the women rush out in dishabille, when Tabitha Bramble, in her under-petticoat, endeavors to lay hold of Mr. Micklewhimmen, and he pushes her down, crying out, "Na, na, gude faith, charity begins at hame ! " and Mrs. Winifred Jenkins falls from the ladder into the arms of Humphry Clinker.

The Brambles visit, in the course of their travels, the seat of a country gentleman in Argyleshire, where "the great hall, paved with flat stones, serves not only for a dining-room but also for a bedchamber to gentlemen dependants and hangers-on of the family. At night half a dozen occasional beds are ranged on each side along the wall. These are made of fresh heath, pulled up by the roots, and disposed in such manner as to make a very agreeable couch, where they lie without any covering but the plaid."

I have previously alluded to the mode in which Smollett, in his 'Humphry Clinker,' attacked the doctrines of the new sect; and it was to ridicule them that a clergyman named Graves wrote his novel called 'The Spiritual Quixote,' the hero of which is Geoffrey Wildgoose, a young man of a respectable family and small estate, who, having picked up some old volumes of puritan divinity, such as 'Crumbs of Comfort,' 'Honeycombs for the Elect,' the 'Marrow of Divinity,' the 'Spiritual Eye Salve and Cordials for the Saints,'

and a book of Baxter with an unmentionable name, resolves to sally forth and convert his benighted fellow-countrymen in the highways and by-ways of England. He is accompanied by Jeremiah Tugwell, a cobbler, who acts as a sort of Sancho Panza, and they visit Gloucester, Bath, and Bristol, where they are involved in various adventures more creditable to the zeal of Wildgoose than his discretion.

He holds such books as Tillotson's Sermons' and the 'Whole Duty of Man' in sovereign contempt, and asserts that it would be as profitable to read the 'Seven Champions' or 'Jack the Giant Killer' as Tillotson, who, he says, quoting Whitefield himself, knew no more of Christianity than Mohammed.

It is, however, a stupid book; the attempts at satire are miserably poor, and the adventures of Wildgoose and his companion show neither wit nor invention.

CHAPTER X.

WAKEFIELD.'

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GOLDSMITH. THE VICAR OF CHARACTER OF LATER NOVELS AND ROMANCES.-MACKENZIE. 'THE MAN OF FEELING,' 'THE MAN OF THE WORLD,' AND 'JULIA DE ROUBIGNE.-MISS BURNEY. EVELINA,' AND 'CECILIA.-MISS EDGEWORTH.-' BELINDA.'-JANE AUSTEN.-USES OF NOVELS.-RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NOVELIST.

Ir is a sensible relief to turn from the maudlin sentimentality of Richardson and the coarseness of Fielding and Smollett, to the purity of the pages of Goldsmith. We seem to breathe all at once

"An ampler ether, a diviner air,"

and have as sweet a picture as was ever drawn of family life in a country parsonage, with its joys and sorrows, its trials and rewards. One great charm of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' is its gentle irony-very different indeed from the vicious double entendre of Swift or Sterne, where the implied meaning is almost always impure. With all the childlike simplicity of Dr. Primrose, there is in him an under-current of sound good sense, which makes him fully sensible of the folly of his wife and daughters, while he indulges

their vanity and smiles at their credulity. With what a soft touch of sarcasm he describes the good lady whom he chose, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well! "She could read any English book without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself upon being an excellent contriver in housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances." The key to his character is, I think, contained in the following sentence about his wife, when he tells us how she began to build castles in the air when Mr. Burchell had rescued their youngest daughter, Sophia, from drowning, and she said that if he had birth and fortune to entitle him to match into such a family as theirs, she knew no man she would sooner fix upon. "I could not but smile to hear her talk in this lofty strain; but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy." When, after the loss of his fortune, and the removal of his family to an humbler abode, his wife and daughters come down-stairs on Sunday morning dressed out in all their former finery, "their hair plastered up with pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up in a heap behind, and rustling at every motion," the way

in which Dr. Primrose rebukes their vanity is by ordering his son, with an important air, to call their coach. 66 6 Surely, my dear, you jest,' cried my wife, 'we can walk perfectly well: we want no coach to carry.us now.' 'You mistake, child,' returned I, 'we do want a coach; for if we walk to church in this trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after us; " and he ends with the wise apothegm, "I do not know whether such. flouncing and shredding is becoming, even in the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain." When Squire Thornhill was expected to pay them a visit, and Mrs. Primrose went to make the venison pasty, the Vicar observed his daughters busy cooking something over the fire. He at first thought that they were assisting their mother, but little Dick whispered that they were making à wash for their faces. Washes he abominated. "I therefore approached my chair by sly degrees to the fire, and, grasping the poker, as if it wanted mending, seemingly, by accident, overturned the whole composition, and it was too late to begin another."

The introduction into this scene of innocent happiness of the two town ladies-or rather ladies of the town-Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina