Calavar, Robin Day, Nick of the Woods, The Hawks of Hawk Hollow, Peter Pilgrim, and Sheppard Lee, he has exhibited a manner as various as his genius, and shown that there is hardly a school of fiction in which he cannot excel.

There are very few works of their sort in the literature of any country comparable to the Zenobia, Probus, and Julian, of William Ware. Mrs. Child's beautiful story of Philothea, in which she has so happily depicted Athenian society in the age of Pericles, is the only American romance of a kind in any degree similar. Mr. Ware's characters are finely discriminated and skilfully executed; and his narratives have a just proportion and completeness. He writes like one perfectly at home amid the ancient grandeur and civilization of his scenes and eras, and in a style of Augustan elegance and purity.

Mr. Osborn's Sixty Years of the Life of Jeremy Levis and Confessions of a Poet are powerfully written and deeply interesting. The latter is more like Mr. Dana's Tom Thornton than any other American novel. It illustrates the metaphysics of passion, and in construction, and in all respects indeed, is superior to his first work, though both inculcate a questionable morality.

I shall have occasion elsewhere to refer to the works in this department by Mr. Allston, Mr. Irving, Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Hall, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Mathews and some other writers.

Since the days of Richardson, when novels were printed sometimes in five quartos and sometimes in ten octavos, their legitimate extent has been in England three duodecimo volumes. The Germans have gone back to the more ancient models, such as were furnished by Boccacio and the authors of the Gesta Romanorum, and many things in our own country have tended to increase the popularity of the tale. Partly in consequence of the demand, perhaps, our productions of this sort have been exceedingly numerous, and without the imprimatur of any foreign publisher they have been read. It has sometimes been amusing, however, to observe the servility of habit and opinion manifested in regard to such of them as have been attributed to foreign writers. In many instances the contents of our magazines, received in silence or with faint praise on their first appearance here, have been copied by British publishers, returned as by British authors, and then sent with extravagant commendations through half the gazettes of the Union.

Admitting, very readily, that it requires more application-more time and toil-to produce a three volume novel, it must not be supposed that the production of the tale is a very easy business. On the contrary, there is

scarcely any thing more difficult, or demanding the exercise of finer genius, in the whole domain of prose composition.

Washington Irving is a name of which the country is very reasonably proud. His rich humour, fine sentiment, delicate perception of the beautiful, and taste, are apparent in almost every thing he has written. He has given us but little of a tender or romantic kind indeed, and less perhaps to show the possession of the inventive faculty. The Wife, The Broken Heart, the Widow and her Son, and the Pride of the Village, prove however that he could summon tears from their fountains as easily as he has wakened smiles. I speak of him thus briefly here, because it is not as a writer of such works as are now under observation that he is chiefly distinguished.

Next to Irving, and perhaps before him in point of time, was Richard H. Dana. His stories published originally in The Idle Man, are among the most remarkable works of their class in modern literature. Paul Felton is a history of wild passion, in which the characters are portrayed with a master's skill, and there runs through it a strain of lofty and vigorous thought, and a knowledge of human life, which place it in the very first rank of ethical fictions. Edward and Mary, and the Son, are of a more pleasing and touching nature, and are scarcely less deserving of praise.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has published some half a dozen volumes of tales and romantic essays, various in their character, but all marked with his peculiar and happy genius. He is most musical, most melancholy." He controls his reader as the capricious air does the harp. The handkerchief, raised toward the eye to wipe away the blinding moisture there, is checked at the lips, to suppress a smile, summoned by some touch of delicate and felicitous humour. He has the most unaffected simplicity and sincerity, with the deepest insight into man's nature and the secrets of his action. His style is remarkable for elegance, clearness, and ease, while it is imaginative and metaphysical; and his themes, chosen most frequently from the legends of our colonial age, though occasionally from those of a later period, or from the realm of allegory, are not more national than almost every thing in his fanciful illustrations and quaint and beautiful philosophy. His Twice Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse are the perfection of pensive, graceful, humorous writing, quite equal to the finest things of Diedrich Knickerbocker or Geoffrey Crayon, and superior to all else of a similar description in the English language.

The characteristics of Mr. Willis are very striking, and his tales are probably not inferior to any of their kind. His style is felicitous, his fancy warm and exuberant, and he has a ready and sparkling wit. No author has described

contemporary society with more vivacity, and in some of its phases perhaps no one has delineated it with more fidelity.

The tales of Mr. Poe are peculiar and impressive. He has a great deal of imagination and fancy, and his mind is in the highest degree analytical. He is deficient in humour, but humour is a quality of a different sort of minds, and its absence were to him slight disadvantage, but for his occasional forgetfulness that he does not possess it. The reader of Mr. Poe's tales is compelled almost at the outset to surrender his mind to his author's control. Unlike that of the greater number of suggestive authors his narrative is most minute, and unlike most who attend so carefully to detail he has nothing superfluousnothing which does not tend to the production of the desired result. His stories seem to be written currente calamo, but if examined will be found to be results of consummate art. No mosaics were ever piled with greater deliberation. In no painting was ever conception developed with more boldness and apparent freedom. Mr. Poe resembles Brockden Brown in his intimacy with mental pathology, but surpasses that author in delineation. No one ever delighted more or was more successful in oppressing the brain with anxiety or startling it with images of horror. George Walker, Anne Radcliffe, or Maria Roche, could alarm with dire chimeras, could lead their characters into difficulties and perils, but they extricated them so clumsily as to destroy every impression of reality. Mr. Poe's scenes all seem to be actual. Taking into view the chief fact, and the characteristics of the dramatis persona, we cannot understand how any of the subordinate incidents in his tales could have failed to happen.

