sure that your true-hearted countryman Longfellow must have had you in his brain, when he painted the picture of his blacksmith.

Toiling, rejoicing,-sorrowing,-
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burning deed and thought !

I especially like your fancy that English Plymouth should write to American Plymouth-Rochester to Rochester-Norwich to Norwich, and so on. As you prettily say, "it would be more like mothers writing to their daughters." You are right too, that "every letter thus interchanged, like a weaver's shuttle, will carry across the ocean a silken ligature to bind two kindred hearts, and through them, two kindred nations." Depend upon it, the thinking masses-for odd as it might seem to some Solomons now in their grave, and I may add, odd as it does seem to some Solomons fast going there, the masses do begin to think they are all against the cruelty, the wicked tom-foolery of war. I've just been reading one of their addresses; I think the last. Fine, rousing words are in it, I can tell you; words that strike upon the heart better than fife and beaten sheep's-skin. Just to show you that we, too, have our pacific blacksmiths—our iron-workers who, like Elihu Burritt, think it far better to make hoes and spades than pikes and bayonets, I copy out this little paragraph, addressed as it is to Americans:

"Working men of America, you are, or should be, the pioneers of freedom; such was the mission bequeathed to you by Washington and his great brother patriots. That mission you will best fulfil by perfecting your institutions by abolishing the slavery of white and black[Ding this into the ears of your countrymen, Master Burritt] wages and the whip-by driving from your legislatures the landlords, usurers, lawyers, soldiers, and other idlers and swindlers; by making the veritable people, the wealth-producers, really sovereign,' and thus esta

blishing a real, instead of a nominal, Republic. War will not aid, but will prevent you accomplishing these reforms."

And to crown all, you'll have to sow wheat for us, instead of making gunpowder. Already you have sent maize into the stomachs of the Irish,-and this is better, isn't it, more profitable too, than riddling them with bullets?

And this morning I read in one of the papers a long account of the pleasant dishes made out of Indian corn, and how they were mightily relished in Scotland; a professor-whose name I forget -having written and lectured on the best way of dressing the grain. More pleasant reading this, of stomachs comforted and bellies filled by American grain-than throats cut and bodies slashed by American steel. Such a gazette of the kitchen is better than twenty gazettes of the War-office. If we must have a war, let it be the new war of prices*-the buying cheap and selling dear; and so no more at present from your friend and admirer, JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

• The great principle of "the movement" of Free-trade, "to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market," is of somewhat older origin than Juniper Hedgehog imagines. Adam Clarke in a note to the proverb "it is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer," says "how apt are men to decry the goods they wish to purchase, in order that they may get them at a cheaper rate," and tells us of "a pleasant story" St. Augustine has on this subject. A certain mountebank published in the full theatre that at the next entertainment he would show to every man present what was in his heart. The time came, and the concourse was immense. All waited, with death-like silence, to hear what he would say to each. He stood up, and in a single sentence redeemed his pledge.

VILI vultis emere, et CARO VENdere.

"You all wish to BUY CHEAP and SELL DEAR."

He was applauded; for every one felt it to be a description of his own heart, and was satisfied that all others were similar. "In quo dicto levissimi scenici tamen conscientios invenerunt suos."-DE TRINITATE, lib. xiii. c. 3. Oper, vol. vii. col. 930.

We are not quite sure whether we are not furnishing the Protectionists with a text, but as we happen to have so many to spare the other way, they are exceedingly welcome to it.

New Books.

PEERS AND PARVENUS. A Novel. By MRS. GORE. 3 vols. Post 8vo. London: H. Colburn.

Ir may be thought by strict utilitarians that in a magazine like ours, intended, as far as it is possible, to aid in the development of all those principles, the application of which can benefit the many, that too much of our limited literary space is given to the notice of novels. It is, however, not without a motive, coherent with the design of the magazine that this is done. Novels have many recommendations. As a medium for conveying a knowledge of human nature as modified by particular manners and circumstances, they are of real service. And whether treating of remote periods, as in the historical class, or of distant manners and customs, in what may be termed (for want of a simpler term), the ethnological, or geographical kind, or as a means of conveying a knowledge of the morals, sentiments, and principles of one class to another, they are equally valuable as mediums of information. It is as one of the last class that we deem Mrs. Gore's writings of peculiar interest to our readers.

This authoress has, at all events, one quality which compensates to a certain extent for the want of many others. She has a style. All that she writes is clear and readable, and has that indescribable, undefinable power which induces the reader to proceed arising, no doubt, from the distinctness of her own perceptions, and a great readiness of intellect, enabling her rapidly to furnish the means of expressing them. There is no complexity in her statements; her descriptions are never encumbered with tedious details; nor confused by the introduction of their remote relations. This, therefore, gives to her narrative lightness, and the reader proceeds unconsciously from idea to idea, and from image to image. Of the intellectual quality of the matter thus offered to the mind we have no great opinion. Character in its concrete state she has no power of delineating. She paints a quality and not a character; but herein she is but little inferior to many writers of a standard celebrity. Congreve and Pope did no more, though they might do it in a more potent manner. The portrayal of real character belongs to much fewer authors than is supposed. After Shakespeare, Addison (in a small degree), Fielding (largely), and perhaps Sir Walter Scott, we shall find but few of our celebrated dramatists and novelists who do more than pointedly portray a characteristic, either embodying an idea, as in "Pelham;" or working out a monomania, as in

