or recreations. His religious views are of course those of the author, and remind us of "Brother Bernardus" in "Hyperion." He longs for the annihilation, "not of sects, but of sectarianism;" and anticipates a Christendom in which differences of opinion on unessential points is forgotten, and peace and mutual love between all the parts of an united body spiritual prevail:—

"His words were always kindly: he brought no railing accusation against any man: he dealt in no exaggerations or over-statements. But, while he was gentle, he was firm. He did not refrain from reprobating intemperance because one of his deacons owned a distillery; nor war, because another had a contract for supplying the army with muskets; nor slavery, because one of the great men of the village slammed his pew-door and left the church with a grand air, as much as to say that all that kind of thing would not do, and the clergy had better confine itself to abusing the sins of the Hindoos and let our domestic institutions alone."

The fairest flower of Fair-Meadow is Cecilia Vaughan. Her father is a judge in one of the courts; and dwells, surrounded by a heap of legal documents, in a mansion which "was one of the few old houses still standing in New England-a large square building, with a portico in front, whose door in summer-time stood open from morning until night." Cecilia's intimate friend is Alice Archer, a thoughtful, oversensitive, delicate girl, the occupation of whose life is to wait upon a widowed mother almost blind, and who in the course of the story becomes totally bereaved of sight, to which affliction Alice herself inherits a strong tendency. Their residence harmonises with the condition of the owners: it is "an old gloomy house with four sickly Lombardy poplars in front:" the furniture, and even the tick of the clock, are all in unison with the decayed condition of the inmates. The two friends so opposite in many points, in temperament, in character, and in fortune, find the same diversity as regards the feelings they inspire in others. The joyous Cecilia has numerous loversthe pensive Alice has none: accordingly, the one almost despises what the other in secret sighs for. Among Miss Vaughan's admirers is a being too humourously pictured to be lost in a group:

"In addition to their transient lovers, who were but birds of passage winging their way in an incredibly short space of time from the torrid to the frigid zone, there was in the village a domestic and resident adorer whose love for himself, for Miss Vaughan, and for the beautiful, had transformed his name from Hiram A. Hawkins to H. Adolphus Hawkins. He was a dealer in English linens and carpets -a profession which of itself fills the mind with ideas of domestic com

fort. His waistcoats were made like Lord Melbourne's in the illustrated English papers, and his shiny hair went off to the left in a superb sweep, like the hand-rail of a banister. He wore many rings on his fingers, and several breast-pins and gold chains disposed about his person. On all his bland physiognomy was stamped, as on some of his linens, Soft finish for family use.'. .He paraded himself at his shop door as she passed: he paraded himself at the corners of the streets: he paraded himself at the church-steps on Sundays: he spied her from the window: he sallied from the door: he followed her with his eyes: he followed her with his whole august person: he passed her and repassed her and turned back to gaze: he lay in wait with dejected countenance and desponding air: he persecuted her with his looks: he pretended that their souls could comprehend each other without words; and whenever her lovers were alluded to in his presence he gravely declared, as one who had reason to know that, if Miss Vaughan ever married, it would be some one of gigantic intellect !"

It so happens that the two friends are both smitten with Arthur Kavanagh, and each is at pains to keep from the other the secret of her attachment. The dénouement of the plot is singularly contrived, and certainly very romantically. Cecilia has procured a carrier-pigeon from a famous taxidermist and bird-seller to convey billets-doux to and fro between herself and Alice. One morning in the brown autumn-that "Joseph with his coat of many colours," as Mr Churchill called that season-the faithful messenger is pursued in his passage by a king-fisher, and saves himself from his foe by darting in through the open window of Kavanagh's apartment in the church-tower, where, terrified and exhausted, he falls to the floor. Kavanagh raises the panting refugee and is surprised to discover attached to the neck by a silken band, and folded under the wing, a billet inscribed with the single word "Cecilia." Instantly a bright scheme crosses the lover's brain which is speedily executed; and a few rapturous lines expressive of his affection having been penned and placed under the safe custody of the carrier pigeon with the writer's signature, the bird is forthwith launched on his airy way from the window on this new errand. But true to his duties the pigeon takes wing to the chamber of Alice Archer, who at first is as much transported as startled to receive from the object of her most ardent aspirations a proposal couched in the warmest terms of endearment; but a more careful scrutiny convinces her that the billet is not intended for herself, but addressed to " Cecilia Vaughan." In a moment, for the first time, the truth is revealed to her: her friend is her successful rival and she herself is the

doomed victim of misfortune. With the heroism, however, of her nature she reseals the note, fastens it again to the bird's neck, and despatches the messenger fraught with the token of love to his mistress. The result quickly circulates -Kavanagh and Cecilia are engaged; and to add to Alice's grief, her friend hastens to her to communicate the intelligence of what has made herself so happy; and not long afterwards Kavanagh himself calls in at the Archers' to conduct his bride-elect home. Alice has one comfort-her secret is not known and it will die with her.

The tale concludes with a marriage and a death. The affianced pair wed and make a honeymoon trip to Italy, Egypt, and the Holy Land; and it is not until after a lapse of three years they return to Fair-Meadow, and instead of finding it the same as they left it are astonished at its growth with a rapidity quite American from a village to a town. The fragile constitution of Alice quickly renders her the victim of a disease, the symptoms of which might be traced in her character; and lastly, Mr. Churchill, from wanting the all-controlling, all-subduing will, which at once gives an outward expression and coinage to the fleeting imagery and philosophic notions of the brain, writes neither his longmeditated "Romance," nor his "History of Obscure Martyrs." The passage which concentrates the finale is too exquisite to escape transcription:

"The first snow came. How beautiful it was, falling so silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacy of their branches!

