The Press. — London, England, 1853-11-05 00:00:00

writer, capable of rivetting novel-readers. While, however, we commend her talents, we must censure their application in this instanee. When we Wee up a !novel we do not want to be upbraided for all our faults, or to be lec tured for our national wrongdoings. We see k for amusement from an intelligent companion, who can chArm us away from the recollec tions of the sorrows and trials to which most of us are subjected sooner or later. We do nut want that our novelist should become our mer chess censor, mocking our stniggling virtues, and malignantly commemorating our imperfec tions. " Margaret ; or, Prejudice at Home," is the life of a governess in England, written appa rently for the purpose of satirising the social character of " England mid the English." The " Christianity " of our country is derided as beinF in most instances little better than by poensy, and the popular homage for mere wealth is most unjustly exaggerated. Who ever wishes to think badly of the people of England, let them store themselves with the ha:moons and bitter invectives of " Margaret." Tho heroine is introduced to us as the illegiti mate daughter of Colonel Leigh. Her grand father is the verger of a cathedral, iind she is the niece of a David Murples (a strongly drawn character), represented as an Infidel, because he can find no Christians living up to the creed professed by them ! As a matter of course,the people with whom she takes service as a governess are each successively worse than the other ; and we must do the authoress the justice to any that the clasp; to which they belong, whe ther high or low, makes nu difference in the severity of her strictures. It is a pity that so clear a writer should look at the world with so much obliquity ; and, if she again aspire to a high place amongst fictionists, she must learn to take a less defiant tone, and to refresh her readers with sceucs of cheerfulness and joy- We will give some specimens of her pecu liar manner. We first select a fitvourable olio. Here is a vigorous portrait of a boy whose mind is excited by hearing of heroism. The picture is a very graphic one : I had never Steen much of children, mid certainly I hood never seen a child so beautiful as this one was. Standing her a al. ousvist, irresolute whether to adv Mies' er retreat, he pave me a full view of his very tair and handsome face his noble head with it clustering curls of s 11111 l y hair ; Isis large, liquid blue eyes and pouting lips :—and making a sudden dash forward he flung himself head- Wig into Mary's hip, dragging her work out of her hands. " I'm not going to stand this any longer," he said: "you all make auch a liet of me, and it's nothing but nonsense. mean to be a soldier." " Oh, he's a brave boy " said Mary, holding his b e ad caressingly with both " and you can't think how patriotic he is, Miss Marples." England," said the child, raising his :soma fusee. and bolding out his chubby hand, and elevatim.t his forefinger. " England shall never lie at the proud foot of a conqueror' Didn't WO boat the Froltell at Waterloo?" "We did, love," said Mary, kissing him, and her whole heart seemed to be in the caress—" we did, and we always shall whilst we have such bravo fellows as pat are." " Oh, yes ! it's all very well talking about brave fellows, and kissing me that way !" said the boy. " I'm not going to stand it, I tell you, so lie quiet. IVonien are so silly! " He glanced slyly at me out of the corners of his blue eyes as he spoke. "Well,l never saw such a little Turk," said Susan. The boy retreated to the end of the room, and stood against the wall with his hands behind him. When I'm a man." he said, " 1 mean to march under the ' flag that braved a thousand years the :tattle and the breere I shall be a soldier or a sailor ; I don't know which yet. But I'll let the Freneh al'e it's true what the song says : ' Britannia needs uo bulwark+, No towers along Ow steep: Iles march is o'er the mountain w a ve, Iler home is on the tleep; Nobody ever conquered ll', did OW, M airy ?•• " No, hive." "Now you were boats:tying heat night, while rending the Bible, that fighting was sinful," said Susan. " Now you know nothing about it," said the boy, and his baby lip eurled with all expression of co nt e mpt. w e said it was sinful to quarrel, but not to defend ourselves. You would look very queer if the French came over some fine day mid bunied all our houses and took us prisoners. We're not going to let them do that, I should think. I've been reading about Nelson, Mary ; all about his funeral, you know. lbon't you think Nelson went tight to Inuiven ? • 1 holy so," said 'Mary. " lit' was MO brave " said the child. But 1 should like to lac buried as Sir John Moore Nab." THE PRESS. " I don't know, but I should, " said the boy. " I'm always thinking of the dark night, and the silence, and the lantern gleaming, and the soldiers bending over him. • No uselern eutlin .•oufiue'l his bream, Nor in sheet nor iu shroud w I hum ; lint he lay like a warrior takiise his rest, With his martial cloak around hiw.