down into one deliquium of love. Fuseli forth into the wilderness, where they found once, when asked if he believed in the im- peace and oblivion. A self-exiled Byron mortality of the soul, replied in language or Landor is rather to be envied; for though rather too rough to be quoted verbatim, "I"how can your wanderer escape from his don't know if you have a soul, but I am own shadow?" yet it is much if that shasure that I have." We are certain that he dow sweep forests and cataracts, fall large believed in the existence of at least one at morning or evening upon Alps and Apother immortal spirit-that of the owner of penines, or swell into the Demon of the the still, serene, and rapt countenance on Brockan. In this case misery takes a which he hopelessly doted. It is curious prouder, loftier shape, and mounts a burnthat on the first meeting of Godwin and his ing throne. But a man like Brockden future wife, they "interdespised "-they Brown, forced to carry his incommunicable recoiled from each other, like two enemies sorrow into the press and thick of human suddenly meeting on the street, and it re- society, nay, to coin it into the means of quired much after-intercourse to reconcile procuring daily bread, he is the true hero, them, and ultimately to create that passion even though he should fall in the struggle. which led to their union. Tó carry one's misery to market, and sell it to the highest bidder, what a necessity for a proud and sensitive spirit! Assuredly, Brown was a brave struggler, if not a successful one. Amid poverty, neglect, nonappreciation, hard labor, and the thousand niaiseries of the crude country which America then was, he retained his integrity; he wrote on at what Godwin calls his "story books;" he sought inspiration from his own gloomy woods and silent fields; and his works appear, amid what are called "standard novels," like tall wind-swept American pines amid shrubbery and brush-wood. His name, after his untimely death (at the age of thirty-nine), was returned upon his ungrateful country Mary Wollstonecroft shone most in conversation. From this to composition she seemed to descend as from a throne. Coleridge describes her meeting and extinguishing some of Godwin's objections to her arguments with a light, easy, playful air. Her fan was a very falchion in debate. Her works -"History of the French Revolution," "Wanderer of Norway," "Rights of Women," &c.—have all perished. Her own career was chequered and unhappy-her end was premature-she died in childbed of Mrs. Shelley (like the sun going down to reveal the evening star); but her name shall live as that of a deep majestical and high-souled woman-the Madame Roland of England-and who could, as well as she, have paused on her way to the scaffold, and wished for a pen to "record the strange thoughts that were arising in her mind." Peace to her ashes! How consoling to think that those who in life were restless and unhappy, sleep the sleep of death as soundly as others-nay, seem to sleep more soundly to be hushed by a softer lullaby, and surrounded by a profounder peace, than the ordinary tenants of the grave. Yes, sweeter, deeper, and longer is the repose of the truant child, after his day of wandering is over, and the night of his rest is come. from Britain, where his writings first attained eminent distinction, while even yet Americans, generally, prefer the adventure and bustle of Cooper to the stern Dantelike simplicity, the philosophical spirit, and the harrowing and ghost-like interest Brown. Of Shelley, having spoken so often, what more can we say? He seems to us as though the most beautiful of beings had been struck blind. Mr. De Quincey, in unconscious plagiarism from another, compares him to a "lunatic angel." ." But perhaps his disease might be better denominated. Another "Wanderer o'er Eternity" was blindness. It was not because he saw falsely, Brockden Brown, the Godwin of America. but, as if seeing and delaying to worship And worse for him, he was a wanderer, not the glory of Christ and his religion, that from, but among men. For Cain of old, it delay was punished by a swift and sudden was a relief to go forth from his species into darkness. Imagine the Apollo Belvedere, the virgin empty earth. The builders of animated and fleshed, all his dream-like the Tower of Babel must have rejoiced as loveliness of form retained, but his eyes rethey saw the summit of their abortive build-maining shut! Thus blind and beautiful ing sinking down in the level plain; they stood Shelley on his pedestal, or went wanfled from it as a stony silent satire on their baffled ambition, and as a memorial of the confusion of their speech-it scourged them dering, an inspired sleep-walker, among his fellows, who, alas, not seeing his melancholy plight, struck and spurned, instead of gently and soothingly trying to lead him | sweet and sinless reverie, among its cliffs. into the right path. We still think, not- The place is, to us, familiar. It possesses withstanding Mr. De Quincey's eloquent some fine features a bold promontory strictures in reply, that if pity and kind- crowned with an ancient castle jutting far hearted expostulation had been employed, out into the Tay, which here broadens into they might have had the effect, if not of an arm of the ocean- -a beach, in part smooth weaning him from his errors, at least of with sand, and in part paved with pebbles modifying his expressions and feelings-if-cottages lying artlessly along the shore, not of opening his eyes, at least of rendering him more patient and hopeful under his eclipse. What but a partial clouding of his mind could have prompted such a question as he asked upon the following occasion? Haydon, the painter, met him once at a large dinner party in London. During the