Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 2.pdf/22

This work, "a tale of the plague and the fire," abounds, as this explanation denotes, in the terrible and the sublime. The time extends from April, 1665, to September, in the following year, embracing the two most fearful and fatal calamities that ever London was visited with. With what grasping power Mr. Ainsworth has seized upon the prominent points arising out of these scenes of devastation and dismay, those best may judge who can most vividly recall past examples of his art in stirring men's blood and lifting the imagination to a point of horror; but they may not so readily surmise with what a gentle and reconciling humanity he has detained us amidst what was loathsome, to exhibit to us, as it were the lily in the charnel house; and carried us through the pestilence and the flame, to vindicate the severity of human trials, to inculcate salutary lessons of exertion and endurance, and track the course of faith, and courage, and happiness, through all. From the insupportable and unredeemed ghastliness of Defoe's astonishing narrative, we turn to this peopled story, and discover a vitality amidst the shadows of death, and hope stealing silently on through the desolation and the ruin.

Mr.Ainsworth's engagement, as editor of "Bentley's Miscellany," terminated with the year 1841, and, in February of the present year, appeared the first number of "Ainsworth's Magazine," a journal of romance, literature, and art. Its success, measured by the sale of the first volume, now completed, surpasses, it is said, by many degrees, that of any similar periodical that ever made its appearance. Its editor had surrounded himself by many able writers, but his reliance, perhaps, was upon a new tale from his own pen─The Miser's Daughter. Though scarcely half finished, public opinion seems to have set its seal upon this fine-toned and charmingly-coloured story, as "the favourite and the flower." Of this work, Cruikshank is the illustrator; but Mr. Ainsworth, it seems, purposes to keep the imagination of a second artist employed, for in July he opens, in his Magazine, a new tale, entitled "Windsor Castle," for which the celebrated Tony Johannot is to furnish steel engravings, and Alfred Delamotte, woodcuts.

Here draw we to a close, with the observation, that should these new romances, now in a state of progress, share the good fortune of their predecessors, they will not only be extensively read, but dramas will be founded upon them in this country; the Paris press will give them a new shape; America will spread them over her surface; the German translator will ensure them a wide circulation in that land of the mysteries; and even the Dutch, as in the case of Rookwood and Crichton, will mark them for their own.

There is one event of a domestic nature that should be mentioned in a more saddened tone at the close. On the 15th of March, in the present year, it was Mr. Ainsworth's affliction to lose his surviving parent─the revered mother, who had taken pride in his rising fame, and had found joy in his constant affection. A beautiful monumental tribute to both parents has just been erected in the cemetery at Kensal Green.

What have we to add to what we have here ventured to record, which the engraving that accompanies this memoir will not more happily embody? Should that fail to do justice to his face─to its regularity and delicacy of feature, its manly glow of health, and the cordial nature that lightens it up, we must refer the dissatisfied beholder to Mr. Pickersgill's masterly full-length portrait, exhibited last year; in which the author of The Miser's Daughter may be seen, not as some pale, worn, pining scholar─some fagging, half-