and the daughter,-confiding his passion for the child to the ear of the parent, who is tortured by secret jealousy, and at last discovering that his truest love has all along been given to the elder lady, whom he marries in the sequel-this is not a pleasing picture, and in hands less able would have been simply repulsive.

Beatrix is a specimen of a type of female character repeatedly introduced by Mr. Thackeray. It is a mistake to say, however, that she is merely Becky in silver-clocked stockings, high-heeled shoes, and surmounted by some one of those ever-changing head-dresses which Addison declared the most variable thing in nature, having risen and fallen within his own memory above thirty degrees. Becky, Blanche Amory, and Beatrix, are distinct species of one peculiar genus. The pliant meannesses of Becky, and the hypocritical sentimentalism of Blanche, would have been alike impossible to the proud, cold-hearted, audacious Beatrix. This most faulty character is drawn faultlessly. The scene in which she is counselled by the family to leave the dangerous vicinity of the prince, and confronts them all in turn with a spirit and an art that remind us of Vittoria Corombona, is one of the most masterly Mr. Thackeray has imagined. It is much to be regretted that our author, either from inadequate acquaintance, or some radical misogynism, should persist in representing women almost exclusively under two aspects either as heartless, if possessed of brains; or else as defective in understanding and in action, if rich in the warm and generous endowments of the heart. Mr. Thackeray seems to fear that the mean is rare between the henpecked husband and the tyrant. He appears to have sought in vain, in the other sex, for a combination of amiable and energetic qualities, of goodness and of talent. For our part, we hold a happier creed on this matter. But we shall say no more, lest that wicked sceptic we review should be malicious enough to suspect that we reviewers are domestically reviewed, and have been put up by our womankind to assume the cudgels in their defence, on pain of being asked 'what we call ourselves?'

We are sorry to see Mr. Thackeray speaking with the levity he

does of the youthful vices of Frank Castlewood. He says he is not going to play the moralist, and cry 'Fie!' But excesses, among which (if some hints do not mislead us) seduction must be numbered, are not surely to be thus lightly treated. The author has forgotten himself for a moment. It was very different in his last novel. Surely he will not himself adopt the ethical code of Major Pendennis. He kept Pen, with all his follies, pure from such contamination. In a passage where we seem to hear the author in propriâ personâ, Esmond should be made not less true in his sense of purity than was the biographer of Arthur Pendennis. No doubt that age was less strict in language and in practice. Yet this fact would justify no one in writing a novel with a moral no better than that of Tom Jones. It is possible to indicate the temperament of an age in this respect, without seeming to share or to approve its maxims. The extinction of Frank in matrimony is highly amusing, and meant, it may be, as a kind of poetical justice. Hear Beatrix describe the manœuvre in her lively way :

:

"I made that onslaught on the priests, in order to divert my poor dear mother's anguish about Frank. Frank is as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls being vain, what are we to you? It was easy to see that the first woman who chose would make a fool of him, or the first robe-I count a priest and a woman all the same. We are always caballing; we are not answerable for the fibs we tell; we are always cajoling and coaxing, or threatening; and we are always making mischief, Colonel Esmond-mark my word for that, who know the world, sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how Frank's marriage hath been managed. The count, our papa-in-law, is always away at the coffee-house. The countess, our mother, is always in the kitchen looking after the dinner. The countess, our sister, is at the spinet. When my lord comes to say he is going on the campaign, the lovely Clotilda bursts into tears, and faints so; he catches her in his arms-no, sir, keep your distance, cousin, if you please-she cries on his shoulder, and he says, 'O, my divine, my adored, my beloved Clotilda, are you sorry to part with me?' 'O, my Francisco,' says she, 'O, my lord!' and at this very instant mamma and a couple of young brothers, with mustachios and long rapiers, come in from the kitchen, where they have been eating bread and onions. Mark my word, you will have all this woman's relations at Castlewood three months after she has arrived there. The old count and countess, and the young counts, and all the

little countesses her sisters. Counts! every one of these wretches says he is a count. Guiscard, that stabbed Mr. Harvey, said he was a count; and I believe he was a barber. All Frenchmen are barbers-fiddle-dee! don't contradict me -or else dancing masters, or else priests;' and so she rattled on.'

