imagination, and so the introduction of the strange and the marvellous that would not be allowed in the novel, as, for instance, the land-slide that buried up Rattlesnake Ledge upon the death of Elsie Venner. Thus the field of modern Romance lies in the supposed subtle and mysterious sympathies between the powers of nature and the human soul, in a kind of intermediate twilight between the known and the unknown, in which there is just enough of inexplicable facts to excite our curiosity and wonder, and make us willing to suspend our judgment at the will of any bold Romancer, and not enough for science or solid beliefs. In our modern Romance as compared with the old, there has been a change in the relative agencies of the fancy and the imagination, to correspond with the advancing intellectual discipline and culture of the age. The fancy now has a different part; instead of its free, bold play with the material of the Romance, it rather furnishes the essentially romantic element in the story, and this is worked out, developed in its various manifestations, under a much stricter supervision of the imagination.

The novel has remained substantially unchanged. It is still a picture of common life idealized. It corresponds therefore to the narrative poem, just as the higher forms of Romance do to the epic. Its incidents must always be truthful to common life,

only more truthful as presenting it stripped of its commonplaces, and thus holding up its essential features more distinctly to our contemplation. The interest of the Romance, so far as it is genuine, turns upon the marvellous and the mysterious. Notwithstanding the changes it has undergone, the essential grounds of interest have been preserved. In the old Romance the imagination furnished the idea of the characters and prescribed the general limits of their representation, but left the details almost wholly to fancy within those limits. So in Undine, Donatello, and Elsie Venner, the imagination first places us in a sort of fairy-land, makes us accept of certain impossible conditions, gratifies our love of the marvellous, our desire for freedom from the ordinary limitations of human life, and then leaves the fancy to develop the characters introduced under its supervision. This last form, as seen in Hawthorne and Holmes, is therefore rather a combination of the Romance

with the novel, than genuine Romance. It requires greater delicacy of treatment, it allows more of the niceties of art, but lacks in breadth and scope, in grandeur of character and incident, giving proof of skilful analysis, subtle speculation, but having little of the primitive freshness and large-hearted simplicity of the old Romance.

If we were to inquire into the moral character of the literature of the imagination generally, and so of Romance, we should recognize the same principles we have been illustrating. The imagination works according to fundamental laws of the human mind. Its creatures are true, present in fact ideal truth. There is an old French story, that when Innocence left the world, she met Poetry on the confines. The sisters met, embraced, passed on their several ways, Innocence back to heaven, and Poetry down to earth, to present to men henceforth in ideals what could no longer be real. This gives in a word the office of poetry, of art, of all imaginative literature. Hence the work of the imagination, whether the epic, the drama, or the novel, is "a fit representation," to use the words of Chevalier Bunsen, "of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero." And those only have lived that have satisfied this requirement. Their excellence lies in this truthful apprehension and exhibition of the course of human life as determined by moral laws that have been made permanent in the moral constitution of the world. Every genuine work of the imagination is fitted to exert a moral influence, and failing to do so is to be condemned not less on literary than on moral grounds. Vinet, in a criticism upon the "Henriade" of Voltaire, says of epic poems, that they are true human bibles: the commemoration of a great event in them serves to consecrate a great truth.”*

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The Romance, as the work of the fancy, and so far as it is true to its character as Romance, is out of the pale of morals. Its influence is purely negative. It obtains a moral character, if at all, from the presence of the imagination to some extent, and from the character that may attach to the material it employs. Hence in the absence of the moral pur

"French Lit. 18th Century," p. 268.

pose that presides over all works of the imagination, the general tone of Romance has often been on the side of immorality; and we are not surprised that the old Romance soon degenerated to such a degree as to merit the severe censure and condemnation of the early Reformers, and erelong to die out. The novel has also been employed for the same unworthy ends; but the human mind sooner or later casts off such abuses, and reserves for an abiding place in its literature only such works as really minister to the substantial needs of humanity.

ARTICLE V.

UZZEN-SHERAH; AND ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO CANAAN.

And his daughter was Sherah, who built Beth-horon the nether, and the upper, and Uzzen-sherah.-1 Chron. vii. 24.

WHAT portion of the Scriptures is so often passed over as uninstructive, in reading, as the genealogies in the beginning of the First Book of Chronicles? And what name, in the whole dry catalogue, is less suggestive of instruction than Uzzen-Sherah, mentioned only that once in the whole Bible? And yet, in what we may know of its history and relations, is evidence that the Israelites, under Joshua, had a right, even according to human law, to enter Canaan as they did, and recover, by force of arms, their ancient heritage.

