LUCY AIKIN.*

Miss LUC-Y AIKIN had all the qualities of it lively converser—not

merely lively in the feminine sense, that is, full of animation and intellectual tact, but lively also in the masculine sense, with quick appreciation of intellectual distinctions, as u ell as the quick humour which accommodates intellectual distinctions to the society to which they are appropriate. Of such a person a book that only

includes a few miscellanies and letters can or course give but a

very inadequate specimen. Miss Aikin was not a writer of that class who leave their own characters indelibly stamped on their writings. She had little intensity though much play in her intellectual nature, and she needed to a considerable extent the "give and take" of society in order to elicit fully her peculiar ability. Her capacities were of the kind to form a very dis-

tinguished salon, it' that institution could only be transplanted from Paris to London. Had she lived a little later we could imagine Saturday reviewers flocking to her reunions expressly to talk over with her those social subjects by which Out contem- porary chiefly gained and retains its reputation. They would have extracted from her many a keen remark and just dis

tinctiou, which they would probably have thrown into a better form than Miss Aikin could create for herself in a formal essay. The short miscellanies prefixed to the letters are precisely of the

type and quality of thought of many of the articles technically called "sub-leaders" published in the Saturday,—avoiding first

principles, acutely comparing apparent contradictions, limiting

carefully the precise scope of general social axioms or assumptions, and not disliking, perhaps preferring, after some discussion to leave the question just as open as they found it. But the form of these slight disquisitions is not nearly as neat as the Saturday reviewers would have made it. Sometimes they take the form of

that unreal and lifeless ditilogue in which " A " and " B " converse together, like "Tutor," "George," and " Harry " in the only papers of her father, Dr. Aikin's "Evenings at Home," which chil- dren ever failed to appreciate,—but which we are bound to say they very properly loathed. Miss Aikin would have said the same things in a real dialogue with many times the lightness and point with which she has said them here. Still these miscellanies show distinctly enough the general power and scope of her mind.

She discusses, for instance, with great acuteness in what senses English society is and is not aristocratic. Again, she points out

with precisely the manner of a Saturday reviewer why we so often attach to our regrets for friends' misfortunes a rider compassion-

ately but finely blaming theta for the result,—why if a friend fails in business we mingle with our pity a hint that he was very imprudent to unite with so speculative a partner,—or if he dies, lament that he should have put so much confidence in the medical man who attended him : —

"A tacit reference to self enters, more or less, into all our sympa- thetic emotions. It is matter of the most familiar remark, that no misfortunes affect us so much as those which are likely one day to fall to our own lot ; and in our anxiety to remove this apprehension from ourselves, we are ever ready to catch hold of some casual or accessory circumstance to which to impute the calamity. 'My friend,' we say, was indeed rained, but it was by negligence, by imprudent trust. I, who am neither imprudent nor negligent, have no such catastrophe to fear. He died, but it was through the ignorance of his physician ; I employ one who is skilful.' A little distrust, however, is apt still to in- trude upon these consolatory explanations. We fear it may be only a flattering unction that we are laying to our souls, and we endeavour, by our very vehemence, to impose silence on our secret doubts how far it may be well directed."

So in another little essay Miss Aikin puts in a defence of intel- lectual doubt, in precisely the same style,—not explaining to what kind of doubt she refers, but grounding her defence on the etymo-

logy of doubt from "double," so as to make it express suspense between alternatives, and pointing to the tolerance which such doubt cherishes. In a word Miss Aikin's intellect seemed chiefly formed for the oral discussion of these secondary sort of questions, involving acute comparisons and lively examples, but not probing deeply, and usually defending, like the S iturday, not without Memoirs, Miscellanies, and Leiters. Be 'heists Lucy Aikin. Edited by Philip Homer, Le Breton, of Use lunar Temple. Loudon: Longm.tu and Co.

ability, a view liable to the charge of being superficial or com- mon-place. She lad a sharp secular intellect of that neutral tint which is always keenest on points of judgment and observation rather than points of principle, and which is particularly adapted therefore to weigh the lighter usages of society in the balance, and sum up the evidence on matters which are no: involved with the genius of personal character or the exigencies of a great move- ment. Miss Aikin's estimates of men of real genius, like Carlyle or Wordsworth, for example, are apt to be wanting in discern- ment. She look her stand on a platform of literary ideas on which a Cad.) le was net possible,—was a monster rather than an eccentriety.

