becomes, for several unlikely and absurd reasons, (though there were natural causes, one should have thought, in abundance,) very irksome and inconvenient. Why then is she not dismissed? Why do they still continue to endure an intrusion so violent? Our readers will hardly believe us when we assure them that this nuisance, this cause of perpetual disagreement and perplexity, continues, for we know not how long, an inmate of Mrs. Maple's house, the chief guest at her dining table, the main attraction of her drawing-room, because the old lady, a woman of rank, fortune, and fashion, thinks the occasional needle-work of this accomplished and admired person, in hemming a few napkins, made it worth her while to endure the most serious and mortifying perplexities.

In this fashionable house, where two nieces and a crowd of friends of high rank would, as one might expect, exclude any female of doubtful or unexplained character-without any tie of relationship, without any feeling of charity, without any personal. liking, nay with a personal dislike and jealousy-this young person, who outshines all the women, and enamours all the men, is permitted to reside without a name. She receives letters addressed to L. S. at the post-office, and when somebody reads the direction to L. S.' some other body cries out, to Ellis, dear me ! and is your name Ellis ? And with this name, thus bestowed, and no other, she travels through four of the five volumes of this interminable work, and only becomes Juliet after the curtain has risen for the fifth act.

The scene being laid in Brighton and its environs, we have all our old acquaintances from Clifton and Tunbridge Wells, Mr. Lovell, Miss Dennel, Mrs. Arlberry, Sir Clement Willoughby, Mr. Hobson, &c. collected for us under the names of Mr. Ireton, Miss Selina Joddrell, Miss Arbe, Sir Lyel Sycamore, and Mr. Tedman.

At last the Wanderer,-whom nothing can induce-neither love nor money, we speak literally, to tell her name, or who, or what, or whence she is,-leaves Mrs. Maple's house and turns companion to the other old lady, then a sempstress, then a teacher of music, then a sempstress again; and during all these metamorphoses all the dramatis persone of the book are kept in distorted attitudes, improbable situations and monstrous inconvenience, covering the drawing-rooms and staircases, like 'the sprawling saints of Verrio and Laguerre,' till it pleases Madame D'Arblay, at the end of the fifth volume, to find out the Wanderer to be a Lord's daughter, which seasonable discovery relieves the whole assembly from the troublesome intricacies in which they had been so long, without any visible cause, involved and pers plexed, like the persons of the fairy tale, who were fettered by

invisible chains, and placed in ridiculous and unnatural attitudes, till the sleeping beauty should be awakened to life and a husband. But if the other persons are fixtures, the Wanderer herself becomes, after a little practice, a most moveable person; she flies to London, about London, and from London--to Salisbury, through Hampshire, loses herself among smugglers and poachers in the New Forest-not a soul can guess why: at last, however, it appears that in this good realm of England, this young woman at first concealed her name, and her quality, and fled like a criminal from place to place, because she was afraid of being taken and delivered up to one of Robespierre's emissaries, who pretended to be married to her. Nay, what is best of all, this emissary of Robespierre arrives in England during the war, pursues his alleged wife, asserts his right to her, and actually forces her from her friends and lovers, (for of course she had abundance of friends and lovers,) in order to convey her back to France. These, Our readers will see, are proceedings as natural and well imagined as the rest; and they will conclude that her long residence in France has given Madame D'Arblay a very novel and surprising view of the state of religion, manners, and society in England.

After all this comes the denouement, which is really worthy of the plot.

The Wanderer is (like Evelina) the child of a secret marriage,. denied or neglected by her father, and the whole mystery of her story is occasioned by her having, to save the life of a French bishop, married, according to the ceremonies of Robespierre's time, one of his emissaries, who had taken a great fancy to 60001. which was to be paid to the Wanderer on condition of her not asserting her birth. She, as we have seen, escapes, but the poor bishop being still in France, she does not dare to declare hername, w and appeal to her family-she does not dare to protest against the forced and illegal contract of marriage she had entered into, lest the bishop should suffer for it. Nay, she is ready to accompany back to France this soi-disant husband, though it is quite apparent to the most ordinary common sense, that to claim her birthright and obtain her whole splendid fortune would be the most likely way of establishing some check upon her avaricious husband, and enabling her to tempt him to the preservation of the worthy prelate; whereas her flight and her concealment, if quite successful, would have left this ruffian without any motive of interest in keeping measures with his victim. At last, however, the bishop escapes, and then the Wanderer turns out to be the Lady Juliet Granville. She divorces her revolutionary spouse, finds a sister in one of her Brighton acquaintance, a brother in one of her former lovers, and a husband in one Mr. Har

leigh, a very odd sort of person, with whom she has been on very odd sort of terms during her English peregrinations.

Violent as the incongruities of this chief plot of the drama must appear to our readers, we venture to assure them that they are tame and common-place, compared with the monstrous absurdities of the under-plot and of the inferior characters; particularly-if, where all is monstrous, we should select any individual instance of a certain Miss Elinor Joddrell, who after appearing as a gay trifling pleasant sort of young gentlewoman, breaks out, of a sudden, as a Jacobin, philosopher and atheist, runs away from her family, disguises herself as a man, wears a mask and dagger, and in this costume comes into a concert room at Brighton, where she magnanimously stabs herself with the said dagger because Mr. Harleigh is one of the company at a public concert in which the Wanderer is to play on the harp. To complete the nice discrimination and accurate nature of this picture, we need only add, that when Miss Joddrell, much against her will, recovers of her wound, and long before she has regained her senses, the Wanderer felicitates herself on obtaining, as a barrier against calumny and persecution, the protection and countenance of this sober and well conducted young lady.

