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  • ter at once natural and instructive, and

very forcibly pourtrays the proclivity of pleasurable vice. The passions, characters, and manners, are in this production natural, striking, and impressive; the fable in its principal constituents, sufficiently probable to interest the reader in the fortunes of the actors; the descriptions of external nature, perhaps too exuberant; but it is the exuberance of genius prompted by taste and sensibility, exquisitely susceptible of the beauties of nature; she cannot restrain her fancy from expatiating on subjects which have afforded to herself so delightful sensations and images. Her marvellous is not improbable. Such were the critical reflections of our hero on his examination of this novel, together with the taste of the times, when it made its appearance. He predicted, however, that attempted imitation, by inferior genius, would inun-