"Mr Somers resumed his reading; but at another time paused to say, 'Some have thought Emerson not quite in his element in treating either of Friendship or Love, because he makes so little of the particular affections, and would merge them, as we see in this essay we have read, in a feeling of universal love and beauty.'

"Her son still remaining silent, Mrs Somers was provoked into taking up the subject. I think, my dear Frederic, you are really called on to justify yourself. How is it that you, who have such decided religious opinions, can like a man who so positively goes against them?

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“I never dislike a man simply for his opinions, even if he holds what seems to me great error, if it does not appear to spring from obliquity of heart; and I have no reason whatever to think it does so with Emerson.' Ah,' thought Elizabeth, 'how beautiful is his candour! I know he does not agree at all with Emerson in many things; and he does not consider those things unimportant. But, indeed, it is not so much depreciation of the value of truth, as a strong and practical sense of the sovereignty of God in dispensing it, which tends to make a man charitable.'

"But though you should not dislike the man, I don't see how you can recommend his works.'

"I don't think I ever do exactly recommend them. I admire and delight in them myself, and wish to introduce him to others who are capable of appreciating them, simply to add to their enjoyment.'

"But if these attractions are combined with what is really hurtful?—' "I understand you,' said he, now entering with more animation into the discussion, and I think your principle is perfectly correct; but in some way it does not seem to me to apply to Emerson. He does not insinuate nor bring forward plausible arguments to support these views. If he did, I should be slow indeed to recommend him. For though we ought all to be able to meet error, as well as truth, face to face, a large number of men cannot safely do so, therefore I would do nothing to bring them in contact with it, when it assumes an aggressive form. But Emerson's theological opinions are just there before you (so far as they are there at all), as his other thoughts and feelings are, and that is all. You learn what they are, and it will do you no more harm to learn this from himself than from his censors. That absence of theoretic system, which is perhaps partly the cause and partly the effect of the unconnectedness we spoke of, Miss Howard, is an advantage here. It makes it by far easier to separate in feeling, as in thought, the truth from the error.'

"Well,' said Mrs Somers, let us have liberality by all means; but when you speak of sympathy, I must own it surprises me you can feel with one who, I understand, does not actually believe in a personal God.'

"Elizabeth looked at Mr Somers in astonishment, and her countenance became a shade paler.

"You did not perceive it,' said he, smiling; then becoming grave, and sighing, he added, ́ 1 much fear, however, what my mother says is too true. But perhaps I hope he does believe in a personal God, though often when he seems to speak of one, it is only an abstraction. To me, however, as I read, forgetting the man Emerson's individual views, those beautiful passages seem to breathe of a Divine Friend.'

"I think, too,' said Elizabeth, after a short pause, by which time she had nearly recovered from the shock which her feelings had sustained; ‘it is remarkable how we can sometimes enjoy nature without a reference to God. After she had begun the sentence, she blushed to think how it might be misunderstood. But Mr Somers' reply set her at ease.

"I quite agree with you; there is such an exquisite harmony between our natures and Nature without-a harmony instituted by God Himself—

and which he has made so perfect and direct, that there is no need that His idea, precious and ever appropriate as that idea is, should come between, in order to unite them. Now it is because Emerson seems to me, almost more than any other man, to be able to feel and to interpret this harmony, with all its subtle relations, between the soul of man and nature, whether seen in the physical forces or in universal being, that I so much enjoy and feast on his writings.""

“I must, return, however, to my favourite Dickens,' said Mary. I am sure you must allow those particulars you so disliked were perfectly natural. The combinations were such as might occur any day in human life.'

"Yes, but would a refined taste have recorded them if they did? In a pathetic situation such as that, a spectator of deep sensibility would probably have failed to see what was there mentioned; for sensibility, while it sometimes sees more, often sees less, than insensibility; and certainly one of refined taste, if he could not help seeing it, would have ignored it. It seems to me no proper justification of such descriptions that they are according to nature. Nature is majestic, silent, and her great whole is so harmonious, she can admit of bold incongruities in her details; but Art is restricted, and can be harmonious only by selection.'

"But, said Mary, we have, as my brother said to-day, the natural faculty of wit, which takes pleasure in incongruity.'

"Yes, but there is selection, meaning, in that very incongruity, or there is no wit. There seems to me to be no meaning, or none but a disagreeable one, in mixing up the offensive with the pathetic. The two tunes, if they must both be played, should be played separately, and not together.'

"I think, my dear,' said Mrs Somers, you should not altogether judge others by yourself. Those in whom the feeling of the humorous is strong, may find a legitimate pleasure in what to you is only repulsive.'

