MR. JAMES'S MORLEY ERNSTE1N.

Wernour any apparent difference as regards ability or labour on the writer's part, the fictions of Mr. JAMES exhibit very different results. Except the native sin of heaviness, a few of the novels which are based on historical events possess considerable variety and interest, and impart to numbers useful information ; a good many, whether descriptive of manners just or long since past, mostly drag their slow length along, wearying the reader and sometimes offending him ; a few, such as the Tales of the Passions, absolutely disgust by the absurd conduct of the story, or by bombastic exaggeration of sentiment and diction.

For these differences we know of no other cause than the acci- dental choice of the subject. Mr. JAMES has no imagination ; he cannot create, he can only design. Hence, if there is in the sub- ject he happens to select some large historical event, as in The Jacquerie, not only furnishing striking scenes and incidents, but suggesting remarkable characters—or if the age was singular for its manners, as the lettres de cachet, the police, the court, and the debauched old King, in The Ancient Regime—a considerable interest is excited, through Mr. JAMES'S historical knowledge, with a certain mechanical skill he possesses in displaying it in the guise of fiction ; and though the incidents may be felt to be melodramatic, and the characters unnatural, the remoteness of the time softens their glaringness, whilst the historical truth floats the fiction. When Mr. JAMES pitches upon a past age, where there is no history to introduce or it is very subordinate to the romance, he is less suc- cessful ; but even then such success as he attains is dependent on his subject. If the social characteristics of the age are well marked and extraordinary—as the times of gentlemen highwaymen, or what not—he is better than when left to the common stock of manners, character, and the passions. When he comes close upon his own age, where extrinsic circumstances cannot assist him, and both characters and incidents are subjected to the test of ex- perience, he sinks still lower ; for he wants the buoyancy to depict manners, and passion is quite beyond him. Yet there is always a certain degree of craft displayed in planning and conducting his story, though deeply tinged, it must be admitted, with mannerism ; and his composition is equally sus- tained. The are scribendi, the power of writing possessed by this author, is indeed very remarkable. Give him but themes, and he will find both ideas and words ad infinitum, and very good words too: morning, noon, evening, night—the sun, the moon, the stars—the town, the country, the sea, the mountain—in short, every object in art or nature, Mr. JAMES, we should say, would undertake to discourse upon at a moment's notice. Writing as much as ∨ in mere composition he excels him : that is, a rigorous revision, sentence by sentence, would discover far less of mere verbiage in JAMES.

Morley Ernstein is a tale of the present age, and is a failure ; but it nevertheless exhibits the characteristic qualities of its au- thor more distinctly than a successful work. In the choice of a subject the science of Mr. JAMES has not failed him ; and, meta- physically speaking, it is well chosen. The object of the writer, he tells us in a preface, was to " display the struggle which so fre- quently takes place in our mixed nature between the earthly im- pulses of mere animal life and the purer purposes of the immortal soul"; and the mode in which this struggle is exhibited is by "depicting the career of a young man setting out unrestrained at the age of one-and-twenty, with a large fortune and strong passions," and with a "tempter of consummate art at his side," opposed by a virtuous passion and such principles as such a young man might be supposed to possess. So far so good; but metaphysics can only lay out the general design ; creative genius is required for execution, and of creativegenius Mr.JAMESis devoid. The struggle between the body and soul of Ernstein the hero is so slight, or, what comes to the same thing, is felt by the reader to be so slight, that he is rather like a Catholic saint preordained to baffle the daemon, than a modern young man of fashion with a great many thousands a year. During his home career, too, he is protected by an en- grossing passion ; and for his conduct abroad he has the excuse of being dismissed for ever by his mistress without any assigned reason. Count Lieberg, the " tempter " under the guise of a friend, is a mere reproduction of Mr. JAMES'S usual villain, with a good deal more than the usual melodramatic exaggeration, rendered absurd by being exhibited in the present times. Nay, so devoid is the German Count of any " compunctious visiting& of nature "—so wonderfully knowing and so exceedingly clever. with such astonishing " power over character," as Mr. Maltravers says of himself— that, coupled with his supernatural resistance to the assault of Mr. Henry Martin in the felon's cell at York Castle, and the twice-repeated assurance of Mr. JAMES that Count Lie. berg's body never could be found after the aforesaid Martin bad fired a pistol into his Countship's ear at Naples, we think it possi- ble that the writer might intend him as a personification of the Devil,—a plan we should like well enough to see attempted in a fashionable fiction, were there any writer living equal to the task. The contest, however, between the incarnate principle of Evil and those he attempts, must be intellectual, not physical ; carried on by suggestions to the ruling passions, not by tempting, like Mr. Jamts's Mephistopheles, the virtue of a sister by threatening to hang her brother for forgery ; neither should Satan be baffled by a burglarious entry, nor the Father of Lies half break down under cross-examination by an Old Bailey lawyer.

