ETHEL CHURCHILL.

IN her present work, Miss LANDON displays a very considerable improvement over her funnier prose productions; for though Ethel Churchill cannot take a place amongst the first class novels, if a novel be considered as a true reflection of actual life in its events, manners, and persons, yet it contains a story of sufficient variety and interest—characters clearly conceived, always spiritedly and sometimes charmingly executed—a narrative sustained throughout with spirit and a poetical grace, and very often touched with ten derness or pathos. The old habit of " stopping the narrative" for a brilliant remark is indeed somewhat too visible, but in point of composition these remarks are not unfrequently the best and most striking parts of the hook.

The scene of Ethel Churchill is laid during the time of the First and Second GEORGES; a remoteness which gives an advantage to the writer so far as manners are concerned, by enabling her to deviate from strict exactness without running counter to the experience of her reader. She has also ingeniously contrived a mode of niching into her narrative some of the most striking characters in literature and fashion, of that Augustan age of wits aml courtiers. POPE, SWIFT, LINTOT and CURL the booksellers, (the last of whom is grievously overrated, we imagine, in respect of liberality and every thing else,) Miss !FENTON, the original Polly, and subsequently Dutchess of BOLTON, (a sketch which almost rises to the merit of genius,) Lady MARY WORTLEY NIONTAGUE. the Dutchess of QUEENSBERRY, Sir ROBERT WALPOLE, and others, are skilfully introduced into the story, or connected with it. Of these persons and their times, Miss LANDON does not seem to have a very deep or a very correct knowledge,—blundering even in matters of common chronology; yet her sketches and scenes have thought and vivacity, if we may demur to their truth ; and her anecdotes are lively, and not badly set, though there are but few of them which are not well known. This sense of triteness may not, how- ever, strike others so much as it does us; but having so lately gone over Lady MARy's Correspondence, and hence having had our attention more closely recalled to the time, we trace, or fancy we can trace, Miss LANDON'S " reading-up" for the occasion.

The story, though not deficient in incidents, distress, or variety, is subordinate, we conceive, to the persons, and to the moral de- ducible from their fate ; which moral is intended to show that fame, wealth, station, fashion, and all the seeming desiderata of life, very frequently contribute to our misery, and are always as nothing compared with the domestic affections, and the proper discharge of ordinary duties, which can only be done by strong principle. One of her heroes is Norbourne Courtenaye, who is betrothed to Ethel Churchill, but is compelled, in order to save his mother, to marry his cousin Constance,—a beautifully feminine character. Yet although she adores her husband, and Courtenaye is too delicate and honourable not to treat her with every attention, still the quick eye of love detects its absence ; she droops, pines, and dies. Walter Maynard, another hero, is also in love with Ethel, and Fame. Despairing to obtain the woman, be pursues the goddess, and goes to London a literary adventurer. Here he achieves distinction as an author of all work; plunges into the pleasures of the time; finds the freshness and excitement of con amore labour gradually cooling down before the drudgery of a daily task and a shaken constitution ; and, in short, leads the life and dies the death of many a writer. Upon this character, and his feelings and circumstances, Miss LANDON has obviously ex- pended much of care and labour; and though the conduct of the tale, or the conduct of the hero, are not secure altogether against the retnarks of the moralist and critic, any more than the minutia) of the circumstances are again-t the cavils of the literary antiqua- rian, still there is much of sentiment and of truth in this episode. The other principal character is Lady Marchmont, a woman of beauty, wit, intellect, heart, and pride ; but who has married, we cannot tell why, a foolish and pompous automaton. Her affec- tions vacant by the heartlessness of her husband, and desti- tute of the sorry comfort, to a wife, of being able to sub- stitute respect for his character or pride in his attainments, she becomes the woman of fashion and the rival of Lady Mary. At last, in an evil hour she listens to a fashionable gallant, Sir George Kingston ; and though she does not fall, she receives an equivocal correspondence. The letters are discovered by her hus- band; who threatens her with exposure. To save her character, she poisons him, out of fear; poisons Sir George, out of revenge; and goes mad herself from remorse. The management of the middle and greater part of Lady Marchmont's character, we think one of Miss LANDON's triumphs ; but the reception, by such a woman, of Sir George Kingston's addresses, is not likely ; and the denouement of the whole is overdone, if not absurd. The gallant is not the wit and gallant—the SEDLEY or VILLIERS- " framed to make women false ;" but a fellow who cannot write his own love-letters, and who, whilst he professes desperate love to Lady Marchmoitt, is, for the sake of notoriety, keeping " the person," as POPE has it, " who played Polly,"—a fact that might

not have greatly injured him with many women of that day, but would for ever have disgusted such a woman as Lady Marchmont. We consider this part, in a critical view, the great blemish of the book ; and we see no motive for it, except the scenes to which it gives occasion, as the moral could have been pointed many other ways. The death-scene of Sir George, after all, could not, physi- cally, we think, have happened. The basis of the poison would have produced prussic acid ; which, Miss LANDON might easily leave learned, kills at a blow.

