Except Amy Herbert, we never read a child's story to compare in interest with the Wide, Wide World; and as it has gone far through the wide worlds of England and America, and received a large share of attention from the readers of fiction here and there, it claims, we think, with its sister story, some notice at our hands. We have lately spoken of the important influence acquired by fiction, and the functions of the critic respecting it. But if he is called upon to interpret its deep truths, and explore its hidden meanings, and detect its subtle beauties, and if he is to determine the laws of taste that should be observed by creative genius, no less certain is it, that he should endeavour to expose the moral fallacies and religious errors which appear to him to mar the perfection of a noble and life-like production, and to make the valuable ally of reverence and reason, to some extent at least, the generator of false sentiment or unreal doctrine.

We enter upon the criticism of these books with no narrow prejudice or sectarian animosity; we have been delighted as well as instructed by them. None could read them without benefit. They move the heart and charm the imagination, and prove themselves, on every page, to be the productions of women of singular power and high character. Were we to say all that we have felt during their perusal, we should be believed to be still in our childhood, and carried away by a sympathy as young and enthusiastic as Ellen Montgomery's. What we shall have to object to in the main is confined almost exclusively to the more popular of these productions, which contains grave and serious error, not natural to the creating mind, but the artificial graft of an orthodox education.

Before entering, however, upon this ground, let us express our real joy and satisfaction in meeting with books for the young, so high in tone and so truly religious. It is not because they are so that we have any fault to find. We could wish nothing better for the rising generation, than that it might possess a whole library of fictitious productions such as these, (not of course unmingled with a much larger amount of other reading,) provided their general tone and religious teaching were of a healthier description than such as the Wide, Wide World presents, and savoured less of bibliolatry and what is called evangelical Christianity. It may seem narrow in us to object to a story on account of the theological views of the writer; but when those views are brought prominently forward, and didactically pressed upon our notice, and urged as the proper principles of action, and the sources from which peace is to come, to young and old alike, then we must step forward, however reluctantly, and as the friends of truth and reality, declare what we deem false and prejudicial, in works otherwise so beautiful and attractive.