The story and its incidents are worse than the management of the two great characters; taken not from life, but from the hack- nied events of the Minerva Press school, though interspersed with descriptions and passing scenes that show the man of observation. The event on which the whole turns is the stale and improbable one of the substitution of a child, and with the connivance of its reputed father : Count Lieberg's grand personal object is, as we have hinted, the seduction of Helen Barham, by a bill of exchange, doubtless forged, but which any lawyer would say could not be proceeded upon, and which certainly the German Count dared not have proceeded upon : the greatest struggle and trouble of Ern- stein arises from one of those stupid mistakes which could have been cleared up in a moment by a single question to a proper per- son : one great incident is the pretty common one of a criminal trial—not, however, for niurder, but burglary : Count Lieberg has two plans for rape, and partially succeeds in an abduction: and house- breakers are the machinery, like the gods of old, to extricate that which is inextricable by the hero or heroine. Some of the scenes have a certain sort of melodramatic effect, and the more level passages frequently exhibit a keen remark upon life happily expressed; but the story as a whole is improbable, or to speak plain English, a tissue of absurdity. The sketch of the Italian cantatrice, Veronica, strikes us as the most life-like thing in the book. She is not, indeed, very like the genemlity•of opera-singers; but the execution is spirited, and she inspires more regard than the automatons who move at the pleasure of the novelist, without any respect to the consistency of nature.

But though the substance of Morley Ernstein is drawn from the Minerva Press, the novel is not one to please the readers of the circulating library ; because the general tone and style of Mr. James is too elevated for their taste; and the occasional obtrusion of the author with some critical observation, his still more frequent re- flections and half-sermonizing discourses, will not merely impede their progress through the story, but be above their comprehension altogether. These, however, we deem the best points of Mr. JAMES; and they will furnish our quotations.

LONDON PEOPLE.

All were London people ; all had been accustomed to mingle much in Lon- don society ; all were acquainted with every thing that existed in the part of London which they themselves inhabited, and in the society with which they were accustomed to mix. I do not mean to say that, as is so common, they knew nothing more. On the contrary, the greater part of the men and women who sat around that dinner-table possessed extensive information upon many subjects ; but still the locality in which they dwelt and the society in which they moved acted in some sort as a prison to their minds, from the limits of which they did certainly occasionally make excursions, but to which they were generally brought back again by the gaoler Custom ere they had wandered far. Such is ordinarily the great evil of London society to a stranger. Unless an effort is charitably made fir the sake of the uninitiated, the conversation of the English capital is limited to subjects of particular rather than general interest ; and where a Frenchm in would sport over the whole universe of created things, solely for the purpose of showing his agility, an Englishman's conversation, following the bent of his habits, sits down by his own fireside, and seldom travels beyond the circle in which he lives. The effect of this contraction is curious and unpleasant to a stranger; but that stranger himself, if he b.: gentlemanly in habits and powerful in mind, very often produces a miraculous and beneficial change upon the society itself. lithe people composing it really possess intellect and information, and the narrowness of their conversation proceed merely from habit, there is something in the freshness of the stranger's thoughts which interests and excites them. They make an effort to keep up with him on his own ground : the animation of the race carries them away ; and off they go, scampering over hill and dale, as if they were driving after a fox.

SPEECH NOT WORDS ALONE.

Let it be remarked, that the very general idea, that speech consists of words alone, is extremely erroneous. That the parts of speech indeed which are beaten into us at school, and for which, during a certain period of our lives, we curse all the grammarians that ever lived, front Priscian down to Lily, consist entirely of words, is true ; but he who looks closer than any of these grammar-makers at the real philosophy of language will find that speech con- sists of three distinct branches—words, looks, and tones. All these must act together to make what is properly called speech. Without either of the two last branches, the words rightly arranged form but what is called language; but that is a very different thing. How much is there in a toile? what a va- riety of meanings will it give to the same word or to the same ?entenc:el It renders occasionally the same phrase negative or affirmative ; it continually

changes it from an assertion to an interrogation. The most positive form of language in the world, under the magic influence of a tone, becomes the strongest expression of doubt, and "I will not" means "I will" full as fre- quently as any thing else.