• Wasn't that grand ? " I thought there was a grandeur about the child himself as he stood with flashing eyes, his cheek paling and his lip quivering with emotion. Our readers will agree with us that a writer who can paint with such spirit has talents fur beyond the average. We must now give some specimens of the partial way in which the authoress looks at life in England : Everything I heard corroborated the fact that the rich and the middle classes, while they make use of the poor for their own convenience and of necessity, hold them aloof, as something loathsome to the sight a n d touch ; and, much stronger in their prejudices than any she/ambler ever was ( for he does not shrink with horror and disgust front the human chattel that lie buys and sells), produce in Englund such a wide line of demarcat• —not between vice told virtue, ignorance and knowledge, talent and Unite eility, but between poverty and wealth, us is met with nowhere else on the broad earth amongst creatures of the Milne spirit and clay. I cannot lie solitary in my belief that this system is highly favourable to the growth of infi delity. The 'tamper who cannot leant front parish chap lulus that he may one day sit down in the kingdom with a lord or duke, or, to strain a point, even with a prince or king, may by chance seize the idea that Christ will be less fastidious ; but the degradation of his state has eaten into his anal and made it abject, so that he entertains more reverence for, and more fear of, a wealthy and influential Min in the world, than he possibly can entertain towards (ital. It is the same with the slaves of both sexes, who fancy that they are independent because that they are free to drudge, as no slave ever did, for a pittance too meagre to sustain half a life, or to lie down in their garrets and cellars and the at once. The book abounds in similar passages of invective against the whole spirit of English life. We could never suppose it to be written by a genuine Englishwoman. We fancied it, at first, to be the production of an Irishwo man and a Roman Catholic, but the manner in which Romanism and the priests figure in the second volume removes the latter part of the impression. We can imagine the daughter of one of the fallen Protestant fiunilies in Ire land, compelled to eat the bitter bread of ad versity, and galled by humble employment, thus venting her scorn in such a work as Margaret; or, Prejudice at home." The en thusiasm excited by Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Toni" has evidently roused the gall of this writer. One of the best things in the work is the description of an " anti-shivery" meet ing, in writing of which the authoress gives fall rein to her sarcastic talent : But o u tward show 'mob. little impression upon me. In tl gist, I tore down the gay trapping% and stripped that gorgeonsly.attired assembly to heart's cure, a j i d W bition VII, swirl Wild sudden desalt . Mere to "saw and annihilate all that was mot genuine around me. That much was spur' s was evident a gh in the 1111 l el' fit all. Taking my ideas of Christian courtesy from books rather than men, the excessive politeness of polite people gat themselves struck Ms. as being at once vulgar and haollow. I thought so on that day. when I witnessed nmeh cringing I bowing, accompanied by uu idiotic o.4aart of . •1 MI the ColltaelifilleeS of the mot: so affctation, anal fluttering about, and ready smiling. and majestic sweeping of pi d heads amongst the woo l len. A tery important•looking, middle-aged gentleman, laurry ing past me lotion. I had yet tumid a scat, gave me a ridden push that sent the two or three paces forward, 111111 a card which I had in any hand fell to the floor. Ile Wined round with an impatient Wanec that lighted upon me and the card too, and then hurried on. Ile had evi dently comprehended in an instant of t . • that I did not belong to that grade of ~ociety to which Ins a tt e ntions were exclusively . due ; therefore he offered no apoloi., , y, and left me to pick up the card. 1 ',et my foot upon it : and from that pedestal, with the thoughts that were then upon use, I could have uttered more startling truth% than met my ear through the day : for then- was nothing so monstrous in the fact of bail men boldly r e mevering i n an ev il count'`, as appeared in the) •ly contradictions practised by those pretending to abound in Christian' love, Mid humility, and charity; practised too. in. broad daylight, as a matter of course. and COWlllelltCll 111 , 1,11 by mane, unless by some sorb illsigiiilirawt Obat . llcl' Rs myself, whose private opinion went for nothing. and whose aggrieved feeling stood no chance of notice from the wo rld. The merits of " Margaret" are the great varieties of life sketched by the authoress. It is too full of dreary thoughts and dismal pic tures to charm as a fiction. Its horrors are unrelieved by bright scenes. There is no sweetness in the writer's attempts at pathos ; she rouses, but does not fascinate; she argues. but does not convince. We admit her