sailed in the same packet. Galt resided some time results.'* We next find Mr Galt engaged in the in Sicily, then repaired to Malta, and afterwards formation and establishment of the Canada Comproceeded to Greece, where he again met with pany, which involved him in a long labyrinth of Byron, and also had an interview with Ali Pacha. troubles, vexation, and embarrassment. While the After rambling for some time among the classic preliminary controversy was pending between the scenes of Greece, he proceeded to Constantinople, commissioners of this company, the Canada clergy, thence to Nicomedia, and northwards to Kirpe, on and the colonial office, previous to his departure for the shores of the Black Sea. Some commercial the scene of his new operations Galt composed his speculations, as to the practicability of landing Bri- novel, The Last of the Lairds, also descriptive of tish goods in defiance of the Berlin and Milan de- Scottish life. He set out for America in 1826, his crees, prompted these unusual wanderings. At one mission being limited to inquiry, for accomplishing time, when detained by quarantine, Galt wrote or which eight months were allowed. His duties, sketched out six dramas, which were afterwards however, were increased, and his stay prolonged, by published in a volume, constituting, according to the numerous offers to purchase lots of land, and for Sir Walter Scott, 'the worst tragedies ever seen.' determining on the system of management to be On his return he published his Voyages and Travels, pursued by the company. A million of capital had and Letters from the Levant, which were well received. been intrusted to his management. On the 23d of He next repaired to Gibraltar, to conduct a commer- April, St George's day, 1827, Mr Galt proceeded to cial business which it was proposed to establish found the town of Guelph, in the upper province of there, but the design was defeated by the success of Canada, which he did with due ceremony. The site the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula. He ex- selected for the town having been pointed out, a plored France to see if an opening could be found large maple tree,' he says, 'was chosen; on which, there, but no prospect appeared, and returning to taking an axe from one of the woodmen, I struck England, he contributed some dramatic pieces to the first stroke. To me, at least, the moment was the New British Theatre. One of these, The Appeal, impressive; and the silence of the woods that echoed was brought out in the Edinburgh theatre in 1818, to the sound was as the sigh of the solemn genius and performed four nights, Sir Walter Scott having of the wilderness departing for ever.' The city soon written an epilogue for the play. He now devoted prospered in three months upwards of 160 building himself for some time to literary pursuits, writing lots were engaged, and houses rising as fast as buildin the periodical works, and residing in Scotland. ing materials could be prepared. Before the end of Among his more elaborate compositions may be the year, however, the founder of the city was emmentioned a Life of Benjamin West, the artist, His- broiled in difficulties. Some secret enemies had torical Pictures, The Wandering Jew, and The Earth- misrepresented him-he was accused of lowering the quake, a novel in three volumes. He wrote for company's stock-his expenditure was complained Blackwood's Magazine, in 1820, The Ayrshire Le- of; and the company sent out an accountant to act gatees, a series of letters containing an amusing not only in that capacity, but as cashier. Matters Scottish narrative. His next work was 'The An- came to a crisis, and Mr Galt determined to return nals of the Parish' (1821), which instantly became to England. Ample testimony has been borne to popular. It is worthy of remark that the Annals the skill and energy with which he conducted the had been written some ten or twelve years before operations of this company; but his fortune and his the date of its publication, and anterior to the ap- prospects had fled. Thwarted and depressed, he was pearance of Waverley and Guy Mannering, and that resolved to battle with his fate, and he set himself it was rejected by the publishers of those works, down in England to build a new scheme of life, 'in with the assurance, that a novel or work of fiction which the secondary condition of authorship was entirely Scottish would not take with the public! made primary.' In six months he had six volumes Mr Galt went on with his usual ardour in the com- ready. His first work was another novel in three position of Scotch novels. He had now found where volumes, Lawrie Todd, which is equal to 'The Anhis strength lay, and Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, nals of the Parish' or The Entail.' It was well The Steam-Boat, and The Provost, were succes- received; and he soon after produced another, desively published-the two first with decided success. scriptive of the customs and manners of Scotland in These were followed at no long intervals by Ringan the reign of Queen Mary, and entitled Southennan, Gilhaize, a story of the Scottish Covenanters; by The subject was a favourite with him, but his mode The Spaewife, a tale of the times of James I. of Scot- of treating it was by no means happy; while the land; and Rothelan, a novel partly historical, founded public taste, accustomed to the historical novels of on the work by Barnes on the life and reign of Scott, was impatient of any secondary work in this Edward I. Mr Galt also published anonymously, in department. For a short time in the same year 1824, an interesting imaginative little tale, The Omen, (1830) Mr Galt conducted the Courier newspaper, which was reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in Black- but this new employment did not suit him. It rewood's Magazine. In fertility, Galt was only sur-quired more time, and incurred more responsibilities passed by Scott; and perhaps no other author could have written an equal number of works of fiction, varied in style and manner, within the same limited period. His genius was unequal, and he does not seem to have been able to discriminate between the good and the bad; but the vigour and copiousness of his mind were certainly remarkable. His friendly biographer, Dr Moir of Musselburgh, says justly, that the 'great drawback to Mr Galt's prosperity and happiness was the multitude of his resources, and from his being equally fitted for a student and man of the world. As the old proverb hath it, "the rolling stone gathers no fog" so in the transition from one occupation and employment to another, he expended those powers which, if long concentrated on any particular object, must have produced great

