? We
cannot enter here upon that great question. But solved it must be, and
solved upon the principles of the great Reformation statutes of our
land, which maintain, in the supremacy of the Crown, our undoubted
nationality; which, besides maintaining this great principle of national
life, save us from all the terrible practical evils of appeals to Rome,
and yet which maintain the spirituality of the land, as the guardians
under God of the great deposit of the Faith, in the very terms in which
the Catholic Church of Christ has from the beginning received, and to
this day handed down in its completeness, the inestimable gift.

[1] Hansard's "House of Lord's Debates," July 15, 1864
[2] "Quarterly Review," vol. cxv. p. 560

ANONYMOUS ON "WAVERLEY"

[From _The Quarterly Review_, July, 1814]

_Waverley; or, 'tis Sixty Years since_. 3 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh, 1814.

We have had so many occasions to invite our readers' attention to that
species of composition called Novels, and have so often stated our
general views of the principles of this very agreeable branch of
literature, that we shall venture on the consideration of our present
subject with but a few observations, and those applicable to a class of
novels, of which it is a favourable specimen.

The earlier novelists wrote at periods when society was not perfectly
formed, and we find that their picture of life was an embodying of their
own conceptions of the "_beau ideal_."--Heroes all generosity and ladies
all chastity, exalted above the vulgarities of society and nature,
maintain, through eternal folios, their visionary virtues, without the
stain of any moral frailty, or the degradation of any human necessities.
But this high-flown style went out of fashion as the great mass of
mankind became more informed of each other's feelings and concerns, and
as a nearer intercourse taught them that the real course of human life
is a conflict of duty and desire, of virtue and passion, of right and
wrong; in the description of which it is difficult to say whether
uniform virtue or unredeemed vice would be in the greater degree tedious
and absurd.

The novelists next endeavoured to exhibit a general view of society. The
characters in Gil Blas and Tom Jones are not individuals so much as
specimens of the human race; and these delightful works have been, are,
and ever will be popular, because they present lively and accurate
delineations of the workings of the human soul,