regularly conducted to the gallows for theft or murder which he has never committed. There is nothing instructive or consolatory in this proposition when taken by itself; and if intended as a reproach upon the laws of this country, it is equally applicable to all human judicatures, whose judges can only decide according to evidence, since the Supreme Being has reserved to himself the prerogative of searching the heart and of trying the reins. But, although the story of Caleb Williams be unpleasing, and the moral sufficiently mischievous, we acknowledge we have met with few novels which excited a more powerful interest. Several scenes are painted with the savage force of Salvator Rosa; and, while the author pauses to reason upon the feelings and motives of the actors, our sense of the fallacy of his arguments, of the improbability of his facts, and of the frequent inconsistency of his characters, is lost in the solemnity and suspense with which we expect the evolution of the tale of mystery. After Caleb Williams it would be injustice to Mr Godwin to mention St Leon, where the marvellous is employed too frequently to excite wonder, and the terrible is introduced till we have become familiar with terror. The description of Bethlem Gabor, however, recalled to our mind the author of Caleb Williams; nor, upon the whole, was the romance such as could have been written by quite an ordinary pen. These preliminary remarks are not entirely misplaced, as will appear from the following quotation from the preface to Fleetwood.

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"One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: 'not to repeat myself.' Caleb Williams was a story of very surprising and uncommon events, but which were supposed to be entirely within the laws and established course of nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit. The story of St Leon is of the miraculous class; and its design, to mix human feelings and passions with incredible situations, and thus render them impressive and interesting.'

"Some of those fastidious readers-they may be classed among the best friends an author has, if their admonitions are judiciously considered—who are willing to discover those faults which do not offer themselves to every eye, have remarked, that both these tales are in a vicious style of writing; that Horace has long ago decided, that the story we cannot believe, we are, by all the laws of criticism, called upon to hate; and that even the adventures of the honest secretary, who was first heard of ten years ago, are so much out of the usual road, that not one reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himself.”—Vol. i. Pref.

Moved by these considerations, Mr Godwin has chosen a tale of domestic life, consisting of such incidents as usually occur in the present state of society, diversified only by ingenuity of selection, and novelty of detail. How far he has been successful, will best appear from a sketch of the story.

Fleetwood, the only son of a gentleman who has retired from mercantile concerns to the enjoyment of a liberal fortune, is born and educated among the mountains of Wales. He has no companions saving his father, an infirm though very respectable old gentleman, and his tutor, who was not a clergyman; notwithstanding which, he studied Plato without understanding him, and indemnified himself by writing sonnets which could be understood by nobody. Fleetwood being of course a passionate admirer of the, beauties of nature, preferred scram

bling over the heights of Cader Idris, adoring the rising, and admiring the setting sun, to perusing the pages of Plato, and the poetry of his tutor. In one of these rambles, somewhat to the reader's relief, whose patience is rather tired by an unfruitful description of precipices, cascades, and the immeasurable ocean in the background, he at length meets with an adventure. A lamb, a favourite lamb, falls into a lake; the shepherd plunges in after the lamb; an aged peasant, his father, is about to plunge in after the shepherd, when Fleetwood, as might have been expected, anticipates his affectionate intentions. After remaining a reasonable time in the water, the shepherd holding the lamb, and Fleetwood supporting the shepherd, they are all three fished up by an interesting young damsel who approaches in a boat, and proves to be (according to good old usage) the mistress of William the shepherd, and the proprietor of the half-drowned favourite. This adventure leads to nothing, except that, in the conclusion of the work, the interesting young woman unexpectedly pops back upon us in the very useful, though not very romantic character of an old sick-nurse; deserving no less, in her advanced age, the praises of the Institution for Relief of the Destitute Sick, than in her youth she had merited a premium from the Humane Society. The worthy tutor, in like manner, vanishes entirely from our view, retiring to an obscure lodging in a narrow street, to finish his book of sonnets, and his commentary on Plato. His pupil is now introduced to the knowledge of mankind at the Univer

sity. Here he discovers no aversion to distinguish himself among the dissipated sons of fortune, and soon becomes something very different from the climber of mountains and diver into lakes. But he acquits himself of all share in a quizzing scene, played off upon a fresh-man called Withers, who had written a tragedy on a very interesting subject the cleansing of the Augean stable. This piece he is prevailed upon to recite to certain arch wags, who receive it with rapture, fill the author drunk, and bear him home, crowned with parsley, and dropping with wine, in classical triumph. They have afterwards the address to pass a wooden figure upon him for the master of his college, who, after a rebuke pronounced in character by one of the quizzers, who chanced to be a ventriloquist, proceeds, by some unknown mechanism, to inflict upon Withers the academical discipline under which Milton is said to have smarted of yore; but, far from imitating the submission of his sublime prototype, the modern bard kicked and cuffed in stout opposition, till he discovered the impassible character of his antagonist. The joke ends by Withers going mad, and the ingenious authors of his distress being rusticated. We presume the ventriloquist found a refuge with Fitz-James, and the mechanist with Merlin or Maillardet. What connexion this facetious tale has with Fleetwood, or his history, does not appear; but we reverence the established privilege of an Oxonian to prose about all that happened when he was at Christ-Church,

We now accompany Fleetwood on his travels. Paris was his first stage, where he had the strange and uncommon misfortune to be jilted by two mistresses. The first was a certain marchioness, whose mind "resembled an eel," and who delighted in the bold, the intrepid, and the masculine. Her lover was greeted with an impudent Amazonian stare, a smack of the whip, a slap on the back, and a loud and unexpected accent that made the hearer start again. Upon discovering the infidelity of this gentle lady, Fleetwood, being in Paris, followed the example of the Parisians, but not without experiencing certain twinges of pain, and revolutions of astonishment, to which we believe these good people, on such occasions, are usually strangers. In a word, he took another mistress. The Countess de B. had every gentle amiability under heaven, and only one fault, which might be expressed in one word if we chose it, but we prefer the more prolix explanation of the author.

"Yet the passion of the countess was rather an abstract propensity, than the preference of an individual. A given quantity of personal merit and accomplished manners was sure to charm her. A fresh and agreeable complexion, a sparkling eye, a well-turned leg, a grace in dancing or in performing the mancuvres of gallantry, were claims that the Countess de B. was never known to resist."--Vol. i. p. 152.

Upon discovery of this frailty, our hero's patience forsook him; and he raved, fumed, and agonized, till ours likewise was on the verge of departure. In this paroxysm, his taste for the mountain and the desert returned upon him like a frenzy; and as there were none nearer than the Alps, to the Alps he flies incontinently on the wings of despair.