Godwin's "Mandeville." Mrs. Austen's admirers, and Miss Edgeworth's, will probably indignantly demand for them an exception. But, if carefully analysed, they will at the best be found to personify by the welding in a logical mode a few qualities and characteristics. An intellectual Francatelli might really produce a serviceable manual that would develope the whole art of character-cooking in as methodical a manner as any culinary process. Mrs. Gore is then not to be singled out as deficient in this power; but it must be said she avails herself of the usual formula less logically than some of her contemporaries, less skilfully according to the received theory of human nature, as derived from observation or mental science. In "Peers and Parvenus" this is particularly perceptible. Resolving, after her fashion, to avail herself of the prevailing notion of the time, she has thought fit to put herself on the side of the low-born against the high. We are sorry to see this contagious cant spreading, because it is always the effect of cant to destroy the principle on which it fixes. The cant of religion brought on infidelity; the cant of patriotism produces reaction in favour of arbitrary rule; and the cant of sympathy undoubtedly will produce reaction on the side of brutality. Cant is a moral virus, destroying for the time of its course all the reticulation of principles.

That we must class Mrs. Gore's works amongst one of its results is proved by the ignorance displayed of the true principles that regulate the rights of mental superiority. Her hero, the child of the poorest peasants, is placed in contrast with the child of the most powerful aristocrats. The one is intended to embody the might of intellect, and the highest nobility of the heart-the other is brutal in his tastes, and narrow in his mind. But that this contrast is made, not because the truth of the principles is appreciated, but because it is effective, is proved by its treatment. The peasant has no benefit from Mrs. Gore's argument, because he is taken out of his class by the assumed superiority of his intellect; and there is not even any just advocacy of the aristocracy of mind. Jervis Cleve (the peasant hero) achieves nothing that marks his superiority to the conventional aristocracy amongst whom he is placed; on the contrary, he only ministers to the gratification of a more cultivated portion of those socially superior to him: he in no way vindicates his mental position by ever being placed in a position really to show the inferiority of the casual to the essential. It is only by the poorest and most inefficient means that his pretended superiority is portrayed; and very ignorant must the authoress be of the portrayal of genius, when she makes it consist in the publishing a learned antiquarian treatise in a philosophical society's papers. This alone would prove the inadequacy of the writer to the great impending question between the artificial aristocracy of custom and the real one of natural superiority.

The book has been considered in some quarters as having a democratic tendency, and it is evident the authoress had some such intention

regarding it. It is doubtful, however, whether it has not a tendency rather the reverse. Maintaining the privileges of hereditary noodledom to patronise the remarkable human productions, whether monstrosities of intellect or body; and thus affording the innumerable under-crop of aristocracy an opportunity of asserting that "genius is always patronised by its superiors when properly demonstrated."

Taken in its broadest view, it must have, however, an unintentional democratic effect. And in common with all the rest of "the fashionable novels," it bears the most conclusive, because involuntary, testimony to the utter inefficiency of forms to fix essentials, and proves that no creation of orders and distinctions can make virtue, or genius, or even humane manners hereditary. It is from these admirers of hereditary aristocracy that we should call testimony to their innate meanness, self-sufficiency, and intense egotism and selfishness, that characterise those calling themselves "the higher classes." A more brutal, ill-mannered, and truly vulgar person than the ultimate Lord Hillingdon is made, it is impossible to conceive, and indeed than most of the characters that are here paraded as representatives of the highest nobility. The best are imbecile in mind, the dupes of the most obvious empiricism, and the worst on a level with the most debased churls. Surely these novels, if intending to befriend a depreciated aristocracy, must call forth frequently from them the trite proverb-“Save me from my friends."

Though deficient in the best qualities of this kind of literature, there are delineations and observations that prove the authoress's capacity and in Lucy Hecksworth, a woman of high conventional station, but of a fine and delicate spirit, we have suggestions of one of those truly feminine and noble creatures which a woman perhaps can alone give an idea of, in the depth of its deep passion and the unselfish purity of its affection. It is but a suggestion of a character, but still it vindicates the authoress's knowledge of her sex, and her sympathy with its profoundest and purest feelings. It is one genuine touch of goodness like this that redeems a mass of meanness, frivolity, and imbecility, which too often characterise the modern Pandora.

REPORT OF AN EDUCATIONAL TOUR IN GERMANY, AND PARTS OF Great BRITAIN AND IRELAND, being part of the Seventh Annual Report of HORACE MANN, Esq., Secretary of the Board of Education, Mass. U.S., 1844. With Preface and Notes by W. B. HODGSON, Principal of the Mechanics' Institution, Liverpool. Fep. 8vo. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.

HOWEVER We may differ with the Americans on some political points, there is an earnest sympathy between the people of each country as to the progression and improvement of the grand body of the people. In