NOTHING was ever made to stand still. The human race-like Joe-is continually dogged by an Inspector admonitory finger and warns it to "move on." Bucket, who shakes an see the greater part of the winding path our ancestors have described, till it is lost to view just within the gate of Eden. Every right and almost every thought has been the occasion of ferocious battle. I forget whether it was for a chair or a sofa that they fought through a few decades of centuries; but nobody forgets how countless multitudes—either in dungeons, or Bartholomew massacres, or French Revolutions-have died, in order that the survivors might think as they pleased. Sometimes a fragment of the Race, in its emigration, became rebellious, and declared it had gone far enough. A people journeyed into a pleasant land and built there a costly city. Its members were sure to fall out with one another before long; and as soon as the nations going by observed it, they rushed upon them and trampled them down. Yet these could not afford to stop till the destruction was complete, and, therefore, they engaged the lower animals, dwelling thereabouts, to finish the work for them. So the owl came and exchanged her hollow tree for a temple; the toad squatted on the palace floor; the young trees, as soon as they were old enough, made haste to push up with their heads and to thrust their roots between the massive stones; wild beasts burrowed beneath the foundations, and creeping vines reached up long crooked fingers, and plucked the sculptured cornices away. Ages afterward, the nations passing wondered why this city had been so utterly blotted out. To ascertain, now, the progress made by any nation, we examine its Philosophy, and, for later times, I know of no better exponent of such Philosophy, than the popular novels of the day. Thus it would not, perhaps, be easy for all to tell what crude compositions the seventeenth century had to beguile its rainy afternoons with. Later, two beings-known to the historian by the names of Porter and Ratcliffe-set up a dolorous story-telling of ghosts and lovesick gentlemen with handsome legs, until matters arrived at so dreadful a pitch, that sensible people actually became interested; and, at the very least computation, ten thousand tender maidens used to appear at the breakfast-table with red eyes. Still later, a clear voice, bewitching to the ear, was heard far up in the highlands of Scotland-singing of lads who of course were jolly, and of lasses who of course were rosy. The song was more connected and was more worthy of belief than its predecessors, but what can we say of it beyond? There could have been no God in Sir Walter's day; eternity had not begun. It is a malicious falsehood, what writers have asserted, that a band of horrid fiends-such as starvation and intemperance-were carousing in many a glen, or crouching in the heather. Not very long before this, my Lord Chesterfield—an old man-resolves, now everything is so satisfactory everywhere, "to sleep in the carriage during the remainder of the journey of life." The Gordon Riots, probably, were allegories, or some such things, and the papers Sidney Smith wrote about cramming little boys alive down the throats of hot chimneys, were pleasant devices of that great and witty man. Plenty, with upturned horn, was hovering over every cottage-from the man-eater's in New Zealand to Siberia. There could have been no pains, no wants, no sorrows, the world over. Otherwise, we have found, seemingly, an unnatural, brutal fact; that a man not insane can see misery and care nothing to relieve it, can laugh while others weep, and can indulge this selfishness for many years, and discover his mistake only just as Charon is crying out, "All aboard." I think I am disposed to admit fully the elegance of style and originality of scope peculiar to the Waverly novels; but these great merits only aggravate the author's guilt. For, in the name of half-starved, half-educated, half-clothed Humanity!-is there a single jot of morality in the entire series? The characters of Jennie Deans and Ivanhoe shall shrivel away be |