It will interest our readers to know, what an American review has told us, that Elizabeth Wetherell and Amy Lothrop are sisters—two Miss Warners; the elder one is the author of the Wide, Wide World and Queechy. In many respects she shows more power than the authoress of Glen Luna. The former delights in describing sentiment and passion, the latter avoids “scenes,” and keeps upon the still waters and quiet ways of domestic life. The one revels in the pathetic, and probably loves to excite, and be excited, to tears, since she describes them as so abundant in her little heroine. She takes an orphan each time for her central figure. Her sister, on the contrary, (who probably considers that some virtue consists in controlling all outward emotion,) draws characters mainly of reserved and subdued feeling, whose affections (though almost equally sensitive) are more deep than passionate, more self-conscious than violent and impulsive. We do not mean to say that there is any disagreeable self-consciousness in the characters of Glen Luna; by no means; quite the contrary; the book appears to us entirely free from this defect, so painfully characteristic of our age, and not altogether absent from the tales of her sister: we only mean that she gives to her characters not more intellect perhaps, but more reflection; and, consequently, self-knowledge and reason keep the feelings under admirable restraint and control; whereas the impulsive and less thoughtful minds which her sister delights to describe, full of intellectual perception and curiosity, with lively instincts and enthusiastic tendencies, unbalanced by meditative power and the clear reasoning of common sense, are perpetually convulsed with anger, sorrow, or despair. The Wide, Wide World we should judge to be the swift production of an open demonstrative character, ready of imagination, and fluent in speech as in writing. Miss Warner writes too easily; she is too diffuse. She has plenty to say, and does not care to condense her narrative. She gives you variety of scene, and a good deal of incident, but is quite heedless as to the space-filled, and the period required for perusal. It demands more labour and time to write tersely and briefly, multum in parvo, and this labour and time Miss Warner cannot or will not give. Her sister has, unquestionably, a less ready invention. There is a good deal less variety of scene and incident in her tale; and if it is long and tedious (which we did not feel it to be), it is more from this cause, the sameness of the narrative, than from that diffuseness of style observable in the Wide, Wide World. We could wish the younger Miss Warner would sometimes write at more length. She is perfectly enigmatical in many of her conversations. We laid down her book with no complaint except of the sad labour occasionally required to make out what her speakers were referring to, or how they slipped so strangely into this or that subject, or what in the world they were driving at. We could not help thinking that these parts were written at a late hour of the night, when the mental powers were in a hazy balance between sleeping and waking, or partially occupied a wool-gathering. The story of Glen Luna is otherwise unexceptionable. Its style though less vigorous and strongly marked than that of the Wide, Wide World, is more delicate and graceful, and bears more signs of careful and studied composition. It is more peculiarly the writing of a refined and tasteful mind, of the true feminine stamp: full as essentially religious as her sister's book, but the religion is more unobtrusive, and given after a less didactic fashion: and this is one of its charms. We like to see religion rather underlying the structure of a tale, and spontaneously breaking forth, now and then, in a full stream to the surface, than brought forward systematically, or by officious efforts of the will, as if the writer were bent upon preaching of duty, and not occupied with the simple unfolding of character. In another respect also we think that Glen Luna claims precedence, as not being anywhere marked in the least degree with the prominent and rather disagreeable tendency of the age, of which some slight traces are to be found in the Wide, Wide World. The tendency we allude to is that of loving to dwell upon exaggerated or at least uncommon states of sensibility and passion, while self-consciousness is close at hand. In Mr. Kingsley's tales, to some extent, this tendency is perceptible, but in Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, it is dominant. The authoress of these books draws passion with a keen self-consciousness; and while her heroines, bound indeed by an iron will under the great law of duty, but subdued by no feminine instincts, and chastened by no religious love, show themselves prematurely open to the advances of their passionate despots, the ardour revealed on the one side or the other, or both, being regarded from within as well as from without, a painful consciousness is produced in the reader as of the presence of unrefined and coarse elements in the life presented to him; and however much he may own the breadth and power of the painter's brush, he has an unpleasant sense of the colours being by no means clear or clean. That these two inharmonious human tendencies do not always appear in the same character, matters nothing: they appear in the book; they are contiguous in the writing; they mingle their streams together, and the precipitate is dark. Look at Louis Moore, one of the brothers in Shirley; in him you have the very sediments of an earthly nature, and self-consciousness strongly active. The Wide, Wide World, and Queechy, are not to be compared with these novels for a moment. But truly sensitive and impulsive as Miss Warner's heroines are, and never without pure and feminine instincts, their womanly attachments are too early developed, not without a show of consciousness in them, and some want of delicacy occasionally in the writer: but the least agreeable points of mental character, and those most nearly resembling what we have been referring to, are to be found in the delineation of her cool, self-conscious, and despotic heroes. She never speaks of their true character, or indeed seems to know or understand it; but it is apparent from the first. We had heard so much female adoration expended on Mr. John Humphreys, that we anticipated making the acquaintance of some more exalted Edmund Bertram or Frederick Wentworth, before whom the heroes of Mansfield Park and Persuasion would pale and be forgotten. What was our disappointment then to meet with a thoroughly disagreeable personage; we use this substantive advisedly; he is a personage essentially; important, and authoritative, and most instructive, bearing all the appearance of a schoolmaster who has been spoiled by his profession, and almost as stupendously dignified as Dr. Blimber himself, without any of that gentleman's native simplicity. He is declared religious by his author, but, in our view, does not really prove himself so at all, though eminently moral; not religious, i.e. if religion consist, as we believe, in the pious devotion, love, and humility of the heart, and not in the dogmatism of the creed, or the iron rule of the will. Mr. John Humphreys is not merely proud, but proud in the worst way, spiritually proud. He assumes that he has found the true way of life, that he can show it to whom he will, that he may command the mind and heart of any one more ignorant or less evangelical than himself, as if the knowledge of the right, the instinct of duty, and the willingness of affectionate obedience, were entirely the lessons of learning and experience or biblical theology, and not of nature and conscience, i.e. of God. Ellen Montgomery is truly religious by nature, and continues so under all her little errors and struggles, whether her dictator be at hand or not. But his self-satisfaction and self-reliance is anything but religious. She loves, and looks up, and clings to higher natures, or those she regards as such, and bows her soul before the spiritual being whom she serves and adores; he looks down or around him, that is, on his inferiors or equals, but spontaneous reverence and affection are no parts of his nature. It is quite a mistake to say that he could be interesting as a preacher. He might do good; he might rouse the moral sense; but a man so ungenial, so arbitrary, so self-conscious, could never move any soul to penitence or devotion. He moves about through the story like a performer on the stage; he is always dramatic and “effective,” inasmuch as he is aiming to produce effects, moral though they be. It is surprising to find how very popular, with the gentler class of readers, these magisterial, despotic heroes appear to be. With ourselves, we must say, that Mr. Rodney Collingwood (the hero of Glen Luna), though less sharply sketched—slightly indistinct perhaps—finds much more favour. He is every way more of a Christian and a gentleman.

A brief passage from the Wide, Wide World may serve as an example of that self-contented condition of mind, proper, in his own opinion, to a true Christian believer, to one who, as is elsewhere shown, places his confidence in the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice and death, or in his own belief in that efficacy. We italicise a few words, to direct attention to them.

“I wonder,” said Alice, after a pause, “how those can bear to love, or be loved, whose affection can see nothing but a blank beyond the grave.”

“Few people, I believe,” said her brother, “would come exactly under that description; most flatter themselves with a vague hope of reunion after death.”

“But that is a miserable hope—very different from ours.”

“Very different indeed! and miserable; for it can only deceive, but ours is sure. ‘Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.’”

