by our countrymen, although they may not be stimulated by a similar deficiency of food of another description.

The most extensive fishery, and one which scarcely yields in importance to that on the banks of Newfoundland, is carried on among that cluster of islands on the Norwegian coast, now distinguished by the name of Lofodden, and a Swedish philosopher has written a learned treatise to prove that we must here look for the Ultima Thule of the ancients, and that the Phenicians, in all probability, repaired thither to traffic in fish. However this may be, its present importance may be easily appreciated from the following particulars related by Von Buch. Nearly 4000 boats with five men in each, and 300 sloops with seven or eight men, are employed in this business. The number of large torsk and cod caught annually in these islands may be reckoned at sixteen million, the value of which, at a fair computation, cannot be less than 600,000 dollars.

Though, at so early a period as the ninth century, this fishery was conducted by the governor of Helgeland on the behalf of Harold Harfager, the king of Norway; on the formation of the Hanseatic league a German factory settled in Bergen, and by degrees acquired the whole traffic in this valuable commodity. The fishermen of Nordland disposed of all their produce to vessels from Bergen, and it was not until the superior advantage which they derived from this commerce had rendered the German merchants intractable and overbearing, that their privileges were curtailed by authority, and their monopoly abolished. To revenge themselves for their lost superiority, the Hans Towns, in 1539, appeared before Bergen with a numerous fleet, and plundered the town in so cruel a manner that a blow was given to the commercial spirit of the inhabitants which they appear never to have recovered. Since that time the northern fishermen have been in the habit of repairing to Bergen with their cargoes. In 1807 no less than 126 yachts arrived there; but this practice has been accompanied with so many disadvantages, that the merchants of Drontheim are using every endeavour to transfer to Hundholm, a town more conveniently situated, the whole of the trade which has hitherto been confined to Bergen.

The Norwegians have been at all times celebrated for a more quarrelsome disposition than their neighbours. Pontoppidan relates that the Italian practice of privately stabbing prevailed at one time to such a degree amongst them, that a wife was always supposed to carry her husband's shroud about her, when they attended together a wedding-feast, or other merry-making. Since that time the custom of carrying knives has been forbidden, which, according to the Archbishop, has occasioned the more frequent use

of what we should consider nearly as pernicious an instrument, the lawyer's pen.

These are but slight blemishes however in the character of a very estimable people. Brave, honest, and intelligent, the Norwegians resemble the English in manners, in feeling, and in language, more than any people upon earth. It is this circumstance which has rendered the blockade of Norway a subject of so much interest at this moment, and it has been apparently taken up by many, more as a question of feeling than of policy or justice.

Much blood has been shed in the contentions between Sweden and Norway, and a strong antipathy between the two countries has been the natural result; but we are rather disposed to believe that the condition of the Norwegians will be materially improved by their recent annexation to the latter power: since we understand (as it is asserted indeed in one of the volumes before us) that of late years the Danes have not been more popular than the Swedes in Norway. It will now be the interest, as well as the duty of Sweden, to conciliate the affections of the valuable people whom she has acquired, and a warlike race will naturally look with pride to the military talents of the prince who appears destined to rule over them.

In the Thirty Years war, the imperialists were accustomed to call Gustavus Adolphus in derision, a king of snow, with the insinuation that his strength would melt away as he moved towards the south. When the Crown Prince first marched upon Leipsic, he was exposed to similar taunts from writers in the pay of Buonaparte. No one, however, will be hardy enough to deny that Europe is much indebted to him for the course which he pursued in the Russian campaign, as well as at the opening of the last and though the tide of public opinion in this country certainly runs strongly against him, his movement upon Denmark has been defended by some of the great military characters of the present day, and at all events, as the allies have been the first to urge the fulfilment of the Swedish treaty, we cannot suppose that they are dissatisfied with his conduct.

ART. IX.-The Wanderer; or Female Difficulties. By the Author of Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla. In 5 vols. 8vo. London; Longman. 1814.

NONE

ONE of our female novelists (not even Miss Edgeworth) ever attained so early and so high a reputation as Miss Burney, or as we must now call her, Madame D'Arblay. Her Eveli

na, published at the age of seventeen, was a most extraordinary instance of early talent, and excited an expectation of excellence which her Cecilia almost fulfilled, and which her Camilla did not. altogether disappoint; but we regret to say, that the Wanderer, which might be expected to finish and crown her literary labours, is not only inferior to its sister-works, but cannot, in our judgment, claim any very decided superiority over the thousandand-one-volumes with which the Minerva Press inundates the shelves of circulating libraries, and increases, instead of diverting the ennui of the loungers at watering places.

If we had not been assured in the title-page that this work had been produced by the same pen as Cecilia, we should have pronounced Madame D'Arblay to be a feeble imitator of the style and manner of Miss Burney-we should have admitted the flat fidelity of her copy, but we should have lamented the total want of vigour, vivacity, and originality; and, conceding to the fair author (as we should have been inclined to do) some discrimination of character, and some power of writing, we should have strenuously advised her to avoid, in future, the dull mediocrity of a copyist, and to try the flight of her own genius in some work, that should not recall to us in every page the mortifying recollection of excellence which, though she had the good sense to admire it, she never would have the power to rival.

