each other.

Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow."

The physical condition of our bodies, the changes which take place on arriving at an age proper for marriage, do not allow of the ignorance which our author requires us to suppose in his heroine, not only in this place, but especially after Heathcliff's absence and return, when she is the wife of Linton and about to become a mother. We desire to put it to the common sense of discriminating readers, whether this is not a radical error in the delineation of these ideal characters. Are they real beings, or impossible combinations of qualities? Could Mrs. Linton, after Heathcliff's return, desire his presence without being conscious that her feelings towards him were such as his presence would only render more intolerable, unless, as the author leaves us no room to suppose, she meant to be untrue to her husband? We think that when any one considers the matter, he will find in what we have said above, a very plain explanation of what has been talked of as a puzzling character. Making all allowance for the influence of education, and giving the fullest weight to that natural maidenly reserve, which in the early growth of affection teaches love to hide itself and affect indifference; there is in these characters an absence of all that natural desire which should accompany love. They are abstract and bodiless. Their love is feline; it is tigerish.

Yet the work is carried on with such power that it excites a sense of shame to turn back to many of its most "thrilling" scenes, and reflect that we were able to

"In her eagerness, she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal, he turned to her, looking absolutely flashed fiercely on her; his breath heaved condesperate. His eyes wide, and wet at last, vulsively. An instant they held asunder; and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive. In fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species; it appeared that he would not understand, though tongue in great perplexity." I spoke to him; so I stood off and held my

We will not inquire into the possibility or naturalness of Heathcliff's treatment of his son. That there are fathers, however, in the real world who are capable of murdering their children to gratify their selfish passions, there can be no shadow of doubt.

The explanation already given of the character of Catherine will apply in a more general form to all-to the whole design and scope of the story. The characters are drawn with dramatic force and made to seem alive, yet when we lay the book aside, they collapse, they die, they vanish; and we see that we have been cheated with illusory semblances. The children know too much about their minds and too little about their bodies; they understand at a very early age all the intellectual and sentimental part of love, but the "bloom of young desire" does not warm their cheeks. The grown-up characters are the mere tools of fixed passions. Their actions and sayings are like those of monomaniacs or persons who have breathed nitrous oxide. When they hate, they swear and fight and pull out each other's hair. When they are grieved they drink themselves to madness. When they love-we have seen how they behave in the extract just given. Agony is heaped on agony, till the deficient mass topples down headlong. The fancy gives out, and like a tired hound, rushes reeling to the conclusion.

Yet with all this faultiness, Wuthering Heights is, undoubtedly, a work of many singular merits. In the first place it is not a novel which deals with the shows of society, the surfaces and conventionalities of life. It does not depict men and women guided merely by motives intelligible to simplest observers. It lifts the veil and shows boldly the dark side of our depraved nature. It teaches how little the ends of life in the young are rough hewn by experience and benevolence in the old. It goes into the under-current of passion, and the rapid hold it has taken of the public shows how much truth there is hidden under its coarse extravagance.

Very young persons are prone to fancy that the march of life, especially in our own free country, is now, by the enlightenment of the age, all perfectly uniform and regular. But as soon as they fall fairly into the ranks, they begin to perceive that there is still some hurly-burly and jostling, and that it requires resolution to keep from turning into characters resembling Heathcliffs. With a very limited experience, the proportion of honest men is seen to lessen. In a short time we begin to find that men with gray hairs are guided often by the weakest and most childish passions. There are plenty of such who will sell the very souls of their own offspring merely to keep up their dignity. There are plenty also who will treat boys and girls in the most overbearing manner, and then go into a great rage and persecute them inveterately on the least show of youthful anger. Boys often suppose that the old, especially those of some character and station, will regard them with kindness; but they soon learn to make proper distinctions, and to cheat and flatter the right sort, thereby preparing themselves to be proceeded with in the same manner when their own time comes. We soon find out, though it takes strong proof, that there is a large proportion among old as well as young who do actually regard nothing but money. And so it is with a thousand other truths which, in, early life, had only the force of rhetorical maxims; they gradually, like the storms of the tropics, at first no bigger than a man's hand, but rising and expanding, cloud over the sky of youthful hope, and leave us more and more in the gloom of despondence.