course of the entertainment, a thin, cracked, shrieking voice was heard from the one end of the table,“ you don't believe, do you, Mr. Haydon, in that execrable thing, Christianity?" The voice was poor Shelley's, who could not be at rest with any new acquaintance till he ascertained his impressions on that one topic. clean, as if washed by the near sea-sandy hillocks rising behind-and westward, the river, like an inland lake, stretching around Dundee, with its fine harbor and its surmounting Law, which, in its turn, is surmounted by the far blue shapes of the gigantic Stuieknachroan and Benvoirlich. Did the bay of Spezzia ever suggest to Mrs. Shelley's mind the features of the Scottish scene? That scene, seen so often, seldom fails to bring before us her image-the child, and soon to be the bride, of genius. Was she ever, like Mirza, overheard in her soliloquies, and did she bear the shame, accordingly, in blushes which still rekindle at the recollection? Poets, perhaps all men, best understand Did the rude fishermen themselves. Thus no word so true has of the place deem her wondrous wise, or did been spoken of Shelley, as where he says they deem her mad, with her wandering eye, of himself, that an adamantine veil was her rapt and gleaming countenance, her light built up between his mind and heart." His step moving to the music of her maiden meintellect led him in one direction-the true ditation? The smooth sand retains no trace impulses of his heart in another. The one of her young feet-to the present race she was with Spinoza-the other with John. is altogether unknown; but we have more The controversy raged between them like than once seen the man, and the lover of fire, and even at death was not decided. genius, turn round and look at the spot, We rejoice, in contrast with the brutal with warmer interest, and with brightening treatment he met with while living, to no- eye, as we told them that she had been there. tice the tenderness which the most evan- We have spoken of Mrs. Shelley's simigelical periodicals (witness the present num-larity in genius to her husband--we by no ber of the North British Review), extend to the memory of this most sincere, spiritual, and unearthly of modern men. It is to us a proud reflection, that for at least seventeen years our opinion of him has remained unaltered. It is not at all to be wondered at, that two such spirits as Shelley and Mary Godwin, when they met, should become instantly attached. On his own doctrine of a state of pre-existence, we might say that the marriage had been determined long before, while yet the souls were waiting in the great antenatal antechamber! They met at last like two drops of water-like two flames of fire-like two beautiful clouds which have crossed the moon, the sky and all its stars, to hold their midnight assignation over a favorite and lonely river. Mary Godwin was an enthusiast from her childhood. She passed, by her own account, part of her youth at Broughty Ferry, in means think her his equal. She has not his subtlety, swiftness, wealth of imagination, and is never caught up (like Ezekiel by his lock of hair) into the same rushing whirlwind of inspiration. She has much, however, of his imaginative and of his speculative qualities-her tendency, like his, is to the romantic, the ethereal, and the terrible. The tie detaining her, as well as him, to the earth, is slender-her protest against society is his, copied out in a fine female hand--her style is carefully and successfully modelled upon his-she bears, in brief, to him, the resemblance which Laone did to Laon, which Astarte did to Manfred. Perhaps, indeed, intercourse with a being so peculiar, that those who came in contact with, either withdrew from him in hatred, or fell into the current of his being, vanquished and enthralled, has somewhat affected the originality, and narrowed the extent of her own genius. In dian widows used to fling themselves upon | account she gives of her first conception of the funeral pyre of their husbands: she has that extraordinary story, when she had rethrown upon that of hers her mode of tired to rest, her fancy heated by hearing thought, her mould of style, her creed, her ghost tales; and when the whole circumheart, her all. Her admiration of Shelley stances of the story appeared at once before was, and is, an idolatry. Can we wonder at her eye, as in a camera obscura? It is it? Separated from him in the prime of life, ever thus, we imagine, that truly original with all his faculties in the finest bloom of conceptions are produced. They are cast promise, with peace beginning to build in not wrought. They come as wholes, and the crevices of his torn heart, and with not in parts. It was thus that Tam o' fame hovering ere it stooped upon his head Shanter completed, along Burns' mind, his -separated, too, in circumstances so sud- weird and tipsy gallop in a single hour. den and cruel-can we be astonished that Thus Coleridge composed the outline of his from the wounds of love came forth the" Ancient Marinere," in one evening walk blood of worship and sacrifice? Words- near Nether Stowey. So rapidly rose worth speaks of himself as feeling for "The Old Sea some reverential fear." "Frankenstein," which, as Moore well remarks, has been one of those striking conceptions which take hold of the public mind at once and for ever. But in the mind of "Mary" there must lurk a feeling of a still stronger kind to- The theme is morbid and disgusting ward that element which he, next to herself, enough. The story is that of one who finds had of all things most passionately loved-out the principle of life, constructs a monwhich he trusted as a parent-to which he exposed himself, defenceless (he could not swim, he could only soar)-which he had sung in many a