he had no right to publish. Sir James is disposed, on the other hand, to find internal marks of sincerity in the doctor's account of his conversations with Struensee. But were not these in their very nature confidential? And Sir James himself remarks, that nobody knows what became latterly of Munter himself; so that the vouchers for his veracity, which might have been found in subsequent respectability of life, are entirely wanting. General Falkenskiold's Memoirs, make us acquainted with the artifices used to obtain from the unhappy young queen a confession of adulterous intercourse with Struensee. And, if these artifices had been even unknown to us, it must strike every body, that such a confession being so gratuitously mischievous to the queen, is not likely to have been made by her, in any case, where she was free from coercion, or free from gross delusion. Equally on the hypothesis of her guilt or her innocence, the poor lady could have had no rational motive for inculpating herself, except such as would imply stratagems and frauds in the conspirators. The case seems to tell its own story. It was thought necessary to include Matilda in the ruin of Struensee, because else there was no certainty of his ruin; and upon that depended not only the prosperity of the intrigue, but the safety of the intriguers. The destruction recoiled upon themselves, if the young queen regained the king's ear. But this could be prevented certainly by nothing short of her removal for ever from the court. And that could be accomplished only by a successful charge of adultery. Else, besides other consequences, the cabal feared the summary interposition of England. But of adultery, as they had no proof, or vestige of a proof, it became necessary to invent one, by obtaining a confession from the queen herself. And this was obtained by practising on her credulity, and her womanly feelings of compassion for the unfortunate. She was told by the knaves about her, that an acknowledg * "Cognosced.”—A term well known to Scottish law, and therefore to Roman law. It means judicially reviewed and reported, no matter in reference to what. But, in common conversation, it has come elliptically to meanan-duly returned as an idiot. Cognosco, it must be remembered, is the appropriate word, in classical Latin, for judicial review and investigation. ment of guilt would save the life of the perishing | delicate, and too doubtful. Even now, after some minister. There is something in this atrocious falsehood as to Struensee, a part of the story which is not denied by any party, reminding one of the famous anecdote about Colonel Kirke, in connexion with Monmouth's rebellion: a fable no doubt in his case, but realized by the Danish conspirators. They won their poor victim to what she abhorred, by a promise that could have offered no temptation except to a generous nature; and, having thus gained their villainous object, they did not even counterfeit an effort to fulfil the promise. A confession obtained under circumstances like these, would weigh little with the just and the considerate.* But where is the proof that the queen did make such a confession? No body of statecommissioners ever received any thing of the kind from her own hands: nothing remains to attest it but the two first letters of her name, having written which, she is said to have fainted away but who wrote the words above her fraction of a signature, without which the signature is unmeaning, and when they were written, whether before or after that fractional signature, nothing survives to show. Besides, if Munter's account of penitential confessions in prison (many of which argue rather the abject depression from a breadand-water diet, and from savage ill-treatment, than any sincere or natural compunction) are to be received against Struensee, much more ought we to receive the dying declarations of the young queen; for these were open to no suspicions of fraud. Three years after her pretended confession, she declared to her spiritual attendant, M. Roques, that, although conscious of imprudences, she never had been criminal. This was her solemn declaration, in the midst of voluntary penitential expressions, and at a moment when she knew herself to be dying. Strange indeed, considering her youth, and her unhappy position amongst enemies, knaves, and a lunatic husband, if she had not fallen into some imprudences. Meantime, Sir James Mackintosh is almost certainly wrong in his view of the course adopted by the English government. He imagines that, from mere excess of indisposition to all warlike movements at that time, this government shrank from effectual interference. But evidently the case was one for diplomatic management. And in that way it was effectually conducted to the best possible solution, by the British ambassador, Sir Robert Murray, who frightened the guilty intriguers out of their wits. Once satisfied that nothing would be attempted against the life of the queen, England had no motive for farther interference, nor any grounds to go upon. She could not have said, "1 declare war against you, because you have called a daughter of England by the foul name of adulteress." The case was too light has been obtained, the grounds for a legal judgment are insufficient on either side: then, they were much more so. The English government must also have been entirely controlled, in such a case, by the private wishes of the royal family; and it was a natural feeling for them, when no prospect existed of a fair judicial inquiry, amongst those, who, in fighting against the queen, would be fighting for their own lives, to retire from a feud that could only terminate in fixing the attention of Europe upon the miserable charges and scandals; charges that arose in self-interest, and scandals that were propagated by malice. The moral of the story seems to lie in its exposure of the ruins, and the absolute chaos worked by a pure despotism. All hangs by the thread of the sovereign's personal character. Here is a stranger to the land suddenly raised from the dust into a station of absolute control over the destinies of the people. His rise, so sudden and unmerited, calls forth rival adventurers: and an ancient kingdom becomes a prize for a handful of desperate fortunehunters. Is there no great interest in the country that might rally itself, and show front against this insufferable insult? There is none. Had the case arisen in the old despotisms of France or of Spain, it could have been redressed: for each of them possessed ancient political institutions, that would perhaps have revived themselves under such a provocation. But in Denmark there were no similar resources. The body of the people, having no political functions, through any mode of representation, were utterly without interest in public affairs: they had no will to move. The aristocracy had no power, unless in concert with the king. And the king was a lunatic. All centred therefore in half-a-dozen ruffians and their creatures; and the decencies of public justice, the interests of the innocent, with the honours of an ancient throne, went to wreck in their private brawls. MACKINTOSH'S DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. This is the most valuable of all the twenty-eight tracts here collected. At the outset, however, (p. 10,) it shocks the sense of just logic not a little to find Sir James laying down the distinction between the Moral and the Physical Sciences, as though "the purpose of the Physical were to answer the question- What is? the purpose of the Moral to answer the question - What ought to be?" Yet at p. 238, Sir James himself makes it the praiset of a modern writer, that he professes to have treated the moral affections "rather physiologically than ethically; as parts of our mental constitution, not as involving the fulfilment or violation of duties." Now, this is exactly the same thing as saying that he has translated *Sir J. M. though manifestly inclined to adopt this account of the pretended confession, a little weakens the case by saying, "If General Falkenskiold was rightly informed," as though the invalidation of the confession were conditional upon the accuracy of the General. But in fact, if his account were withdrawn, the conspirators are in a still worse position : "for the unfinished signature, confessedly completed surreptitiously by some alien hand, points strongly towards a physical compulsion exercised upon the queen, such as had given way, and naturally would give way, under a violent struggle, after one or two letters had been extorted by forcibly guiding her hand. + "The praise ;" and even the special or separate praise of that writer; which is far indeed from being true, |