THE HEEBERTS. * THE family of the Herberts came in with

the Conquest; but their property at length got encumbered, and the last head of the house involved it in ruin by election-expenses and living at the rate of about as many thousands as he had hundreds. On his death, the sale of every thing left his widow enough to purchase an annuity of fifty pounds a year, to provide for herself and two children, a son and a daughter; and it is in the fortunes of these two children that the story of this novel consists. William Herbert, after apply- mg in vain to a Bishop and a Baronet to enable him to continue his studies for the Church, is led through a variety of adventures— as a contributor to the press, an unsuccessful ethical writer, a line.ndraper's shopman, and a lawyer's clerk, including a "romantic incident" with a thief and his intended victim—till he is enabled to pursue his studies and acquire a church-living through a series of " uncommon lucky" circumstances. His sister fills two situations as governess; one in a family of excessive vulgarity, where she is exposed to exaggerated and incredible annoyances ; another in a house of a superior citizen, where she is entrapped into an elope- ment by a Lord, under the stale pretence of her mother's illness, and rescued by an humble admirer, who from a well-born plough- boy on her father's estate has been metamorphosed into a thriving merchant, and who is eventually made happy by her hand. It will be seen from this outline that there is not much of real life FE -the story. A man of family and possessions is likely enough to die in debt; but it is not probable, or indeed credible, that he should be without relations or friends who would render some assistance to his family, especially as he is painted as an amiable and friendly ma. n, with only the weakness of keeping up a family state when lir means were insufficient. This radical defect extends to the different scenes or acts of the novel. The descriptions of the va- Nous phases of life are untrue ; or if they have bits of reality, the form in which they are presented is that of caricature. The author seems practically ignorant of the life he undertakes to describe, abd in the main to have drawn his modern facts from hearsay or .•.As the parcel which contained these volumes bore the inscription "second copy, we assure the sender that we never saw the work till the present week. police-reports, his notions of the current of worldly events from the novels of a long past age,—the Vicar of Wakefield having ap- parently been an object of close study, both as regards its style and the general cast of its characters and incidents. Hence there is a double incongruity : the book, as respects the extrinsic form of events and persons, as well as the style of the writer, be- longs to the present age ; but the spirit of the life it would paint is that of a time which has passed away so entirely, that, presented in this manner, it seems unnatural.

As a fiction' therefore, The Herberts is a sort of failure, in despite of several scenes of power and interest, some ludicrous ability in the author, together with sufficient metaphysical skill, and a mind endowed with the quality of speculative thought. But the writer's nature is rather critical than creative : his forte is analysis, not synthesis. He can deduce the truth from an actua, but he cannot reproduce the real; there is little knowledge of life exhibited in his book, and consequently no living character. He appears also to have looked on the world with prejudiced eyes, and to have drawn harsher conclusions than life really warrants : his indiscriminate abuse of lawyers is an example of this,—unless, indeed, he took it with other things from older writers. But perhaps a better picture of the kind of knowledge possessed by him, or least exhibited in his book, could not be given than in his own account of Mary Walton- ' " In the meetings just described, William was not very forcibly struck with the originality of Miss Walton's remarks, as they were derived rather from books than from experience. Be was beginning to set rather less value than formerly on the morals and disquisitions of books : he had discovered the vast use of worldly knowledge to every one who must struggle in the world, and was per- fectly this that th knowledge was compatible with virtue. His experi- ence in a lawyer's office had been of immense importance to him in this re- spect ; the very perusal of an act, with its thousands of cautions against of- fenders, was sufficient to teach him a good deal of the nature of men; and the personal intercourse with clients, and observations of Mr. Burgess's intercourse with them, opened his eyes to points of human character that he had not dreamed of before. He would not now have believed a man must be good be- cause it was in priut. He therefore felt a kind of superiority over Miss Wal- ton, who seemed very ignorant of the ways of the world, and to have had little acquaintance with contemporaneous society. Her opinions regarded more the human heart and society in the abstract ; her knowledge appeared to be ga- thered from books rather than from men, and her sentiments to be produced from reflection on the observations of others rather than her own. If any of her sentiments could be combated, none could be condemned ; for if they were not just in the fullest sense, they were like those of a child, founded on a first view of circumstances.'

It will at once be seen from this extract, that the author of The

Herbert: is a very different kind of person from the general run of novel-writers, in his matter, style, and mode of thought. The book abounds with shrewd remarks on the world in the lump, or "founded on a first view of circumstances " ; in satirical but rather exaggerated pictures of the false opinions and practices of society ; in general

criticism on books, men, manners, and things. It is indeed criti- cism, or the faculty of judging, which is the most prominent fea- ture of this writer's mind ; though it may as often take the shape of an observation upon life as of direct criticism. Next to this quality is his metaphysical skill; which, when exercised on fitting, subjects, produces good effects. Some of the incidents connected with the Cymon-like metamorphosis of the ploughboy- Thomas Wilson are perhaps not likely ; but the conception and execution of the change is managed with much skill, and without this author's frequent fault of overdoing. The episode or act which narrates the story of William Herbert and Mary Walton is one of remark- able metaphysical ability, and possesses the most consistency and truthfulness of any thing in the book. It may be observed of both these portions, that they are peculiar, yet general, having little to do with social life, and therefore as well adapted to one age as another.

From its nature, The Herberts is one of the few novels where parts convey a more favourable impression than the whole; and this character the author has increased by affixing to each of the ten books into which he has divided his story, an introductory chap- ter, having a very slender relation to the fiction. Of the independent passages our extracts will consist.

