The Sun.
London, England, 1819-01-25 00:00:00

LITERA RY REVIEW.

CORALY, a Novel, in Three Voltretts, I tree.

It was lately our melatircholy duty to advert to
.the death of one of our best female Novelists ; it
is now our more agreeable task to notice the !ad-
duction of a new IVork, by an individual of that
sex, which, though it may-not replace those ta-
lents of which we have to ,deplore the loss in Mrs.
'lsobel-ON, is happily calculated to perpetuate
her influence, and disseminate her moral and re-
ligious principles.--Corn/y is a fiction, of which
the avowed object is to enforce, by example, the
importance of certain precepts. The story is, we
confess, too romantic to satisfy the ascetic spirit
of criticism ; but though the incidents sometimes
diverge from probability, the character's are not
ton remote from ordinary life to excite interest
and sympathy—and in the general tenor of the
sentiment, there is something like accents of our
native language in a strange land, which almost
persuades us that we hear the voice of a familiar
friend. The following pa. sage does honour to the
discrimination and sensibility of the wi her
" You have never known poverty, therefore you
know 'lot the extent of its miseries; it is not
the bare deprivation of the riegancies, or even
the csmeeuieuees, of lite which constitute its
horrors; it is in the little distinction which is
made between guilt and misfortune. The very
actions which hare in prosperous days been ap-
pi need and extolled, the very opinions which,
when harked by situation and oidependence,
ac ere ipplatuled and admired, although their in-
trinsic value in a I stations must he the same, I
have hen confounded in experiencing, have all
turned to my disadvantage and condemnation.
I believed, when I sail, and with perfect truth,
that I could hear poverty, and that its evils con-
sisted in giving up 311 but the mere necessaries Of
life. I reasoned, that to live homely, to be
clothed poorly, to renounce society, to work
lud, and to be sheet fill, were requisites I should
t►ot va wit ; Ina I falsely calculated, that my mind
was still to be my own; that the independence
of-`my heart I could not only carry with me every
where, brit that I could assert its honest opinions,
tearless censure, since unconscious of wrong.
}lett lay my chief mistake ; those who have fa-
a ow* to ask, must have no opinions of their own.
They must go still tulther ; they must, at least
apparently, adopt at pleasure those of others.
All this I at length discovered ; but even then I
calculated that such opinions, though I found they
existed in the world at large, would not, could
t►ot, extend to my more immediate friends and
relatives. Again 1 was mistaken, for in msr
altered fortunes, I found them also changed ; and
while they needed an excuse for their neglect,
they found it in heaping blame upon my conduct.
found that even they expected from me what
will never happen—that poverty was to deprive
sue of the recollection that I was butts and edu-
cated as a gentlewoman."
,The striking truth, and impressive lesson,
which this ,Extract contains, ought to sink deep
into the minds of all our youthful Readers, and
induce them to avoid those indiscretions which
may lead to embarrassments, and produce that
melancholy effect of obligation which the Author
has so well described, and which may be con-
sidered as such a proof of the met it of the Work,
is cannot-but recommend it to general attention.