character has its freest expression, and in delineating which the novelist may discover, if not the rarest genius, the most genial sympathies. She seldom aims at the heroic, and we like her the better for this. We find not so much of heroism in our every day life as of tamer qualities, and we value the writer most highly who can please and satisfy us with those scenes in which our life in this world must be passed. There is a charm in the very name of home, but we apprehend that it oftener arises from the freshness and vigor with which youth lays hold of a few pleasant objects and circumstances, and thus associates these with it, than because it is the "heaven on earth" it may be made. When we find our authoress drawing those traits most requisite for domestic happiness with such delicacy and faithfulness, and we are thereby prompted to possess them ourselves, we care little about what are termed the higher qualities of the novelist. In the character of Judge Frank we have the personification of the good and faithful father; a strong and dignified man, and a kind and loving one; - a father whose beneficent influence over his children gives them an understanding of the full expressiveness of the prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven." The good mother: - and we must here confess our weakness, if any one can so deem it. We are fully acquainted with all the relationships that exist in human life, their endearments and entwining influences, but our earliest tie takes precedence and is strongest of all. The qualities of Elise, as exhibited in her home, gently released us from the present, carried us back over the rugged years of manhood's experience, laid us quietly in childhood's cradle, hid our face in the maternal bosom, and folded our arms around that well-remembered form we first loved. They have given us an impulse of increased love for all good mothers. For the good wife we can no where find a more genial example than in Franziska. And her Bear! No lady need desire a more faithful and affectionate husband. We have never found a picture of conjugal life that accords so truly with our own peculiar taste. Despite the dissatisfaction and misery that manifestly follow the ill assorted connexions in the married life, man and woman continue to rush together into the nuptial state, and too late discover their unfitness for each other, and eke out an existence of mutual dislike and servitude. How little of the true spirit of love enters into the majority of these accidental or convenient combinations. In a great degree we must attribute this lamentable deficiency to the gross imperfection of character which prevails in many instances. Lord Chesterfield's advice to his daughter, "Do not inquire too curiously into the particulars of the early life of your husband," becomes a law to many a beautiful and delicate girl, who too late finds him, in whom all the intense ardor of her young affections has been placed, to be, not the truesouled man, but the unprincipled monster. And girls, also pass we cannot spare them this serious admonition too many of their "loving years" in the acquisition of those superficial qualities, which, in the trying experience of subsequent life, are as evanescent as the flowers' fragrance beneath the peltings of the storm. The consequence comes in that intolerable weakness and puerility, which many a wise husband laments in his once "pretty little wife." The good husband is he alone who is the good man; he whose youth and earlier manhood have been one constant progress, onward and upward, in the development of the soul's most noble faculties. Aberrations from this course he remembers not. Dissipation and licentiousness offer no tempting suggestions to him. His whole nature, determined in the right, bends not to such ignoble weakness and grossness of sin. The heart's affections are pure. The good wife may possess all superficial accomplishments, will, if possible, acquire them, and give them due appreciation, but these are matters of secondary importance. She must have a soul; must have a quick perception of the beautiful, the true and the good, a sensitively benevolent heart which feels for all her kind, and that extreme delicacy and purity of character which know nothing of the coarseness and vulgarity that come of ignorance and sin. Such an one only could be the presiding genius of our home. Such an one only could we love boundlessly give any amount of affection short of worship. We could toil for her, suffer for her, if need be die for her. We are aware that we require much in a wife; but we require even more in the husband. We are not visionary, but within the bounds of what we know to be possible, nay, practicable. We cannot recognise anything to be desired or toiled for in this world, but the soul's progress and happiness. What satisfaction and profit may arise from the conjugal state, if its requisitions are fully estimated and regarded! Purity of character, congeniality of thought and feeling, the deep mutual sympathies of the soul, the merging of two loving spirits into one, these things are only understood by the husband and wife who are true to their own natures and faithful to each other. "If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once, and mix and melt with our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood."