Yet, the "Scottish Chiefs" scarcely achieved the popularity of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," the first romance originated by the active brain and singularly constructive power of Jane Porter, produced at an almost girlish age. The hero of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was really Kosciuszko, the beloved pupil of George Washington, the grandest and purest patriot the Modern World has known. The enthusiastic girl was moved to its composition by the stirring times in which she lived; and a personal observation of, and acquaintance with some of those brave men whose struggles for liberty only ceased with their exile, or their existence. Miss Porter placed her standard of excellence on high ground, and--all gentle-spirited as was her nature--it was firm and unflinching toward what she believed the right and true. We must not, therefore, judge her by the depressed state of "feeling" in these times, when its demonstration is looked upon as artificial or affected. Toward the termination of the last and the commencement of the present century, the world was roused into an interest and enthusiasm, which now we can scarcely appreciate or account for; the sympathies of England were awakened by the terrible revolutions of France, and the desolation of Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which our youth _now_ would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, were key-notes to public feeling; the English of that time were thoroughly "awake," the British Lion had not slumbered through a thirty years' peace. We were a nation of soldiers and sailors, and patriots; not of mingled cotton-spinners and railway speculators and angry protectionists; we do not say which state of things is best or worst, we desire merely to account for what may be called the taste for _heroic_ literature at that time, and the taste for--we really hardly know what to call it--literature of the present, made up, as it too generally is, of shreds and patches--bits of gold and bits of tinsel--things written in a hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward--suggestive rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our fathers probably overrated. At all events we must bear in mind, while reading or thinking over Miss Porter's novels, that, in her day, even the exaggeration of enthusiasm was considered good tone and good taste. How this enthusiasm was _fostered_, not subdued, can be gathered by the author's ingenious preface to the, we believe, tenth edition of "Thaddeus of Warsaw."