"What silence, too, came with the snow, and what seclusion ! Every sound was muffled-every noise changed to something soft and musical. No more trampling-hoofs-no more rattling wheels! Only the chiming sleigh-bells beating as swift and merrily as the hearts of children.

"All day long, all night long, the snow fell on the village and on the churchyard-on the happy home of Cecilia Vaughan on the lonely grave of Alice Archer! Yes; for before the winter came she had gone to that land where winter never comes. Her long domestic tragedy was ended. She was dead, and with her had died her secret sorrow and her secret love. Kavanagh never knew what wealth of affection for him faded from the world when she departed-Cecilia never knew what fidelity of friendship, what delicate regard, what gentle magnanimity, what angelic patience, had gone with her into the grave, Mr. Churchill never knew that, while he was exploring

the past for records of obscure and unknown martyrs, in his own village, near his own door, before his own eyes, one of that silent sisterhood had passed away into oblivion unnoticed and unknown.

“How often-ah, how often-between the desire of the heart and its fulfilment lies only the briefest space of time and distance; and yet the desire remains for ever unfulfilled! It is so near that we can touch it with the hand, and yet so far away that the eye cannot perceive it. What Mr. Churchill most desired was before him. The romance he was longing to find and record had really occurred in his neighbourhood, among his own friends. It had been set like a picture into the frame-work of his life, inclosed within his own experience. But he could not see it as an object apart from himself; and, as he was gazing at what was remote and strange and indistinct, the nearer incidents of aspiration, love, and death, escaped him. They were too near to be clothed by the imagination with the golden vapours of romance; for the familiar seems trivial, and only the distant and unknown completely fill and satisfy the mind."

دو

Such is the outline of a tale of American life, which has much to recommend it for the insertion of which we have no space and the accessories of which are all good. The inferior dramatis persona-Mr. Wilmerdings, butcher to the village who had married a milliner, and whose "bridal tour had been to a neighbouring town to see a man hanged for murdering his wife "-the rubicund comfortable doctor with "the noisy boots "-the portly Sally Manchester with her "Sunday's blue poplin gown and large pink bow on "the congregation-side of her bonnet"-Elder Evans, by profession tragic actor, who also lent his voice to swell the chorus of a fanatical camp-meeting in the woods as well as Mr. Pendexter, with his partiality for dilating on the Hebrew massacres and the tales of the Zumzummims, with his oldfashioned chaise nicknamed "the ark," and antiquated white horse with a stump of a tail which never ceased waggingare all struck off with a master-pencil, prompt at seizing on individual characteristics and presenting to the reader's eye with a bold touch the creations of the fancy as actual fleshand-blood existences. The merit of the author is the greater in proportion to the difficulty of imparting interest to events not above the level of ordinary experience, and exhibiting in clear and precise basso relievo characters so common that every one conceives he has met their counterparts on the real stage of life. We believe that many passages in Longfellow's poetical works will be stereotyped quotations in the mouths of Britons as well as Americans; and that "Kavanagh" will permanently rank as the "Vicar of Wakefield" of our Western cousins.

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ART. IV.-The Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean, including a Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia. By the Rev. H. CHRISTMAS, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A.; Author of the "Cradle of the Twin Giants, Science and History," &c. Three vols. London: Bentley.

THERE are few things more interesting than a visit to a locality which, if we may be allowed such an expression, has stood still without stagnating-which enables us to pay a sort of personal visit to our progenitors, and enjoy the hospitality and conversation of men of past ages, whose physical existence in our gas-lit generation is an agreeable anachronism, like those that charm us in Shakespear's plays. Even in our own country we may accomplish such an object; and a few miles off main roads, and out of hearing of the steam whistle, we may find hamlets and villages in which relics of the past are preserved, like flies in amber, and which we would gladly transfer, like those well-known curiosities, to the glass cases of our town museums. A journey from the busy centres of modern civilization to one of these sequestered spots that have stood, as it were, out of the way of the great stream of time, affords the means of tracing the process of social development; and of comparing, to some extent at least, the comparative value of the good old times with our own older, though commonly miscalled younger, growth. Such journeys afford all the elements for the best kind of relaxation-that which consists, not in idleness, but in completely varied exercise of our powers. Perhaps, no accessible spot could be found more highly possesssing these advantages than the Balearic Isles, which occupy a large, and, to us, the most interesting part of Mr. Christmas's book. There was an additional good reason for selecting them in the fact that they were almost as unknown as were the valleys of the moon before Lord Rosse's telescope enabled us to take a close view of the estates of the great man of that romantic planet. So completely have they been avoided by tourists, and so slightly visited by Englishmen of business, that Mr. Christmas would have been as much entitled to set up a claim to this discovery as Leverrier was to that of adding Mr. Adams's Neptune to the family of solar planets. And yet, as Mr. Christmas tells us, one of these little islands once enjoyed all the luxuries of our colonial yoke.

The early history of the Balearic Isles is obscured by one of those fogs so common to the badly drained and ventilated epochs of the ancient world. Following Dameta, in his