indeed, to have induced him to use his utmost efforts for the preservation of his benefactor; but his fellow slaves were bound by no such obligations, and what right had he to prevent them from accomplishing that just vengeance in which he had before been so willing to join? We are ready to allow that the case was a difficult one, and that possibly, however Cæsar had been made to act, we should not have felt perfectly satisfied with his conduct; but why should these difficult cases be brought forward in works of fiction? When they occur in real life, an honest mind will commonly be enabled, by its own intuitive, or habitual feelings of right, quickly to decide even amid a choice of evils; but by general rules these nice points never can be decided. To bring them forward unnecessarily is, therefore, to incur, without any adequate advantage, the risk of confounding, and thus blunting the moral sense. A note

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informs us that "whatever merit the heads of chapters, in the following stories, may have, it must be attributed to the editor," that is to Mr. Edgeworth. We really feel glad to have Miss Edgeworth exculpated from the imputation of having prefixed to her chapters such trite obvious maxims as "The passion ate and capricious are often unjust." Hasty conclusions are but seldom just." "Surmise is often partly true and partly false," and "The end of vice is shame and misery." Several errors have crept into these volumes, "caused by the author's absence from the press.” We must present our readers with an extract from the beautiful tale of " Rosanna,' merely to whet their curiosity. The remark with which it begins is equally new and judicious, and the Irish cabin is drawn from nature.

"There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence: the first is a virtue, the second a vice. Examples of both may be found in abundance in Ireland. There you may sometimes see a man, in sound health, submitting day after day, to evils which a few hours would remedy; and you are provoked to hear him say:

It will do well enough for me. Didn't it do for my father before me? I can make a shift with things for my time: any how,

I'm content.'

"This kind of content is indeed the bane of industry. But instances of a different sort may be found, in various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them we may behold men struggling with adversity, with all the

strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fortitude, which must excite at once our pity and admiration.

"In a pleasant village in the province of Leinster, there lives a family of the name of Gray: whether or no they are any way related to old Robin Gray, history does not determine; but it is very possible that they are, because they came, it is said, originally from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however, in the obscurity which in volves the early history of the most ancient and illustrious families, we proceed to less is well known, that is by all his neighbours, disputable and perhaps more useful facts. It that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging prospects: he was the youngest of a large family, and the portion of his father's property that fell to his share, was but just sufficient to maintain his wife and three chil dren. At his father's death, he was obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant water, and before the window of one pane, a dunghill, that reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out the light, and filled the house with the most noisome smell. The ground sloped toward the house door, so that in rainy weather, when the pond was times the floor was so damp, and soft, that full, the kitchen was overflowed, and at all the print of the nails of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set down his foot: to be sure these nail marks could scarcely be seen, except just near the door, or where the light of the fire immediately shone; because, elsewhere, the smoke was so thick that the pig might have been within a foot of you without your seeing him. The former inhabitants of this mansion had, it seems, been almost without a roof; the couples and pur content without a chimney, and, indeed, loins of the roof, having once given way, had never been repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch, so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary.

"The prospect without doors was scarcely more encouraging to our hero than the scene within the farm consisted of about forty acres, and the fences of the grazing land were so bad that the neighbours' caule took por session of it frequently by day, and always by night. The tillage-ground had been so illmanaged by his predecessor, that the land was what is called quite out of heart.

"If farmer Gray had also been out of heart, he and his family might, at this hout, have been beggars. His situation was thought desperate by many of his neighbours, and, a few days after his father's decease, many came to condole with him. Amongst the rest, was easy Simon, or as some called him, soft Simon, on account of his unresisting disposition, and contented, or, as we should rather name it, reckless temper He was a sort of a half or a half quarter gentleman,

so that every shadow drives them into these holes, and they run their silly heads into the nooses, and are caught.

"EMILY. And do they breed here in England?

GEORGE. Yes, I believe so; the book I have, says, they are seen at all times of the year in some countries, while in others they are not known at all; but the great numbers, for they are caught by dozens and dozens, to eat, being reckoned very good, do not appear till some time in August; and now they are almost out of season, and you see the traps are not set. Their nests are made under stones or pieces of rock, among rough ground, but these nests are not often found; and therefore some people have supposed, as the greatest number of them are seen about the Sussex downs, which you know are, except some part of Kent, the nearest of any part of England to the coast of France, that they come from thence to breed, and go back again in winter, because, like many other birds, they would fare but badly here, for there are no insects at that time to feed them, and they live on flies, gnats, and worms. But my mother, I know, has finished her verses.

"Mrs. TALBOT. I have-but it is unnecessary, as George has so well related the history of the wheat-ear or cul-blanc, or at least as much as is known of it, to tell you, that this place where we sit, and which is one of those they much frequent, is one of those circular trenches, in the inidst of which a pile of stone was raised, and on them a fire was made, to give notice of the approach of an enemy. Since the aft of war has been otherwise conducted, the same artifice is often used by smugglers, whose comrades on shore make these signals to warn them of danger, in landing their contraband cargoes. This, you may perhaps recollect, George, I once explained to you, when you were reading a poem by Mr. Crowe, called Lewsdon Hill, celebrating an high hill in Dorsetshire, where, among other circumstances, he mentions a place called Burton.

