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its captivity-'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient; I fear, poor creature, said I, I can not set thee at liberty. 'No,' said the starling, 'I can't get out; I can't get out,' said the starling. I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirit, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked up stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change; no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or ehemic power turn thy sceptre into iron: with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which rises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice; his children-but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the further corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed: a little calender of small sticks lay at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh; I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

CHARLES JOHNSTONE, the period of whose birth is not known, was born in Ireland, and bred to the bar; but a severe obstruction of his hearing compelled him to abandon that profession. After some delay and irresolution, he finally resolved to turn his attention to literature; and, in 1760, ap

peared his first novel, under the title of The Adventures of a Guinea. The work was so wonderfully popular, that in less than a year from its first publication, a third edition was called for. It exhibits a variety of incidents, related in the style of Le Sage and Smollett, but the satirical portraits are overcharged, and the author was too fond of lashing and exaggerating the vices of his age. One of the critics of the novel says, 'it leads us along all the gloomy, and foul, and noisome passages of life, and we escape from it with the feeling of relief with which we would emerge from a vault in which the air was loaded with noisome vapors.'

Johnstone wrote several other novels of a similar description to 'The Adventures,' among which were The Reverie, or a Flight to the Paradise of Fools, and The Pilgrim, or a Picture of Life; but they are now all utterly forgotten. In 1782, the author went to India, became proprietor of a Bengal newspaper, and died there, in 1800.

HORACE WALPOLE, the author of The Castle of Otranto, was the third son of Sir Robert Walpole, and was born in 1717. In the seventeenth year of his age, he entered King's College, Cambridge, and soon after distinguished himself by his elegant verses in honor of Henry the Sixth, the founder of Eton school. Under the patronage of his father, who was prime minister, he obtained, in 1738, the office of inspector of exports and imports, which he afterwards exchanged for that of usher to the exchequer, with which he held the place of comptroller of the pipe, and of clerk of the escheats in the exchequer for life-appointments which yielded him annually, nearly five thousand pounds. In 1739, he received permission to travel on the continent, and, accompanied by Gray, he made the tour of France and Italy; but the dispute at Reggio, to which we have already alluded, separated them for a time, though their intimacy, to the honor of both, was renewed, in 1744.

On his return to England in 1741, Walpole was elected a member of parliament; but though he sat in the house over twenty-five years, he never distinguished himself as a speaker, except in his famous defence of his father, which occurred in the very commencement of his parliamentary career. On resigning his seat in the house, he retired to his favorite estate at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, which he had purchased in 1747, and which, from year to year, he afterwards tastefully adorned with all the striking features of Gothic times. In this charming spot the literary hermit established, in 1757, a printing-press, where he published, first the two sublime odes of his friend Gray, and afterwards edited other works in an elegant and highly finished manner. On the death of his nephew, in 1791, Walpole became Earl of Oxford, but elevation of rank had no charms for him. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and with reluctance submitted to the adulation of his friends, on assuming an empty title, which he contemptuously called a new name for a superanuated old man of seventy-four.

In his manners, Lord Oxford was polite and even facetious; and as a man

of letters, he was distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his information. In his sentiments he was lively and intelligent, and in his perceptions, clear and acute. If avarice and vanity were, according to one of his biographers, his leading foibles, an affable and social temper were his counteracting virtues. He was of a benignant and charitable disposition, though not a liberal patron. The death of this distinguished man occurred on the second of March, 1797, at the advanced age of eighty.

The Castle of Otranto,' published in 1764, is the only one of Walpole's works that connects his name with the novel writers of this period. It at first appeared anonymously, as a work found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England, and printed at Naples in the black letter, in 1529. 'I wished it to be believed ancient,' he said, ' and almost every body was imposed upon. The tale was so well received by the public, that a second edition was soon called for, to which the author prefixed his name. Though designed to blend the ancient romance, in which all was imagination and improbability, with the modern, in which nature is copied, the peculiar taste of Walpole, who loved to 'gaze on Gothic toys through Gothic glass,' and the nature of his subject, led him to give the preponderance to the antique. The particulars in which he has improved on the incredible and mysterious, are the dialogues and style, which are pure and dramatic in effect, and the more delicate and picturesque tone which he has given to chivalrous manners.

Walpole would, however, hold but an insignificant place in English literature if his reputation depended on 'The Castle of Otranto.' His Correspondence and Memoirs, those pictures of society and manners, compounded of wit and gayety, shrewd observation, sarcasm, high life, and sparkling language, place him in a high position among the literary men of his age. In 1758, appeared his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, and three years after, his Anecdotes of Painting in England. In 1767, he published his Historic Doubts as to the character and person of Richard the Third; besides which he left for publication Memoirs of the Court of George the Second, and a large collection of copies of his letters. As his letters are generally considered his best performances, we quote the following as a specimen.

TO SIR HORACE MANN, 1750.

LONDON EARTHQUAKES AND LONDON GOSSIP.

Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent,
That they have lost their name.-Dryden.

