venience." The water was of course then as disagreeable as it is now. "Some people say it smells of rotten eggs; and others compare it to the scouring of a foul gun." A visit to Scarborough furnishes an excuse for an elaborate description of a bathing-machine, which seems then to have been a thing unknown elsewhere. York Minster gives occasion for an attack upon Gothic architecture, which is called "proposterous in a country like England, where the air is externally loaded with vapors, and where of consequence the builder's intention should be to keep the people dry and warm." And we have the following astounding description of a cathedral: "The external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be displeasing to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety and proportion, even though he may be ignorant of architecture as a science; and the long, slender spire puts one in mind of a criminal impaled with a sharp stake rising up through his shoulder!" We need not wonder, therefore, that the cathedral of Durham is dismissed as "a huge, gloomy pile; " but it is undoubtedly true at the present day, as when Mr. Matthew Bramble and his party visited that city, that "the streets are generally narrow, dark, and unpleasant." Edinburgh is fairly dealt with, and praised for its romantic site, its castle, and its palace. The Canongate

"would be undoubtedly one of the noblest streets in Europe, if an ugly mass of mean buildings, called the Lucken-booths, had not thrust itself, by what accident I know not, into the middle of the way, like Middle Row in Holborn." But "the first thing that strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless;" and the state of the stairs leading to the flats was such that

a man must tread with great circumspection to get safe housed with unpolluted shoes." It would not be possible to quote the confidential letter of Winifred Jenkins to Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall, on the subject. It has all the vigor and fidelity of a Dutch picture, but tempora mutantur, and it must be read in private. Linlithgow has "an elegant royal palace, which is now gone to decay, as well as the town itself;" but "Glasgow is the pride of Scotland," and, according to Mr. Bramble's opinion-or, in other words, the opinion of Dr. Smollett himself—it is "one of the prettiest towns in Europe." He thinks that its cathedral may be compared with York Minster or Westminster, and computes the number of inhabitants at thirty thousand-they now amount to more than four hundred thousand. But the journey is dull enough as a narrative, although it is enlivened by some ludicrous adventures; as, for instance, that in which the kitchen chimney catches fire at night, and

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.

GOLDSMITH. -THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.'

CHARACTER

OF LATER NOVELS AND ROMANCES.-MACKENZIE.—THE MAN OF FEELING,' 'THE MAN OF THE WORLD,' AND 'JULIA DE ROUBIGNÉ.-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