We have spoken of the remarks with which the story is plen- tifully interspersed ; and these display considerable thought and observation, sententiously or eloquently expressed. Of this na- ture are the following.

TOCTII, MANHOOD, AND AGE.

There are in existence two periods when we shrink from any great vicissi- tude—early youth and old age. In the middle of life, ue are indifferent to change; for we have discovered that nothing is, in the end, so good or so bad as it at first appeared. We know, moreover, how to accommodate ourselves to circumstances; and enough of exertion is still left in us to cope with the event. But age is heart-wearied and tempest-torn: it is the crumbling cenotaph of fear and hope. Wherefore should tl.ere be turmoil for the few, and evening hours, when all they covet is repose ? They see their shadow fall upon the grave, and need but to be at rest beneath. Youth is not less averse from change ; but that is from exaggeration of its consequences, for all seems to the young so important, and so fatal. They are timid, because they know not what they fear, hopeful, because they know not what they expect. Despite their gayety of confidence, they yet dread the first plunge into life's unfathomed deep.

These remarks on coquetry are from part of a scene where Miss LANDON undertakes to solve the origin of the quarrel be- tween POPE and Lady MAtre, and to " show cause " why the bard ever afterwards pursued the beauty with such bitter hatred.

There is a cruelty in feminine coquetry, which is one of nature's contradic• tinns. Formed of the softest materials—of the gentle smile and the soothing word, yet nothing can exceed its utter hard-heartedness. Its element is vanity, of the coldest, harshest, and most selfish order : it sacrifices all sense of right, all kindly feelings, all pity, for the sake of a transient triumph. Lady Mary kuew—for when has woman not known?—her power. She knew that she was wholly beloved by a heart, proud, sensitive, and desponding. She herself bad warmed fear into hope ; had matte passion seem possible to one who felt, keenly felt, how much nature had set him apart. If genius for one moment believed that it could create love, as it could create all else, hers was the fault ; she nursed the delusion : it was a worthy ti thine to her self-love.

BRILLIANT SPIRITS.

It is a strange thing, but so it is, that very brilliant spirits are almost always the result of mental suffering, like the fever produced by a wound. I some- times doubt tears, I oftener doubt lamentations; but I never yet doubt the ex- istence of that misery which flushes the cheek and kindles the eye, and which malice the lip mock with sparkling words the dark and hidden world within. There is something in intense suffering that seeks concealment, something that is fain to belie itself. In Cooper's novel of the Braro, Jacques conceals himself and his boat, by lying where the moonlight fell dazzling on the water. We do the same with any great despair ; we shroud it in a glittering atmosphere of smiles and jests; but the smiles are sneers and the jest are sarcasms. There is always a vein of bitterness runs through these feverish spirits; they are the very delirium of sorrow seeking to escape from itself, and which cannot. Sus- pense and agony are hidden by the moonshine.

PECUNIARY OBLIGATIONS FROM WOMEN.

He was right in his refusal. Sooner or later a woman must inevitably despise the man who takes money from her. Before a man can do this, there must be those radical defects of character t3 which even kindness cannot always be blicd. He must he a moral coward, because he exposes her to those annoy- ances which he has not courage enough to face himself; he must be mean, be- cauae he submits to an obligation from the inferior and the weak ; and he must be ungrateful, because ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favours of which we are ashamed. Money is the great breaker up of love and friendship ; and this is, I believe, the reason of the common saying, that " large families get on best in the world," because they can receive from each other assistance without degradation. The affection of family ties has the character On it of childhood in which it was formed: it is free, open, confiding ; it has none of the delicacy of friendship or the romance of sentiment: you know that success ought to be in common, and that you have but one interest.

BEFORE AND BEHIND THE SCENES.