Many, perhaps most, have justified that act on the ground of God's command to do it, virtually admitting that it had no other ground of justification. But probably few thinkers ever felt perfectly satisfied with that defence. The question will recur to considerate minds, whether God would or could make a wrong act right by simply commanding it. The assumption that he did, or could, seems to imply that he knows nothing of, or cares nothing for, any "eternal and immutable morality;' that his will is perfectly lawless, conforming to no idea of right in his own mind; and that Abraham, when he argued that "the Judge of all the earth" must "do right," was talking

perfect nonsense; because, if nothing is right or wrong except as made so by his will, then destroying the righteous with the wicked, if he should please to do it, would be just as right as making a difference between them. A strong point, indeed, seems at first sight to be made, of God's command to Abraham, to offer up his son Isaac. But, perhaps, in an age when God is to be worshipped by sacrifices, it is not wrong for a man to offer up his son, when he knows, as Abraham did, that after the offering up, that son will be alive, and be the father of a numerous posterity, in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Paul, Heb. xi., evidently understood the case. But let us come back to Uzzen-Sherah.

of the land No person,

When Abraham entered Canaan, a great part was unoccupied. It belonged to the human race. family, tribe or nation, had appropriated it since the flood, or laid any claim to it. Some Canaanites had come there before him, and occupied some parts of it; as they had a right to do. He, as he had the same right to do, came and occupied other parts. God, who sees the end from the beginning, promised the whole of it to his seed, knowing that it would all ultimately come into their hands without injustice. But, independently of this promise, as a matter between man and man, between Abraham and the Canaanites, he had the same right as they, to come and occupy vacant lands between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. So they all understood it, and treated him accordingly. See, for proof, the history of his rescue of Lot, in association with Aner, Eshcol and Mamre; his intercourse with Melchizedek, and his purchase of the cave of Machpelah at Hebron. In all these transactions he is treated, not as a lawless intruder, but as "a mighty prince," in every respect fully their equal. He neither acquired nor sought to acquire an exclusive property in any land except that at Hebron; but his right to occupy and use any land in Canaan not yet appropriated by others, was perfect, and was universally acknowledged.

Isaac inherited his father's right of occupancy; and in addition to it, acquired an acknowledged ownership of certain wells which he digged, and of course, as much land round about them as was necessary to their advantageous use. His

first movements in this direction were frustrated by the opposition of other claimants, to whom, we know not for what reason, he saw fit to yield; but afterwards, especially at Beersheba, he acquired a title which was not only not disputed, but solemnly acknowledged. (Gen. xxvi.)

Esau having retired to Mount Seir, Jacob inherited his father's rights in Canaan, and made still further acquisitions. Especially, he bought, for a hundred pieces of money (Gen. xxxiii. 19,) "a parcel of ground" near Shechem, which he gave to his son Joseph, where was the well, afterwards made famous by Christ's conversation with the woman of Samaria. This land was, and still is, an excellent tract for pasturage. He made this gift to Joseph just as he was about to die, when he had been seventeen years in Egypt. (Gen. xlvii. 28; xlviii. 22.) He still regarded himself as the owner of that land. He claimed, also, the real estate of the family at Hebron. (Gen. xlix. 29-32.) This last claim was acknowledged valid by the Hittites at Hebron, on the occasion of his burial, as is evident from their behavior on that occasion. The sojourn of Jacob and his family in Egypt was not understood, either by themselves or the Canaanites, as a relinquishment or forfeiture of their right to their lands in Canaan.

The charge which Joseph gave concerning his bones, (Gen. 1. 24-26,) shows that he then entertained the same views; that he regarded the family lands in Canaan as still theirs, and to be reoccupied as aforetime. He "was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh," (Gen. xli. 46,) and thirty-nine when Jacob arrived in Egypt, as seven years of plenty and two years of famine had then elapsed, (Gen. xlv. 11;) so that when he died, aged one hundred and ten, the Israelites had been in Egypt seventy-one years. Up to that time, there had been no intentional or acknowledged relinquishment of their claim. As he was buried at Shechem, (Josh. xxiv. 32,) his charge probably referred to his land there, and implied a claim to it. But of this claim there is other proof, coming down to a later date, and connected with Uzzen-Sherah. We read, (1 Chron. vii. 20-28):

"20. And the sons of Ephraim; Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son,