voice demanding of him the sacrifice of his wife, as a proof of his disinterested piety -and he obeys!

Carwin is a character in whom we at first feel much interest; for we do indeed expect to find in him the key to all these mysteries. Yet it is hardly possible that the reader should ever suppose him to have been introduced as the immediate cause of any supernatural phenomena. We have already begun to suspect that the incidents which produce so great an effect upon Wieland, and so little upon all the rest, have some degree of mysteriousness, indeed, but no very great actual importance. For we see very plainly that we are conversing with real men and women of this world, and that we are not introduced to the island of Prospero; that in such an every-day state of things as has been all along described, no reasonable author could introduce an order of events depending on unheard-of laws, and on unnatural agencies. No sane writer of fiction would be very likely to introduce a Caliban into the family of an ordinary country gentleman like Squire Western, or a Mephistopheles among the quiet and simple inhabitants of "sweet Auburn." Yet, though no reader could justly form any expectation of finding in Carwin a character that should be the author of supernatural events, in a manner strictly accordant with his own nature, we have no doubt that a majority of readers feel more dissatisfaction with the author's development of this personage than with anything else in the tale. This was the most critical part of the whole writing.* The manner in which the author extricates himself from this difficulty, and acquits himself of this

*It has not escaped our notice that the author (in his Advertisement) speaks of Carwin as the "principal person." This may seem a conclusive testimony against our opinion of the purpose which this character was intended to serve. But we must be

allowed to doubt that the author means anything more by these words than we have already admitted. It is indeed the character on which the whole, in a certain way, depends, and the one which unquestionably gave the author most pains and perplexity in unfolding. So, also, he speaks of the narrative being told "by the lady whose story it contains"-although no one will pretend that the work is very much like an autobiography. Both these expressions seem to be used in rather a loose ner, to avoid the repetition of names, and not e sake of explaining a story which is not yet

task, will afford a tolerably sure test of his powers.

It cannot be too firmly settled in every mind, that there is a Providence which overrules all events; that crime has its own terrible and inevitable consequences; that the error and folly which lead to the same results as crime are equally fatal in their outward effects, and render men equally responsible for those effects. Murder committed in a drunken frolic is not excusable; the strangling and robbery which the Thug believes it to be his positive duty to perform, and for the omission of which he dreads a terrible retribution, render him as amenable to justice as the same deeds would any other criminal; and the infanticide religiously perpetrated on the banks of the Ganges is no less heinous because induced by the religious passion. No action is performed without some motive. Even the madman has an irrational motive. Coleridge has taken rather a singular position, in one of his works, where he descants upon a "self-determined will." A man may do this or that according to our metaphysician-without motive, were it only to show that the thing can be done without motive! The same author has elsewhere descanted at some length upon Irish bulls. It is in this region of motives, if we mistake not, that authors of fiction are most usually assailable, in all controversies respecting naturalness and consistency. The providential laws are violated, when innocence is suffered to be involved in a series of intolerable calamities, brought about by an innocent agent: that is, such a thing is impossible. that the guilt of one should be the cause of calamities to another, or to many others, is nothing impossible-nay, it is comparatively common. Now the problem for our author to solve was no less than this: To make Wieland the deliberate agent of a most horrible deed, under human will acts under the restraint of any sense of duty. Those who deny that the superior law, will need no further reason for such an action than, simply, that he willed it. The common sense of every reader, nevertheless, tells him that, in al ordinary states of mind, the phenomenon and the conditions we have mentioned are incompatible-that, to be rendered poss ble, there must be some intervening mo

But

tive, depending for its efficacy on a diseased state of the mind. The mental malady of Wieland, we have already seen, would have come to that stage which rendered the act possible, through the operation of only some very trivial incident, so soon as it was possible for him to credit the reality of a direct, sensuous intercourse with the Deity. It is to confirm this faith that Carwin is introduced. The motive on the part of Carwin, however, must not have been pure malignity-else the design of the author would have been entirely frustrated, by removing the whole enormity of the murder, and the whole weight of the reader's horror, upon this inferior agent. Now we conceive that this part of the fiction is admirably managed so as to secure all the ends intended. Carwin carries on a complicated system of deceit, into which guilt of another and different character, in respect to which we feel little indignation, but abundant loathinghas betrayed him. He never once suspected any serious consequence could follow. And therefore, while the part he has played has a sufficient motive, and falls short of the highest degree of guilt, it nevertheless serves the purpose for which he was introduced on the stage. We despise the man-we look upon him as a degraded, insignificant creature. The whole weight of all the dreadful mystery is left to rest upon Wieland; and the chief responsibility of the calamities in which his family are overwhelmed is not transferred from their immediate cause.

