il moonlight and morning met, and the
breakfast bell ringing out into the soft air from the old gable, found
us at the end of the fourth volume. Dear old times! when it would have
been deemed little less than sacrilege to crush a respectable romance
into a shilling volume, and our mammas considered _only_ a five volume
story curtailed of its just proportions.

Sir William Wallace has never lost his heroic ascendency over us, and we
have steadily resisted every temptation to open the "popular edition" of
the long-loved romance, lest what people will call "the improved state
of the human mind," might displace the sweet memory of the mingled
admiration and indignation that chased each other, while we read and
wept, without ever questioning the truth of the absorbing narrative.

Yet, the "Scottish Chiefs" scarcely achieved the popularity of "Thaddeus
of Warsaw," the first romance originated by the active brain and
singularly constructive power of Jane Porter, produced at an almost
girlish age.

The hero of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was really Kosciuszko, the beloved
pupil of George Washington, the grandest and purest patriot the Modern
World has known. The enthusiastic girl was moved to its composition by
the stirring times in which she lived; and a personal observation of,
and acquaintance with some of those brave men whose struggles for
liberty only ceased with their exile, or their existence.

Miss Porter placed her standard of excellence on high ground, and--all
gentle-spirited as was her nature--it was firm and unflinching toward
what she believed the right and true. We must not, therefore, judge her
by the depressed state of "feeling" in these times, when its
demonstration is looked upon as artificial or affected. Toward the
termination of the last and the commencement of the present century, the
world was roused into an interest and enthusiasm, which now we can
scarcely appreciate or account for; the sympathies of England were
awakened by the terrible revolutions of France, and the desolation of
Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor
part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which
our youth _now_ would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, were key-notes
to public feeling; the English of that time were thoroughly "awake,"
the British Lion had not slumbered through a thirty years' peace. We
were a nation of soldiers and sailors, and patriots; not of mingled
cotton