of opinion than he was prepared for, and he gladly left the daily drudgery to complete a Life of Byron, on which he was engaged for Colburn the publisher. The comparative brevity of this memoir (one small volume), the name of Galt as its author, and the interesting nature of the subject, soon sold three or four editions of the work; but it was sharply assailed by the critics. Some of the positions taken up by the author (as that, had Byron not been possessed of genius, he might have been a better man'), and some quaintness and affectation of expression, exposed him to well-merited ridicule. Mr Galt next executed a series of Lives of the Players, an amusing

* Biographical Memoir prefixed to Galt's novels, in Blackwood's Standard Novels,

whidder as minister of Dalmailing is admirably described :

Poor

compilation, and Bogle Corbet, another novel, the object of which, he said, was to give a view of society generally, as The Provost' was of burgh incidents It was a great affair; for I was put in by the patron, simply, and of the sort of genteel persons who are and the people knew nothing whatsoever of me, and sometimes found among the emigrants to the United their hearts were stirred into strife on the occasion, States. Disease now invaded the robust frame of and they did all that lay within the compass of their the novelist; but he wrote on, and in a short time power to keep me out, insomuch that there was obfour other works of fiction issued from his pen-liged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbyStanley Buxton, The Member, The Radical, and Eben tery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve Erskine. In 1832 an affection of the spine, and an when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing attack resembling paralysis, greatly reduced Mr as we were going to the kirk. The people were really Galt, and subjected him to acute pain. Next year, mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, however, he was again at the press. His work was and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at a tale entitled The Lost Child. He also composed a me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, commemoir of his own life, in two volumes-a curious passionating their wilfulness and blindness. ill-digested melange, but worthy of perusal. In 1834 old Mr Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of he published Literary Miscellanies, in three volumes, glaur on the side of his face, that his eye was almost dedicated to King William IV., who generously sent extinguished. a sum of £200 to the author. He returned to his When we got to the kirk door, it was found to be native country a perfect wreck, the victim of re- nailed up, so as by no possibility to be opened. The peated attacks of paralysis; yet he wrote several sergeant of the soldiers wanted to break it, but I was pieces for periodical works, and edited the produc- afraid that the heritors would grudge and complain tions of others. After severe and protracted suffer- of the expense of a new door, and I supplicated him ings, borne with great firmness and patience, Mr to let it be as it was; we were therefore obligated to go Galt died at Greenock on the 11th of April 1839. in by a window, and the crowd followed us in the most Of a long list of our author's works, several are unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an already forgotten. Not a few of his novels, however, inn on a fair day with their grievous yelly-hooing. bid fair to be permanent, and the Annals of the During the time of the psalm and the sermon they beParish' will probably be read as long as Waverley or haved themselves better, but when the induction came Guy Mannering. This inimitable little tale is the on, their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, simple record of a country minister during the fifty the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, got up and years of his incumbency. Besides many amusing protested and said, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, and touching incidents, the work presents us with a he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, picture of the rise and progress of a Scottish rural but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief village, and its transition to a manufacturing town, and a robber.' And I thought I would have a hard as witnessed by the minister, a man as simple as and sore time of it with such an outstrapolous people. Abraham Adams, imbued with all old-fashioned Mr Given, that was then the