strain of matchless sweetness, but which betrayed and destroyed him-how can she, without horror, hear the boom of its waves, or look without a shudder, either at its stormy or at its smiling countenance? What a picture she presents to our imagination, running with dishevelled hair, along the sea shore, questioning all she met if they could tell her of her husband-nay, shrieking out the dreadful question to the surges, which, like a dumb murderer, had done the deed but could not utter the confession! Mrs. Shelley's genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and circumscribed -more so than even her father's—and, in this point, presents a strong contrast to her husband's, which could run along every note of the gamut-be witty or wild, satirical or sentimental, didactic or dramatic, epic or lyrical, as it pleased him. She has no wit, nor humor little dramatic talent. Strong clear description of the gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the mind, or of those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work, somewhat laboriously creates, is her forte. Hence her reputation still rests upon "Frankenstein ;" for her "Last Man," "Perkin Warbeck," &c., are far inferior, if not entirely unworthy of her talents. She unquestionably made him; but, like a mule or a monster, he has had no progeny. Can any one have forgot the interesting strous being, who, because his maker fails in forming a female companion to him, ultimately murders the dearest friend of his benefactor, and, in remorse and despair, disappears amid the eternal snows of the North Pole. Nothing more preposterous than the meagre outline of the story exists in literature. But Mrs. Shelley deserves great credit, nevertheless. In the first place, she has succeeded in her delineation; she has painted the shapeless being upon the imagination of the world for ever; and beside Caliban, and Hecate, and Death in Life, and all other weird and gloomy creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involuntary, gigantic unit stands. To succeed in an attempt so daring, proves at once the power of the author, and a certain value even in the original conception. To keep verging perpetually on the limit of the absurd, and to produce the while all the effects of the sublime, this takes and tasks very high faculties indeed. Occasionally, we admit, she does overstep the mark. Thus the whole scene of the monster's education in the cottage, his overhearing the reading of the "Paradise Lost," the "Sorrows of Werter," &c., and in this way acquiring knowledge and refined sentiments, seems unspeakably ridiculous. A Caco-demon weeping in concert with Eve or Werter is too ludicrous an idea-as absurd as though he had been represented as boarded at Capsicum Hall. But it is wonderful how delicately and gracefully Mrs. Shelley has managed the whole prodigious business. She touches pitch with a lady's glove, and is not defiled. From a whole forest of the "nettle danger," she extracts a sweet and plentiful supply of the "flower safety." With a fine female footing, she preserves the narrow path which divides the terrible from the disgusting. She unites, not in a junction of words alone, but in effect, the "horribly beautiful." Her monster is not only as Caliban appeared to Trinculo-a very pretty monster-but somewhat poetical and pathetic withal. You almost weep for him in his utter insulation. Alone dread word, though it were to be alone in heaven! Alone! word hardly more dreadful if it were to be alone in hell! "Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea; Thus wrapt around by his loneliness, as by a silent burning chain, does this gigantic creature run through the world, like a lion who has lost his mate, in a forest of fire, seeking for his kindred being, but seeking for ever in vain. He is not only alone, but alone because he has no being like him throughout the whole universe. What a solitude within a solitude!-solitude comparable only to that of the Alchemist in St. Leon, when he buries his last tie to humanity in his wife's grave, and goes on his way, "friendless, friendless, alone, alone." What a scene is the process of his creation, and especially the hour when he first began to breathe, to open his ill-favored eyes, and to stretch his ill-shapen arms, toward his terrified author, who, for the first time, becomes aware of the enormity of the mistake he has committed; who has had a giant's strength, and used it tyrannously like a giant, and who shudders and shrinks back from his own horrible handiwork! It is a type, whether intended or not, of the fate of genius, whenever it dares either to revile, or to resist, the common laws and obligations, and conditions of man and the universe. Better, better far be blasted with the lightnings of heaven, than by the recoil, upon one's own head, of one false, homeless, returning, revenging thought. Scarcely second to her description of the moment when, at midnight, and under the light of a waning moon, the monster was. born, is his sudden apparition under a glacier among the high Alps. This scene strikes us the more, as it seems the fulfil ment of a fear which all have felt, who have found themselves alone among such desolate regions. Who has not at times trembled lest those ghastlier and drearier places of nature, which abound in our own Highlands, should bear a different progeny from the ptarmigan, the sheep, the raven, or the eagle-lest the mountain should suddenly crown itself with a Titanie spectre, and the mist, disparting, reveal demoniac forms, and the lonely moor discover its ugly dwarf, as if dropped down from the overhanging thunder cloud-and the forest of pines show unearthly shapes sailing among their shades-and the cataract overboil with its own wild creations? Thus