serve to give a tone of dignity and elevation to general conversation, which has no small effect in moulding the national character.

It seems to the Greek to be almost impossible to think or act meanly in the presence of such a literature and such a locale as his. He is, as it were, in an amphitheatre, from which the glories of five-and-twenty centuries look down upon him. He represents, in his own eyes, a long line of heroes, whose ancestral renown he is bound to uphold; and he is strong in the determination not to disgrace such an illustrious pedigree by one unworthy act or thought.

Nor is this honorable feeling expended in martial enthusiasm alone. The modern Greek is as earnest in his endeavour to reform social, moral, and political abuses, as he was to shed his blood in his country's cause; and the result is manifest from day to day, in the improvement everywhere perceptible in the national institutions, especially those connected with education. The university, lately established, is flourishing, and schools are opened wherever a fair prospect presents itself of obtaining scholars.

III. Connected with the preceding observations, is the improved condition of the priesthood in Greece. The sacerdotal body is now offered the means of general as well as spiritual enlightenment and as that church has, in the midst of the grossest superstition, ever "kept the true faith as a precious gem in a rough casket," good hopes may be entertained that she may yet emerge from her comparative darkness as a pure and apostolic branch of the universal church.

IV. The domestic morality of the Greeks has ever been more pure than among the Turks. It has of late years been sensibly improving, and patterns of true fidelity and affection are to be found in most of the families throughout the country.

To all these instances of advancement, most of them not at all or very imperfectly understood in this country, may be added the almost total cessation of brigandage throughout Greece. An unprotected person may now travel from one extremity of the land to the other, as safely as through the best parts of England; and so rare is crime of an aggravated dye, that capital punishment is scarcely known. Indeed, the odium in which it is held renders it extremely difficult for government to procure any one to undertake the office of executioner. The difficulties of other kinds experienced some years ago in travelling through Greece, too, are now in many places altogether removed, and in the rest rapidly disappearing. The roads are good, the horses sound, and easily procured, and the way-side accommodation respectable. The saddle is still the approved mode of conveyance; and the traveller who is not inured to it must expect to suffer occasionally from fatigue and exhaustion, especially during the hours nearest to noon; but he has few of those vexatious hindrances and exhausting privations to impede him, which the most enterprising tourist had to encounter fifteen years ago.

Let us hope that all these indications may be an earnest of something to come: that Greece may not only exhibit progress, but attain a proud position; that as she once shone out a sun amidst the darkness, she may yet again shine, a star in the constellation of the nations; that, small as she is, she may be enabled to resist the encroachments of the great and grasping powers that surround her; and that, if she be singly unequal to the struggle, she may claim and obtain the assistance of that remote, but ever-present and influential empire, which has witnessed with such intense and glowing interest the spirit of early Greece reviving in the bosoms of her sons.

No. CLXXVII.

FATIGUED with the tedious routine of dry reading, bored by the weightier matters of the law, sick unto death of demurrers, and grievously annoyed by rules to compute, when summer comes back with its delicious sunshine, and its long, pleasant, idle days, we adjourn to our marine villa, and there comfortably establishing ourselves in some quiet corner, we luxuriate in indolent repose, divested of all unnecessary covering-coatless, neckclothless, and bootless-often in our shirt sleeves-oftener, still, enveloped in the huge folds of an ancient Turkish dressing-gown, we loll whole days away on the sofa, and plunge recklessly, not into the quiet blue wave which ripples beneath our window, but into the more exciting sea of fiction. We read French novels by the ream, almost as fast as M. Dumas can write them; German more slowly, for they are commonly somewhat philosophic, besides all those of our own tongue; and then, in the gloaming, over our glass of "cold without," do we jot down our opinion of their merits. We mention these particulars of our domestic retirement not from any hope that our mode of life in the long vacation will possess the least attraction to any of our readers, but merely to account in a satisfactory manner for the melange which ornaments the heading of this chapter. Since that quiet

evening that witnessed our departure from the good town of Carrickfergus in a chaise and pair, amid the blessings of our landlady and the fervent farewell of "boots," with purse crammed with the greasy provincial notes in which kind northern solicitors will persist in paying our fees, and digestive functions slightly impaired by the riotous living of circuit, we have skimmed half the contents of the neighbouring circulating library, and save the three whose names form our text, we did not find a single novel worthy our consideration.

