HORSE-SHOE ROBINSON Is an historical novel, of considerable power and

interest. Both these qualities, however, are displayed in the history rather than

in the fiction : had Mr. KENNElitY travelled over well-known grounil, and taken up a fatniliar subject, which required creative genius and coastructive skill, he would certaiely have been thought heavy, and perhaps unreadable. The wild scenery of such half-settled countries as Virginia and Carolina, the habits of life and diversified characters of the remoter parts of the States some fifty years since, the stirring adventures and barbarities of Colonial partisan warfare, and the irregular troops by whom it was

chiefly waged, are subjects that give a truthful air and an ex- citing antiquarianism to the work, altogether apart from its merit as a novel.

The scene of the story is laid in the Southern States, in 1780, about the time when the American General GATES was defeated by Lord CORNWALLIS, and the cause of independence was, appa- rently, crushed. The most important, the most active, and the busiest character in the novel, is Sergeant Robinson, whose cog- nomen and nickname of " Horse-Shoe " (from his trade of a farrier, and the returning sweep of a river near his own house), give the title to the book. This man has from nature a stalwart person, a good and a stout heart, a quiet dry humour, and an acuteness VI Well Yankee habits have disposed him to render serviceable to his own interests and those of his friends. His training as a backwoodsman and hunter have made him well acquainted with the country, rendered him capable of enduring excessive fatigue, and given him skill in all the Indian modes of finding his own way through the forest and over the mountain, or of tracking or avoid- ing an enemy. In addition to these qualities, he has served long enough in the "continental line" to have acquired the wary craft and ready adaptation to all kinds of circumstances which dis- tinguish the old campaigner. Upon him and upon a Sergeant Curry—a kind of darker Bothwell—the action of the tale depends. Curry, instigated by an Enalish Captain St. Jermyn alias Tyrrell, plots; but Robinson is alwaa s ready to foil them by counterplots; and in the end, Curry is killed by Robinson, in single combat, at King's Mountain; and St. Jermyn, by a species of strong-hand law, is hanged upon a tree after the action.

St. Jermyn's intrigues have a threefold object : he wishes to engage Mr. Lindsay, a Loyalist of Virginia, openly to join the Royalists ; he desires to win his daughter and her estates ; and, chiefest of all, he aims at destroying his rival, Butler, by murder- ing him, through the agency of Curry and a Tory band of half- robber soldiers, or failing that, to get him executed as a spy. The intrigues of love and politics arc short, but wearisome; nor is their conduct very cleverly managed. There seems no sufficient reason for St. Jermyn assuming a feigned name in his friendly visits to Lindsay; for detection woult have subjected him to the punishment of a spy; and though it was natural that a family, the

volities of whose junior members were Colonial, should dislike

him, there was nothing dishonourable in a Royalist officer en- deavouring to acquire partisans, nor any crime in his falling in Jove with his host's daughter. His attempts upon Butler are base enough, but the reader scarcely feels satisfied of their probability ;

there seems a want of motive. Love and avarice will indeed drive a moo a long way; but to an English officer of high rank and high connexions, the dower of Miss Lindsay could have been no such enormous attraction; and though we hear of his love, he never displays it. There is none of the smothered fire developed which would have driven a gentleman upon such a crime with such in- struments.

The want of development of character, and the absence of in- terest, are felt too in all the love scenes between Mildred and Butler; and throughout the whole romance of the story there is a deficiency of art and connexion. Butler is an instrument in the hands of events, or of Horse-Shoe Robinson; Mildred does no- thing to the purpose ; and some of the incidents are mere discon- nected episodes, that neither advance nor retard the catastrophe, which is brought about at last without any skill. The interest of the work is in its sketches of history and landscape, and in its isolated scenes; which, however, derive their power chiefly front present objects, without much relation to the past or the future. The court-martial where Butler is tried as a spy, and the night- ambush where he is made prisoner, for instance, would be nearly as effective in fragments as where they now stand.

The whole of any one scene would encroach too much upon our columns; we must therefore pick a few bits for extracts.

A DISTRACTED PROVINCE.

One feature that belonged to this unhappy state of things in Carolina, was the division of families. Kindred were arrayed against each other in deadly fituils; and, not turfrequently, brother took up arms against brother, and sons against their sires. A prevailing spirit of treachery and distrust marked the times. Strangers did not know bow far they might trust to the rites of hospitality ; and malty a man laid his head upon his pillow, uncertain whether his fellow- lodger, or he with whom he had broken bread at his last meal, ought not invade him in the secret watches of the night and murder him in his ;lumbers. All went armed, and many slept with pistols or daggers under their pillows. There are tales told of men being summoned to their doors or windows at midnight by the blaze of their farm-vards, to which the incendiary torch had been ap- plied, and shot down, in the light of the conflagration, by a concealed hand. families were obliged to betake themselves to the shelter of the thickets and swamps, when thew own homesteads were dangerous places. The enemy wore no colours, and was not to bee distinguished from friends either by outward guise or speech. Nothing could be more revolting than to see the symbols of Peace thus misleading the confident into the toils of war; nor is it possible to imagine a state of society characterized by a more frightful insecurity.

