fence of the worth of the spiritual nature; and his insight into the spiritual beauty of Christianity is such as might shame the pretensions of many a proud divine. The names we have mentioned, as belonging to the new and better school of literature are not very often brought together, yet there are among them, many points of resemblance, and they unite in their opposition to the Satanic School. Widely as men, like Wordsworth and Carlyle, differ from each other, they yet have the same philosophy of man's nature, and hold a place in the new literature of the age. To the wild spirit of rebellion, the new school opposes a spirit of reconcilation. It does not cease warring with hostile powers, because it is weak and slavish, but while it has manfully thrown off all shackles upon its freedom, submits to the evils which are inevitable, and glories in a liberty which is subject to law. It does not quarrel with fate, nor, like a caged beast, tear itself against the iron limits of necessity. It acknowledges, that limitation is the lot of man; that the feeling infinite cannot find full scope and happiness in this world, and most aspires, while it most submits. It is calm not with the quiet of stupidity, but the serenity of intense and harmonious action. The spirit to which it aspires, is like that, which Carlyle attributes somewhat too enthusiastically to his idol, Goethe. "The stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of his being; a trembling sensibility has been inured to stand without flinching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing outward, nothing inward shall agitate or control him. The brightest and most capricious fancy, the most piercing and inquisitive intellect, the wildest and deepest imagination, the highest thrills of joy, the bitterest pangs of sorrow; all these are his, he is not theirs. His faculties and feelings are not fettered and prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union. under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of Chaos were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together under its soft vesture into a glorious and beneficent Creation. This is the true rest of man, the dim aim of every human soul, the full attainment of only a chosen few.” Thus calm and reconciled, without being dull or slavish, this better literature is also free from the disgust at common things, which marked the Satanic School. It honors common it loves the calmer aspects of nature; it glorifies the fa life; miliar home; it asks but life and health and the common blessings of existence to make its happiness. How widely in this respect, the strains of the contented dweller at Rydal Mount differ from that noble poet, who found nothing in home, or foreign pilgrimages and pleasures, to give him peace. The one turned from the richest joys the world can give with disgust, -the other finds delight in the most ordinary scene. The simplest flower wakes thoughts to him too deep for tears. He could say: "Long have I loved what I behold, The night, that calms the day, that cheers; Her humblest mirth and tears. "The dragon's wing, the magic ring With sympathetic heart may stray, “These given, what need I more desire, The respect which Wordsworth and like spirits show for common things, does not originate in a mind common-place, and a spirit tame and prosaic. They find great principles in common objects. As the philosopher owns the same sublime law in a drop of water, which he sees in the shape and movements of the heavenly orbs; so the heart's true philosopher discerns sublimest truths in simplest things, and to him all nature and life are rich with meaning. The spirit of beauty appears in the mountain daisy as in the rose gardens of Eastern princes; for him every forest has a charm as well as the shades of a Vaucluse. He need not seek the Alpine storm, nor list to the live thunder, as it leaps from crag to crag, that he may hear the voice of God; for God whispers in every breeze, and beams in every star. To him common humanity is interesting, and in every man he owes the marks of that nature, which was so brightly revealed in a Shakspeare and Milton, and once tabernacled the Deity in Mary's Divine Son. The works dictated by such feelings have already had much effect on the public mind, and given interest to common scenes and char acters. Some of the most fascinating of recent poems record but the simple annals of the poor; and the most distinguished fiction of the present year, and which is alike a favorite in humble homes and brilliant halls, paints the sorrows and the final happiness of a pauper orphan. But the crowning excellence of this better literature lies in the beauty with which it clothes practical life, the worth it gives to duty above passion. In its ear, duty is the harmonious accord of all faculties and all feelings. It dignifies the common virtues; it is believing, humble, calm, contented, active, conscientious; but its faith is something better than credulity, its humility is not tameness, its calmness is not stagnation, its content is not stupidity, its activity not worldly routine, its conscientiousness is not the death of genial impulses, but rather their harmonious utterance. It points to a practical life, as a good school for the ideal muse, and regards ideality as the beautifier of daily experience. Its steed is no tame hack-horse, but a fleet Pegasus with foot for the earth and wing for the empyrean, and he soars on sublimer pinion for walking in the lowly meadow, and resting in this working-day world. The highest flights of the imagination are not only compatible with, but even aided by, a dutiful and practical life; and the most glowing sensibilities may find scope and nurture by the quiet fireside. Poetry