The world has no confidence in the courage and strengh of youth. It gives no credit. It stands before the rising race like a bristling rampart. Let no young man fancy what he might or could accomplish if circumstances were otherwise with him than they happen to be, if he had capital to start with, or if nothing ailed his heart. The weakest vagrant in the street can quiet his conscience with such apologies. Neither let any young man expect the fruition of any of his early hopes. They are all mere fictions of the fancy. He may change and change, and realize something resembling the dream; but the apple of knowledge must be first eaten, and ever after there is a flaming sword turned every way before the original Eden. Or he may have pride enough to render him indomitable; he gains nothing by it. Sooner or later he must succumb to wrong, or to disease, or age. But there is a noble satisfaction in holding out to the very last, and one may do this without being a misanthrope, without turning his back to the world, or treating it with discourtesy or indifference.

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A president of one of our colleges once said to a graduate at parting :— My son, as this may be the last time I shall see you, and I shall never have another opportunity of doing you any good, (he had never improved any previous one during four years,) I want to advise you: Never oppose public opinion. The great world will stave right on!"

Whether the graduate has ever opposed public opinion is of no consequence; what we would particularly call attention to is the wisdom of the advice. Of course, if one is to go by public opinion, he must first ascertain, as well as he can, what public opinion is, and must then cut out and fashion his individual opinion to conform thereto. This process must be the constant habit of his soul; he must, in fact, turn himself wrongside out. He must sacrifice himself to gain what the very sacrifice renders it impossible that he should enjoy. The advice is so sound and may be of so much service, especially to the aspiring, among those whose occupations force them before the public, that it deserved to be printed.

But at the same time, there is a certain class of well-meaning characters, who, we

are well aware, can never act upon it. They will have their own way, or, if not, at least the way of no one else. They will think and speak for the truth, or what they deem such, as long as they can; and the world may stave on as much as it pleases -it owes them nothing. They know very well what will be the result of the conflict; they know that the world asks of every man to spread his soul and body on its terrible rack, and permits him no rest but in his grave. They know that life is accursed, that what it promises it never performs, that it wears out first the heart, then the mind, beginning with its subtlest virtues, and at last the body.

Notwithstanding this, these stubborn people are so invincibly obstinate, many of them, that they wilfully keep up a cheerful countenance, and persevere in being good-natured under all the whips and scorns of time. The mean gain victories over them, but the consciousness of their meanness poisons the luxury of the triumph-or if it does not, the vanquished do not mind. For they set great store upon animal comforts, and on the various sensual and sensible delights. They take a pride in a good digestion; and lo! when the crafty and envious think they have now overpowered them, they are making merry one with another, in a wholesome and proper manner. Their motto is, not "never say die!" but, "never say die!" or, as the Samoeid proverb has it, "Grinandbearit!" It is to help such weakly constituted persons as these that Providence has given domestic and social affections, and, growing out of them, the sweets of contemplation, and the sure pleasures of literature and the arts. These are immortal and unchangeable. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

But we need not dwell longer on these old and well-known truths. Our object in recalling them, has been simply to warn the young, whom these ideal personages of Wuthering Heights are now so strongly impressing, against the infection of unconsciously imitating them. Let no hopeless young gentleman persevere in a constancy like Heathcliff's, nor any forlorn wives in an attachment to others than their own bosom partners-if they can help it. If they must preserve their just revenges, let them endeavor to do it without injuring

their bodily or mental health, calmly awaiting the proper opportunity to strike the blow. It were well also if they could keep their purposes profoundly secret; for so they may forget them: "there is no grief,” says Sancho, that time cannot assuage. Is there not, moreover, a great comfort in the faith and hope of Christianity? For this teaches us that we are not to undertake to right all wrongs, but to live them down, and leave their punishment to Heaven. The chivalry of youthful affection. should yield before the eternal wisdom; and, laying down the little things of today, we should nourish that greater revenge which has stomach for all eternitywhich is the love of right and hatred of wrong.

