118 Monthly Review of Literature. C^ AN - 



to our roost trivial follies or pampered tastes ! Had the ladies been deprived of 

 a choice importation of ribbons or gloves, we should have had a whole army of 

 Amazons to enlist in their cause, or had we been obliged to take our tea for a 

 week without sugar, or our fish without sauce, in consequence of their oppres- 

 sion, how we should be now animated with sympathy for their wrongs and 

 detestation for their tyrants ! Are our feelings isolated from the rest of our 

 fellow-men, as well as our country ? How shall we appear at the bar of history 

 in future years when our sons and grandsons shall inquire where was England 

 when Poland fell ? But bear up manfully against fortune, ye brave Polish 

 exiles ; can the throne of the Czar, framed of such numerous and incongruous 

 materials, cemented with blood, and bound with chains, stand for ever ? Can 

 the nations of Europe always harden their hearts ? we trust not future gene- 

 rations will blush at the supineness and callosity of their forefathers, and 

 Poland may yet be free. We are, however, happy to find from a second edition 

 of Mr. Fletcher's work being called for, that there are still some hundreds who 

 feel an interest for the fate of this gallant nation. We recommend all who have 

 been lukewarm in the cause to peruse the history, where they will learn what 

 noble fellows they have suffered to be trampled on by numbers. The intrinsic 

 interest of the Polish annals is not as the too many ignorantly suppose, of tem- 

 porary duration ; they present one of the most singular studies of policy and 

 government that the world ever furnished, which such men as Milton,* Rous- 

 seau, and Voltaire, have turned their attention to. We should also recommend 

 all who wish to take a just view of the more recent Polish History, not to follow 

 such guides as the reviewer who has stated his presumption that " the 

 more immediate statements may be suspected of partiality, on account of their 

 avowed source." But unfortunately for the reviewer, Orginski, the author 

 whose " voluminous" work he alludes to, cannot be suspected of partiality, at 

 least to the Polish patriots, by any person who has read his four volumes' and 

 supplement. The additional matter of the present edition will be found to con- 

 tain much interesting information. The work altogether evinces talent of no 

 common order. It is highly creditable to Mr. Fletcher as an author and as a 

 man, and we again dismiss the volume with our good wishes. 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. FOURTH AND LAST SERIES. 



As we suppose that most of our readers have already perused " the new 

 Waverley Novel," we need not give any lengthened analysis of the interesting 

 fictions which are included in this Fourth and last Series of the Tales of my 

 Landlord. The four volumes contain two romances, one is entitled " Count 

 Robert of Paris," and the other " Castle Dangerous." We think the preface 

 the most interesting portion of the volumes. The description of Paul Pattison 

 arriving at the house of our old friend Jedediah Cleishbotham, must remind 

 every one of some poor scholar whom he may have seen at some period or other 

 of his life, exactly answering to the masterly delineation of Sir Walter Scott, 

 who, by the way, has closely followed Juvenal in his description of this par- 

 ticular subject, and with such excellence, that he has, in fact, almost surpassed 

 the great Roman satirist. 



The scene of Count Robert of Paris is laid at Constantinople, on the shores of 

 the " many-billowed Hellespont." The plot is confined to a conspiracy against 

 the life of the reigning emperor, Alexius Comnenus ; its development and 

 total failure, together with an account of the second Crusade, may be said to 

 constitute the tale. The great beauty in all Sir Walter Scott's novels consist in 

 their entire harmony of parts like a time-piece, each portion being indispen- 

 sable to the whole together with a faithful and sometimes exquisite delineation 

 of character. In the tale of Count Robert we do not recognize the first charac- 



* The connection between England and Poland during the Commonwealth was 

 very intimate, and the interest which Milton felt for the latter country is evinced 

 in his brief History of Moscovia (in which the singular history of Borin is fully 

 related), and his translation of Tobieski's proclamation. 