Why is the hope of any human being to be thus tossed to the winds? Happily the Infinite One may do what He will with his own; and as the less narrow heart of a poet has written,—

We think and feel—but will the dead
Awake to thought again?
A voice of comfort answers us
God doeth nought in vain:—
He wastes no flower, no bud, no leaf,
No wind, no cloud, no wave;—
Nor will He waste the hope which grief
Hath planted in the grave!

To Mr. Humphreys, sen., no objection can be made; he is slightly sketched, but the circumstances of his life make his quiet and reserve natural. The best male character in this story is Mr. Van Brunt. Few delineations could be better, more graphic, or more true to life. The authoress is, however, more generally successful in describing her own sex. In Aunt Fortune, and Alice Humphreys, and Nancy Vawse, in the invalid Mrs. Montgomery, and in the last sketches of Scottish Ladies, there is hardly a line that does not tell, and is not drawn from life. Perhaps little Ellen Chauncey is as sweetly and excellently described as any character in the book, and is most beautifully, with true artistic tact, introduced as a contrast to her pensive friend, the heroine of the tale, upon whose history and inner life is lavished a skill and power truly admirable.

We believe, however, that in writing for children it is very undesirable to take a theme so exciting and sad as the struggles of a desolate orphan child. Falling into the hands of children, the book is as likely to be prejudicial to their healthy life as novel reading, of an exciting kind, to older minds. It is true that such a position as her heroine's enables the writer to manifest the use of religion more easily, just as many preachers find that sermons of consolation for sorrow and bereavement are more easily written than sermons for the ordinary conditions of life. But is it advisable to draw upon the sensibilities of children? Decidedly we believe not. Those of a natural tenderness and sympathy need no extra excitement of this kind. It does them harm, and not good: they need bracing for action; they need to be strengthened by pictures of courage and scenes of cheerfulness, not to be melted into tears. While with others of a harder nature, if capable of perceiving the beauty of a character like Ellen, without sharing their sensitiveness at all,—an unnatural and lamentable sentimentality may too readily be induced that cannot be again uprooted. We have been rejoiced to find that there are still many natural spontaneous healthy-minded children to be met with, who have neither suffered too keenly with poor Ellen Montgomery, nor striven, against their natures, to resemble her. Glen Luna is a story hardly suited to young children at all, but eminently more healthy for all who can enter into it. It describes the struggles of the outer life such as it is everyway wholesome to contemplate, and does not lay bare the tender heart, with the acute sufferings of solitude and bereavement. The consequence is, that the one tale braces the mind to energy and duty, while the other schools the soul into submission. If this latter virtue were one commonly required of children; if their natures were usually mature in affection at an early age, and their lives generally so forlorn and isolated as that of an orphan child of peculiar sensibility must be; then we might admit that the Wide, Wide World was one of the most useful books that had ever been written: but all will allow that this is not the case. Where one child is constituted so keenly sensitive and tender-hearted, as to suffer from separation and bereavement with all the intensity conceivable in the young, a dozen will be found more hardly constituted. At all events, circumstances are not often so unfortunate, thanks to a gracious Providence, as to try the young very severely by a lot of loneliness and unbefriended affection; and, therefore, as we used to object to the novel-like tales of Mrs. Hofland, we cannot but regret that powers so remarkable as Miss Warner's have been spent upon a tale of struggle and grief, so calculated to excite prematurely the deeper feelings of the young heart, which cannot be too sacredly kept for real life, and must be in danger of injury, if too early expended upon fiction. If the mature nature suffers (through its vivid appreciation of human wants and weaknesses and trials) by too frequent a perusal of exciting stories, more dangerous is it, a great deal, to draw much upon the tender sympathies of childhood by pictures of life, rousing the whole inner nature, and yet pictures only. It must cherish an early taste for the morbid enjoyments of sentiment through the imagination, by no means to be coveted for the young. Their tales, we think, should owe their interest to difficulties and struggles arising rather from without than from within; calling for energy, and courage, and self-denial, and honesty, and forbearance, more than for religious resignation and trust. And the best parts of the Wide, Wide World are those which have that object rather than this. The exercise of forbearance towards Aunt Fortune, and forgiveness towards Nancy Vawse, is among the most useful and excellent portions of the discipline through which Ellen Montgomery has to pass. It is premature to ask for deep reliance in a spiritual being at so early an age. We do not deny that, to some extent, religious trust will often be developed in childhood, and certainly in a character of Ellen's innate sensitiveness, reverence, and affection. But we grow up gradually into trust in God, out of trust in humanity; and it is plain enough that even Ellen's trust is really in the Humphreys, and only very partially in her Saviour. We would not be understood to say that children are incapable of being religious, of being possessed with an idea of the presence of God; far from it. But it is impossible that at so unripe an age, they should be brought to throw themselves, with all their troubles, and cares, and perhaps anguish, upon the bosom of the Unseen. They need some visible arm, some human breast, on which to lay their aching heads and sob out their griefs; the youthful imagination cannot grasp—the untried affections cannot compass—the all-pervading spirit; and Time only can lift up the soul gently and gradually to that condition wherein it shall be easy to “commit all its griefs and ways” into the gracious hands of Him who is “over all, and through all, and in all.”