Such being the opinion which we should have felt ourselves obliged to pronounce on an imitator, it follows that we have a still more severe judgment to pass on Madame D'Arblay herself. We are afraid that she is self-convicted of being what the painters technically call a mannerist; that is, she has given over painting from the life, and has employed herself in copying from her own copies, till, instead of a power of natural delineation, she has acquired a certain trick and habitual style of portraiture:-but the Wanderer is not only the work of a mannerist, but of a mannerist who is épuisée, whose last manner is the worst, and who convinces us that, during the thirty years which have elapsed since the publication of Cecilia, she has been gradually descending from the elevation which the vigour of her youth had attained.

Shall we confess that we were not wholly unprepared to expect this lame and impotent conclusion'? In Madame D'Arblay's best works an accurate eye discovered the seeds of the defect which is now so obvious.

-facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen.'

The characters and incidents of Evelina, Cecilia, and (though somewhat more diversified) of Camilla,have too much resemblance. In each,the plot is a tissue of teasing distresses all of the same class,

and in each, are repeated, almost to weariness, portraits of the same forms of fashionable frivolity and of vulgar middle life. To bring this more forcibly to our reader's observation we need do no more than recall to their recollection, the Willoughbys, and the Branghtons, of Evelina; the Meadowes and Hobsons of Cecilia; the Clarendels and Dubsters of Camilla; and, indeed, almost every personage in each of these dramas, who will invariably be found, mutato nomine,' in the other two.

We have lately seen a criticism on one of Madame D'Arblay's novels by a very competent judge, of which we shall select a few passages.

The heroine is a young lady amiable and unexperienced, who is continually getting into difficulties from not knowing or not observing the established etiquettes of society, and from being unluckily connected with a number of vulgar characters, by whom she is involved in adventures both ludicrous and mortifying. The hero is a generous and pleasing lover; the other characters of the piece are a lady-wit and oddity; a gay insolent baronet, a group of vulgar cits, and a number of young bucks, whose coldness, carelessness, rudeness, and impertinent gallantry, serve as a foil to the delicate attentions of the hero."

Now we beg leave to ask, whether any reader, who may not have already seen the original criticism, can distinguish to which of Madame D'Arblay's novels it applies? To us it appears a kind of generic description, and is equally just of each of the three; and when we add that this is the character of Evelina, her first work, which thus serves equally well for either of the others, we think we have adduced a very strong proof of our assertion that, even in her best days, Madame D'Arblay's style had a predisposition to self-imitation and tautology. As this peculiar manner, however, was at least her own-as the figures, though repeated, were well drawn,-as the details, though minute, were vividly expres sed, and as there existed, in each of these works, great and distinct beauties of character and composition, the subordinate defects of repetition and self-imitation were excused in Cecilia and tolerated in Camilla, amid the general splendour of these delightful pieces.

But in the Wanderer there is no splendour, no source of delight to dazzle criticism and beguile attention from a defect which has increased in size and deformity exactly in the same degree that the beauties have vanished. The Wanderer has the identical features of Evelina-but of Evelina grown old; the vivacity, the bloom, the elegance, the purple light of love' are va

Mrs. Inchbald's British Novelists. This lady's Nature and Art,' and 'The Simple Story,' are very high in the list of our best modern novels.

nished; the eyes are there, but they are dim; the cheek, but it is furrowed; the lips, but they are withered. And when to this description we add that Madame D'Arblay endeavours to make up for the want of originality in her characters by the most absurd mysteries, the most extravagant incidents, and the most violent events, we have completed the portrait of an old coquette who endeavours, by the wild tawdriness and laborious gaiety of her attire, to compensate for the loss of the natural charms of freshness, novelty, and youth.

The tame similarity in copying only one form of nature, is a fault of about the same level with the dull extravagance that neg lects nature altogether. Every one recollects the admirable humour and good taste with which Goldsmith, in his Vicar of Wakefield, exposes both these errors, at first sight so different and yet in truth so congenial. In the family picture of the Flamboroughs, the whole family, to the number of seven, were painted each with a china-orange in the hand; while the excellent artist, guided by an equal degree of taste, exhibited, in that of the Primroses, the Vicar in his canonicals by the side of Mrs. Primrose as Venus, Miss Olivia in a pea-green riding habit, and Squire Thornhill at her feet in armour as Alexander the Great.

Madame D'Arblay has, in her Wanderer, united the double merit of Goldsmith's painter: she has all the variety of the seven figures with seven China-oranges, and all the probability of the union of the Vicar's surplice with the armour of Alexander.

The following is a sketch of this woeful and wonderful tale, in which we are mistaken if even the best humoured of its gentle rerders can find much interest.

During the reign of Robespierre, a company of English are making their escape in an open boat from the French coast, when a female voice in great distress requests to be taken in. This request is complied with, and the Wanderer, in no very comfortable plight, is introduced into the society with which she is to travel to the end of the novel.

a

This society is composed of persons not very artfully selected for the purpose of maintaining probability in the story. Two cautious, selfish, ill-tempered, ill-mannered old ladies, with the usual train of giddy and silly nieces, impertinent and vulgar sons and nephews, are the persons into whose society and families wretched outcast, without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and absolutely without a name, picked up on the beach of a foreign sea-port, is to be received as an inmate in order to carry on the tale. A more violent improbability was surely never more dearly purchased; but what follows is worse- these worthy ladies and the anonymous Wanderer soon hate one another with all their hearts, and the intrusive company of the stranger