AMELIA OPIE.
Pxw years have passed since, on grave occasions which drew people together for intellectual or philanthropic purposes, might be ob- served an aged lady of benevolent aspect, whose countenance bore traces of past beauty and of forcible thoughts, strikingly contrasted with the demure Quaker dress in which it was shrouded. The steadfast countenance would have attracted observation, if her age, and some contrast perhaps between her Quaker aspect and the oc- casion which brought her forth, had not already turned upon her an attention, which certainly-was not diminished when you were told that this venerable Quaker lady was the once dashing Amelia Opie, whose fietiona have been the solace and instruction of so Many. The newspapers of the day announce her death ; and by The simple line of the obituary the thoughts are suddenly chal- lenged to trace back, atA rapid glance, that life so distinguished for its length and for its utility. The tight of her on the bench at Norwich Assizes, or amongst the audience at Carlyle's lectures, caused that sense of the unex- pected which we feel when a fellow-creature whom we have re- garded as a classic belonging- entirely to the past, appears suddenly to us amonget the living. To see Amelia Opie amongst our content- porariter, was almost as if we had seen Richardson or Fielding or Lady Mary Wortley Montague. But the death which now ac- tually removes her, brings forward to the mind the still further past ; and in recording her departure from the world, we seem to take a more distinct and formal farewell of one who has been familiar to our most intimate thoughts. For there are few, at least of the elder generation now living, with whom the works of Mrs. Opie do not form some of the most delightful recollections of early reading.
There was, indeed, an organic vigour in them, such as compara- tively few novel-writers command. Their purpose was for the most part moral ; but the moral was rendered with an artistic power seldom attained by moralists of fiction. Even when the purpose stood forth most plainly on the surface, the same skill de- prived it of its merely didactic character. The effect of course was proportionate. Works of an avowedly didactic character do not usually succeed in convincing any but those who are convinced already. The province of imaginative writing is not conviction. However admirably Mrs. Opie illustrated the fatal tendency of "white lying" to make those around the culprit wretched and to destroy the culprit himself, people already addicted to lying would not be reformed ; and few would establish in their own minds any precise rule upon the subject of the book ; or if they did, they would probably pay little attention to it afterwards. The use of such writing is notto produce a set resolution, but to familiarize the mind with feelings and ideas; to create, not a resolve, but a sentient affection for that which is true and noble, and a corre- sponding repulsion from that which is false and base. The naked moralist, like Mrs. Holland, for example, failing to seize upon the affections, does not attain the effect; although perhaps the precept, set forth more nakedly, remains snore distinctly as a recollection in the mind. Not many would trace their virtues directly to a particular book, or even to the whole range of Mrs. Opie's writings; yet we believe that there are few authors who have instilled so considerable and pregnant a portion of feeling and thought into their generation as she did.
It was not only in the teaching of the young that her influence was felt. More than one truth worthy of consideration in any tri- bunal receives its best illustration at her hands. For instance, the story of "Henry Woodville," which is so complete in its consis- tency and verisimilitude, exposes the weakness of circumstantial evidence as thoroughly as the profoundest legal argument could do ; and it must have stamped a healthy doubt on many a mind which has been practically engaged in the subject of jurisprudence.
Amelia Opie has departed at the age of eighty-five. She belonged to the period of our grandmothers ; and it is pos- sible that the costume inevitably intermingled with writings drawn as hers were directly from life, has somewhat removed them from the regard of the present time. The costume of our grandmothers' period is precisely that which least engages the sympathies. One more generation and she will be removed from the sera of our grandmothers to that of our ancestors : the cos- tume which is too near to be "out of fashion," will become a matter of archreology ; and the living passion, which belongs to no period, and which beats with as true a pulse in her writing as in any that ever was printed, will have revived in all its force, freed from the tyrannies of costume. At whatsoever period, no literature could have a more healthy influence. Amelia Opie raises no nice social questions; does not perplex the mind with profound inquiries into "rights of women," or of man ; but deals mainly with straightforward healthy instincts—with the affections such as can be exercised in any state of society—with vicissitude such as she conceived it, in the graphic fire of her prime, soft- ened by a charity such as belonged to the benevolence of her venerable age, and to the class rather than to the sett where she sought an imitative repose.
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