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Yes, I am quite aware of that, and I must allow others to look with gratification at what I can only turn away my eyes from-the ugly peculiarities of appearance and manners of their fellow-men. But, surely, when we wish to enlist the sensibilities of others in their behalf, these are not the things to which we should draw their attention. What I complain of in Dickens is not his making the offensive and the awkwardly ridiculous succeed the pathetic, but his often mixing them up so with it as to me entirely to mar its effect.""

These extracts will suffice to shew that the author of "Ashburn," possesses a thoughtful and cultivated mind, a mind at once under the power of high religious principle, and the utmost refinement of taste, and we hope will induce many readers to peruse her volume to seek for instruction where it is not often to be found-in the pages of a New Year's tale. Had we followed our inclination, we should have selected many other passages for the delectation of our readers, but space forbidding, we must content ourselves with particularly recommending to their notice, the chapters entitled "Fiction Triturated," and "Ethics and Theology," in which the subjects under discussion are treated with great lucidity and sound judgment. So much to our readers. To Aura herself we would say, that her mind being one in which the logical and analytical faculties, are decidedly the most prominent, in which the imagination does not seem to be vivid, and the dramatic power altogether wanting, she is far more likely to succeed in the writing of philosophical, esthetical, and critical essays, than in the construction and develope

ment of a story, for which, in candour, we must say she appears to have no talent whatever. "Ashburn" is not a tale,-there is literally no story in it at all,-its proper title would have been the "Opinions and Experiences of Frederic Somers, Gentleman;" but with all its artistic errors, we regard it as a valuable addition to our feminine literature, and we take leave of its author in the hope of soon meeting her again.

"Joseph the Jew," reminds us of one of Retsch's Sketches, in which a few strokes, drawn by a skilful hand, give all the effects of a finished picture. The story being founded on facts, and the author having apparently conscientiously adhered to the realities of the case, the events it records are stretched over a long period of years, during which many gaps in the biography of the hero occur, which we may suppose in a work of pure imagination would have been filled up. Having introduced Joseph to her readers as an ill-used child of tender years, and the necessities of truth requiring that she should carry them along with her until she leaves him an aged man, full of years and wisdom, instructing his grand children in the way of life, she has with the esthetic perception of an artist seized upon those points of his history, which are not only the most prominent in themselves, but which possess a consecu tive coherence with one another, and which, in spite of the intervals of many years which frequently occur in the developement of the story, give it all the consistence and finish of a well sustained tale. To give our readers an idea of the purpose the author had in view in its publication, we cannot do better than transfer to our pages her extremely well written preface, which we believe will induce many to purchase the book for their own instruction and guidance in the matter to which it particularly refers, and we sincerely hope it may have the effect it is so well calculated to produce, of softening their prejudices, not only against the proscribed race of Israel, but against others who are as unjustly looked upon as the pariahs of society :

"In the present day, when many carry their liberality so far as to wish to obtain for the Jews an equal enjoyment of political as well as of religious privileges, any mere advocacy of their rights, particularly in the unassuming form of a tale for young people, would be useless and ridiculous. The object of this little book, is not to prove that the Jews have equal political rights with ourselves; that is a subject for statesmen to weigh with deliberation, and which the best and wisest of our political leaders will do well to consider carefully, involving, as it does, such important results. But, while many are ready to advocate the cause of the Jews in a social point of view, unfortunately the prejudices which were formerly entertained against them as private individuals and members of the community, still exist, even among professing Christians, exercising a very baneful influence on their character, and being especially calculated to hinder their conversion to Christianity.

"That many of the faults which we attribute to them, do at present exist in the Jewish character, is not denied by observant and thoughtful men, even among themselves; but we have been rather apt to overlook the fact, that it is we who have made them what they are. The barbarous persecutions which they endured during the first sixteen centuries of the Christian era, were perhaps less prejudicial to their moral development, than the more petty persecutions of modern times; and it has been my endeavour, in the following pages, to show how these were likely to act on the mind of an

educated and sensitively-minded Jew, as a barrier to the embracing of Christianity.

"During a residence of nearly two years in Germany, I was particularly struck with the fact, that those holding rationalistic views, were almost the only persons who really treated the Jews with what I should call true toleration. Consistency with their professed view, that creeds are immaterial so that God be worshipped, be it as 'Jehovah, Jah, or Jove,' compels them to this. The consequence of their toleration has been, that thousands of Jews, both on the continent and in this country, have become rationalists.

"Like all persons doubtful of the position which they are supposed to occupy in society, and accustomed to be looked on with suspicion and contempt, the Jews are peculiarly alive to kindness; and real sympathy and forbearance would, I am convinced, go farther towards elevating their moral character, and inclining them to Christianity, than all the teaching and preaching which have hitherto been substituted in their place. Could I hope that this little story would lead any of my readers to the exercise of that sympathy and forbearance, I should feel that my labour had not been altogether in vain.”

