470 MONTHLY 11EVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF 1 POLITICAL ECONOMY. No. XX. CINNAMON AND 



PEARLS ; A TALE. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. LONDON : CHARLES Fox, 



1833. 



WHENEVER it has been our duty to speak of Miss Martineau, and upon 

 any occasion when her monthly increasing works have been laid before us for 

 review, we think we have not been slow to award the degree of praise to her 

 miraculously prolific pen, which both the graphic skill with which it is em- 

 ployed, and the important subjects to which it has devoted its powers, 

 undoubtedly demanded from us. 



It were, perhaps, neither gallant, just, nor to the purpose, to inquire 

 whether an originally disinterested and philosophical aim have not been 

 gradually diverted from its object, and converted, by other influences, into a 

 mere book-making speculation, whether what was, in the first instance, a 

 spirit of instruction, be not now a matter of trade, and lastly, whether 

 Miss Martineau's " Illustrations of Political Economy" have not placed more 

 available assets into her own pocket, than available ideas into the heads of 

 her readers. 



We take it for granted that Miss Martineau, actuated by a very proper 

 regard for her own worldly welfare (a consciousness of which might, we 

 think, occasionally modify her strictures upon others, who justify the con- 

 tinuance of monopolies in which they are implicated on the same ground), 

 is, nevertheless, zealous to remedy the defects of former legislators, and to 

 amend the fiscal and philosophical errors of her predecessors. 



It might, then, be worth her while to lend an ear to parties* fully alive to 

 her merits, generally favourable to her views, and especially anxious for her 

 success. It may be, also, not open to invidious misconstruction, if we, too, 

 take the liberty of suggesting that more time, more thought, and, above all, 

 more diffidence should be bestowed and displayed than Miss Martineau has 

 heretofore chosen to devote to the discussion of questions which fully demand 

 the most unreserved sacrifice of the former two, arid a very sincere exhibition 

 of the last. 



For we hold it to be quite a plausible conjecture, that Miss Martineau is 

 not, as yet, fully mistress of the principles which she so perseveringly and 

 periodically seeks to illustrate ; that even if she be, principles which others, 

 no less competent than herself, have been so long endeavouring to establish, 

 are not likely to be summarily disposed of by her ; and the object which they 

 have failed to reach by a straight course, it is hardly possible for her to anti- 

 cipate by a crooked one. 



It may be all very well, as a matter of speculation, to insinuate principles 

 of political economy into a tale which shall have popular requisites to recom- 

 mend it ; by these means, at all events, the philosophical authoress may 

 contrive (not to kill, we trust, but) to bring down " two birds with one 

 stone ; and, while she secures the political economist, to bag at the same 

 time the novel-reading spinster ; but the effect of her labours is another 

 question. 



The allegory of the " Fairy Queen" was never yet satisfactorily explained, 

 and its exposition has been long ago relinquished in despair ; and we con- 

 fess that the illustrations of Miss Martineau are, for the most part, quite as 

 unintelligible. 



We can, indeed, often apprehend the companion, when we are quite at a 

 loss to discern the analogy ; and, sometimes, when an external analogy of 

 position has been attained, the essential disparity of circumstances is left out 

 of the account altogether. 



Could the affairs of the world be regulated by general principles, it would 

 hardly require a superior intelligence to expound, or a more than ordinary 



* The Edinburgh Review. 