A GREAT FAMILY.

The above-mentioned William Herbert, then, was the last descendant of one of the oldest of our English families. For more than seven hundred years his ancestors had been numbered among the great men of their time, as, like other great men, from the Norman invasion down to the time of the Eighth Henry, they had gained considerable fame by mixing in all the battles which could be got up with or without a pretext. During the next century they had con- siderably increased their riches by thrusting themselves into all the religious intrigues ; since when they .haltaken an active part in politics; by which, as they were steady to their pnnciples, I fear they did not add to the family wealth. However that may be, of the grandeur of their origin there can be no doubt, as they came into England with the Bastard William, which in our great families is considered the most undeniable proof of purity of race.

CATHEDRAL PRECINCTS.

He turned about to inquire of a passer-by, but the whole of the enclosure round the cathedral contained not a visible human being. The sacred building stood in an extensive square, formed by lofty houses, with each a wall before it, enclosing a mass of trees ; the only channel of communication with the rest of the world being certain narrow and gloomy passages, which it required a very experienced eye to discover. Very motionless was that spot—the choicest spirit of dulness seemed to have taken possession of it. Here was one of the proudest monuments of human skill enclosed by the familiar evidences of human and present comfort, and no living being to be discerned: it was such a scene as must have suggested the Eastern tales of vast cities utterly unpeopled. There was not a road to be seen in the whole extent of pebbled enclosure: it seemed impossible that those trees should have grown where they stood, or that the processes of vegetable life should go on in a spot so utterly without motion; the very air had grown dull, had lost its elasticity, and become incapable of conveying a sound. It seemed that even the aspen, which answers a breath RS gentle as the last sigh of a love-smitten virgin, would here have sunk isto the utter and eternal stillness of a woman's tongue—in marble.

WOMAN'S LOVE OF APPROBATION.

Woman was not made to live alone any more than man ; and the absence of the natural assistant of the gentle sex was felt in ways separate from protection and support. All the actions of a woman, whether of useful industry or of ornament, are subject to the approval and pleasure of the other sex, to which their own are subordinate, and on which they are founded. To descend to the humblest form of this feeling : every one knows, that when a fair lass has arrayed herself in her new gown or ribbons, or any finery put on for the first time, although the admiration of her female acquaintance may give a degree of pleasure, the applause or compliment of one man is more valued than that of a thousand women : and this feeling, modified by the circumstances of individuals, runs through the %%hale sex, and is part of the nature of the human being, im- planted in the heart by the Divine artificer, to produce the most delicious fruit that grows in the garden of human life. Women, by themselves, require little to be comfortable ; they can live without bustle and without form ; neither in beauty of raiment nor in delicacy of food can they find happiness, so long as they have it to themselves alone. They require to please the other sex before they can please themselves. A knot of old maids may, to be sure, he bitterly merry over their tea and scandal, and despise the other sex with profound dis- dain; but there is something unnatural in that enjoyment ; nor does anybody suppose that the respectable spinster's heart hounds with such a sweet human delight at the compliment of her female friends, on her neat room, darling spaniel, and strong tea, as the heart of the cottager's wife, when her tired hus- band tells her how nicely she has cooked his bit of supper, and how pretty she looks in her clean cap. It matters not whether the husband be the master of a palace or the occupier of a hovel—whether his day be spent in the sports of the field, the druggery of a profession, or the labour of a farm : the pleasure of the wife, and the object of her labour, is to have a table comfortably spread at his return, and to see that he enjoys the delicacies or the necessaries which she has provided for him; whether the provision be merely a piece of bread and cheese and a snow-white tablecloth on the deal table, or the rich soup, the superb joint, and the bottle of exquisite wine laid out in the magnificent dining. room, the feelings of a woman relative to man are the same.

MILTON COMPARED WITH SIIAKSPERE.

Milton also could paint the forms of mankind, though in a lower degree, for his excellency chiefly consisted in the power with which he poured out his own spirit in an ideal person. Milton painted a Satan, which was a Milton. The poet Milton had little sympathy with angel or archangel, with cherub or seraph ; the transcript of his own mind ass the archangel ruined. The inqui- sitive speculation, the indomitable courage, were drawn direct from the depths of the poet's soul. The victory of Gabriel, the sentiment of Raphael, the faith- fulness of Abdiel, the repentance of Adam, were the respect which the habits of the man of active life paid to the prejudices and professions of his fellow- men. Satan was the hero of the poet's heart, and the grandest hero which genius has ever dared to offer to the admiration of mankind.

TIIE CRITICAL THEORY OF THE LIERBERTS.

Industry, indolence, extravagance, and avarice, are as frequently the cha- racteristics of a family as of a person; and the virtues and vices which have produced family greatness or family ruin, will be generally in as exact an agreement one with the other, and the events of generations arranged in as re- gular and consistent a concatenation, as the virtues and vices and the opinions and actions of a man. The reader will readily call to mind many a family as well as many a man reduced from wealth to poverty by a course of continual extravagance ; and I believe it will be generally found, that when the riches of a family have been dissipated by generations of extravagance, it is as seldom that the descendant who inherits the empty coffers and the mortgaged estates of his ancestors lives a sober and careful life, that he may restore his family to its original splendour, as that an individual who had dissipated inherited wealth stops short in his career to work himself up to the state whence he has fallen. There is a family despair as well as an individual one; and whether a man has dissipated wealth, or inherited only the memory of it, he generally de- pends on some lucky chance to retrieve his lost glories, rather than on the personal exertions which reason points out as more effectual towards that purpose.