We have long been tired of the eter nal tameness and insipidity which are the prevailing characteristics of works of fiction in the present day. The poor novel-writers are evidently at their wits' end, and, to use a Scotch phrase, have already gone to the full length of their tether. Time was, that when stretched on our comfortable sofa, with a dish of Mocha, and a new novel, we were as happy as Sir William Curtis with punch and turtle. Now, though we still lounge and sip coffee, the novel forms no longer an item in our catalogue of pleasurable appliances. We can derive no amusement from a mere dull rifacciamento of old incidents dressed up in holiday finery for the nonce of republication by Mr Colburn. We are sick to death of the eternal remodelling of antiquated common-places; of the incessant outpouring of one vessel into another; the tame resuscitation of feeble and everyday characters; the persevering endeavour to concoct new mixtures from old ingredients,-ending, as all such attempts must end-in lamentable failure. There really appears as if there were something in novel-writing which numbs the faculties, and paralyses the energies of ordinary minds. We have thousands of first rate men in the country, poets, philo sophers, political economists, magazine-contributors, historians, news paper-reporters, and metaphysicians. Now, take these men each in their own particular department, read their historical, or metaphysical, or political treatises, their police reports, their essays, critical and moral, their poetry, and ten to one you will find them all respectable-some more than respectable-in point of talent. But strange to say, let any of these lights of the age sit down to indite a novel, and a change is at once wrought in the whole character of his intellect; his faculties desert him in his utmost need, and he sinks at once into a driveller. Where, for instance, will you

meet at a venture with three more ta lented and promising individuals than Lord Normanby, Mr Lister, and Mr Robert Ward? They are quite the sort of men one would wish to meet at a dinner party any day in the week; clever, personable, well dressed, and well bred; amiable in their domestic relations, pleasant travelling companions, chatty in a post chaise, and condescendingly communicative in the mail; good shots and quadrillers, far from despicable at Ecarté, and able, with some cramming, to accomplish a tolerable speech in the House of Commons. We appeal to any one if we have here overstated their merits, or whether, in the catalogue of these gentlemen's pretensions, one item could conscientiously be omitted. Yet take them as novel-writers, and they display a lamentable want of all imagin ative power. How utterly stale, flat, and unprofitable, (to any at least but the author and bookseller,) is the matter of their fictions! They present us with no new and vigorous creations; they give utterance to no thoughts which bear the stamp of power and originality; all is tame, drowsy, unimpassioned and monotonous. They describe not men but manners; the manners too, not of large bodies of so ciety, but of a particular coterie, insignificant in everything but the rank and wealth of its members. Their motto uniformly is, "La sauce vaut mieux que le poisson." In their eyes the value is not in the matter, but in the cookery, and such hashing and rehashing, such mingling of fashionable condiments to disguise the staleness of their materials, as they are com pelled to employ, it is altogether marvellous to contemplate.

It is but justice to observe, however, that many of the faults we have noticed, are faults as much of the system as of its individual supporters. Luckily for Mr Colburn there is a rage among vulgar people and vulgar people form the great majority of the reading pub

is only by a story skilfully constructed and happily adapted to the purposes it is intended to effect, that this knowledge in its fullest extent can be imparted. In other words, it is an Eastern novel alone which can be made the vehicle of such interesting but minute information, as can lead us to any intimate communion with nations differing so widely from ourselves in everything of thought or circumstance, principle or observance.

Had works of this sort formed any portion of the scanty but precious relics of ancient Greece, how vast would be our increase of knowledge on all those points, which at present admit only of the vague conjectures of the antiquarian! Nay, did we possess but one single story of Athenian fiction, in how great a degree would not the history, the philosophy, the poetry, of the most glorious and interesting era recorded in the annals of mankind, have been illustrated and explained! How many doubts would at once be removed, how many false conjectures corrected, how many erroneous conclusions set at nought? As it is, of much which it would be most interesting to know, of the habitudes and modes of thought of a people whose productions have modelled the taste, and ennobled the imagination, of all succeeding generations, we are, and must continue ignorant. Through a medium always obscure, and frequently fallacious, we can view them only as a whole, in their collective and external relations, while all the minuter features which would have lent beauty and accuracy to the picture, must remain without the scope of our observation.

