and not to the oases in it. Mr. James evidently pos sesses talent sufficiently great to enable him to write well, if he could only learn to "labor and to wait;" but he is cursed with the mania of book-making, and seems to look more to the number of his pages than to the quality of his rhetoric.

In these remarks on Mr. James, as a novelist, we have intended to do him no injustice. We are willing to grant him the praise of talents and learning, and to do fit honor to the moral purpose he seems to have in his writings. But we dispute his claim to those qualities which constitute the chief excellence of a novelist; we doubt his possession of that fecundity of mind which can produce a series of novels without constant repetition of old types of character, and old machinery of plot. If the severity of our criticism has ever run into fanciful exaggeration, it has been owing to the petulant humor engendered by exposing unfounded pretension.

The

Indeed, Mr. James does not appear like a man who could be wounded or hurt by severe criticism. abstract character of the personages of his novels affects our own view of himself. We oppose him as we would oppose an idea or a principle. We do not consider him as an individual. Our imagination refuses to shape the idea suggested by his name into a palpable person. Whenever an author appears to our mind in a concrete form, the quality of mercy we extend to his compositions is never "strained." We feel for his pardonable vanity, and we would launch at him no sarcasm calculated to lacerate his delicate sensibilities. He is a human being, a brother, or, at least, a cousin. If he be a dunce, we pat him on the shoulder, and tell him to try again. If he be a man of talents, with some absurd o

pernicious principles, we regret that the latter should weaken the respect we bear to the former. But not so is it with Mr. James. We no more think of hurting his feelings by sharp criticism, than of wounding the sensibility of Babbage's calculating machine by detecting it in a mathematical error. To us he is a thin essence, impenetrable to the weapons of earthly combat, and unmoved by any hail-storm of satire which might seem to beat on his frame. He is an abstraction, and, therefore, the last person to expect that a reviewer will hide the thorns of analysis in the flowers of panegyric.

FEW persons on either side of the Atlantic are igno rant of the name of the Rev. Sydney Smith, the wit, the whig, the Edinburgh reviewer, and the holder of Pennsylvania bonds. But if we except his lately published "Letters on American Debts," his name is more familiar than his writings. It is not a matter of surprise, that the brilliant petulance and grotesque severity of the "Letters" did not win him many admirers in the United States. The fact that they insulted our national pride, and were unjust and sweeping in their censures, was sufficient to prevent their singular merit, as compositions, from being acknowledged. After having withstood all the falsehood and exaggeration of the London press, a press which, in the sturdy impudence with which it retains its hold upon a lie, excels all others in the world, we felt irritated, that a "pleasant man had come out against us," with the expectation that we were to be "laid low by a joker of jokes." A more thorough knowledge of Smith's writings, and a percep tion of the ingrained peculiarities of his character, would, we think, abate much of the grim asperity with which we received that specimen of his nimble wit and sarcas

The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. Second edition. In three volumes. London: Longmans & Co. 8vo. 1840. North American Re view, July, 1844.

tic rebukes. If we knew the man, we should see, that to return an acrimonious answer would be the most ridiculous of all possible modes of retort. While he has the laugh of all Europe on his side, from London to St. Petersburg, he may safely defy the utmost severity of denunciation, backed by the most labored array of facts. Revenge is to be sought, not in denouncing, but in quoting him. He has written for the last forty years upon the affairs of England, with the same careless disregard of the external proprieties of literature, and the same fearlessness of tone, which he has displayed in his censure of the United States; but as the offences which prompt strong invective have been far more numerous and flagrant in his own country than in ours, the brilliancy and bitterness of his satire have never appeared to more advantage than when confined to home scenes and home institutions. His hostility to us arises from pardonable ignorance and personal prejudice, and therefore his accusations are to be regarded with suspicion: his hostility to many features of English society and English law sprung from his conscience and personal knowledge, and may be received with confidence. He has always been a strong friend of liberal principles, and an unflinching and merciless enemy to fraud and corruption. There have been, in the present century, many able Englishmen who have made injustice and bigotry appear detestable; but to Sydney Smith, more than to any other, belongs the merit of making them appear ridiculous. Placemen, pedants, hypocrites, tories, who could doze very placidly beneath threats and curses, retted and winced at the sharp sting of his wit. He has subjected himself to charges which are most injurious to a clergyman, - impropriety, levity, infidelity;

he has allowed his opinions to stand in the way of his professional advancement, rather than swerve from the principles of his political creed, or forbear shooting cut his tongue at hypocrisy and selfishness.

But even if his services to humanity and freedom had not given him the privilege to be a little saucy to republics, the individuality of his character would screen him from the indignation we feel against libellers whose judgments are less influenced by eccentric humor. We desire to learn Sydney Smith's opinion on any matter of public interest, not because his temper of mind is such as to give it intrinsic weight, but because we know it will generally be shrewd, honest, independent, peculiar in its conception, and racy in its expression. Almost everything he has written is so characteristic, that it would be difficult to attribute it to any other man. The marked individual features, and the rare combination of powers, displayed in his works, give them a fascination, unconnected with the subject of which he treats, or the general correctness of his views. He sometimes hits the mark in the white, he sometimes misses it altogether, for he by no means confines his pen to themes to which he is calculated to do justice; but whether he hits or misses, he is always sparkling and delightful. The charm of his writings is somewhat similar to that of Montaigne's or Charles Lamb's, — a charm which owes much of its power to that constant intrusion of the writer's individuality, by which we make a companion where we expected to find only a book; and this companion, as soon as we understand him, becomes one of our most valued acquaintances.

The familiarity of Sydney Smith's manner does not consist merely in his style; indeed, the terseness and