MISS MARTINEAU'S LITTLE NOVELS.
IN Weal and WO in Garceloch, Miss MARTINEAU has continued the history of the people With whose characters and condition she had made us so thoroughly well acquainted in the Illustration of last month. We have the heroic Ella, her bold and energetic brethren, the slovenly Murdoehs, and the rational and travelled Angus, under new and most trying circumstances. In Ella of Garveloch, we learned, by the domestic history of a few families in the poor and sterile Western Islands, how RENT arose, and how exertions meant for private benefit operated on the community. The scene is now changed. Garveloch, under a temporary access of prosperity, becomes a great fishing-station: is taken by a com- pany ; and is flocked_ to by a numerous population, which popula- tion is not a little increased by the islanders themselves, under the motives induced by the prospect of wealth and comfort. But the luck changes ; the fish take another direction ; stormy seasons succeed one another ; and ruin falls upon the crowded population of Garveloch : trade fails, supplies cease ; in short, there is a famine in the place — the famine succeeded by universal sickness. Here are scenes for the picturesque pen of Miss • MARTINEAU : they are painted with a power and quiet self-pos - session not exceeded in any of her former works ; while the di- dactic conversations that take place amid them are full of prac- tical instruction. Weal and b1 in Garveloch, is one of the most valuable of Miss MARTINEAU'S admirable series. At this mo - meat, no person is doing more good in England than this lady: perhaps no other female ever occupied the same proud position of a national instructress, on the topics of the country's most essen- tial interests. The next Number is to be "A Manchester Strike." We shall. look out for the Cotton-spinner's Romance of Real Life, with as much anxiety as we used formerly to expect the announcement of the arrival of the Leith smack, freighted with the charming in- ventions of one who now, alas will never charm again, either by pen or tongue.
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