Our readers will think that these characters are maintained, as Horace directs, with perfect consistency to the end, when they are informed that a solemn and pitched discussion is held, in an advanced stage of the novel, between the Wanderer, Miss Joddrell, and their common lover Mr. Harleigh, in which free-will, the origin of evil, the right of suicide, and divers other knotty points of religion and morals are so well handled by the aforesaid Mr. Harleigh, that Miss Joddrell is persuaded to abandon her mask and dagger, and to give over the practice, to which she was greatly addicted, of cutting her own throat.

We have now done with this novel, on which we should not have been justified in saying so much, but that we conceived ourselves in duty bound to attend the lifeless remains of our old and dear friends Evelina and Cecilia to their last abode : but of Madame D'Arblay herself we have a word or two to say.

We learn from the preface, (from which, indeed-so tortuous is its construction and so involved its expression-we can gather scarcely any thing else,) that these volumes were written between the years 1802 and 1812, in Paris, where she enjoyed, as she informs us, under the mild and beneficent government of Napoleon the Great, 'ten unbroken years:'-' neither startled by any species of investigation, nor distressed through any difficulties of conduct, by a precious fire-side, or in select society, a stranger to all personal disturbance.'

L

Now really we should have expected, if Madame D'Arblay were restrained by her feelings, whatever they might be, from expressing her detestation of the gigantic despotism, the ferocious cruelty, the restless and desolating tyranny of Buonaparte, that, at least, she should not have sought for opportunities of insinuating her gratitude for the blessings, the tender mercies which Françe enjoyed under the dominion of that tyger.

Though the whole scene is laid in the time of Robespierre, and though she, in her text, takes very carefully the Buonapartian tone of abuse of the republican revolution, yet whenever she has occasion to allude to any of the horrors of that period, she does not fail to subjoin, with a loyal accuracy, a note to testify that she alludes to the tyranny of Robespierre-she did not see, good lady, that this disclaiming note was the most severe satire against her imperial protector, as it leads the reader to suppose, that without its assistance, it would be doubtful to which of these monsters she alluded. We cannot bear these base condescensions -Madame D'Arblay might have been silent, but she ought not, as an Englishwoman, as a writer, to have debased herself to the little annotatory flatteries of the scourge of the human race.

This fault, however, if the work should come to another edition-Madame D'Arblay will probably correct; because, since the publication of the last, Buonaparte has been overthrown and exiled; and we think we may assume, from the style of the passages to which we allude, that Madame D'Arblay is not likely to continue to flatter, when her flattery can no longer conduce to her personal convenience. Hereafter, therefore, we shall be prepared to find, instead of this alludes to the days of Robespierre,' this alludes to the days of Buonaparte;' and instead of acknowledgments for the ten.happy years spent under his reign, to hear of the ten happy years which she proposes to pass under the parental government of Louis the Eighteenth.

ART. X. Sermons, by the late Rev. Walter Blake Kirwan, Dean of Killala. With a Sketch of his Life. 8vo. Dublin and London. 1814.

PROFUSE admiration can hardly be allowed as a criterion of

the real merits of popular preaching. An energetic manner, and an eloquent expression on subjects of prevailing interest, while they seldom fail to captivate the imagination, too easily elude the

scrutiny of severer judgment. In the irritation which disputed opinions necessarily create, the mind, biassed by passion, is less equal to the exercise of discretion; a favourite doctrine is of itself a sufficient title to our regard, and positive defects are countenanced by congenial feelings. But independent of this illusion, even in common topics that pass without controversy, we cannot always decide with accuracy; the flowing phrase and the balanced. period assail the judgment through the ear, and it is only in the perusal that we can divest ourselves of partiality, and that taste and sober reason become the final arbiters.

う

That this liability to imposition should be wrought upon in the common concerns of life, and that we should be deceived into opinions prejudicial to our temporary welfare, is, doubtless, a consequence of our infirmity; it is an attempt, however, unworthy of a Christian minister; in the cause of truth artifice is unnecessary, and when applied to the diffusion of heretical opinions, it is no light offence. But, supposing the pulpit to be confined to its proper uses the interests of religion-we must still object to the modern qualifications of popular preaching. If faith should be the growth of our unprejudiced judgment, if religious practice should originate from the knowledge of our duty, from a conviction of its necessity to our happiness, there is no farther requisite than a close adherence to the Gospel. Let the truth be soberly demonstrated, let the obligation of scripture morality be simply expounded, and, while the preacher instructs with earnestness, let him temper his zeal with humility, and every effect will follow which should form the object of sermons. It is true that this path conducts not to that admiration which the candidate for popular favour proposes to himself. If his voice is mellifluous to the ear, if his gesture is graceful to the eye, if, in short, he can attract to himself the idolatry of his audience, his purpose is accomplished; his morality recommended by pomp of language, and aspiring to the flights of fancy, scarcely wishes to reform the mind; it surprizes, it delights, it rivets the attention, not to the lesson it inculcates, but to its adventitious attractions, and it is remembered, not to strengthen virtue in its retirement, but to charm in the display of conversation. It is fortunate for the thinking part of the world that this admiration does not always correspond with the cravings of its votary, and that present praise ministers to the ambition of posthumous celebrity :-the press dissolves the spell, and the senses are left to the operation of natural agency. The imposing confidence that supplies the deficiency of knowledge, the graceful utterance that imparts to languor the air of beauty, and, above all, the reputation name, which, to the generality, is the criterion of every excence, cease to influence beyond the title-page; the public grows ashamed of a