Next to the merit of this novel as a work of thought and subtle insight, is its great power as a work of the imagination. In this respect it must take rank very high, if not among the highest. It is not flowingly written; the author can hardly be an easy writer. Yet he has the power, with all his faults of style, of sometimes flashing a picture upon the eye, and the feeling with it, in a few sentences. The snow-storm which occurs in the second and third chapters of the first volume, is an example. But the effect of the description is often marred by consciously chosen fine words; as for instance, the word "shimmering" in one of the extracts first quoted.

The dialogue is also singularly effective and dramatic. The principal characters all talk alike; yet they stand before us as definite as so many individuals. In this respect the book reminds us of the Five Nights of St. Albans. It is like that also somewhat, in the tone of the fancy; the dream in the opening might have been conceived by the author of the Five Nights; the effect is so like some of his own. Yet this novel has none of the loftiness of that splendid romance; and whatever it may be as a work of genius and ability, is not worthy to be named with it as a work of art.

That it is original all who have read it need not be told. It is very original. And this is the reason of its popularity. It comes upon a sated public a new sensation. Nothing like it has ever been written before; it is to be hoped that in respect of

its faults, for the sake of good manners, nothing will be hereafter. Let it stand by itself, a coarse, original, powerful book, one that does not give us true characters, but horridly striking and effective ones. It will live a short and brilliant life, and then die and be forgotten. For when the originality becomes familiarized, there will not be truth enough left to sustain it. The public will not acknowledge its men and women to have the true immortal vitality. Poor Cathy's ghost will not walk the earth forever; and the insane Heathcliff will soon rest quietly in his coveted repose.

We are not aware that anything has been written upon the rank that ought to be assigned to such works as Wuthering Heights in fictitious literature. In conversation we have heard it spoken of by some as next in merit to Shakspeare for depth of insight and dramatic power; while others have confessed themselves unable to get through it. But all agree that it affects them somewhat unpleasantly. It is written in a morbid phase of the mind, and is sustained so admirably that it communicates this sickliness to the reader. It does in truth lay bare some of the secret springs of human action with wonderful clearness; but still it dissects character as with a broad-axe-chops out some of the great passions, sets them together and makes us almost believe the combinations to be real men and women. It abounds in effective description, is very individual, and preserves the unity of its peculiar gloomy phase of mind from first to last. Yet the reader rises from its conclusion with the feeling of one passing from a sick chamber to a comfortable parlor, or going forth after a melancholy rain, into a dry, clear day.

Now if the rank of a work of fiction is to depend solely on its naked imaginative power, then this is one of the greatest novels in the language. Not one of Walter Scott's resembles it in assuming a peculiar and remote mood of feeling, and carrying it through two volumes in spite of the most staring faults and extravagances. Scott takes every educated person at about the level of an after-dinner conversation and tells a long story, full of chivalry, antiquarian lore, splendid scenes, characters true as far as they go, excellent sense, and thought, which, if not deep, is free and

manly. We rise from reading Ivanhoe younger than when we sat down. Even after his most tragic novel, the Bride of Lammermuir, the regret which we feel is not of that uneasy kind which the soul struggles to shake off; we do not feel as if we had been reading a horrible murder in the Newgate Calendar. The characters are sublimed into the pure art-region; the imaginative power is not exerted through an unfortunate individual experience, but it passes out through curious knowledge and plain legal thinking. Scott did not deign to entertain the public with his private griefs; his ideal life had no connection with his actual one. He told his stories as stories, and kept himself so completely aloof from them that he was never known to be the author of them till circumstances forced him to confess it.

He

Yet few men are really more individual than he; few men have passed away from the world in the last century who have left a plainer impression of themselves behind them. Only he is never designedly or consciously individual. We feel the force of his character in reading his novels; the contact of his cheerful, resolute spirit, his true manly heart, quickens kindred qualities in the reader; but it is not because the writer intends it, that they do. is intent only on his tale; he studies how to carry on his incidents, develop his characters, throw them into perplexities and get them at last safely out of them. The world has long ago acknowledged his originality; but it was by nursing no singularity that he was so. He meant only to tell his stories in a sensible, agreeable manner, such as should find him readers among gentlemen and ladies, and men of letters. Whenever he assumes a character, it is as unlike his own as he could make it. His originality, in fine, was simply the natural birth of his mind, which he no more controlled than he did the shape of his features.