The overture was almost at a close; and silence being now more effective than any thing that he could urge in favour of the play, Courtenaye went behind the scenes : never had the contrast struck him so forcibly. Before the curtain, all was light and brilliancy ; beautiful faces appeared with every advantage of dress and situation ; placed at their side was thegraceful and perfumed cavalier, with flatteries as light as the wave of the fan, that half chided, half encouraged them. Scattered amid the glittering crowd, were men whose empire was that at which the youthful author aimed—the empire of the mind. All before the curtain was poetry in its most brilliant and yet most tangible shape ; but behind came the reality—cold, dark, and forbidding. Norbourne felt his enthusiasm suddenly extinguished : he looked with absolute loathing on the scene around him, so gloomy, and yet so common. Actors and actresses appeared alike ex. aggerated and tawdry ; and he marvelled what could be the attraction of un existence which seemed divested as much of comfort as of dignity.

Just as these thoughts were passing before him, his attention was drawn to Booth, who, to solve a trifling disagreement between hint and the author as to the effect which was to be given to a particular passage, began to declaim the speech in question. Courtenaye was at once carried out of hiurtelf; he caught the fire of the actor ; the splendid voice, the noble gesture, and the exalted sen- timent, aided by the pomp of the verse, mastered his inmost soul. He was again under the influence of genius,—that influence so subtle and so intense, conquering alike time, place, and circumstance.

AFFECTION A HABIT.

Both had a great deal to say, and yet the conversation languished : but we have. all felt this after a lung absence. Cunfidence is a habit, and requires to be re- newed. We have lost the custom of telling every thing, and we begin to fear that what we have to tell is scarcely worth being told. We have formed new acquaintances; we have entered into other amusements; we feel that our tastes are altered ; and we require a little while to see if the change be mutual. More. over, the affections are always timid; they require both encouragement and custom, before they can venture to communicate their regrets. It is a curious, but an undeniable fact, that the meeting, after absence, of old friends, is almost always constrained and silent at first they are surprised to find how little they have said of what they meant to say. It merely shows, after all, that affection is a habit.

FCIONISHED LODGINGS.

The room itself was large and dark, and had that peculiar air of discomfort which belongs to "ready-furnished apattmente :" every thing looks as if it had been bought at a sale, and there is an equal want of harmony both in the pro- portions and colours. The idea involuntarily occurs of how the chairs had encircled other hearths; of how, around the tables, had gathered family groups, broken up by the pressure of distress and of want. All the associations are those of poverty ; and of all human evils poverty is the one whose suffering is the most easily understood : even those who have never known it can compre- hend its wretchedness. Hunger, cold, and mortification, the disunion of fami- lies, the separation of those the most fondly attached, youth bowed by prema- ture toil, age wasting the little strength yet remaiuing,—these are the familiar objects winch surround poverty.

One of the most powerfully drawn, and most interesting cha- racters m the work, is Lord Norbourne, Courtenaye's uncle,—a man of naturally affectionate feelings, but which the world has rather overlaid than destroyed, and which gradually well out with circumstances. Thus much to give the key to a bit of dialogue, in which the persons, as they too often do, arc made to express the writer's own feelings.

TALENTS FOR THE WORLD.

An allusion to some pamphlet which had just made a noise, induced Nor- bourne to mention Walter Maynard to his uncle in terms of warm praise. " He realizes," exclaimed he, warmly, " all one ever imagines of genius. He has the keenest sensibility, and this gives hint the key to the sensibility of others. He is eloquent, for his heart is in his worth; and lie has that pas- sionate melancholy which is the true clement of poetry." " Say no more," interrupted Lord Norbourne ; " you have described the man of all others the most unfitted to struggle with the actual world. Hi3 sensibility will make him alive to a thousand annoyances, which would be scarcely perceptible to one of cooler mould ; his eloquence will obtain just ad- miration enough to deceive him; and his melancholy only asks a few years' ex- perience to deepen into utter despondency. Still, give me his town address : I will, if I can, serve any friend of yours." " He has wonderful talents," continued his friend.

" Talents," resumed Lord Norbourne, " of this high and imaginative order, seem to me rather given to beeefit others than their possessor. Their harvest is in the future, not the present. Their brains produce the golden ore which commoner hands mould to the daily purposes of life."

" I think." replied the young advocate, unwillieg to give up a point in which his feelings were interested, "that even y, a wcs.ld believe in Walter BIaynard's success in life, if you knew him. What has brought the world to its present state, but individual talent?" "I do not deny your assertion," said his muscle; '6 but minds of the higher order are not the best suited to ordinary use. I cannot express my meaning better than by using a simile of our opponent the Irish Dean. Swift says, ' Take a inely-polished razor, and you will waste your labour in getting through a ream of paper which you need to cut a coarse bone knife will answer vour purpose touch better.' Now, your fine minded man is the razor; and I leave you to make the application."