Nor is the difficulty removed, though it may be lessened, by removing the object of reliance (granting this to be admissible) from the all-pervading Father to his realised image in Christ his Son. It is quite true that Jesus of Nazareth, the companion of Peter and James and John, the friend of Mary and Martha, the healer of disease, the feeder of the multitude, the restorer of the dead, may be comprehended and loved by the young reader of the gospels, where no adequate conception of the great Life-giver can be attained. He who took little children up in his arms and blessed them, who washed his disciples' feet, and was bowed in agony in the garden, and remembered his mother, and prayed for his enemies, and spoke peace to his fellow sufferer on the cross, presents to every mind, even in youth, a reality of existence, and an idea of perfection, that more or less can be grasped and understood. But still we do not think it possible, for most children, if for any, to be able to cast themselves in thought upon his help and care, as if he were a human being close at hand, and anxious to assist them. Imagination must be very vivid, and Faith very keen, in one whose heart, as yet timid and inexperienced, prone to cling to the strong hand of protection, and the kind look of love, can find solace and support in the merely mentally-conceived image of one whom it has never known. This may be possible, not to say easy, to one who has for years studied that divine character, and unconsciously drawn forth all its real greatness and wonderful beauty by the mingled processes of mental study and personal experience. But children must have the realities of knowledge to hold by, and the parent, sister or friend must train them up to a love and reverence for Christ, by fixing their intuitive sympathies first upon what is visibly good, or almost virtually made visible by the living efforts of the human mind, through eye and ear, to convey its impressions to the untaught soul. We question much whether any use of the Bible to a child really alone in spirit, debarred from all outward help, and teaching, and sympathy on religious subjects, would prove any effective source of strength and comfort. It was through Mrs. Montgomery and the Humphreys that Ellen's high principles were really cultivated, and in sending her to the Scripture and the Saviour, they only sent her to cultivate her higher sympathies with themselves. So prayer comforted her, mainly perhaps because she was occupied as they wished. A child's conscience may be early cultivated. Very soon do children know right from wrong; it is a deeply-seated instinct of our nature, of which we become aware long before we know what it means, or why it must be obeyed. But reliance upon God's help and blessing under trouble and temptation is of much later growth; and though it is desirable doubtless early to teach some simple form of prayer, the deep realities and uses of prayer cannot be known and felt at a tender age.

And further; though to a mature mind, thoroughly imbued with orthodox views, the Wide, Wide World might prove simply instructive and beautiful, we do not believe that to any child with a clear mind and a simple heart, there can be any truthful reality in the relation there described as existing between man and Jesus Christ, or in the manner in which our duties towards him are inculcated. There in the New Testament is set before us a great prophet, mighty in power and solitary in holiness; he is described as dependent on God, though constantly in communion with Him. He is a character of unequalled excellence; but his life and death are parts of the world's history, and all his existence is linked with the past or associated with our unearthly future. It is only long culture in the popular theology that can lead the mind to identify this great Teacher and Prophet of the Jews, with the eternal Creator. The one is a human being belonging to a certain age and country, the other a spirit independent of all time, the source, and centre, and controller of all things. That Jesus was immortal does not prove him omnipresent even to our globe,—and the simple reader of Scripture would not certainly come away thence with the idea, that our great Master and Exemplar, who passed his life between Galilee and Judea, was now to be the daily refuge of the soul, the answerer of prayer, and the giver of peace, and the saviour from sin. At any rate whatever may seem natural to children trained by Trinitarian parents, we must deprecate the influence of these ideas amongst those who hold the humanity of Jesus Christ. There is a tendency in the present day among Unitarians to forsake the simple ground of real conviction, for fanciful sentiments and pleasing theories. We should be the last to desire a return to the old, hard, unreverential view of Christ's life and character. We do not think of him, with Mr. Parker of America, as a distinguished Hebrew reformer, but as the express image of the Father, the word of God made flesh, the revealer to the world of God's character and will. But this he was by the grace of God, who gave to him, His spirit without measure. He was a created being. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, he executed his divine mission; cast upon the world his glorious revelation, and then returned to the Father's bosom. Historical in his birth, in his life, in his death, he bears to the Father of All, the relation we bear ourselves, that of a child, a son. We know that God encompasses us behind and before. His presence is essential to the maintenance of life, to the very existence of the air we breathe, the light by which we see,—the ground we tread,—the landscape we admire, the human forms we love. We feel assured that we could not raise our arm, or our eyelid, or move one step, or feel one beating of the pulse, if His power were not present,—His will momentarily operative around and within us. If our Lord is the same being with this Almighty One, then we may, indeed, fly to Jesus, and lay our troubles at his feet, for we must ever feel him near. But if this be but the arbitrary assumption of the fanciful theologian, then why confound the all-sustaining personality of God, with the prophet of a past age, albeit risen and glorified? When shall we learn deeply to love, and highly to revere, and meekly to imitate the excellencies of our Lord, without flying off into exaggerated sentiments, and making a God, virtually or really, of the Son who was sanctified and sent into the world? Where is our proof that he abides with us individually, and will hear our cry if we call to him, and stretch out his hand for our rescue? To put him in the place of God as our daily ally and refuge,—is it not to put imagination in the place of conviction, and to turn from the inherent Spring of all life, to the peculiar Inspirer of the world about eighteen centuries ago? from the Independent Fountain of all things, to one of earth's dependent beings whose life is among the records of history, however truly it may be declared the brightest and the best, and lifted heavenward by divine attributes and a constant communion with the Eternal?