fitly, amid scenery like that of some dream of nightmare, on a glacier as on a throne, stands up before the eye of his own maker, the miscreation, and he cries out, "Whence and what art thou, execrable shape ?" In darkness and distance, at last, the being disappears, and the imagination dares hardly pursue him as he passes amid those congenial shapes of colossal size, terror, and mystery, which we fancy to haunt those outskirts of existence, with, behind them at midnight, "all Europe and Asia fast asleep, and before them the silent immensity and Palace of the Eternal, to which our sun is but a porch-lamp.' Altogether, the work is wonderful as the work of a girl of eighteen. She has never since fully equalled or approached its power, nor do we ever expect that she shall. One distinct addition to our original creations must be conceded her and it is no little praise; for there are few writers of fiction who have done so much out of Germany. What are they, in this respect, to our painters to Fuseli, with his quaint brain, so prodigal of unearthly shapes-to John Martin, who has created over his head a whole dark frowning, but magnificent world-or to David Scott, our own most cherished friend, in whose studio, while standing surrounded by pictured poems of such startling originality, such austere selection of theme, and such solemn dignity of treatment (forgetting not himself, the grave, mild, quiet, shadowy enthusiast, with his slow, deep, sepulchral tones), you are almost tempted to exclaim, "How dreadful is this place!" Of one promised and anticipated task we must, ere we close, respectfully remind Mrs. Shelley; it is of the life of her husband. That, even after Captain Med wyn's recent work, has evidently yet to be written. No hand but hers can write it well. Critics may anatomize his qualities she only can paint his likeness. In proclaiming his praise, exaggeration in her will be pardoned; and in unveiling his faults, tenderness may be expected from her; she alone, we believe, after all, fully understands him; she alone fully knows the particulars of his outer and inner history; and we hope and believe, that her biography will be a monument to his memory, as lasting as the Euganean hills; and her lament over his loss as sweet as the everlasting dirge, sung in their "late remorse of love," by the waters of the Italian sea. From Fraser's Magazine. THE death of Dr. Mendelssohn, in the reluctantly accepted, or absolutely refused. early part of the last month, is one of the It is true that, after a career of some twenty most melancholy casualities that have oc- years before the public, applause was not to curred in the musical art for a long time. seek; he had exhibited marvels of facility We naturally forget how many similar and as concerto and extempore player on the sudden experiences have suggested the usual organ and piano-forte, and amidst such reflections on the uncertainty of life, and frenzied plaudits, that the intoxicating the vanity of human wishes, in the sight of draught of youthful ambition may have a young composer invested with all the lost its stimulus. Like some other heroes, goods of fortune; the spectacle of artist- however, he also may have found perpetual existence in a favorite of the public is so ani- glory of itself an accumulating and intoleramated that we confer a kind of immortality ble. weight, and that a great name and upon it, and remove into hazy obscurity figure in the eye of the world are dearly and the dim vista of the future the last and purchased by constant toil and responsigreatest of evils. But surely the recollec- bility. He may have wished to anticipate tion of C. M. von Weber, carried off in the the honorable repose of age in consideration first acclamation of his triumph among us, of the more than double duty of his youth and of the early doom of Bellini, the most having in his various capacities of cominventive melodist and dramatic genius of poser, concerto player, extempore player, modern Italy, with numerous promising and conductor of an orchestra, acquitted names in the humbler ranks of art, should himself with a distinction unparalleled, teach us our error in wilfully excepting save by Mozart. Possibly, too, he found a genius from the influence of the ordinary decline of the physical power necessary to rule of human instability. When a com- contend with the daily exigencies of his poser fulfils the arduous duties and complicated responsibilities of Mendelssohn, he attains the giddiest height of prosperity and applause, with proportionate danger to health and life; and now that the melancholy event is passed, we begin to look into its prognostics. position. At any rate, his appearance in the orchestra, when last we saw him at the Philharmonic Society, did not betray the fatal secret. Those who saw Mendelssohn on that brilliant occasion, honored by the presence of the Queen, revelling in his favorite Pianoforte Concerto-Beethoven's We remember that, of late, he was soli- in G--with all the playful grace, the ease, citous rather to avoid engagements than to and conscious mastery that communicated accept them; that he would not conduct the their peculiar charms to the performance, Leipsic subscription concerts this year; can scarcely have anticipated that, in a few that he was often with difficulty induced to short months, the player and his piece play; and that he found himself physically would become alike food for history. That incompetent to cope with the weight of the those inconceivably rapid and elastic finBirmingham organ at the last festival. gers, whose "artful and unimaginable What he had formerly undertaken with touches" created the uproar af enthusiasm cheerful and ready compliance, he now in the concert-room, should not delight |