quaintance with him, and, indeed, I thought him too much of a man of the world, and of society, to feel with him that particular delicacy, in regard to Gertrude, which made me in general shun all intercourse with my former friends. He was in great pecuniary embarrassment-much more deeply so than I then imagined; for I believed the embarrassment to be only temporary. However, my purse was then, as before, at his disposal, and he did not scruple to avail himself very largely of my offers. He came frequently to our house; and poor Gertrude, who thought I had, for her sake, made a real sacrifice in renouncing my acquaintance, endeavoured to conquer her usual diffidence, and that more painful feeling than diffidence, natural to her station, and even to affect a pleasure in the society of my friend, which she was very far from feeling."

He is called away to the south of France, by intelligence of his mother being at the point of death :—

"When I arrived at Toulouse my mother was much better, but still in a very uncertain and dangerous state of health. I stayed with her for more than a month, during which time every post brought me a line from Gertrude, and bore back a message from my heart to her's' in return. This was no mean consolation, more especially when each letter spoke of increasing health and strength. At the month's end, I was preparing to return-my mother was slowly recovering, and I no longer had any fears on her account; but, there are links in our destiny fearfully interwoven with each other, and ending only in the anguish of our ultimate doom. The day before that fixed for my departure, I had been into a house where an epidemic disease raged; that night I complained of oppressive and deadly illness-before morning I was in a high fever.

"During the time I was sensible of my state, I wrote constantly to Gertrude, and carefully concealed my illness; but for several days I was delirious. When I recovered I called eagerly for my letters-there were nonenone! I could not believe I was yet awake; but days still passed on, and not a line from England-from Gertrude. The instant I was able, I insisted upon putting horses to my carriage; I could bear no longer the torture of my suspense. By the most rapid journeys my debility would allow me to bear, I arrived in England."

"At last I arrived at

; my carriage stopped at the very house

my whole frame was perfectly frozen with dread-I trembled from limb to limb-the ice of a thousand winters seemed curdling through my blood. The bell rung-once, twice-no answer. I would have leaped out of the carriage-I would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. man fettered and spell-bound by an incubus is less helpless than I was. last, an old female I had never seen before appeared.

A

At

"Where is she? How? I could utter no more-my eyes were fixed upon the inquisitive and frightened countenance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I thought, might have said all that my lips could not; I was deceivedthe old woman understood me no more than I did her; another person appeared-I recognised the face-it was that of a girl, who had been one of our attendants. Will you believe, that at that sight,-the sight of one I had seen before, and could associate with the remembrance of the breathing, the living, the present Gertrude,- -a thrill of joy flashed across me-my fears seemed to vanish-my spell to cease?

"I sprung from the carriage; I caught the girl by the robe. Your mistress,' said I, 'your mistress!-She is well-she is alive-speak, speak?' The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, and, perhaps, my emaciated and altered appearance, terrified her; but she had the strong nerves of youth, and was soon re-assured. She requested me to step in, and she would tell me all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name) was alive, and, she

believed, well; but she had left that place some weeks since. Trembling, and still fearful, but, comparatively, in Heaven, to my former agony, I followed the girl and the old woman into the house.

"The former got me some water. Now,' said I, when I had drank a long and hearty draught, I am ready to hear all-my wife has left this house, you say-for what place?' The girl hesitated and looked down; the old woman, who was somewhat deaf, and did not rightly understand my questions, or the nature of the personal interest I had in the reply, answered, What does the gentleman want? The poor young lady, who was last here?-Lord help her!'

"What of her?' I called out, in a new alarm. has she gone? Who took her away?'

What of her? Where

"Who took her?: mumbled the old woman, fretful at my impatient tone; Who took her? why, the mad doctor, to be sure!'"'

He follows here to her terrible abode. The whole scene in the madhouse is most admirably done. We regret exceedingly we have not room for all of it. His finding her is thus described :

66

We were now in a different department of the building—all was silencehushed, deep, breathless: this seemed to me more awful than the terrible sounds I had just heard. My guide went slowly on, sometimes breaking the stillness of the dim gallery by the jingle of his keys-sometimes by a muttered panegyric on himself and his humanity. I neither heeded nor answered him.

"We read in the annals of the Inquisition, of every limb, nerve, sinew of the victim, being so nicely and accurately strained to their utmost, that the frame would not bear the additional screwing of a single hair breadth. Such seemed my state. We came to a small door, at the right hand; it was the last but one in the passage. We paused before it. Stop,' said I, for one moment;' and I was so faint and sick at heart, that I leaned against the wall to recover myself, before I let him open the door: when he did, it was a greater relief than I can express, to see that all was utterly dark. Wait, Sir,' said the guide, as he entered; and a sullen noise told me that he was unbarring the heavy shutter.