It has been said that knowledge is power, and it is true; but surely it is no less so, that knowledge is pleasure; nor, of all the modifications of pleasure, of which our nature is susceptible, is that the least noble and enduring, which is derived from works in which instruction is united to the highest excitement of the imagination, and of all the best and deepest sympathies of the human heart. Such a work is Anastasius; one of the proud est and most successfulefforts of contemporary genius, which at once raised its author, previously known only as a dilettante dissertator on chairs, chimney-pieces, and chaises longues, to the very foremost rank of literary distinction. We confess we know of no

gree of principle and feeling somewhat greater, which, we trust, would not have injured the truth of the delinea

tion.

Altogether, however, the book is clever and amusing, and the manners of the different classes of society in Persia are painted with a graceful felicity of touch, which bears abundant evidence of the skill of the artist. All occasions of deep feeling he avoids, and even when they naturally occur in the course of the narrative, they are slurred over in a manner which shews pretty strongly, that the forte of the author does not lie in the pathetic.

Between these two works-below Anastasius, but, in all respects, above Hajji Baba-would we place the Adventures of a Kuzzilbash. It is a work of great talent and originality; full of vivid and vigorous description and spirit-stirring adventure, of perilous escapes by flood and field, of broil and battle, of human passion and human crime.

The word Kuzzilbash, or Redhead, as our readers know-or, more probably, as they do not know-is employed in the present day to designate a Persian soldier, though in former times it was exclusively applied to seven tribes, who, in the reign of Shah Ismael the first, formed a sort of body-guard to their monarch, and were bound by covenant to defend the Sheah faith against the accursed followers of Omar. The hero, whose adventures form the staple of the work, is represented as of distinguished lineage, being the son of a chief of the tribe of Affshar, which occupies a small district in the province of Khorasan. His respectable father, we are informed, was a person of truly moderate desires, and contented with a very limited exercise of the privileges of a polygamist. He had only two wives, of whom the mother of our hero was the favourite. Ismael -for in such name does he rejoice was not born for several years after their union, and his birth was not unaccompanied by fearful omens. His mother, having fallen asleep one day after coming out of the bath, is visited by a dream of fearful import, which is afterwards fully realized in the misfortunes of the family, and the perils by which the life of her son is assailed. The worthy matron is slowly recovering from her accouchement,

having had, what in Scottish phrase is called, " a sair time o't," when she is visited by Roushun-u-deen Sheikh Allee Calunder, a dervish equally cele brated for his profound wisdom, his unrivalled sanctity, and the impenetrable mystery which hung over his character, and the habits of his life. As this personage plays rather a striking part in the story, it may be as well to allow the author to shadow, forth his character and attributes.

"The Sheikh was believed to be a native of India, a land fertile in magicians and necromancers, as well as in saints and sages; but though the person and extraordinary attributes of this holy man were well known in Persia, and throughout all the east, no one in all these countries could, give any account either of his family, the place of his birth, his age, or even of the way in which he lived and moved from

place to place. Strange tales were told of his age, and of the power he possessed of transporting himself to great distances in an incredibly short time :-his appearance was that of a man in the prime of life, yet he had been known to speak of periods and events of very remote occurrence, as from his own knowledge, so that those who heard him were constrained to believe that his mortal span had been preternaturally extended. He was never seen to partake either of meat or drink, and a comparison of dates between travellers in countries widely distant, who each had met with this extraordinary person, reduced them to the perplexing dilemma of attributing to him the power of ubiquity, or of a miraculously rapid locomotion.

"The Sheikh was believed to profess the tenets of that sect of religious sceptics called Sooffees; but the rigid austerity and self-denial of his life, its blameless tenor, and the power of his eloquence in the the sublimer doctrines of their religion, all mosques, when preaching to the people on caused him to be looked upon as a worthy pillar of Islamism;-even the priests and Moollahs of the most celebrated shrines, though they hated and feared him for his extraordinary influence and endowments, did not dare to deny his claims to supereminent piety.

But the Sheikh possessed other and more powerful holds on the minds of the people at large. Intimately acquainted with the motions of the heavenly bodies,

and their powers over and sympathies with the animal and vegetable worlds, he was a profound astrologer; he surpassed Aristotle as a philosopher, and Avicenna or Hippocrates in medical skill. The unerring certainty of his predictions, and the accuracy with which he decided upon lucky hours and minutes, together with the mystery in

which much of his life and actions were shrouded, while they raised him almost to the rank of a prophet in popular estimation, caused him also to be regarded in some de gree as a magician, and one possessing power over the genii and spirits of the ele ments-what wonder then, that my mother's excited imagination should hail the arrival of such a person, at such a moment, as a special interposition of destiny? Men of such holy stamp have always free access to every part of the household; and woe to that husband, father, or official, who should in any way impede the progress, or oppose the will, of Sheikh Allee Calunder!