The excessive dislike and detestation of Clara towards Carwin has, doubtless, contributed to mislead some readers respecting the real magnitude of the agency which he exerts. This horror is perfectly natural-exaggerated as it nevertheless is. The remembrance of that scene, in which Carwin comes forth from the closet at midnight, avowing a fiendish purpose, must awaken no very gentle emotions in the mind of such a woman as the sister of Wieland. Nor could she forget the base heartlessness of the deceitful calumny that had for so long a time alienated Pleyel from his attachment, and induced him to impute to her one of the most infamous of crimes. But even had Carwin been only, as he pretends, the innocent yet careless occasion of the calamity that annihilated

| the whole family of her brother, her feelings could hardly have been less violent against him than they were. For all these reasons combined, therefore, it is very plain that the reader who enters into entire sympathy with the emotions of the narrator, and does not form an estimate of things from the facts she communicates, entirely independent of her personal feelings, does injustice to the author. He has exactly followed nature in the words which Clara is made to use, but, of course, he expects the reader to bear in mind by whom they are spoken. On certain particulars, as her own expressions plainly show, she is totally unfit for a dispassionate judgment.

Some parts of the closing scenes of Wieland's life are unsurpassed by any passage which we remember in the most celebrated novelists. The tumultuously shifting clouds of madness that chase through his soul in that last hour, and the final moments of sanity, more terrible than all, excite the mind to a feeling of almost supernatural awe. A more vivid, burning impression than that which these powerful passages leave on the mind, is inconceivable. We detect here, very plainly, the workings of a genius kindred to that which gave birth to the tragedy of Macbeth, and to the wild, frantic energies of the Moor of Venice.

We know of few novels that are fuller of moral meaning than "Wieland." It seems to us impossible for any one to read it without receiving some very valuable lessons, such as cannot very soon be forgotten. The dangers of fanaticism, of false notions of the Deity, of a too ready credence of supernatural interpositions, are here effectively exhibited. That direct intercourse of the senses with the Supreme Being is impossible; that an uncontrolled and irregular flow of the religious feelings is unwise and pernicious; and that duty never can require of a man any other sacrifice than a renunciation of his attachment to evil; are truths proved and illustrated on almost every page. And if there is a little excess of tragedy in the events here portrayed, even this fault turns to some good account, by adding to the force and permanence of the impression made by the moral lessons connected therewith.

On one who reads for critical purposes

We have presented to our readers in the Review for this month a portrait of the Hon. Robert Charles Winthrop, the present Speaker of the House of Representatives.

This gentleman, whose preferment to the high official station which he now holds, is a well-deserved and appropriate tribute to his personal worth and public service, has won a not less eminent place in the esteem of the Whig party of the Union, by the fidelity with which he has devoted his talents, throughout an active political career, to the advancement of the good of the country.

Mr. Winthrop's participation in the public counsels is attended by a fortunate prestige of name and lineage. In both of these he may be said to be identified with the history of that portion of the country which he represents; and if there be any truth in the ancient notion that an honorable ancestry constitutes a pledge to patriotism and virtue, he has an especial reason to acknowledge its obligations, and to find in them an incentive to the faithful and zealous performance of every public duty. He stands in the sixth degree of lineal descent from John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts-"that famous pattern of piety and justice," as he is called in the early chronicles of New England, -who, emigrating to this shore in 1630, brought with him the confidence and respect of the government he had left, and the most upright and exalted faculty for the duties he came to assume. Grahame, adopting the thought of a classic historian, says of him that "he not only performed actions worthy to be written, but produced writings worthy to be read."

John Winthrop, the eldest son of this worthy, was scarcely less distinguished. He was a man much addicted to philosophical study and especially to physical science, and was one of the early patrons of the Royal Society. Sir Hans Sloane and three other members of that society,

some fifty years afterwards, in commending the grandson of this gentleman to the notice of their associates, bear honorable testimony to the good repute in which the ancestor was held. They speak of "the learned John Winthrop" as "one of the first members of this Society, and who, in conjunction with others, did greatly contribute to the obtaining of our charter: to whom the Royal Society in its early days was not only indebted for various ingenious communications, but their museum still contains many testimonies of his generosity, especially of things relating to the natural history of New England."