minister of Lugton, was national feelings and prejudices, but thoroughly sin- & jocose man, and would have his joke even at a cere, kind-hearted, and pious. This Presbyterian solemnity. When the laying of the hands upon me worthy, the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, is a fine repre-his, but he stretched out his staff and touched my was a-doing, he could not get near enough to put on sentative of the primitive Scottish pastor; diligent, blameless, loyal, and exemplary in his life, but without the fiery zeal and kirk-filling eloquence' of the supporters of the Covenant. Micah is easy, garrulous, fond of a quiet joke, and perfectly ignorant of the world. Little things are great to him in his retirement and his simplicity; and thus we find him chronicling, among his memorable events, the arrival of a dancing-master, the planting of a pear-tree, the getting a new bell for the kirk, the first appearance of Punch's Opera in the country-side, and other incidents of a like nature, which he mixes up indiscriminately with the breaking out of the American war, the establishment of manufactures, or the spread of French revolutionary principles. Amidst the quaint humour and shrewd observation of honest Micah are some striking and pathetic incidents. Mrs Malcolm, the widow of a Clyde shipmaster, comes to settle in his village; and being a genty body, calm and methodical,' she brought up her children in a superior manner, and they all get on in the world. One of them becomes a sailor; and there are few more touching narratives in the language than the account of this cheerful gallant-hearted lad, from his first setting off to sea to his death as a midshipman, in an engagement with the French. Taken altogether, this work of Mr Galt's is invaluable for its truth and nature, its quiet unforced humour and pathos, its genuine nationality as a faithful record of Scottish feeling and manners, and its rich felicity of homely antique Scottish phrase and expression, which to his countrymen is perhaps the crowning excellence of the author.

In the following passage the placing of Mr Bal

head, and said, to the great diversion of the rest, "This will do well enough-timber to timber;' but it was an unfriendly saying of Mr Given, considering the time and the place, and the temper of my people.

and it was a heavy day to me; but we went to the After the ceremony we then got out at the window, Mrs Watts of the new inn of Irville prepared at my manse, and there we had an excellent dinner, which request, and sent her chaise-driver to serve, for he was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that not often called for.

But although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility I began a round of visitations; but oh! it was a and therefore the very next morning among them; steep brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart, for I found the doors in some places barred against me; in others, the bairns, when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers, 'Here's the feckless Mess-John;' and then, when I went in into the houses, their parents would not ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way said, Honest man, what's your pleasure here?' Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door, like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous deed of a civil reception, and, who would have thought it, from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day.

Thomas was standing at the door with his green duffle apron and his red Kilmarnock nightcap-I mind him as well as if it was but yesterday and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner, 'Come in, sir, and ease yoursel; this will never do; the clergy are

God's gorbies, and for their master's sake it behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel, but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out of the nest of patronage.' I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together, and I told him that it was not so much the pastor's duty to feed the flock, as to herd them well; and that although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some time, and that if I held to that doctrine in the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change. I was mindit,' quoth he, never to set my foot within the kirk door while you were there; but to testify, and no to condemn without a trial, I'll be there next Lord's day, and egg my neighbours to be likewise, so ye'll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird's family.'