My text is not literally true; but as far as earthquakes go towards lowering the price of wonderful commodities, to be sure we are overstocked. We have had a second, much more violent than the first; and you must not be surprised if, by next post, you hear of a burning mountain sprung up in Smithfield. In the night between Wednesday and Thursday last (exactly a month since the first shock), the earth had a shivering fit between one and two, but so slight, that, if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been

awake, and had scarce dozed again,—on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses in an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people running into the streets, but saw no mischief done: there has been some; two old houses flung down, several chimneys, and much china-ware. The bells rung in several houses. Admiral Knowles, who has lived long in Jamaica, and felt seven there, says this was more violent than any of them: Francisco prefers it to the dreadful one at Leghorn. The wise say, that if we have not rain soon, we shall certainly have more. Several people are going out of town, for it has nowhere reached above ten miles from London: they say they are not frightened, but that it is such fine weather, 'Lord! one can't help going into the country! The only visible effect it has had was on the Ridotto, at which, being the following night, there were but four hundred people. A person who came into White's the morning of earthquake the first, and heard bets laid on whether it was an earthquake or the blowing up of powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, 'I protest they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show against judgment.' If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati or orange-flower water; I am already planing a terreno for Strawberry Hill.

The Middlesex election is carried against the court: the Prince is in a green frock (and I won't swear, but in a Scotch plaid waistcoat), sat under the park wall in his chair, and hallooed the voters on the Brentford. The Jacobites are so transported, that they are opening subscriptions for all boroughs that shall be vacant-this is wise! They will spend their money to carry a few more seats in a Parliament where they will never have the majority, and so have none to carry the general elections. The omen, however, is bad for Westminster; the high-bailiff went to vote for the opposition.

I now jump to another topic; I find all this letter will be detached scraps; I can't at all contrive to hide the seams. But I don't care. I began my letter merely to tell you of the earthquake, and I don't pique myself upon doing any more than telling you what you would be glad to have told you. I told you, too, how pleased I was with the triumphs of another old beauty, our friend the princess. Do you know, I have found a history that has great resemblance to hers; that is, that be very like hers, if hers is but like it. I will tell it you in as few words as I can. Madam la Marechale de l'Hôpital was the daughter of a sempstress; a young gentleman fell in love with her, and was going to be married to her, but the match was broken off. An old fermier-general, who had retired into the province where this happened, hearing the story, had a curiosity to see the victim; he liked her, married her, died, and left her enough not to care for her inconstant. She came to Paris, where the Marechal de l'Hôpital married her for her riches. After the Marechal's death, Cassimir, the abdicated king of Poland, who was retired into France, fell in love with the Marechale, and privately married her. If the event ever happens, I shall certainly travel to Nancy, to hear her talk of ma belle fille la Reine de France. What pains my Lady Pomfret would take to prove that an abdicated king's wife did not take precedence of an English countess; and how the princess herself would grow still fonder of the Pretender for the similitude of his fortune with that of le Roi mon mari! Her daughter, Mirepoix, was frightened the other night with Mrs. Nugent's calling out, un voleur! un voleur! The ambassadress had heard so much of rob bing, she did not doubt but dans ce pays cy, they robbed in the middle of an assembly. It turned out to be a thief in the candle! Good night!

A brief notice of Mackenzie, and a passing remark on Miss Clara Reeve, will close our notice of the novel writers of this period.

HENRY MACKENZIE, sometimes called the Addison of the north, and the most successful imitator of Sterne, in sentiment, pathos, and style, was born in Edinburgh, in August, 1745, and was the son of Dr. Joshua Mackenzie, a respectable physician of that city. He was educated at the highschool and university of Edinburgh, and afterwards prepared for the profession of the law. The legal department selected by Mackenzie, was the business of the Exchequer court, and that he might be the more thoroughly qualified for this, he went to London in 1765, and studied the English Exchequer practice. Returning to Edinburgh, he mingled in its literary circles, which then numbered the great names of Hume, Robertson, Smith, Blair, Kames, and many others. In 1771, he made his first appearance as an author, in his novel, The Man of Feeling, and this was afterwards followed by The Man of the World, and Julia de Roubigne. Besides his novels, he was the author of some dramatic pieces that were brought out at Edinburgh; but they were generally attended with very indifferent success.

The style and diction of Mackenzie are always choice, elegant, and expressive; but he wanted power. It may seem strange that a novelist so eminently sentimental and refined, should have ventured to write on political subjects; but Mackenzie supported the government of Mr. Pitt with some pamphlets written with great acuteness and discrimination. In real life the novelist was shrewd and practical: he had early exhausted his vein of romance, and was an active man of business. In 1804 the government appointed him to the office of comptroller of taxes for Scotland, which entailed upon him considerable drudgery, but was highly lucrative. In this situation, with a numerous family around him, enjoying the society of his friends and his favorite sports of the field, writing occasionally on subjects of taste and literature—for he said, 'The old stump would still occasionally send forth a few green shoots'-the Man of Feeling lived to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died on the fourteenth of January, 1831.

The first novel of Mackenzie, 'The Man of Feeling,' is much the best of his works. The work contains no regular story, but the character of Harley, his purity of mind, and his bashfulness, caused by excessive delicacy, interest the reader from the very commencement of the tale. His adventures in London, the talk of club and park frequenters, his visit to bedlam, and his relief of the old soldier, Atkins, and his daughter, though partly formed on the affected sentimental style of the inferior romances, evince a facility in moral and pathetic painting that had, at that time, only been surpassed by Richardson. The death of Harley, as described in the following extract, has, in pathos, rarely been surpassed by any writer:

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