To keep upon the firm ground of reality, and not dream until we mistake imagination for truth, and truth for imagination, is surely one of the first requisites for a deep and vital religion. We do approach God through Christ; because our minds can form no image of the Father so pure and perfect, so moving to the deepest love and veneration of the heart, as that with which the Gospels supply us in our Lord. But because he is the channel or mediator through which our thoughts ascend on high, he does not, therefore, become, in any sense, the present friend and sanctifier of the soul: and it appears to us purely visionary and self-deceptive, to believe in his spiritual presence with us, and to seek his counsel and support. He came to show us how the filial relation of a human being to the great Father could be perfectly sustained, not to bid us set that filial relation aside, and take a new Parent. The relation to God into which he was born, was precisely that of which we also are conscious, and his example of perfection is lost upon us, if that relation is to be changed through the nature of his mission, or the consequences of his exalted fidelity. Nor do we think that an opposite conclusion is to be established on the reading of a few texts of scripture. With regard to this, two things have to be considered; the almost inevitable unexactness of many of the reported sayings of Jesus; and the place, time, and circumstances in which they were uttered. What can be established from a single text in a single gospel, like that of Matthew xviii. 20? It might be addressed exclusively to his immediate disciples; it might refer only to the presence amongst his earnest followers, assembled as such, of that holy spirit which he had awakened and fostered; or it might be the Evangelist's version of some saying of Jesus, misunderstood by him or indistinctly heard. We must not forget these possibilities. It is not at all probable that the words of Jesus were taken down as they fell from his lips, and many a sentence must have been modified in its meaning, and certainly given to us in other words, in the course of its transmission to our present Gospels. Who can suppose that all the latter chapters of St. John's Gospel (admitting that it was certainly written by him) give us word for word the discourse of Christ? The supposition is plainly absurd, even were there no reason to believe that it was the latest composition of the Evangelist. The more carefully we study the sacred records, the more are we convinced that we must not rely on the strict verbal accuracy of our Scriptures at all, but, contented with their general truthfulness, rejoice to be able to draw forth the spirit of their teachings throughout. Great mischief is done by taking texts away from their context, and giving to them a general application, in place of that special one evidently their own, and the only one of which they will fairly admit. We take an example of this error from the Wide, Wide World; the passage occurs near the commencement of the story, and will furnish a good specimen of Miss Warner's style. Ellen Montgomery is about to be separated from her mother, who is consumptive, and going to Europe for a voyage, the little girl remaining behind; the morning had been spent in making purchases for Ellen.

When dinner was over, and the table cleared away, the mother and daughter were left, as they always loved to be, alone. It was late in the afternoon, and already somewhat dark, for clouds had gathered over the beautiful sky of the morning, and the wind rising now and then, made its voice heard. Mrs. Montgomery was lying on the sofa, as usual, seemingly at ease; and Ellen was sitting on a little bench before the fire, very much at her ease indeed—without any seeming about it. She smiled as she met her mother's eyes.

“You have made me very happy to-day, mamma.”

“I am glad of it, my dear child. I hoped I should. I believe the whole affair has given me as much pleasure, Ellen, as it has you.” There was a pause.

“Mamma, I will take the greatest possible care of my new treasures.”

“I know you will. If I had doubted it, Ellen, most assuredly I should not have given them to you—sorry as I should have been to leave you without them. So you see, you have not established a character for carefulness in vain.”

“And mamma, I hope you have not given them to me in vain, either. I will try to use them in the way that I know you wish me to; that will be the best way that I can thank you.”

“Well, I have left you no excuse, Ellen. You know fully what I wish you to do and to be; and when I am away, I shall please myself with thinking, that my little daughter is following her mother's wishes. I shall believe so, Ellen—you will not let me be disappointed?”

“Oh, no! mamma,” said Ellen, who was now in her mother's arms.

