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viii huts and cottages, rather than in halls and palaces. His Baron is hewn more ditinctly in his indigent etate than in his affluence. The daughters enjoy but one day of luxury for fix of olitude and hardhip. His hermit-knight and runaway ’quire are urely not characters elevated above

We could eaily undertake to hew that our author has not eized the full advantage of his ubject. He has not been careful to interet the reader in the fortunes of any of his peronages: nor are his characters delineated with ufficient preciion. They come, and no heart beats at their approach: they go, and leave behind them no olicitude for their fate. When a writer has before him all that obervation has acertained of the coure of nature; when he adds to this all that upertition and ignorance have dreamed of powers upernatural; and when he aumes the liberty of mixing thee heterogeneous materials without contraint, we may expect him to produce ome triking ituations. But in the work before us we can dicover little that affects us with pity or laughter. The beginning of the econd volume irreitibly reminds us of the Tempet, and Midummer’s Night’s Dream, but Number-Nip has neither the airy lightnes of Ariel, nor the entertaining half malicious archnes of Puck. This Prince of the Gnomes partakes of the gloom of his own dreary ubterraneous realms.

Our author eems to undertand little of a painter’s artifice. He hews his figures without management or perpective. Ignorant, as it would appear, of the