* This fulness of conjugal life we find remarkably delineated by Miss Bremer. The We might remark too upon her portraits of children. Every reader of her tales has in recollection the astounding numbers she announces in all her families, and what well behaved children she has contrived to make them. beauty of this character in her hands is its unaffected naturalness. Her children are not "old ones" dwarfed into Lilliputians, but real "young ones" with the full glee of new life upon them. With such characters as we have briefly noticed it would seem to require little skill to form pleasant homes. At any rate she not only succeeds in her family combinations, but she throws the charm of her own heart upon them and brings over all the rich warm glow of happy domestic life. Few writers of fiction succeed in portraying the delicate and refined woman. Here is a glance however; we do not pronounce it entirely satisfactory, but its beauty and truthfulness make a vivid impression on our fancy. Gaze into a pure fountain in the moment in which day divides itself from night,' see the magic light of morning at once mirroring itself therein with the heaven and its glittering stars, and thou hast an image of Nina's soul. So pure was she-so gleamed in the depths of her being every eternal truth. But all this sweet splendor broke as through a twilight; it was a foretelling of light, not the light itself. She was the original man as man in his innocence in his first holy beauty. Her soul seemed to be one with the beautiful body; it belonged to it and appeared moulten into it. Her manner possessed that charming repose which nothing of self-consciousness can counterfeit. Unconstrained but modest, she was self-collected. It gave a sweet tranquillity to the mind and to the eye, to contemplate her. How beautiful and harmonious were the movements of her tender arm, of her fine white hand; her gait how floating, how quiet, and noble! It would be difficult to give a description of the beauty and charm of her countenance; but he who had seen the pure finely-arched brow made radiant, the silken soft hair, the wonderful eyes beneath their long dark lashes, the small Grecian nose, the bewitching mouth, the sweet oval of the face, and the dazzling fair skin, must have declared that she was the loveliest creature of God's creation." -Nina. p. 14. Being conversant with the heroes of many of the popular novels of the day, we can turn with singular complacency to Edward Hervey. "Hast thou ever met with one in whose presence the soul has strengthened itself by an unspeakable satisfaction, and from whom a blessed feeling of satisfaction has poured itself through thy whole being? Hast thou met with any one who made thee at peace with thyself, with God, with life, and with thy fellowmen; any one towards whom thou turnest involuntarily, as the sun to the light, or as man to a quiet angelic nature? If so, thou hast experienced what must men feel in the presence of Hervey. It was as if a mild sunshine diffused itself from his heart." "What was indescribably attractive in him was the unspeakable gentleness and benevolence of his glance, his beautiful smile a decision, a clearness and freshness in his whole being — all these contributed to increase yet more his influence." - Nina. P. 74. We are disposed to show more favor, because so little is claimed. 66 Sketches of every day life" is no sonorous title to decoy the imagination before opening a book. Consequently as we discover merit, it seems of tenfold value, appearing in such modest simplicity. Her deep reli gious sentiment, her love of nature and happy manner of expressing it, her tact at catching the minute expressions of humanity in such characters as she has attempted,-these we consider her prominent traits as a novelist. And she is not entirely deficient in a higher order of genius. The humorous fancies of the Frenchman and German at the north pole remind us of the comical "unintentionals" of Pickwick. Some of the scenes in which we find Bruno and Hagar, for tragic power, will bear favorable comparison with the severest in the "Bride of Lammermoor." Her calm, beautiful philosophy reconciles us more to a life of trial, disappointment and change, by directing our attention to so many redeeming influences. She aims evidently to present truth and reality in their most attractive forms, and we know of no better manner of shewing how she does this, than in her own glowing words. "The picture of reality must resemble a clear stream, which during its course reflects, with purity and truth, the objects that mirror themselves in its waves, and through whose crystal one can see its bed and all that lies therein. All that the painter or the author in the representation of these can permit to his fancy, is to act the part of a sunbeam, which without changing the peculiarity of an object, yet gives to all hues a more lively brightness, lets the sparkling of the waves become more diamond-like, and lights up with a purer brilliancy even the sandy bed of the brook."-H-Family. p. 40. There is no mistaking the hearty, benevolent disposition which breathes through all her pages. "Oh! I would clasp the whole of human kind If we have not found true poetry in her sober prose, we have no conception of the nature of poetry. If that is not a truly religious spirit which has with such prismatic power separated the varying shades and colors of human life, and spread them out before our eyes in such harmonious beauty, we must confess we know not what religion means. We rejoice at the popularity of these books in our country, for in the tumult of party strife and amidst the engrossing cares of business there is much need of the purifying influences which they throw upon us in these pictures of |