Mrs. Elizabeth Okes Smith is a woman of a most original and poetical mind, who has succeeded, perhaps better than any other person, in appreciating and developing the fitness of aboriginal tradition and mythology for the purposes of romantic fiction.

The tales of Mr. Bryant, Mr. Leggett, Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Simms, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Kirkland, and several others, will be remembered as possessing various and peculiar merits.

I come now to the consideration of the Humorous, the Comic, and the Satirical. It has been so frequently asserted by men of little observation that these qualities are almost or utterly unknown among us, that I should feel some hesitation in speaking of them were the proofs of their existence here less abundant and satisfactory. It is true that we have no Lucian, no Rabelais, no Molière; but the gay, the witty, and the facetious, have nevertheless borne a

due proportion to our writers of the graver, profounder, and more imaginative

classes.

I am disposed to think that however successful Mr. Irving has been in other departments of literature, he will be longest remembered as a humorist. Of his History of New York, humour is the predominating quality, and it would be difficult to find any thing which possesses it in a higher degree. Mr. Irving's humourous writings are different from nearly all others. The governing attribute of his mind is taste, and he presents nothing to the public before it has been polished with the skill and care of a lapidary. In all his works it would be impossible to find a word that shocks the fastidiously refined by its vulgarity, yet there is in them no lack of freshness or freedom. In his vivacity he is never unguarded, in his gayety he is never unchaste. Humour cannot easily be described. As Barrow so well observes, "It is that we all see and know, but which is properly appreciated only by acquaintance. It is so versatile, so multiform: it appears in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, and is so variously understood by different eyes and judgments, that it would be as easy to paint the face of Proteus as to give a clear and certain idea of it." Yet it may be safely averred that a gentleman had never conception of it which is not illustrated in the works of our author.

Mr. Paulding and Mr. Irving commenced so nearly together that it is difficult to say which had precedence in point of time. The marriage of Paulding's sister to an elder brother of Irving led to the acquaintance of the youthful wits, both of whom had already written some trifles for the gazettes, and it was soon after proposed in a gay conversation that they should establish a periodical, in which to lash and amuse the town. When they next met, each had prepared an introductory paper, and as both had some points too good to be sacrificed they were blended into one, Paulding's serving as the basis. They adopted the title of Salmagundi, and soon after published a small edition of their first number, little thinking of the extraordinary success which awaited it. Upon the completion of two volumes a disagreement with their publisher suddenly caused a suspension of the work, and the sequel to it was written several years afterward while Irving was abroad, exclusively by Paulding. Salmagundi entitles its authors to a very high rank among the comic writers. In this miscellany, The Mirror for Travellers, John Bull and Brother Jonathan, and his other writings, Mr. Paulding has given almost every sort of facetious and satirical composition. He deals more largely than Irving in the whimsical and the burlesque, and he is wanting in the exquisite refinement which lends such a charm to Geoffrey Crayon's humour. The follies of men

are often confirmed, rather than cured, by undisguised attacks. Mr. Cooper, by his honest and sensible commentaries upon a class in our American society, gathered the scattered vulgar into a mob. Paulding, who took greater liberties, was perhaps a more efficient reformer, without startling them by an exhibition of their deformities, or attracting their vexed rage to himself. The motley crowds at our watering places, the ridiculous extravagance and ostentation of the suddenly made rich, the ascendency of pocket over brain in the affairs of love, and all the fopperies and follies of our mimic worlds, are described by him in a most diverting manner; while the more serious sins of society are treated with appropriate severity. Besides his occasional coarseness, however, Mr. Paulding has the fault, in common with some others, of labeling his characters, gay, sedate, or cynical, as the case may be, in descriptive names, as if doubtful of their possessing sufficient individuality to be otherwise distinguished. If a hero cannot make himself known in his action and conversation he is not worth bringing upon the boards.

Robert C. Sands exhibited considerable humour in both his poems and prose writings. He excelled in burlesque, of which he produced some admirable specimens. Mr. Sands, Mr. Verplanck and Mr. Bryant formed together a ❝ literary confederacy," during the existence of which they wrote the three volumes of The Talisman, except a few pieces by Mr. Halleck, and another friend of theirs. Mr. Villecour and his Neighbours, and Scenes in Washington, in this miscellany, are the joint composition of Sands and Verplanck, and are excellent, except that in a few instances they run into ill-natured caricature. The Peregrinations of Petrus Mudd, in The Talisman, (in which is given a true history of a well-known New Yorker,) and other early writings of Mr. Verplanck, show that that gentleman needed but the impulse to rival the finest wits of the reign of Queen Anne.

John Sanderson, to natural abilities of a high order added a calm, chaste scholarship, an intimate acquaintance with men, a singularly amiable disposition, and a frank and highbred courtesy. In his humour were blended happily the characteristics of Rabelais, Sterne and Lamb. To his appreciation of the comic was added a most delicate perception of the beautiful. He knew society, its selfishness, and its want of honour, but looked upon it less in anger than in sadness. Yet he was no cynic, no Heraclitus. He deemed it wisest to laugh at the follies of mankind. Through all his experience he lost none of his natural urbanity, his freshness of feeling, his earnestness and sincerity. He was not less brilliant in his conversation than in his writings; but he never summoned a shadow to any face, or permitted a weight to lie on any heart.