6

nothing can be better than the account of the early struggles of this humble hero-the American sketches of character with which the work abounds-the view it gives of life in the backwoods-or the peculiar freshness and vigour that seem to accompany every scene and every movement of the story. In perception of character and motive, within a certain sphere, Mr Galt stands unrivalled; and he has energy as well as quickness. His taste, however, was very defective; and this, combined with the hurry and uncertainty of his latter days, led him to waste his original powers on subjects unfitted for his pen, and injurious to his reputation. The story of his life is a melancholy one; but his genius was an honour to his country, and merited a better reward.

THOMAS HOPE.

THOMAS HOPE, the author of Anastasius, was one of the merchant princes of England whom commerce had led to opulence, and who repaid the compliment by ennobling his origin and pursuits with taste, munificence, and genius. He was one of three brothers, wealthy merchants in Amsterdam. When a young man, he spent some years in foreign travel, visiting the principal places in Europe, Asia, and Africa. On his return he settled in London, purchased a large house, and a country mansion (Deepdene, near Dorking), and embellished both with drawings, picture galleries, sculpture, amphitheatres for antiques, and all other rare and costly appliances. His appearances as an author arose out of these favourite occupations and studies. In 1805 he published a folio volume of drawings and descriptions, entitled Household Furniture and Decorations. The ambitious style of this work, and the author's devotion to the forms of chairs, sofas, couches, and tables, Review; but the man of taste and virtu triumphed. A more classical and appropriate style of furniture and domestic utensils gained ground; and with Mr Hope rests the honour of having achieved the improvement. Two other splendid publications proceeded from Mr Hope, The Costume of the Ancients (1809), and Designs of Modern Costumes (1812), both works evincing extensive knowledge and curious research. In 1819 Mr Hope burst forth as a novelist of the first order. He had studied human nature as well as architecture and costume, and his early travels had exhibited to him men of various creeds and countries, The result was Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek, written at the Close of the Eighteenth Century, in three volumes. The author's name was not prefixed to the work-as it was given forth as a veritable history but the secret soon became known, and Mr Hope, from being reputed as something like a learned upholsterer, or clever draughtsman, was at once elevated into a rivalry with Byron as a glowing painter of foreign scenery and manners, and with Le Sage and the other masters of the novel, in the art of conducting a fable and delineating character. The author turned from fiction to metaphysics, and composed a work On the Origin and Prospects of Man, which he did not live to see through the press, but which was published after his decease. His cosmogony strange and unorthodox; but amidst his paradoxes, conceits, and abstruse speculations, are many ingenious views and eloquent disquisitions. Mr Hope died on the 3d of February 1831, and probate was granted for £180,000 personal property. Mr Beckford and Vathek' are the only parallels to Mr Hope and Anastasius' in oriental wealth and imagination.

The Ayrshire Legatees' is a story of the same cast as the Annals, and describes (chiefly by means of correspondence) the adventures of another country minister and his family on a journey to London to obtain a rich legacy left him by a cousin in India. The Provost' is another portraiture of Scottish life, illustrative of the jealousies, contentions, local improvements, and jobbery of a small burgh in the olden time. Some of the descriptions in this work are very powerfully written. Sir Andrew Wylie' and The Entail' are more regular and ambitious performances, treble the length of the others, but not so carefully finished. The pawkie Ayrshire baronet is humorous, but not very natural. The character of Leddy Grippy in The Entail' was a prodigious favourite with Byron. Both Scott and Byron, it is said, read this novel three times over-provoked a witty piece of ridicule in the Edinburgh no slight testimony to its merits. We should be disposed, however, to give the preference to another of Mr Galt's three-volume fictions, Lawrie Todd, or the Settlers,' a work which seems to have no parallel, since Defoe, for apparent reality, knowledge of human nature, and fertility of invention. The history of a real individual, a man named Grant Thorburn, supplied the author with part of his incidents, as the story of Alexander Selkirk did Defoe; but the mind and the experience of Galt are stamped on almost every page. In his former productions our author wrought with his recollections of the Scotland of his youth; the mingled worth, simplicity, pawkiness, and enthusiasm which he had seen or heard of as he loitered about Irvine or Greenock, or conversed with the country sires and matrons; but in 'Lawrie Todd' we have the fruit of his observations in the New World, presenting an entirely different and original phase of the Scottish character. Lawrie is by trade a nailmaker, who emigrates with his brother to America, and their stock of worldly goods and riches, on arriving at New York, consisted of about five shillings in money, and an old chest containing some articles of dress and other necessaries. Lawrie works hard at the nailmaking, marries a pious and industrious maiden (who soon dies), and in time becomes master of a grocer's shop, which he exchanges for the business of a seedsman. The latter is a bad affair, and Lawrie is compelled to sell all off, and begin the world again. He removes with his family to the backwoods, and once more is prosperous. He clears, builds, purchases land, and speculates to great advantage, till he is at length enabled to return to Scotland in some style, and visit the place of his nativity. This Scottish jaunt is a blemish in the work, for the incidents and descriptions are ridiculously exaggerated; but