Lord Castlewood is a life-like figure, a fair sample of the fuddled, fox-hunting, cock-fighting, spendthrift, good-hearted, high-spirited squire or noble in the so-called good old times. The family group which occupies the first volume possesses a charm and mournful interest which deepens into pathos at the close, when poor Castlewood dies more nobly than he had lived. The dowager Viscountess Esmond, with her half-French jargon, her rouge and cards, her love of priests and politics, of intrigue and of King James, her reminiscences of by-gone gallantry, is a sketch executed con amore by Mr. Thackeray. She talks in this style :

'And she has shut her door on you-given the living to that horrid young cub, son of that horrid old bear, Tusher, and says she will never see you more. Monsieur mon neveu-we are all like that. When I was a young

woman, I'm positive that a thousand duels were fought about me. And when poor Monsieur de Souchy drowned himself in the canal at Bruges, because I danced with Count Springbock, I couldn't squeeze out a single tear, but danced till five o'clock the next morning. 'Twas the Count-no, 'twas my Lord Ormond that played the fiddles, and his Majesty did me the honour of dancing all night with me. How you are grown! You have got the bel air. You are a black man. Our Esmonds are all black. The little prude's son is fair; so was his father fair and stupid. You were an ugly little wretch when you came to Castlewood-you were all eyes, like a young crow. We intended you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt-how he used to frighten me when I was ill! I have a comfortable director now-the Abbé Douillete-a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays always. My cook is a devout, pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of Orange is very ill indeed.'

As to the historical personages, we have a vera effigies of that thorough Stuart, Prince James, who is well introduced in the third volume, unworthy, as were all his house, of that high-souled infatuation which would have served him with success could he have

served himself. Swift appears in a single scene, insolent and brutal, stalks off with his Irish porter, and we see him no more.

Marlborough receives hard measure, as he deserves. Mr. Thackeray's estimate of his character is given in a powerfully written passage, exhibiting, in the strongest relief, the strange contrasts of a nature whose memory is associated with so much obloquy and so much renown. The secrets of poor Steele's domestic life are opened to us, and we behold him tippling and henpecked. It is touching to see him filled with such reverence for Addison, without a particle of respect for himself.

This novel, true to the character of Esmond, is serious throughout-presenting scarcely a vestige of that comic element which sparkles at intervals in the other productions of the author. The dénouement is unpleasing. Esmond is the worst in plot and best in expression of all Mr. Thackeray's writings. Female character is even less charitably treated than in former fictions. Mr. Thack

eray's portraits are like daguerreotypes, which never represent the faces of men in their most favourable aspect, but are almost invariably unjust to women, owing to the undue strength of shadow. In spite of these faults, the book will win and will retain the attention of the thoughtful by its instructive exhibitions of the pathology of the heart, by many a grave lesson eloquently uttered, -will endear itself to every reader of taste by an indescribable charm, and will probably survive in our literature almost every similar work of its time.

Was it not in this,

Baumgarten's 'Acts of the Apostles,' &c. German Theology. 'WHAT are the bells ringing for?' asked a man one day of an Irishman he met. Quoth the Hibernian, Faith, and it's only a singing in me ears that I'm troubled with.' Now let the reader gravely mark wherein Pat's mistake consisted. that he inferred the objective from the subjective? Impressions which had their reality only in his own consciousness, he transferred to the consciousness of others. His individual auditory experience was assumed as the normal and universal one. A similar misconception has prevailed but too extensively, both in the philo

sophy and the theology of Germany. The sage pronounces concerning the harmonies of the universe as though they were but the echoes of the sounds which chime in the belfry of his solitary brain. The discord of the upper and lower worlds-the perplexing interaction of the great antagonisms of existence is to be reconciled in reality on the principle by which his own imagination sets the rivals at one again. He states their quarrel for them; he commands peace. Like mine host of the Garter' appeasing Parson Evans and Doctor Caius, he cries magniloquently, 'Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so:-Give me thy hand, celestial; so:-' and every Justice Shallow says, 'Follow, gentlemen, follow.'

Germany has followed' her philosophers long, to little purpose. We have been happy to observe of late some signs of a disposition to draw back and take another course. Sancho begins to doubt whether his Don Quixote will ever be able really to present him with the island so often promised. A more practical tendency has assumed the ascendant. Even philosophical theologians have learnt to recognise in this excessive subjectivity a fundamental error-to look more duly at facts, less complacently at ideas. On the subjective principle the scientific divine starts with the axiom-I, as a Christian, am myself the material of systematic theology. He evolves his theology, like his metaphysics, out of himself. Christianity becomes, accordingly, either so much mere feeling, or so much mere metaphysical and ethical process. This method has been fairly tried. Its validity has at last been called in question. It has been virtually, if not formally, abandoned by some names of no mean mark in the theological world of Germany. The fact is significant, that the same year which produced the able work before us, witnessed also the publication of a systematic theology by Hofmann, which arrives at results the very opposite of those of Schleiermacher, and is almost everywhere right where he is wrong.*

* The reader of German is referred to a discriminating review of this important work in the Theol. Studien und Kritiken.

VOL. II.

Y