"Slowly the grey cold light of the morning broke in: a dark figure was stretched upon a wretched bed, at the far end of the room. She raised herself at the sound. She turned her face towards me; I did not fall, nor faint, nor shriek-I stood motionless, as if fixed into stone; and yet it was Gertrude upon whom I gazed! Oh, Heaven! who but myself could have recognised her? Her cheek was as the cheek of the dead-the hueless skin clung to the bone-the eye was dull and glassy for one moment, the next it became terribly and preternaturally bright-but not with the ray of intellect, or consciousness, or recognition. She looked long and hard at me; a voice, hollow and broken, but which still penetrated my heart, came forth through the wan lips, that scarcely moved with the exertion. I am very cold,' it said- but if I complain, you will beat me.' She fell down again upon the bed, and hid her face.

My guide, who was leaning carelessly by the window, turned to me with a sort of smirk- This is her way, Sir,' he said; her madness is of a very singular description: we have not, as yet, been able to discover how far it extends; sometimes she seems conscious of the past, sometimes utterly oblivious of every thing for days she is perfectly silent, or, at least, says nothing more than you have just heard; but, at times, she raves so violently that-that-but I never use force where it can be helped. I looked at the man, but I could not answer, unless I had torn him to pieces on the spot."

He tries every possible means of restoring her-but in vain! at last he is recommended to take her to the scenes of her early childhood

1

"those scenes," the physician is made to say, "are in all stages of life the most fondly remembered; and I have noted that, in many cases of insanity, places are easier recalled than persons; perhaps, if we can once awaken one link in the chain, it will communicate to the rest." Glanville is enabled to obtain the very house in which Gertrude had been born, and lived all her life, till her elopement with him-her mother had died before that time, and her father having also died since, there is no impediment to their coming:

"The experiment partially succeeded-would to God that it had not! would that she had gone down to her grave with her dreadful secret unrevealed! would-but

"Here Glanville's voice failed him, and there was a brief silence before he recommenced.

"Gertrude now had many lucid intervals; but these my presence were always sufficient to change into a delirious raving, even more incoherent than her insanity had ever yet been. She would fly from me with the most fearful cries, bury her face in her hands, and seem like one oppressed and haunted by a supernatural visitation, as long as I remained in the room; the moment I left her, she began, though slowly, to recover.

"This was to me the bitterest affliction of all-to be forbidden to nurse, to cherish, to tend her, was like taking from me my last hope! But little can the thoughtless or the worldly dream of the depths of a real love. I used to wait all day by her door, and it was luxury enough to me to catch her accents, or hear her move, or sigh, or even weep; and all night, when she could not know of my presence, I used to lie down by her bedside; and when I sank into a short and convulsed sleep, I saw her once more, in my brief and fleeting dreams, in all the devoted love, and glowing beauty, which had once constituted the whole of my happiness, and my world.

"One day I had been called from my post by her door. They came to me hastily-she was in strong convulsions. I flew up stairs, and supported her in my arms till the fits had ceased: we then placed her in bed; she never rose from it again; but on that bed of death, the words, as well as the cause, of her former insanity were explained-the mystery was unravelled.

"It was a still and breathless night. The moon, which was at its decrease, came through the half-closed shutters, and beneath its solemn and eternal light, she yielded to my entreaties, and revealed all. The man-my friendTyrrell-had polluted her ear with his addresses, and when forbidden the house, had bribed the woman I had left with her, to convey his letters-she was discharged-but Tyrrell was no ordinary villain; he entered the house one evening, when no one but Gertrude was there-Come near me, Pelham -nearer-bend down your ear-he used force, violence! That night Gertrude's senses deserted her-you know the rest.

"The moment that I gathered, from Gertrude's broken sentences, their meaning, that moment the demon entered into my soul. All human feelings seemed to fly from my heart; it shrunk into one burning, and thirsty, and fiery want-that was for revenge. I would have sprung from the bedside, but Gertrude's hand clung to me, and detained me; the damp, chill grasp grew colder and colder-it ceased-the hand fell-I turned-one slight, but awful shudder went over that face, made yet more wan, by the light of the waning and ghastly moon-one convulsion shook the limbs-one murmur passed the falling and hueless lips. I cannot tell you the rest-you know— you can guess it."

We think it will not be disputed, that the man who can write thus has the strongest command both over the more powerful passions, and the softer feelings. And, at this moment, touched and subdued, as

any one with a heart must be, at reading this most beautiful and painful tale, we feel almost angry with ourselves for having spoken lightly and with blame of such a writer. But, after all, where we have given the blame, he is by no means such a writer;-and the more we think of it, the more the discrepancy is to us inexplicable.