is thus no longer the swan-song of agonized and dying feeling, but the cheerful music that gladdens daily life, and in its saddest tones but chants the pensive aspiration after better worlds. The bard of Rydal Mount sings of Duty as well as Immortality, and his life seems true to these strains. A wild genius like Richter is not dulled by regular habits, but in all he wrote, shows that his soul of flame was steadied by a regular life, and kept pure and glowing in a happy and virtuous home. At home he wrote, and there found inspiration enough; while Shelley, and such as he, sought it in startling scenes and wild abodes, now invoking the muse among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome-now finding a home in the roofless recesses of the Pisan hills, and now tossed by the winds and waves of that wild Bay, in whose rocky caves the midnight moon often lighted his reveries, and in whose waters he at last found a grave. If Richter so differs from the Satanic band, much more the serene Goethe; and the most prominent lesson, which the chief of the German Parnassus utters, bids us lead a life of efficient action, if we would enjoy the fulness of the heart's sensibilities, to seek for constancy and ardor of feeling in vigor and steadiness of occupation, to keep faith in the ideal, and yet not lose sight of the actual world; and instead of fretting at things as they are, or rebelling in Satanic pride at the limits that restrict our efforts, and the disappointments that mock our aspirations, cheerfully set ourselves to the duties of our sphere, and whatever our hand findeth to do, do it with our might. Cheerily, then, let the pilgrim wend his way, and while he travels the busy road, he may enjoy all the better for his activity the verdure around him, and the sky and the stars above. "Thy lot is appointed, go follow its hest; Thy journey's begun, thou must move and not rest, S. O. ART. II. Oliver Twist; by CHARLES DICKENS, (Boz,) Author of "Pickwick Papers," &c. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, successors to Carey & Co. 1839. 8vo. pp. 212. It is not often that books of such sudden popularity afford much for profitable remark. They are quickly read out of the world. A work, which is to endure, men are not in so great a hurry to see. Silently and slowly it forms itself, amid the noise and glitter of life's ephemeral attractions, and is recognised only by the few of truer sense and insight, until at last, upon the strength of their enthusiasm about it, the world comes to honor it, as ignorantly as it does Shakspeare, and all great authors, who are famous, but by no means popular. Indeed very wide popularity is commonly a presumption against a book, while it is new; since it is only requisite for such success, that it be something which can be idly read, or that it contain something wicked, like Lady Bulwer's late novel, to stimulate the malicious curiosity of the many. It was a long while, therefore, before we yielded to the fashion and began to read "Boz." We were charmed against our will. And, what is more, the charm lasted while we thought over the dream. As we read VOL. XXVII. - 3D s. VOL. IX. No. II. 21 along, pleasant amusement deepened into intense and pure emotion; and, after these were gone, there remained a substantial product in our hands. Our faith, as well as our knowledge of the world, had grown. We had been seeing worse sides of human life exposed than had ever entered our thought before, and exposed in such a way, that we could still see the evil subordinated to the good, and that there is yet more to be hoped, than to be feared, for man. We had been led through the labyrinths of a great city by a true and wise observer, — one who goes everywhere into the midst of facts, and does not get lost among them; one who dares to look into the rotten parts of the world, and yet forgets not its beauty as a whole, but still has faith enough to love this human nature, whose meanness he knows so well. Truly, thought we, the work deserves to be admired; and, that we may get all the good we can out of it, we will try to tell wherein it is truly admirable. We are not going to judge it by received or assumed laws of criticism; but, having felt that here is something genuine and effective in its way, we would, if possible, unfold its great excellencies, and seek in them their law. For, really, it is not worth the while to criticise a work, which is not significant enough to give law to the critic. Accordingly, we shall take this story for what it is, and find no fault with it for what it is not. "Oliver Twist" is the story of a parish boy, so named, who first saw light in the work-house of an English village, whither his young mother had come, a forsaken wanderer and a stranger, to die in giving him birth. His infant experiences are dismal enough. Not brought up, but "dragged up," as Charles Lamb would say, among paupers, to be starved, beaten, and abused by every body; a stranger to smiles and every genial influence; taught from the first the stern reality of hardships, solitude, and total want of sympathy; with everything conspiring to cure him as fast as possible of childhood's charming sins, simplicity and trustfulness; he was made to appreciate, through all its details and refinements, the admirable economy of the pauper system of England, which does so much to discourage paupers, and so little to prevent men from being born into that condition. These wretched scenes, true to the life, yet relieved by much exquisite humor in the caricatures of the petty officials, the "Beadle" and the "Board," those more shrewd, than kind dispensers of the public charity, and by many little touches of natural affection here and there, form the first portion of the |