Such being the aim of the work, we can say nothing higher in its praise, than that the execution is worthy of it. With historical fidelity and statistical accuracy, the writer details many of the persecutions and iniquitous imposts to which the Jews in Germany were subjected previous to the French Revolution, and very logically deduces that these were the very causes which led their victims to harden their hearts against the faith professed by their oppressors, and led the greatest minds amongst them to embrace Rationalism as the only solution of the doubts that disturbed them in their Judaical belief. The slight sketch given of the great Jewish philosopher Mendlesöhn, is touched with such delicacy and good taste, as makes us regret we do not see more of him, while the character of the Christian philosopher Dr Richter stands in fine relief to it, proving beyond controversy the supremacy of that wisdom which is from above, "over all philosophy falsely so called." It will strike every reader of her work, that this not less than that avowed in her preface, is the author's aim in "Joseph the Jew," and not one of the least of its merits is the perfect fulfilment of her purpose by the very simple and natural machinery she calls in aid to effect it. It is not by long and learned polemical discussions that she vindicates the supremacy of the philosophy of the gospel, but by such natural and striking illustra tions of its power in the lives of its professors, as must carry conviction to every mind, of which the following extract is a singular proof:

"The young man who was to be buried, was the only child of one of the professors at the University. He had given promise of great ability, was young, gay, and amiable, when he was cut off by fever after a few days illness. His father was a man of much learning, and of a most benevolent nature, but destitute of that knowledge which alone maketh wise unto salvation. He boasted of his philosophic views, and avowed that he never would believe that to which his reason could not assent.

"A large number of persons were gathered round the young man's grave; he had been much liked, and his father was also a general favourite, so that, besides the friends who had been invited, a number of students had come to pay the last tribute of respect to their departed companion. All present

were surprised and distressed at the vehemence of the father's grief, which seemed uncontrollable. He sprung forward when the coffin was about to be lowered, and, but that his friends withheld him, would have leapt into the open grave. As the earth fell upon the lid, with its dull heavy sound, he seemed like one distracted, but gradually became a little more composed, and at length, with a desperate struggle, he mastered his emotion, and spoke as follows:

"My Friends, you wonder, I doubt not, that I, who am called a philosopher, should have betrayed such a passion of grief. It is not only that he who has now been consigned to the grave, was my only son, and that my heart was bound up in him; others have endured like losses, and have been able to bury their dead, in sorrow it is true, but in silence. They were supported under their heavy bereavement by a hope that they should again meet their loved one, to part no more for ever. i have no such hope -bear with me then my friends in my sorrow.' He threw himself on the newly made grave in such an agony of grief, that those present shed tears at the sight.

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Slowly and sadly the mourners returned to their several homes, leaving one or two of his more intimate friends to speak what comfort they could to the broken-hearted father.

"As Joseph walked to his house, and afterwards related to his shuddering wife, the sad scene which he had witnessed, he could not help acknowledging how frail a reed for support in the time of sorrow and sickness, was that human reason, of whose powers he so much boasted. But he had yet to learn what it is that can alone give the victory over death, and throw bright and peaceful light, even over the grave."

Though it is rather a long extract, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of presenting to our readers the following passage, as it is one of the prettiest scenes we have lately met with in our reading of fiction:

"You may call again,' said the man, saucily, 'you Jews are always in such a hurry for your money. The ladies are out, and when the Fraulein is to be married the day after to-morrow, you might suppose we have no time to attend to you.'

"So saying, he slammed the door in her face, and Sarah turned away with the determination of authorizing Hannah to claim the money which she would not herself again seek for.

"At that moment a handsome carriage stopped at the door, in which were two ladies and two gentlemen. One of the ladies was elderly, tall, thin, and very stately. The other might be a year or two older than Sarah, but she looked young and very beautiful, her figure being round and graceful, with a lovely complexion, dancing blue eyes, and a remarkably fine chiselled mouth, in which there was an expression of firmness, as well as of great sweetness. Sarah looked at her for a moment with delight. She thought she had never seen any one she admired so much.

"As she stood for a second, half unconsciously looking at the party getting out of the carriage, she heard the elderly lady make some remark with a tone of asperity, about a Jewess.

Colouring up to her very temples, Sarah hastened to be gone, when the younger lady addressed her in a voice so kind and sweet, that she quite forgot the momentary annoyance she had felt.

"You have been calling at our door,' she said; 'did you wish to speak to either of us?"