REFLECTIONS ON HUMAN VICE.

What was very justly said by a man who had made acquaintance, actuated by no evil views, with that most miserable class of beings the fallen women of a great city, that "each carries a tragedy about with her," may well be said a-the criminals who every day expose themselves to fresh punishment by fresh crimes. It is not indeed with the latter as with the other unhappy beings I have just mentioned, that there is always a fund of broken hopes and lost affec- tions and crushed sensibilities; for man, made of sterner stuff, often strides on rapidly into evil by his own choice, and corrupts himself with his eyes open. With men the tragedy is not enacted in their own heart ; it is among parents, relations, friends—among those who have built up their hopes and loves upon a being who shakes them all to the ground and leaves scarcely a ruin standing. But even were it not for this—were the criminal alone in all the world—had he disappointed no father's brightest wishes, had broken no mother's heart, had he never scattered dismay and sorrow round the fond domestic hearth, nor cast the shadow of the Upas on the hearts of brothers and sisters—surely the degra- dation of high intellect, the debasement of all man's powers corporeal and men- tal, the extinction of bright innocence, the condemnation of an immortal spirit, are tragic acts enough to wring the heart of even the sternest when he beholds crime. It is the apathy of age, the deadened sense of habit, or the levity of youth, that enables us all to walk almost indifferent through scenes where, every day, sorrow and sin and destruction are taking hold of beings like our- selves.

MATCHES.

Great part of the men and women that are cast by the will of God into the world go about seeking a mere match of some kind. For most of them, if not exactly any thing, very nearly any thing will do. It matters not what is the first thing that links their affections to another—whether beauty, or similar thoughts, or similar tastes, or circumstances, or proprieties, or follies, or acci- dents; one or two slight causes combining is sufficient to produce the effect; the words are spoken, the altar gives its sanction, the ring encircles the finger, the white ribands and the orange blossom, the smiles and gayety, are worn and pass away, and the union settles down into tranquil happiness, continual irri- tation, fierce strife, or speedy rupture, as the temper, the passions, and the principles of the parties impel or bind them. But there are others, however, of a finer clay and a higher mould, who form, at a very early period, a bright

ideal image of the being that must he their soul's companion, in which every trait and feature is made harmonious (to use boldly a mixed figure) to the

preexisting tones of their own heart ; where each taste, each feeling, each thought, finds a respon,ive note in the spirit of another, and where the corporeal form represents but as a symbol that grand quintessence of all that we desire in the heart of the being that we love. Seldom, very seldom does it happen in

life, that those who have thus, if I may so call it, preconceived their love, ever find the being they have dreamt of. Seldom, if they do find her, is it their fate

to win her: but if they do, they may well die the day after, for they have

known enough arhuman joy to fill up a whole existence. Seldom do they find her ; they may find the face and the form, but the one harmonious whole is rare—oh, how rare! The mines of Golconda do not furnish fewer diamonds, the rivers of Ceylon roll down fewer rubies, than the whole world produces, ay, ins thousand years, of beings fully worthy to be loved.

THOUGHTS.

There are strange things told of preaeutiment : there are a thousand recorded instances of men firmly and clearly anticipating the death that awaited them, often when there was no reasonable cause for expecting it. But we may go further still : who is there that, without any distinct motive that he can per- ceive, has not often found his thoughts resting strongly upon some particular

theme, very loosely related, if at all, to the circumstances around him, and re- turning, whether be would or not, to that one topic; his mind seemingly im- pelled to its consideration by an irresistible power out of himself, and then, ere many hours were over, has found the things connected with that theme rise up around him as if by magic? Who is there that has not had occasion to say to himself in life, "My thoughts were prophetic "? Who is there that has not more than once in life almost fancied himself endowed with the second- sight?

Read by themselves, these, and many other passages, may chal- lenge comparison with any writer of the day ; but as they stand in the novel, they are as likely to be skipped as perused ; for they are not introduced when the story pauses and the mind requires a relief, but they as often impede its progress when the reader desires to burry on—they cause a stoppage.