Thee, Burton, and thy lofty cliff, where oft The nightly blaze is kindled; farther scen Than erst was that love tended cresset hung Beside the Hellespont. Yet not like that, Inviting to the hospitable arms

Of beauty and youth, but lighted up, the sign

Of danger, and of ambush'd foe to warn The stealth approaching vessel, homeward

bound

From Havre, or the Norman isles.

"EMILY. But that is not verse. "GEORGE. Yes, it is, it is blank verse: the same as Milton's Paradise Lost, you know, and the Task, and a great many other poems we have read parts of.

"EMILY. But what I mean is, that it is not in measure, in rhyme.

"Mrs. TALBOT. In measure, certainly, but not in rhyme, and that is what distin. guishes it from heroic verse of ten syllables,

where the lines rhyme to each other, or rhyme alternately-as in that sort of verse in which elegies are usually written. But we will discuss this another time.-Here are my rhymes, which if George can make them out, written with a pencil, he will read to us.

"The Wheat-ear.

From that deep shelter'd solitude,
Where in some quarry wild and rude,
Your feather'd mother reared her brood,

Why, pilgrim, did you brave

The upland winds so bleak and keen,
To seek these hills?-whose slopes between
Wide stretch'd in grey expanse is seen

The ocean's toiling wave?

Did instinct bid you linger here,
That broad and restless ocean near,
And wait, till with the waning year

Those northern gales arise,
Which, from the tall cliff's rugged side
Shall give your soft light plumes to glide
Across the channel's refluent tide,

To seek more favouring skies? Alas! and has not instinct said That luxury's toils for you are laid, And that by groundless fears betray'd

You ne'er perhaps niay know Those regions, where the embowering vine Loves round the luscious fig to twine, And mild the suns of winter shine,

And flowers perennial blow?

To take you, shepherd boys prepare
The hollow turf, the wiry share,
Of those weak terrors well aware,

That bid you vainly dread
The shadows floating o'er the downs,
Or murmuring gale, that round the stones
Of some old beacon, as it moans,

Scarce moves the thistle's head
And if a cloud obscure the sun
With faint and fluttering heart you run,
And to the pitfall you should shun

Resort in trembling haste;
While on that dewy cloud so high,
The lark, sweet minstrel of the sky,
Sings in the morning's beamy eye,

And bathes his spotted breat

Ah! simple bird, resembling you
Are those, that with distorted view

Thro' life some selfish end pursue,

With low inglorious aim;
They sink in blank oblivious night,

While minds superior dare the light,
And high on honor's glorious height

Aspire to endless fame!"

are sorry to observe in the forelines convolvulas, which cannot be ted as the plural of convolvulus. A her inaccuracies dispersed through ork, we think it our duty to point cot in the spirit of cavilling, but a feeling of the great importance rectness in writings designed to it the young and the ignorant. ist not vex about it," is a gross ism, as is lay for lie. "Papaver n opiate dew conceal'st beneath rlet vest:" it is not from the scar1. REV. VOL. III.

let but the white poppy that opium is extracted. In some verses on the

hedge-hog tangere is accented tangere. A boy is made to remark the mistake, and his mother acknowledges his criticism to be well founded, but adds, that "such licences are now very frequently this." It certainly is not the fact that taken in short and trifling pieces like such licences are taken by those who know them to be licences; and though Mrs. Smith's ignorance of the quantity of a Latin word, at the time of writing the line in question, might well be pardoned, so dangerous a defence of ignor ance or carelessness, addressed to young persons, is not to be forgiven. We have likewise congener for congener. Some instances occur of false grammar, as

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many an unhappy desolate young per son date." A more serious mistake is tots as the same people, and as negroes. that of considering Caffres and HottenThe clematis is called clemati; a hybernacle, hybernacle; genera is in one place used as the singular; and the peacock is affectedly and improperly called the paon. Many sentiments are introduced of so very refined and melancholy a nature, that it is rather to be hoped than feared that they will prove quite incom prehensible to Mrs. Smith's juvenile readers. A moral is frequently tacked to the poems, much in the manner of those annexed to the fables of our old friend remember any thing but that they have Esop; of which few people, we imagine, always passed them over. Many excellent remarks, and moral sentiments, are work appears dictated by a genuine love however introduced; and the whole for the beauties of nature, which can scarcely fail of being communicated to the impressible and enquiring mind of youth. When writers, possessed of Mrs. Smith's lively genius, condescend to address themselves to young persons, their labours, of which the effect is certain, and the utility incalculable, ought at least to receive the tribute of generous applause.-If, therefore, we have freely pointed out the faults of the volume before us, we hope that the author will attribute this uncourtly frankness solely to the importance that we a tach to the productions of her pen, and cur persua sion that the demand for a second edition will soon enable her to correct these small imperfections. We shall gratify our rea ders by extracting one little piece moie. II h