Than the author of "Tancred," there are few men of the day who have contrived to monopolize more of the public attention. Mr. D'Israeli is somehow or other always before the world; if his ambition be "the monstrari digito prætereuntiu," he has completely achieved it. The successful assailant of the formidable leader of one of the most powerful administrations, and which was likely to be one of the most lasting that ever governed the country -of one who wields well and with terrific power the formidable weapons of argument and of ridicule-who has never been known to commit himself, and who, whatever may be the defects of his political or personal character, is undoubtedly a master of the science of parliamentary debate-the audacious and successful assailant of this

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man of might, not to speak of the author of six novels, of which some are of very superior merit, must be no ordinary mortal; and because he is no ordinary mortal, he is worthy of the attention of Maga, who is ever regardless of fry of the smaller kind; not indeed annihilating with savage cruelty their infantine existence, but throwing them back again into the waters of oblivion, until they wax bigger, and more worthy of being dished up for the literary banquet of her distinguished supporters. We remember well when the world was ringing with applause after one of those brilliant and polished essays, unrivalled, perhaps, in the annals of parliamentary invective, inquiring of a gentleman who occupies the most distinguished position of his time in the republic of letters, his opinion of Mr. D'Israeli. "I was present," said he," in the House of Commons upon the occasion of his first speech, and notwithstanding the total failure of that effort, I prophesied that he would yet become one of the most effective debaters of his time; for besides many of the elements of ability which were then displayed, he appeared to me possessed of the most indomitable pluck." This gentleman's parliamentary diagnosis has turned out correct, and the honorable member for Shrewsbury now has certainly achieved a position as a brilliant and formidable debater. But our business in this paper is not with his political career, which we leave to the tender mercies of critics better qualified to appreciate than we can possibly be. In the more peaceful, and to our taste, the more agreeable haunts of literature, Mr. D'Israeli has already gathered laurels which are at least as imperishable as those which cluster round the brow of the successful aspirant for political distinction.

We shall never forget the impression made upon us by Pelham." We read this incomparable novel in the earlier years of our college life; we read it, we remember well, one bright spring evening, in our rooms in that portion of the old square which exists no longer. There was a tumbler of mild half-and-half potheen, exquisitely blended with cold water, at our side, as delicious stuff as ever parted the lips or inspired the brain of an under

graduate; in ten minutes we were in extacies; in twenty we had forgotten the existence of our bowl of nectar. Lingering with intense delight over those glorious pages, time was forgotten; the Greek lecture of the following morning was uncared for; we were oblivious of night roll, and but that the junior dean stood our friend, would have lost our lucrative situation of marker. We never rose until we turned over the last page of the book; when we sought our couch, we dreamed thereof; and the next day, to the no small amazement of one of the learned lecturers, who asked us if we could scan a certain line in a certain chorus of a Greek play, and to the delight of the whole class, we replied, dreaming, "that pine-apple fritters were impossible."

But we are not unmindful either of the pleasure which was afforded us by the perusal of " Vivian Grey." The fresh and sparkling style, the knowledge of human nature, and the powerful touches of eloquent description, caught our juvenile fancy; and upon a re-perusal of these volumes, we see no reason to change the opinion we formed when they first met our eye. The great charm of Mr. D'Israeli, as a writer of fiction, is the off-hand manner in which he makes the personages who figure in his pages discuss the topics of the day; expressing, at the same time, through their medium, his own experiences, his own opinions, and the result of his own reflections, upon such subjects as arise, enlivened by his wit and fancy, enriched by his acute observations upon character, and his knowledge of the world. The pages of a novel of this writer afford as agreeable a banquet for the literary epicure as it is possible to conceive. His description of Lord Eskdale, in the work now before us, is almost equal to that of the Marquis of Carabas in his earliest work just mentioned, or to the Mr. Rigby, the Tadpoles, and Tapers of "Coningsby." Lord Eskdale, first cousin to the Duke of Bellamont, and lord lieutenant of the county adjoining that in which Bellamont Castle was situated, exercised a powerful influence over his worthy relatives. A knowing man of the world, they never committed any action, however unimportant, without consulting him; and, in consequence, they never committed them