"On being informed, by an attendant, of the pregnant lady's wish to see and converse with him, the Sheikh solemnly, and even mournfully, pronounced his blessing. "Peace be with thy lady, so long as heaven wills it! the cares of her soul are known to me, and I come to soothe them; lead me straightway to her presence!' So saying, he followed the slave to my mother's apartment.

"The Sheikh, it has already been said, appeared to be a man in his prime; scarce did he seem to have numbered thirty winters :—his hair, grown to immense length and thickness, was plaited and wreathed around his head like a lofty turban, and partially sprinkled with ashes; a few feathers of a pheasant, with a branch of the Arabian jasmine, were stuck fancifully on one side; two full, piercing, and deep-seated eyes, blazed from under brows of intense thought, above which rose his high and noble forehead; a finely formed and aquiline nose gave dignity to his face, naturally of a graceful oval, but which now, thin and care-worn, betokened the austerities of penance and abstinence; a large and handsome beard hung in undulating curls around his cheeks, and half concealed a mouth, which could fascinate by the sweetness of its smile, or add terror to the dark frown of the brow.

"The figure of the Sheikh was in harmony with his countenance: lofty, graceful, and nervous, it bespoke the power of the mind that animated, yet seemed to prey upon it; for his frame was wasted almost to emaciation. A tattered mantle, of various colours, formed but a scanty covering to the upper part of his body; a thin strip of cloth was wound around his loins; the skin of a tiger hung over his shoulders; on his feet he wore the wooden slippers common to dervishes; and in his hand he bore a stick of ebony, with a crooked crutchlike handle, on which, when seated in meditation, he could rest his arm, and to which many people attributed much of his supposed magical power.

"The Sheikh, as he entered the room, at the upper end of which my mother was seated upon a cushion, solemnly uttered

the salutation of peace, in the name of God and his prophet; and seating himself opposite to her, remained for more than a minute bending his keen eyes mournfully on her countenance. No one ventured to interrupt this silence, till the Dervish himself at length spoke as follows:-' Daughter! the angels of good and of evil are alike the messengers of Allah, and both must be received with meekness and humility; learn, then, to bend with resignation to his will, that the blessings which his goodness bestows may not elevate thee unduly, nor the sorrows he permits to assail thee in this vale of tears weigh too heavily on thy soul. Thou hast dreamed a dream, which indeed has in part imaged to thy sleeping mind the future destiny of thyself and of thy offspring. Thy soul shall be gladdened by the birth of a son, but thy joy shall not long endure. He will be lost to thee before his youthful energies have attained maturity; many perils, much of adversity and various adventure, shall he experience, but it will be to surmount them all; for more of good than of evil fortune is written on his forehead, and his star shines brightly though it be environed with many baleful influences! But here the veil is dropt, and Heaven, in mercy to its creatures, denies the dangerous gratification of perfect foreknowledge. Be satisfied then, my daughter, with the promised good fortune of thy son, and seek no farther to pry into his destiny or thy own: be sure that, if thou dost, evil will result from the attempt. My task is now ended, and, for the present, thou seest me no more. May God protect thee!' So saying, the Sheikh arose, and quitted the apartment slowly as he had entered it, leaving all who had witnessed this extraordinary interview too much bewildered to think of stopping, or even addressing him: and whether the attendants without had held careless watch was never known, but none of them observed the Sheikh quit the fort, or even the village, nor was he heard of any more at this period."

The lady, as might be expected, disregards the positive injunctions of this formidable person, and determines still further to gratify her curiosity, by applying to a neighbouring astrologer for such information as he can afford with regard to the future destiny of her son. But the astrologer confesses himself at fault; he is ruled by a higher influence, and can tell nothing which the mother of Ismael is at all desirous of hearing. She is again visited, however, by the Dervish, who thunders forth a dreadful denunciation on her rashness and obstinacy, and departs. Shortly after, the town is attacked by the Toorko