It is a pity that the editor has given us so many of Miss Aikin's letters to Dr. Chancing. They were letters interesting no doubt to her to write, and to him to read,—but they are not of any great interest to the public,—for they go into subjects which were scarcely adapted to the peculiar nature of Miss Aikin's talents, and throw no light on those subjects which has not been thrown a thousand times before. Metaphysics and theology

were not in Miss Aikin's way, and when she grows "earnest" she is, we regret to say, apt also to grow dull, because a

little superficial. The same may be said of the letters to Mrs. Taylor. Some of them are the earliest dated letters in the book, and were perhaps written before Miss Aikin had grown out of the pedantic age, or possibly it may have been that her reverence for this particular friend induced her to stand on mental tiptoe when she wrote. This sort of thing is very trying :—

"In the fate of Europe, what food for meditation! The first, the most welcome, thought that strikes me is, that for sovereigns, as for private persons, for nations as for individuals, it is good to have been afflicted."

Moralizing was never in Miss Aikiu's way, and had any young lady moralized on the advantages of national adversity to her, we feel sure she would have had some poignant repartee to make. Mrs. Taylor appears to have been the only correspondent to whom her style ever became inflated. The following reads to us

more like a fragment from one of Evelina's letters, than from one of Miss Aikin's :—

" What delightful satisfaction have I had in recurring to those sacred hours which we were permitted to pass together ! Who can expresa the cheerfulness, the vigour, the sense of inward refreshment procured by such expansions of the heart and mind? To meet a kindred soul, whose intuitive sympathy gives the power of clothing in words thoughts. which must otherwise have bloomed and died in long and joyless suc- cession within the dark recesses of the bosom, is a boon more bright than all the fabled gifts of fairy benefactors, and one in which there seems to be as much of spell and talisman. What is the charm, my friend, by which you thread the whole labyrinth of my bosom, and find access to cells of which I myself must have forgotten the exis- tence ?"

Of this sort, however, there is but little. Many of the letters, especially front Edinburgh, from Mr. Roscoe's house at Allerton, and also the earlier ones from Hampstead, are very lively. And many even of the others are full of anecdote. Here are two very good stories :— " My father and mother were not particularly delighted with their expedition to G—'s, as far as the beauties of nature were concerned.. My father heard there an anecdote which will give you an idea of the extreme barbarity of the fen country. A Cambridge physician being sent for to a patient in that part, and finding the road scarcely passable,. though it was the middle of summer, inquired of his conductor, a simple country lad, what the people could possibly do for medical assist- ance in winter ? 0 Sir !' replied the gawky, in winter they die a natural death !' My father has got something from his fen expedition,. however, namely, a descriptive letter for the Athenaum, for which Dr. Falkenor has also sent a dissertation on the Elysian fields. There is a man at Ache, whose name I forget, who has written to say that if my father will accept of his service for the Alltemewn, his mind will be. found 'a perpetual source of poetic and prosaic strength ;' he confesses,. however, that there is a kind of confusion in his head, but hopes my father will be so good as to put him in order.' 0 the Norfolk. geniuses !"

The volume contains, on the whole, much that is entertaining, though much that might have been omitted with advantage, espe- cially if the space could have been filled up with any of the more

interesting letters, to as well as from, Miss Aikin, to give us a con- ception not only of the influences that were brought to bear upon her mind, but of the impressions she made upon others. Of these, indeed, the traces are often visible enough in her letters. Miss Aikin often reflects unconsciously the tone of mind of the person. to whom she is writing,—in some measure " ceases to be herself and becomes a correspondent." Still, her relations with her friends would have been far clearer to us had some of the monotonous letters to Dr. Charming and Mrs. Taylor been omitted, in favour of letters addressed to herself by such men as Mr. Whishaw, Mr.

Roscoe, or Professor Smyth.