'Anastasius' is one of the most original and dazzling of modern romances. The hero is, like Zeluco,

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

THOMAS HOPE.

ing, still so fresh, so erect on its stalk, at mid-day hung its heavy head, discoloured, wan, and fading but so frequently had the billows, during the fury o. the storm, drenched my boy's little crib, that I could not wonder he should have felt their effects in a severe cold. I put him to bed, and tried to hush him t sleep. Soon, however, his face grew flushed, and hi pulse became feverish. I failed alike in my endea ment: but, though playthings were repulsed, and tales no longer attended to, still he could not bea vours to procure him repose and to afford him amuse me an instant out of his sight; nor would he take anything except at my hands. Even when-as too soon it did-his reason began to wander, his filial affection retained its pristine hold of his heart. It had grown into an adoration of his equally doting father; and the mere consciousness of my presence seemed to relieve his uneasiness.

been those of such exceeding happiness, I should not Had not my feelings, a few moments only before, so soon perhaps have conceived great alarm; but I of joy followed by some unforeseen calamity; and my had throughout life found every extraordinary burst exultation had just risen to so unusual a pitch, that a deep dismay now at once struck me to the heart. I felt convinced that I had only been carried to so high a pinnacle of joy, in order to be hurled with greater ruin into an abyss of wo. Such became my anxiety to reach Trieste, and to obtain the best medical assist

a villain spoiled by early indulgence; he becomes a renegade to his faith, a mercenary, a robber, and an assassin; but the elements of a better nature are sown in his composition, and break forth at times. He is a native of Chios, the son of Greek parents. To avoid the consequences of an amour with Helena, the consul's daughter, he runs off to sea in a Venetian vessel, which is boarded by pirates and captured. The pirates are in turn taken by a Turkish frigate, and carried before Hassan Pasha. Anastasius is released, fights with the Turks in the war against the Araonoots, and accompanies the Greek drogueman to Constantinople. Disgrace and beggary reduce him to various shifts and adventures. He follows a Jew quack doctor selling nostrums-is thrown into the Bagnio, or state prison-afterwards embraces the Turkish faith-revisits Greece-proceeds to Egypt-and subsequently ranges over Arabia, and visits Malta, Sicily, and Italy. His intrigues, adventures, sufferings, &c. are innumerable. Every aspect of Greek and Turkish society is depicted-sarcasm, piquant allusion, pathos and passion, and descriptions of scenery, are strangely intermingled in the narative. Wit, epigram, and the glitter of rhetorical amplification, occupy too much space; but the scene is constantly shifting, and the work possesses the truth and accuracy of a book of travels joined to those of a romance. too, is a thorough man of the world, has a keen inThe traveller, sight into human weaknesses and foibles, and de-ance, that even while the ship continued to cleave scribes his adventures and impressions without hypo- the waves like an arrow, I fancied it lay like a log crisy or reserve. those in which pathos is predominant-such as the the breeze, dying away, really left our keel motionless The most powerful passages are when, as if in resentment of my unjust complaints, upon the main. How, then, did my pangs increase scenes with Euphrosyne, whom Anastasius has basely violated-his sensations on revisiting Greece and the tomb of Helena-his reflections on witnesson the waters! My anguish baffled all expression. ing the dead Araonoot soldier whom he had slain the horrors of the plague and famine-and, above all, the account of the death of Alexis, the child of Anastasius, and in whom were centred the only remains of his human affection, his love and hope. The gradual decay of this youth, and the intense anxiety and watchfulness of his father, constitute a scene of genuine grief and tenderness. the craft and villany of Anastasius, thus humbled We forget and prostrate. His wild gaiety and heartless jests, his degeneracy and sensualism, have passed away. They had palled upon himself, but one spring of pure affection remained to redeem his nature; and it is not without the strongest pity and kindred commiseration that we see the desperate adventurer reduced to loneliness and heartbroken despair. The scene is introduced by an account of his recovering his lost son in Egypt, and carrying him off to Europe :

