198 Monthly Review of Literature, 
regiment abroad, and Adolphus is sum- 
moned to pass a few days with him before 
he quits England. De Colmar visits Emily 
to take leave, but though making the state 
of his affections manifest enough to the 
young lady, says nothing. Adolphus re- 
mains at the castle, and the countess and 
he become exceedingly intimate; a fall, 
which puts the lady to some pain, elicits a 
sudden expression of their mutual feelings ; 
but luckily, by the presence and prudence 
of a young Minerva, the lady’s friend, no 
harm follows, and he is induced to leave 
the castle, and return to his duties in town. 
Very soon, news arrives of De Colmar— 
he is wounded, and returns home. Adol- 
phus, to his amazement, hears nothing from 
him. He is going, it is reported, to marry 
somebody’s widow. Adolphus at last meets 
him by chance, but gets no explanation. 
While distressed and anxious about his 
sister, whose affections he has reason to fear 
are fixed on De Colmar, he attends a sick 
friend, catches a fever, and after a very 
serious illness, on recovering from his de- 
lirium, he finds himself, he knows not 
how, in the castle, and under the countess’s 
personal care. Their fond attachments now 
break out, almost uncontrollably; Lord 
Amesfort is in the North; and just as 
Lady Amesfort has come to the resolution 
of renouncing her home, and name, and 
respectability, by the exertions of the young 
Minerva, who had before saved her, her 
purpose is interrupted by the presence of 
Lord Amesfort, who, to prevent extremities, 
is finally driven to avow himself the father 
of Adolphus. Distracted at this intelligence, 
he suddenly seizes Lord Amesfort’s son, a 
_child of five or six years old, and flies with 
him to the continent; where, without an 
object, except that of killing time, and 
smothering his humbled feelings (he is a 
bastard), he continues a considerable time, 
suffering sundry mortifications from his 
suspicious position in seciety. 
In the meanwhile, by a series of judicious 
attentions, Lord Amesfort reconciles the 
countess to herself—soothes her feclings, 
and finally, what he had never done be- 
fore, attaches her affections. Young De 
Colmar too, who had been withheld from 
prosecuting his marriage, on the ground of 
Emily’s illegitimacy—which accounted also 
for his mystery with the brother—at length 
gets the better of his prejudices and offers 
his hand; but Emily has a worm within 
—she has been struck to the heart by the 
desertion of De Colmar, and especially 
by the cause, and the same blow also levels 
the poor mother; and both of them die. 
The final scene between De Colmar and 
Emily is very striking. Lord Amesfort had 
seduced his cousin, or rather they had se- 
duced each other; the act of imprudence 
was committed; he offered reparation, 
which she, in a sort of Eloisa enthusiasm, 
vefused—forgave—was happy—she was but 
a girl, and not very well taught, or able 
[Frs. 
to measure effects. They lived abroad, till 
friends interfered, and he was persuaded 
to abandon her —to marry legitimately, 
and live respectably. He did so, but the 
remembrance of Emily embittered every 
feeling. She pined and lingered, till at 
last her daughter’s disappointment from 
her imprudence, added the final pang, and 
reduced her to a state of idiocy. The 
surviving parties are made very comfort- 
able. Lady Amesfort loves her husband, 
Adolphus marries Minera, and De Col- 
mar, Emily’s youngest sister. 
Leiters from the West, by Hon. Fudge 
Hall, 1828.—This is neither historical nor 
tourical, but a gossiping book of anything 
and everything American, though chiefly 
relative to the settlements in the west. The 
author commences a series of letters from 
Pittsburgh, and continues them as he 
drifts and rows down the Ohio, as far as 
Shawnee—noticing the incidents of his pas- 
sage, which are nothing at all, and the 
scenery and the sailors; but for the most 
part expatiating upon any thing that pre- 
sents itself to his recollection—some things, 
perhaps, picked up on the spot, connected 
with the first settlers of those far off regions. 
Though not incapable of serious discussion, 
his pages are full of flippancy, according 
very little with our notions of the gravity of 
a ‘Judge’—fitter, indeed, for a youth of 
eighteen or twenty—eternally talking of 
‘female charms,’ eyes, and ankles, and of 
poetry, confining his notions of poetry, as 
thousands besides, to babbling brooks and 
green fields. With England he has no ace 
quaintance but from books, and American 
books ; and judges of the notions English- 
men entertain of Americans, by such writ- 
ers as Fearon, and others of his unlicked 
class—busying himself with rebutting the 
invidious remarks of these gentry, and the 
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and 
getting often very angry, and committing 
flagrantly the very offences he thinks he is 
castigating. The taste, indeed, of the whole 
book is of the worst description; he is a 
common quoter, which is almost next to a 
common swearer—tells broad caricature 
stories, and concludes, because America has 
made great advances, nothing can be better. 
Accounting to his correspondent for the 
motives of his tour to the west, he asks, 
“ Who has not heard of the antiquities of 
the west ?” 
When we are told of the Great Valley, whose 
noble rivers, stretching in every direction from 
the distant mountains, poured their waters into 
the bosom of the Father of Sireams; and of the 
rich bottoms, extensive prairies, and gigantic fo 
rests of the West, we could smile at what we be- 
lieved to be simple exaggeration. But when we 
heard of eaverns, extending horizontally for miles, 
and exhibiting traces of former inhabitants, of 
immense mausoleums filled with human bones, 
some of them of a dwarfish size, indicating the 
former existence of a pigmy race—of the skele- 
