abhorrent from indecency: but the heroes and heroines, who tell their own stories, instead of dwelling with unction or satisfaction on their past lives, only narrate particular incidents to express their sincere disgust at them, and repentance for the future, and to warn others from a life so fruitful of bitter results. Whilst De Foe was so cruelly and unjustly imprisoned in Newgate for defending the Hanoverian succession! (strange perversion of party spirit!) he employed his active mind in acquiring information relative to its unhappy and guilty inmates; and deeply convinced that mankind would be benefited by an exposure of the sorrow and distresses that invariably accompany and follow a life of crime, he embodied the results of his experience in fictions which we agree with him in thinking to be as useful as they are vivid. Mr. Alexander Chalmers, in his sketch of De Foe[106], says, "these lives are too gross for improvement"; we cannot agree with this opinion of the learned biographer. We hold, that novels, written like De Foe's, not on the base principle of making a market by pandering to the worst passions of the multitude, but where all indecency of expression or even of suggestion, is carefully avoided, and vice is only described as entailing misery, are instructive and beneficial to the people. The style of De Foe is plain and homely, but expressive, direct, and manly. It may be described as thoroughly English. It reflected the character of his mind, and bespoke the man of firm resolve, and unshaken integrity. His principles were those of a sincere dissenter, of the whig school. He joined most heartily in the Revolution of 1688, and continued a steadfast friend to its principles and its hero. To William III. De Foe was devotedly attached; and after the death of that great king, vindicated his memory from the poisonous shafts of malice and slander. He was the champion of civil and religious liberty, which he evidently valued as the most precious of earthly things. Of that cause he continued the unflinching advocate, and may be regarded as the most efficient of that day which the press could boast. Through good report and evil report, under the smiles of sovereigns or incarcerated in Newgate, in prosperity or poverty, stung by the malevolence of faction, or by filial ingratitude, in health or in sickness, in gladness or in sorrow, De Foe held by the same sheet anchor of principle, remained incorruptible in his love of liberty, and died as he had lived throughout a long and eventful career, what he so justly felt himself, a "True-born Englishman," and to use his own admirable expression in Robinson Crusoe, a "broadhearted man." Honoured be his memory!