My cousin's letter had promised me a brilliant lot, and-what was better-my own pockets insured me a decent competence. The refinements of a European education should add every external elegance to my boy's innate excellence, and, having myself moderately enjoyed the good things of this world, while striving to deserve the better promised in the next, I should, ere my friends became tired of my dotage, resign my last breath in the arms of my child.

The blue sky seemed to smile upon my cheerful thoughts, and the green wave to murmur approbation of my plan. Almighty God! what was there in it 80 heinous to deserve that an inexorable fate should cast it to the winds?

In the midst of my dream of happiness, my eye fell upon the darling object in which centred all its sweets. Insensibly my child's prattle had diminished, and had at last subsided in an unusual silence. I thought he looked pale; his eyes seemed heavy, and his lips felt parched. The rose, that every morn

except from the need I stood in of their aid: for,
In truth I do not know how I preserved my senses,
the sun ever found us, on rising, in the same place
where it had left us on setting, my child-my dar
while we lay cursed with absolute immobility, and
ling child-was every instant growing worse, and
sinking apace under the pressure of illness. To the
deep and flushing glow of a complexion far exceeding
in its transient brilliancy even the brightest hues of
paleness. His eye, whose round full orb was wont
health, had succeeded a settled, unchanging, deadly
to beam upon me with mild but fervent radiance,
half closed; and when, roused by my address, the
idol of my heart strove to raise his languid look, and
now dim and wandering, for the most part remained
to meet the fearful inquiries of mine, he only showed
all the former fire of his countenance extinct. In the
more violent bursts, indeed, of his unceasing delirium,
his wasting features sometimes acquired a fresh but
sad expression. He would then start up, and with
ling down his faded cheeks, beg in the most moving
his feeble hands clasped together, and big tears rol-
seemed absorbed in inward musings, and, no longer
taking note of the passing hour, he frequently during
terms to be restored to his home: but mostly he
the course of the day moved his pallid lips, as if re-
peating to himself the little prayer which he had been
wont to say at bed-time and at rising, and the bless-
ings I had taught him to add, addressed to his
him thus, and doubly agonized to think that I alone
had been the cause I burst out into tears which I
mother on behalf of his father. If-wretched to see
strove to hide, his perception of outward objects.
seemed all at once for a moment to return. He asked
and feeble as he was, he could not yet nurse me as he
wished; but promised me better care when he should
me whether I was hurt, and would lament that, young
grow stronger.

rolled on, without any progress in our voyage, while
all I had left to do was to sit doubled over my child's
In this way hour after hour and day after day

593

80

Lest he might feel ill at ease in my lap, I laid him down upon my cloak, and kneeled by his side to watch the growing change in his features. The present now was all to me: the future I knew I no longer should reck. Feeling my breath close to his cheek, he half opened his eyes, looked as if after a long absence again suddenly recognising his father, andputting out his little mouth-seemed to crave one last token of love. The temptation was too powerful: I gently pressed my lip upon that of my babe, and gathered from it the proffered kiss. Life's last faint spark was just going forth, and I caught it on the threshold. Scarce had I drawn back my face, when all respiration ceased. His eye-strings broke, his features fell, and his limbs stiffened for ever. All was over: Alexis was no more.