A WILD LANDSCAPE.

By the time that they had gained the summit of a long hill that rose imme- diately from the plain of the river, Robinson apprized Butler that they were now in the vicinity of Adair 's dwelling. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the varied lustre of early twilight tinged the surrounding scenery with its own beautiful colours. The road, as it wound upward, gradually emerged from the forest upon a tract of open country, giving signs of one of those original settlements which, at that day, were sparsely sprinkle:el throngh the great wil- derness. The space that had been snatched item the ruggeduess of nature for the purposes of husbandry, comprehended sonic three 'four fields of thinly- cultivabsi land. These were yet spotted over with stumps of trees, that seemed to leave but little freedom to the course of the ploughshare, and bespoke a thriftless and slovenly tillage. A piece of half cleated ground, occupying the side of one of the a:ljaceut hills, presented to the eve of our travellers a yet more uncouth spectacle. This spot was still clothed with the native trees of the forest, all of which had been death-stricken by the axe, and now heaved up their withered and sapless branches towards the heavens without leaf or spray. In the phrase of the woodman, they had been girdledsoune years before, mid were destined to await the slow decay of time in their upright attitude. It was a grove of huge skeletons that had already been bleached into an ashy but by the son, and whose stiff and dry members tattled in the breeze with a pre- ternatural harshness. Amongst the most hoary of these victims of the axe, the gales of winter had done their work and thrown thorn to the earth, where the shattered boles and boughs lay as they had fallen, and were slowly reverting iatoo thcit original dust. Others, whose appointed time had not yet been ful- filled, gave evidence of their struggle with the frequent attain, by their declina- tion from the perpendicular line. Some had been caught in falling by the boughs of a sturdier neighbour, and still leaned their huge bulks upon these supports. awakening the mind of the spectator to the fancy that they had sunk in some deadly pal osystn into charitable and iendly arms, and, thus locked to- gether, abided their tardy but irrevocable doom. It was a field tof the dead ; and the more strikir g in its imagery from the contrast which it filo nished to the rich, verdurous, and lively forest, that, with all the joyousness of health, encompassed this blighted spot. Its aspect was one of unpleasant desolation ; and the traveller of the present day who visits our West( en wilds, where this slovenly practice is still in use, will never pass through such a precinct without a sense of disgust at the disoiguration of the landscape.

DOW Ti) TELL A GENTLEMAN.

" lievause you are a gentleman," replied the girl, curtseying, " for all your homespun clothes." " Ila ! pray how have you found that out ?"

" You talk differently from our people, sir. Your words or your VOICC—I can't rightly tell which—are softer than I have been used to hear. And yon don't look, awl wa!k, and behave as if homespua had been all you ever store."

" And is that all ? "

" You stop to consider, as if you were studying what would please other people ; and you do not step so heavy, Sir ; and you tin nut swear ; and you do not seem to like to give trouble I can't think, Sir, that you have been always used to such as are hereabouts."

A DISTANT CO3IIIAT.

Thu firSt few scattered shot, that told of the confusion in which the combat was begun, were, after an interval, succeeded by regular vollies of musketry, that indicated an orderly and marshalled resistance. Platoon after platoon fired in regular succession, signifying, to the practised hearing of the soldier, that infantry were receiving the attacks of cavalry, and that as yet the first had not faltered. Then the firing grew more slack, and random shots were discharged from various quarters; but amidst these were lwaid no embodied vollies—it was the casual and nearly overpowered resistance of flying men.

At this juncture there was a dark frown on the brow of Curry, as he looked at his comrades and said, in a low and muttered tone, " That helter-skelter shot grates cursedly on the ear : there's ill-luck in the sound of it." Presently a few stragglers appeared at a turn of the read, some quarter of a mile in the direction of tlho battle, urging their horses forwald at the top of their speed. These were followed by groups both of infantry and cavalry, pressing

onward in the utmost disorder ; on horseback thrusting their way through the throng oi foot soldiers, seemingly regatilless of life ur limb; the wounded with their wounds bleeding afresh;or hastily bandaged with such appliances as were at hand. All hurried along, amidst the oaths, remonstrances, awl un- heeded orders of the officers, who wine endeavouring to resume their commands: it was the flight of men beset by a panic alai fearful of pursuit ; and the clouds of dust raised by the press and hurry of this career almost obscured the setting sun, We have spoken plainly of Mr. KENNEnv's defects, because he has opened a new field, which promises to yield a good crop if properly cultivated. That he is familiar with the history and traditions of the American Revolution, is evident : he would fashion his matter with far more effect if he limited himself to short tales, and aimed.at bringing out rather than expanding the traditions of the Revolution. The arrest, rescue, and love of Butler, would have filled a volume or a volume and a half, and furnished a tale of great power. By aiming at the production of an historical novel, which, after the manner of SCOTT, should be expanded by dialogue, enriched by the introduction of public cha- racters, and illustrate the general history of the time, without possessing dramatic genius necessary to give truth and interest to the first or the art to connect the two last with the story, Mi.. KENNEDY has put forth a work of power in parts, but in effective as a whole.