“Well, my child,” said Mrs. Montgomery, in a lighter tone, “my gifts will serve as reminders for you, if you are ever tempted to forget my lessons. If you fail to send me letters, or if those you send are not what they ought to be, I think the desk will cry shame upon you. And if you ever go an hour with a hole in your stocking, or a tear in your dress, or a string off your petticoat, I hope the sight of your workbox will make you blush.”

“Workbox, mamma?”

“Yes. Oh! I forgot—you've not seen that.”

“No, mamma! What do you mean?”

“Why, my dear, that was one of the things you most wanted; but I thought it best not to overwhelm you quite this morning; so, while you were on an exploring expedition round the store, I chose and furnished one for you.”

“Oh! mamma, mamma!” said Ellen, getting up, and clasping her hands, “what shall I do? I don't know what to say. I can't say anything. Mamma, it's too much.”

So it seemed, for Ellen sat down, and began to cry. Her mother silently reached out a hand to her, which she squeezed and kissed with all the energy of gratitude, love, and sorrow; till, gently drawn by the same hand, she was placed again in her mother's arms, and upon her bosom; and in that tried resting-place she lay, calmed and quieted, till the shades of afternoon deepened into evening, and evening into night, and the light of the fire was all that was left to them.

Though not a word had been spoken for a long time, Ellen was not asleep; her eyes were fixed on the red glow of the coals in the grate, and she was busily thinking, but not of them. Many sober thoughts were passing through her little head, and stirring her heart; a few were of her new possessions, and bright projects—more of her mother. She was thinking how very, very precious was the heart she could feel beating where her cheek lay; she thought it was greater happiness to lie there than anything else in life could be; she thought she had rather even die so, on her mother's breast, than live long without her in the world—she felt that in earth, or in heaven, there was nothing so dear. Suddenly she broke the silence.

“Mamma, what does that mean, ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me?’”

“It means just what it says. If you love anybody or anything better than Jesus Christ, you cannot be one of his children.”

“But then, mamma,” said Ellen, raising her head, “how can I be one of his children? I do love you a great deal better; how can I help it, mamma?”

“You cannot help it, I know, my dear,” said Mrs. Montgomery, with a sigh, “except by His grace, who has promised to change the hearts of his people—to take away the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh.”

“But is mine a heart of stone, then, mamma, because I cannot help loving you best?”

“Not to me, dear Ellen,” replied Mrs. Montgomery, pressing closer the little form that lay in her arms; “I have never found it so. But yet I know that the Lord Jesus is far, far more worthy of your affection than I am; and if your heart were not hardened by sin, you would see Him so; it is only because you do not know Him that you love me better. Pray, pray, my dear child, that He would take away the power of sin, and show you Himself; that is all that is wanting.”

“I will, mamma,’ said Ellen, tearfully. ‘Oh, mamma! what shall I do without you?”

Alas! Mrs. Montgomery's heart echoed the question—she had no answer.

“Mamma,’ said Ellen, after a few minutes, “can I have no true love to Him at all, unless I love Him best?”

“I dare not say that you can,” answered her mother seriously.

“Mamma,” said Ellen, after a little, again raising her head, and looking her mother full in the face, as if willing to apply the severest test to this hard doctrine, and speaking with an indescribable expression, “do you love Him better than you do me?”

She knew her mother loved the Saviour; but she thought it scarcely possible that herself could have but the second place in her heart; she ventured a bold question, to prove whether her mother's practice would not contradict her theory.

But Mrs. Montgomery answered steadily, ‘I do, my daughter;’ and, with a gush of tears, Ellen sunk her head again upon her bosom. She had no more to say; her mouth was stopped for ever as to the right of the matter, though she still thought it an impossible duty in her own particular case.

I do, indeed, my daughter,” repeated Mrs. Montgomery; “that does not make my love to you the less, but the more, Ellen.”

“Oh, mamma, mamma!” said Ellen, clinging to her, “I wish you would teach me! I have only you, and I am going to lose you. What shall I do, mamma?”

With a voice that strove to be calm, Mrs. Montgomery answered—“I love them that love me; and they that seek me early shall find me.” And after a minute or two she added, “He who says this has promised, too, that He will gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom.”

By the ingenuity of the orthodox mind, these two sentences are quoted as the words of Jesus Christ, the one from Proverbs (viii. 17), the other from Isaiah (xl. 11); the one consisting of words put by the writer into the mouth of personified Wisdom, the other a declaration made by the Prophet concerning the gracious kindness about to be manifested by Jehovah to his people. “Behold the Lord-God will come with strong hand, &c.,” is the commencement of the passage, and supplies the subject of the pronoun He: yet, showing that there is no mistake as to the reputed source of these declarations, little Ellen quotes the first of the two later on in the story, and “remembers” that her mother had said that they were “the Saviour's words.”

