aid, that her chief merit consists in close
observation of character, with a forcible and truth-like power of
delineation. In plot, supposing her to aim at such a thing, she
decidedly fails, and the winding-up of her _dramatis personae_ is
hurried and imperfect. Notwithstanding these defects, however, she has
succeeded in rivetting universal attention, while her aims are in the
highest degree praiseworthy.

HANDEL IN DUBLIN.

If biographers will occasionally make assertions at random, and pass
lightly over important events, because their records are not at hand,
while they give ample development to others, just because the
materials for doing so are more abundant, it is well that there is to
be found here and there an industrious _litterateur_, who will leave
no leaf unturned, and no corner unexplored, if he suspects that any
error has been committed, or any passage of interest slighted, in the
memoirs of a favourite author.

Mr Mainwaring, the earliest biographer of Handel, and, on his
authority, a host of subsequent writers, took upon them to assert,
without any apparent foundation, that the oratorio of the _Messiah_
was performed in London in the year 1741, previously to Handel's visit
to Ireland; but that it met with a cold reception, and this was one
cause of his leaving England. Dr Burney, when composing his _History
of Music_, examined all the London newspapers where public amusements
were advertised during 1741 and for several previous years, but found
no mention whatever of this oratorio. He remembered, too, being a
school-boy at Chester when Handel spent a week there, waiting for fair
winds to carry him across the Channel, and taking advantage of the
delay 'to prove some books that had been hastily transcribed, by
trying the choruses which he intended to perform in Ireland.' An
amateur band was mustered for him, and the manuscript choruses thus
verified were those of the _Messiah_. In the absence, therefore, of
stronger evidence to the contrary, Dr Burney believed that Dublin had
the honour of its first performance. An Irish barrister has now proved
this, we think, beyond dispute.[1] His evidence has been drawn from
the newspaper tomes of 1741, preserved in the public libraries of
Dublin, confirmed by the records of the cathedrals and some of the
charitable institutions, and yet more emphatically from some original
letters of this date. He has thus succeeded in doing 'justice to
Ireland,' by securi