We shall not go into the account of Glanville's revenge. Fixed, immutable, deadly revenge, seems to us to be a very fearful passion to dwell upon; and we must say that we think the author has by no means taken sufficient care to qualify, when he speaks in his own person, the opinions which he puts into his hero's mouth on this subject. He scarcely says one word to reprobate a revenge carried on for years, with a spirit the most intense, the most unremitting, the most awfully saturated with a hatred that makes the flesh creep. The injury inflicted was certainly extreme-and that it might give rise to a passion of this unnatural character (we here use the word, not, as critics, for “ unlikely," but, metaphysically, for "originally repugnant to nature,") we believe to be very possible. But while he narrated its course and consequences, the author should have strongly expressed his condemnation of its indulgence. It is savage, unchristian, almost fiendish : and no doubt should have been left as to whether or not it should be considered the natural, almost lawful, retaliation for an injury, though of the deepest dye.

There are some other parts of the third volume of a different character, which also possess very considerable merit. We allude to the proceedings of Pelham in the closest dens of London thieves, whither he goes to procure some evidence necessary for the freeing Glanville from the accusation of having murdered Tyrrell. This, though a little perhaps over-wrought in parts, and too much drawn out, is done with very vigorous power, both of narrative and description. But, after what we have laid before our readers, we are not in the mood to go into the low villany and ruffianism of Job Jonson and his associates.

We have thus, though somewhat late, gone through our task of reviewing this work. We understand its success to have been very considerable; so, perhaps, we shall but slightly add to its circulation when we recommend our readers to get the book, and, skipping such of the early parts as may pall upon them, enjoy the power, the beauty, and the tenderness of Sir Reginald Glanville's narrative. We have given, we think, sufficient proofs that our praises are not unworthily or lightly bestowed. For our blame, each reader will judge for himself as he goes along. We know not the author, nor even who he is, --for there are many reasons to disbelieve each and every of the names rumoured-but, whoever he may be, we recommend him strongly to adhere to that description of writing which may be designated as the novel of passion, for we have scarcely met any writer who has a greater power of strongly agitating the passions, and deeply moving the heart.

DIARY

FOR THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER,

6th. If it were not for the reflection of the great political and social interests at stake in Portugal, the proceedings of the Miguelites would be the most ludicrous thing in the world. The whole story of Major Colmieiro," of the police cavalry of Lisbon," and Sir Augustus West -as given in the Times of to-day-would be a positive farce, if it were not for the above consideration on the one side, and that of the affair having amounted to a broken bone to the poor Doctor on the other. It appears, that this Major, whose business it is to preserve the peace of Lisbon-a sort of Portugueze Sir Richard Birnie-following the bent of the Court, abominates and abuses every thing and body English; and that, in the course of a conversation on the subject, he wrought himself up to that pitch of valour, that he took an oath to knock down the first Englishman he met. It appears, however, that he interpreted the oath most strictly; for he was some days before he could meet one Englishman alone-Englishmen being evidently beyond the letter of his bond. At last, when out on duty-that of keeping the peace-being at the top of a certain hill, called Campolide, he sees a tall, slender, pale Englishman coming up the hill on horseback. Our cavalry Major, being mounted on a spirited horse, charges the unhappy Doctor-for no less a person than Doctor Sir Augustus West, physician to the Royal Family, did the English rider prove to be-and, as he passes him, strikes him a violent blow on the right breast, with the hilt of his sword.

Now, we most heartily wish that it had been any other Englishman breathing that had been thus stricken-and this, not out of mercy to Sir Augustus, but out of justice to the Major. For right sure are we that any other person, bearing that title, would have galloped after the police-man, who continued his course down the hill, and given him a right hearty English belly-full, before he went home to get his rib set. We are not exactly among those who believe in the national maxim that one Englishman will beat three Frenchmen, or three any men, cæteris paribus; but we are most firmly of opinion, that if one foreigner makes oath to knock a man down, he had better not single out an Englishman-as it cannot be supposed that he will have the luck to meet a second Sir Augustus West-and, man to man, in nineteen cases out of twenty, if the foreigner bring it to the arbitration of the fist, he will get right soundly licked. Now, if this had been, instead of a peaceable potter-carrier, a young English midshipman, or a mate of a merchantman, nay, or the correspondent of the Times himself, who describes the adventure so vividly, it is luxurious to imagine the surprise and dismay the Major would have experienced, at being initiated into the effects of our national science. Belcher's celebrated one-two, or the dreadful right-hander of Bill Neate with which he felled the ox, or the getting the head into chancery and fibbing, for which the great Jack Randall was so famous-how charming to translate