Now we must earnestly protest against the doctrinal contents of this passage. Miss Warner boldly grapples with the difficulty she perceives, and puts the whole dilemma forward through her heroine's simple observations. Now, did not the authoress feel how grievously she was violating innate human instincts, and human nature generally, if not Scripture also, by first demanding an impossibility from the young and loving heart, and then attributing its incapacity to comply with that demand, to the effect of original sin? We were not aware that hearts could be subdivided; and that that which was human and affectionate in one direction, could be (without any provocative cause of deadness or hostility, and with an obvious cause for reverence and love) hard and icy in another. That Ellen had a tender and feeling heart, and only needed mental growth and experience, together with the culture she received, to feel the full claim of Jesus Christ on her admiration, veneration, and attachment, is amply proved. What, then, is the writer's ground for accusing her of having a “heart of stone, hardened by sin?” Simply that she did not love her Lord better than her Mother, in deference to the authority of the quoted text.

The textual question is easily settled. The words of Jesus, spoken to his immediate followers and apostles, to whom the great work was committed of preaching the Gospel far and wide over the earth, and who had been privileged to enjoy a close and confidential intercourse with their heavenly Master, cannot bear to us that peculiar force, and admit of that literal explanation which belonged to them in their first utterance. But at the same time they have a clear application to ourselves, and undoubtedly imply that in cases where some antagonism arises between parental claims and those of our divine Teacher, we must prefer duty to filial obedience or devotion. More than this we believe is not demanded in the text. And it appears to us quite suicidal towards those innate affections implanted in our souls by our Creator, to demand that, as soon as ever we become conscious of duty, we shall bring the spiritual reverence and devotion that we owe to our unknown Lord, into immediate comparison with our personal human affections, and set ourselves down as guilty creatures, if our hearts are not more strongly knit to him than to our relatives and friends. Whatever may be possible for the mature, we think that to ask this of children, is nothing less than monstrous. To whom are they really most indebted? To the Christ of whom they have heard or read in Scripture, or to the parents, guardians, or friends who have nursed them from infancy, shielded them from cold and heat, danger and death, satisfied their natural wants, opened their minds and hearts, and blest them with every species of culture and love? Christianity has herein its peculiar sanction as a divine religion, that it is every way calculated to develope, in the most natural and orderly manner, the native principles and dispositions of the uncorrupted heart of infancy. It does not remove a “heart of stone” and replace it by a “heart of flesh;” it nurtures and elevates the innate dispositions of the fleshly heart, and out of human affection generates, gradually and harmoniously, the love of Christ and God. But it is necessarily some time before human attachment, and spiritual reverence and affection, can be brought to assimilate. This is the slow process of years;—as we learn by broken ties to associate the earthly with the heavenly, and by prayer and faithfulness of will to bring down to earth our conceptions and our love of Heaven. To bring before us a child so essentially loveable and good as Ellen Montgomery, and represent her to the reader as already separated from God and her Saviour, by a mean and earthly nature spoiled by sin, is to invent a foul blot for humanity, and pretend, at the expense of all reality and truth, that it is deforming the fair beauties of God's holiest creation, which it is felt in nowise to injure or affect. What better instance could we have than this, of the essential antagonism between Calvinistic or so-called evangelical Christianity, and the teaching of him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God?”

Another thing we find fault with in this book is the writer's occasional indulgence in that indiscriminate moralising often employed towards the young, but tending to produce prejudicial effects, through deception and consequent disappointment. Singularly enough she devotes the greater part of her story to proving the utter falseness of the following homily. Ellen is to live with a half sister of her father's, a certain Aunt Fortune, already mentioned, who, up to the very last, shows herself inexcusably unjust and unkind towards her devoted and forgiving little niece. Ellen regrets that the relationship between her aunt and herself is not closer. Her mother asks the reason:—

“I'm afraid (says Ellen) she will not be so likely to love me.”

“You mustn't think so, my child. Her loving or not loving you will depend solely and entirely upon yourself, Ellen. Don't forget that. If you are a good child, and make it your daily care to do your duty, she cannot help liking you, be she what she may; and, on the other hand, if she have all the will in the world to love you, she cannot do it, unless you will let her—it all depends on your behaviour.”

A little further on she adds—

“It will be your own fault if she does not love you, in time, truly and tenderly.”

And again—

“You can make her love you, Ellen, if you try.”

Now, as soon as we read this passage, before we made Miss Fortune Emerson's acquaintance, we felt how one-sided a mis-statement it contained. If it is only given to prove that Mrs. Montgomery was a weakminded woman, we have nothing more to urge. But this does not appear. Now in this particular case, the opposite would have been very much nearer the truth, indeed it would have been the truth; for it really depended entirely on Aunt Fortune, whether any mutual love were possible. Ellen's heart was open and tender to a fault. The most commonplace kindness would have made her captive at once. But even in any ordinary case, it is manifest that two persons being concerned, the responsibility cannot rest entirely with one. Supposing this wise apophthegm had been pronounced to Miss Emerson by Mr. Van Brunt, while it was falling from Mrs. Montgomery's lips, there is no reason to bring why it would not have been as appropriate in the one case as in the other. Yet to what absurdity are we then reduced. Mutual love between A. and B. is declared by C. to depend “solely and entirely” upon A.; by D. it is declared to depend “solely and entirely” upon B.;—which (after Euclid's phraseology) is absurd. This unmeaning kind of language is too often indulged in towards children, and nothing but disappointment and misery can come of it. The serious though often disheartening truths of life should be at once boldly confessed and stated. Truth before all things.