talents, without admiring them. and, though we have read her adventures with attention, we would almost willingly forget them. Yet its ability SATURDAY, places it so far above the Minerva Press rub bish that litters our circulating libraries, that, with the drawbacks we have intimated, we may direct our reader's attention to " Margaret; or, Prejudice at Home." The Romance of Military Life. By Lieutenant- Colonel Cameron, Author of "Adventures in Georgia," &e., &c. London :G. Cox. Twomunns of this volume are occupied with a very extraordinary story called " Harcourt," which in the hands of a practised novelist would have made " a romantic tale of thrilling interest." It is apparently founded on fact, but it is presented hero with the colour of fiction, and, as Colonel Cameron is not a skilful wtiter, we should have preferred the sketch of " Harcourt's" actual life to this inartistic por traiture. The author introduces this tale with the t*ollowing preface : I have mentioned that I am indebted for the details it contains to a brother officer with whom I was formerly associated on a particular service. A period of twelve years has elapsed since he imparted to me the incidents it embodies, but in the early part of 114.50 I saw in an English newspaper an extract from a French official journal, published by order of the Judicial Tribunal in one of the northern departments (in all probability for the purpose of affiording general information upou the sub ject, to enable any other claimants that might be in existence to come forward ), stating, that demands had been made, and inquiries instituted by distant relative* (or foreigners who declared themselves to be such), re garding several large stuns of money, and other funds, derived from the property of an officer who had served in the armies of France with considerable distinction up to the period of the Consulate, when, owing to a domestic calamity of a frightful and must painful nature, which entailed the tieceasity of his being confined in a 'liaison de tante, from which he subsequently succeeded in escaping, the amount in question, no out coming forward to estab lish any right to its succession, had been appropriated by the Liovernment. The story opens with a description of that fatuous siege of Toulon at which young Napo leon Bonaparte so much distinguished himself. Harcourt," an English exile, under romantic circumstances, meets with Bonaparte and be comes attached to his fortunes. Ile rises in the army, and covers himself with honour at the loattle of Marengo. These introductory incidents of " an Englishman" fighting against his native laud appear so startling as to out • rage reality ; but it appears subsequently that " Harcourt " was an hishann, and a Roman Catholic, who fled from Ireland to avoid the consequences of a penal crime. His early vicissitudes are thus told : la early life, a being,—almost the last of an ancient name and lineage, but of impoverished fortunes,—had his prospects of the future blighted by an involuntary homi cide, committed under eircinnstances of absolute self defence. His adversary, however, was as rich and power ful as he was poor and friendless; and he was compelled lo endure a life of exile, poverty, and misery, or incur the risk of an unjust and ignominious end. He sought for refuge in a land which had risen against its blood-stained a ao's, and there chanice directed him to the notice of the ivonderful icing whose name and renown now fills tho whole of Europe. and who was destined to restore order to his distracted country by crushing anarchy and misrule 'beneath his iron sway. With generous kindness he bympathised with the unfortunate exile, and attached hint to his futilities. Under his auspicious friendship he soon rose to rank and distinction; and, though serving in the ranks arrayed in more than common hostility against the government and country to which he owed allegiance, it was ever understood that he should never be rolled upon to serve against those possessing the ties of blood and Winked with himself. After rising to command in the French ser vice, Harcourt, while serving in the army of Italy, rescues the beautiful Virginia de Melzi and her father from a party of French marauders. He manies the lady, who becomes one of the ornaments at the Imperial court of Napoleon. At a military review at Paris her horse takes fright, and Virginia Harcourt is killed on the spot, and her husband goes mad. We are then introduced to " a low, rakish schooner' (an article that, since the time of Mr. Cooper, seems to have been patented for the use of novelists in distress for incident), and on board this suspicious craft is " Mad Ned," tdias Harcourt, of whom the pirates ;stand in superstitious awe. He subsequently escapes to the Dutch settlements at the Cape then proceeds to India, where he takes service under Holkar, rises to high command, storms a hill fortress, releases more ladies in peril, and falls under the displeasure of a native ruler who seeks to exterminate him. He next flies for life, awl passes through various pails,