It seems that here should be made a distinction in all works of the imagination: whether the imaginative power be simply the confessing oneself to the world, or working under the sway of the will in a region entirely removed from the soul's actual existence. One writer, stung by disappointment or mortified vanity, turns to the world and makes a face at it; contorts

his visage and unpacks his heart; another, under similar troubles, takes advantage of the knowledge they have given him, and goes on as before, keeping himself to himself and working the harder-too proud to show a single tear. We do not inquire which of the twain makes the most judicious manifestation of himself, but which ought to take precedence as exhibiting a true healthy imaginative power?

Undoubtedly, though the first may exhibit the most vehemence of passion, the other is the greater artist. For the one who keeps to himself and uses his noblest faculties for his service, sending them out to delight the world with their free flights, his soul dwells apart, like a star, in a serene heaven of contemplation. He weeps, if ever, in secret places, taken unawares by the bitterness of sorrow, but soon recovers his serenity and labors to make the world more cheerful. Whereas the one who turns world-hater lives in the pity of other men; he sighs for sympathy, that always comes too late; he cannot use his powers except to relieve himself. He is like those passionate men who, when they suffer grief, play the tragedy hero to their friends-indeed, he is weaker than they; for it is the duty of one's friends to support him through his trials, and all of us have our failing points, but no one has a right to intrude his woes upon strangers.

If we could look into the inner lives of the greatest artists, using that title in its largest sense, as comprehending all who address the world through its sensibility to beauty-poets, painters, musicians, sculptors, novelists-it would then perchance be found that the guises under which they appeared through their works, have been in most cases the farthest possible from their real life—unless, indeed, as of many it might be truly affirmed, we consider their ideal life as more actual to them than their real, inasmuch as it occupies the most of their attention. Outwardly, they may suffer sickness, poverty, yea, starvation; within, the rapt spirit holds high converse with the great ones of old, the living fancy bourgeons and plumes its wings, the active intellect toils like an iron engine. It is with such as if, while the body trailed on the dull earth, the soul expatiated in the golden regions above the sunset.

In whatever fashion this power of throw

VOL. I. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

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ing aside the actual, and living two lives, develops itself, whether in poetry, lyric or dramatic, painting, music, novel writing, it will always be found to be quite independent of the individual. For it is in its essence simply the power of being unindividual, and wherever the individual is mixed up with it, the observer does not fail to distinguish them by an intuitive perception. No man could, or should rather, plead for his life in the same way that he might make an ideal hero in a tragedy plead for his. The language of art is not that of real life. No living being ever conversed in Shakspearian dialogue. Yet no dialogue represents witty conversation better than the scenes with Falstaff. Though it affects the reader with the fidelity of an actual report, yet when it is analyzed, it is seen at once to be quite another thing; and besides, it is actually present. We might glance over all of the arts and select similar instances, but it is not necessary for our purpose.

There is a delightful class of artists, whose imagination, through accident or habit, continually personates a single character. This is a development so much resembling that of the misanthropist, that it requires some care to distinguish them. The misanthropist personates to the world an extremely ill-used person; the humorist places himself in the shoes of some very agreeable one, as Isaac Bickerstaff, Robinson Crusoe, or Elia. Where this development is very peculiar and sustained till its originator almost takes on his imagined form of being, the world is very apt to charge him with being a self-worshipper. But it does not necessarily follow, because an artist manifests himself in that way, that he was an egotist. That is a matter to be decided on other grounds, by what his friends say of him, and by the course of his life.

Supposing, which requires some confidence, the reader to be able to collect and unify these discursive remarks, we will recur to the previous question, as to what rank ought to be assigned to such works as Wuthering Heights. We have said, what all who have read it know, that it was original. Douglass Jerrold, in the newspaper advertisement, that, by one of those singular coincidences which make the same idea to be expressed twice at a