One other fault we have to find with the authoress of the Wide, Wide World before we close our observations of disparagement. We think she insists upon an obedience too unlimited. She seems to approve of Ellen's calling herself Ellen Lindsay, and the daughter of her uncle, in direct opposition to the fact, as well as to her own instincts and inclination, because she had been so commanded by him. And where she is courageous enough to speak the truth respectfully, she is made to repent as of some wrong action, and to apologise accordingly. And in one or two places in the early part of the story, Ellen shows a readiness to keep things secret from her father, and afterwards from her Aunt Fortune, that appeared to us unsatisfactory, and quite needless to the tale, and inconsistent with her conscientious disposition. Her one fault in our eyes is her prudery.

The descriptive parts of the story are well written and vivid, though in this respect we think Queechy shows signs of increased power, and additional care and pains. The following passage from the Wide, Wide World, describing Ellen's journey in Mr. Van Brunt's ox-cart from Thirlwall to her aunt's house, gives an interesting picture both of the country and the child:—

Slowly, very slowly, the good oxen drew the cart and the little queen in the arm-chair out of the town, and they entered upon the open country. The sun had already gone down when they left the inn, and the glow of his setting had faded a good deal by the time they got quite out of the town: but light enough was left still to delight Ellen with the pleasant look of the country. It was a lovely evening, and quiet as summer; not a breath stirring. The leaves were all off the trees; the hills were brown; but the soft, warm light that still lingered upon them, forbade any look of harshness or dreariness. These hills lay towards the west, and at Thirlwall were not more than two miles distant, but sloping off more to the west as the range extended in a southerly direction. Between, the ground was beautifully broken. Rich fields and meadows lay on all sides, sometimes level, and sometimes with a soft, wavy surface, where Ellen thought it must be charming to run up and down. Every now and then these were varied by a little rising ground, capped with a piece of woodland; and beautiful trees, many of them, were seen standing alone, especially by the roadside. All had a cheerful pleasant look. The houses were very scattered; in the whole way they passed but few. Ellen's heart regularly began to beat when they came in sight of one, and “I wonder if that is Aunt Fortune's house!”—“perhaps it is!”—or, “I hope it is not!” were the thoughts that rose in her mind. But slowly the oxen brought her abreast of the houses, one after another, and slowly they passed on beyond, and there was no sign of getting home yet. Their way was through pleasant lanes, towards the south, but constantly approaching the hills. About half a mile from Thirlwall, they crossed a little river, not more than thirty yards broad, and after that the twilight deepened fast. The shades gathered on field and hill: everything grew brown, and then dusky; and then Ellen was obliged to content herself with what was very near, for further than that she could only see dim outlines. … They plodded along very slowly, and the evening fell fast; as they left behind the hill which Mr. Van Brunt had called “the Nose,” they could see, through an opening in the mountains, a bit of the western horizon, and some brightness still lingering there, but it was soon hid from view, and darkness veiled the whole country. Ellen could amuse herself no longer with looking about; she could see nothing very clearly but the outline of Mr. Van Brunt's broad back, just before her. But the stars had come out!—and, brilliant and clear, they were looking down upon her with their thousand eyes. Ellen's heart jumped when she saw them, with a mixed feeling of pleasure and sadness. They carried her right back to the last evening, when she was walking up the hill with Timmins; she remembered her anger against Mrs. Dunscombe, and her kind friend's warning not to indulge it, and all his teaching that day; and tears came with the thought, how glad she would be to hear him speak to her again. Still looking up at the beautiful quiet stars, she thought of her dear far-off mother—how long it was already since she had seen her—faster and faster the tears dropped—and then she thought of that glorious One who had made the stars, and was above them all, and who could and did see her mother and her, though ever so far apart, and could hear and bless them both. The little face was no longer upturned—it was buried in her hands, and bowed to her lap, and tears streamed as she prayed that God would bless her dear mother, and take care of her. Not once nor twice—the fulness of Ellen's heart could not be poured out in one asking. Greatly comforted at last, at having, as it were, laid over the care of her mother upon One who was able, she thought of herself and her late resolution to serve Him.

Here we must take leave of Miss Warner for the present. Her other work suggests a variety of criticism on American life, and manners, and characters, that we cannot enter upon here, and we, therefore refrain from quoting from its lively and interesting pages. Our warmest thanks are due to the lady who has so delicately and powerfully delineated the true and tender heart of a most interesting orphan child.