He was elected Governor of Connecticut for several years, in which station, says Belknap, "his many valuable qualities, as a gentleman, a philosopher and a public ruler, procured him the universal respect of the people under his government; and his unwearied attention to the public business, and great understanding in the art of government, was of unspeakable advantage to them."

He was twice married, his second wife being the daughter of the celebrated Hugh Peters. By this marriage he had several children, amongst them two sons, of whom Fitz John was the elder. He, following in the footsteps of his father, was elected Governor of Connecticut, and held that post for nine years, commencing in 1698 and continuing until the day of his death. The younger son was a member of the Council in Massachusetts under the new charter granted by William and Mary, and was afterwards Chief Justice of the Superior Court of that State. His name was Wait Still, a compound of two family names, and not, as some have supposed, one of those conceits which at that period seemed to strike the fancy of the Puritan fathers. "That middle name," as the learned and accurate President of the Massachusetts Historical Society has been careful to inform us, was derived from inter-marriage of Adam, his great grand

66

father, with the family of Still; and this gentleman," he adds, "was not designated by a perverse simplicity which characterized the age."

Wait Still Winthrop, the Chief Justice, appears to have left but two children, of whom John, the only son, resembled his grandfather in an ardent devotion to scientific research, and like him, became a distinguished member of the Royal Society; his introduction to that body being, as we have seen, greatly facilitated by the respect in which the memory of his ancestor was yet held. Attracted by the love of his favorite studies and his attachment to the society of learned men, he removed to England, where he spent his latter days, and died in 1747.

He left a large family behind him. John, the oldest of his sons, married in Boston the daughter of Francis Borland. He was a gentleman of wealth and leisure, and was one of the most respectable citizens of New London, Connecticut. One of the younger sons of this gentleman was the late Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, the father of the present Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Thirtieth. Congress.

Robert C. Winthrop, the youngest son of Thomas L. Winthrop, to whom we have just referred, was born in Boston, on the 12th of May, 1809, and was educated at Harvard; where, in 1828, he received his diploma, and with it, one of the three highest honors awarded to his class. He studied law under the direction of Daniel Webster, and was admitted to the bar of Boston in 1831. He devoted but little attention to the practice of his profession, the bent of his mind inclining him much more to the study of public affairs than to the labors of a vocation which few men pursue but under the spur of a necessity, which, in the present instance, did not exist.

Mr. Winthrop entered into public life in 1834, being then elected to the Legislature of Massachusetts, and has since continued in the public service. He was the representative of Boston in the State Legislature for six years, during the last three of which he was the Speaker of the popular branch of that body; discharging the arduous duties of this post with an address

judgment which elicited the most hon

orable confidence and approbation from the body over which he presided.

The House of Representatives of Massachusetts at that time numbered between five and six hundred members. We may suppose the duties of the Speaker in such a body to exact the highest degree of parliamentary skill and tact in their administration. In this school the incumbent found full and adequate experience; and he left it, after his three years' service, with the reputation of an expert and effective proficient in the rules of legislative proceedings.

Mr. Winthrop first became favorably known beyond the limits of his own State, when, in 1837, he visited the city of New York, at the head of the Massachusetts delegation, which assembled there with the delegations from the Whigs from many other States, to celebrate the great triumph of the Whigs of New York in the elections then recently held. It was a great meeting of congratulation, and intended to concert measures for the co-operation of the Whig party in the Presidential canvass which was soon to open. It was a brilliant prelude to the election of 1840, of which the results were at once so glorious and so disastrous.

On that occasion, no one drew more observation in the large crowd there assembled, than the subject of this memoir. His speech in the Masonic Hall, where the congratulations of the occasion were proffered and received, is still remembered by those who were present, as one of the most felicitous and attractive incidents of that memorable exhibition. His vivid and animated eloquence stimulated the already excited feeling of the assembly to the highest key of exultation, and old and young left the scene of this event with common prediction of future eminence to the orator, and more extended renown amongst his countrymen.

His congressional career began in 1840. The resignation, in that year, of the representative from Boston, Mr. Abbott Law1ence, led to the choice of Mr. Winthrop by a majority so decisive as almost to deprive the election of its title to be called a contest. He thus took his seat in the House of Representatives at the second session of the Twenty-sixth Congress. He was a member also of the distin