ABEL _ALLNUT.
Tans novel is a wiredrawn imitation of the Vicar of Wakefield; and that in an age when the almost childish simplicity of the Vicar and his family does not exist, at all events as the type of a class. In GOLDSMITH'S time, the inhabitant of a village off the leading high-roads was almost isolated front the world, and of ne- cessity ignorant of it, and a fitting prey both for sharpers in plea- sure and business. The facilities of communication and the un- ceasing exertions of the press have changed the condition of this class, and enabled even a backwoodsman of America to keep pace with society so far as mind is concerned. Another error of Abel 'Mout is its length. The Vicar of Wakefield would probably have wearied us had it been extended and spun out after the fashion of this imitation. A still greater defect is the literal nature of the work—its total want of imagination. Almost every thing and person in it has indeed an air of individual truth; but it is the truth of a profile "taken by a machine," or of an auc- tioneer's "descriptive particular." Many of the dialogues read like reports ; but they are reports of what is tedious and common- place in reality, and tedious in the extreme when stripped of that vital character which enables us to endure the dulness of real life. The novel "drags its slew length along."
if the reader, with the impression of' some of Mr. MORIER'S Eastern romances still upon his mind, should inquire whence this failure? he may be answered, in a mistaken estimate by the au- thor of his own powers, and in the injudicious choice of his sub- ject. Mr. Moirma is a good transcriber, whether his prototype be in nature or books: but he can neither select nor elevate. Hence, in despite of absurdities of structure and want of poatry in descrip- tion, the freshness of Oriental manners had a charm in their no- velty, which is necessarily wanting when the same author drops down to old bachelors, old maids, vulgar retired citizens and their half-bred sons, and the vicissitudes of a family who are led by a speculating relation to embark their all in Mexican stock and lose it ; which loss occasions a state of distress from which they are rescued by the matrimonial advertisement of an old gentle- man, who however resigns in favour of his nephew, a former love of the distressed damsel. In the working-up of such materials, it would be unjust to deny the author the praise of care and pains ; and if a matter-of-fact air in fiction be a merit, then is Abel -411out a good work. But to us, such goodness seems like the goodness of a shilling—of concernment to these who take it, but not of much importance to the world at large.
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