The Press. — London, England, 1858-02-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, FEBRUARY 27, 1858. 210 Ido not know how you like your new subjects, Gut I hear they are extremely content with their Prince and Princess. I ought to wish your lordship joy of all your prosperities, and of Mr. Fludd's baptism into the Catholic or Universal Faith ; but I reserve public felicities for your old Drawing-room in Leicester•felds. Private news we have little but Lord Carmarthen's and Lord Cranborne's marriages, and the approaching one of Lady Bridget Lane and Mr. Tall-Match. Lord Holland has given Charles Fox a draught, of an hundred thousand pounds, and it pays all his debts, but a trifle of thirty thousand pounds, and those of Lord Carlisle, Crewe, and Foley, who being only friends, not Jews, may wait. So now any younger sou may justify losing his father's and elder brother's estate on precedent. Neither Lord nor Lady Temple are well, and yet they are both gone to Lord Clare's in Essex, for a week. Lord Temple had a very bad fall in the Park, and lost his senses for an hour. Yet, though the horse is a vicious one, he has been upon it again. In short, there are no right headed people but the Irish ! As it is ancient good breeding not to conclude a letter without troubling the reader with compliments, and as I have none to send, I must beg your lordship not to forget to present my respects to the Countesses of liarryruore and Massarsene, my dear sieters in Loo. You may be sure I am charged with a large parcel from Clivedon, where I was last night. Except being extremely ill, Mrs. Clive is extremely well ; but the tax-gatherer is gone off, and she must pay her window lights over again ; and the road before her door is very bad, and the parish won't mend it, and there is some suspicion that Garrick is at the bottom of it; so if you please to send a shipload of the Giant's Causey by next Monday, we shall be able to go to Mr. Bofey's rout at Kingston. The papers said she was to act at Covent Garden, and she has printed a very proper answer in the Evening Post. Mr. Rafter told me that formerly when be played Luna in The Rehearsal, he never could learn to dance the Hays, and at last he went to the man that teaches grown gentlemen. Miss Davis is the admiration of all London, but of me, who do not love the perfection of what anybody can do, and wish she had less top to her voice and more bottom. However, she will break Millico's heart, which will not break mine. Fierville has sprained his leg, and there is another man who sprains his mouth with smiling on him self—as I have heard, for I have not seen him yet, nor a fat old woman and her lean daughter, who dance with him. London is very dull, so pray come back as soon as you can. Mason is up to the ears in " Gray's I.ife ;" you will like it exceedingly, which is more than you will do this long letter. Well! you have but to go into Lady Nune ham's dressing-room, and you may read something ten thousand times more pleasing. No, no ! you are not the most to he pitied of any human being, though in the midst of Dublin Castle. In his old age he never seems to have lost what may almost be called his methodical uprightness. The debonair style of writing belonged to him through life. And after a thousand letters, the thousand and first has as little the air of a composition as its earliest predecessor. There is not a speck of ink on his ruffles to the last ; and the most inveterate writer and one of the greediest for fame of his age, he still preserves the ease and apparent carelessness of the amateur, as he did when in his boyhood he travelled with Gray. Charmione. A Tale of the Great Athenian Revolution. By Edward A. Leatham, M.A. Two Vols. London: Bradbury and Evans. PROBABLY no kind of fiction is more difficult to write than a classical novel ; for it requires two qualities not often found in the same person—the plod:lin:4 iindustry which can collect and arrange innumerable small details, and the strong and vivid imagination which can breath life into this inert mass of archaeo logy, and endow its dry bones with character, motion, and interest. We have had indus trious antiquarians, like Professor Becker, who galvanize the skeleton of the past into a variety of formal attitudes " characteristic of the period," who do not suffer their hero to pass his threshold or lift a fold of his toga without adducing chapter and verse from Atbemeus or Martial, and whose work will in consequence seldom keep any human being but a student cramming for an examination a minute out of bed after his time. We have, also, brilliant writers like Sir Bulwer Lytton, who possess no attraction for the afore said student, but whose genius has thrown around the crumbling walls and shattered columns of an ancient city a spell like that which attracts the traveller to the roofless chambers of Kenilworth, or peoples with visions not its own the lonely islet of Loch Katrine. _ _ has attempted to combine the ioth these classes of writers. though not that of a Berlin :nsive and generally accurate, rally into the course of his \t any undue or pedantic obtrusion. We do not pretend to have tested the whole of his costume by ancient authori ties, for in these cases the total impression derived from a book is of more importance than any justification which might be made out from special scraps of scholarship. One allusion, however, we may notice which ap pears erroneous. Sophocles is represented as saying,— Who knoweth, if this crimson dream of fate Comes through the ivory or the ebon gate? Why the "ebon gate"? Mr. Leatham, writing of dreams, has perhaps nodded for a moment. Homer, and we believe all other writers, re present the gate of true dreams as made of horn. Mr. Leatham's story commences with the death of Pericles, after which occurs an interval of twenty years, and closes with the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants by Thra sybulus. Its chief historical scenes are the trial of the six generals who commanded in the fleet at Arginusce, and the " reign of terror" under Theramenes and Critias which preceded the fall of the latter. Most of the characters who figured prominently in that eventful epoch are brought upon the canvas : the political personages are presented in those characters usually assigned to them ; but Plato is described as the victim of an un requited attachment, and as betaking himself to philosophy to console his disappointment. The two principal female characters are Char mione (a dark beauty), married to Pericles, a bastard son of the great statesman, and Eucharis (a fair beauty), married to Archinus. Both the husbands are generals at Arginusre ; Archinus is reported drowned ; Pericles, one of the six who are condemned, is supposed to owe his death to the guilty passion of Critias for Charmione. The love scenes are the part of the book probably least in keeping with the rest They are deemed indispensable in a work meant for modern readers, but the space they fill is far larger than would have been allotted to them in the times to which they relate ; if. indeed, they would have had any space at all. In the life of an ancient Athenian, friendship seems to have occupied the place which love occupies in ours, hut its phases would probably be found too un manageable for introduction into a modern novel. The epoch selected by Mr. Leatham is certainly a very interesting one, but we doubt whether some sort of historical intro duction would not have been advisable to fit the book for the average reader. who will pro bably have to turn up Grote or Thirlwall if he wishes to comprehend the situation of affairs. The book is written with spirit, and much care has evidently been taken to study the characters. The style is on the whole good, though when the author uses such phrases as " what guys " (supposed to be applied by Athenian spectators to actors in the Dionysia) —" coming the upright dodge"—" devil an " obol shall he have,"—and makes Critias upon ono occasion utter a hearty " d—n !" he seems somewhat forgetful of the principles which are usually supposed to preside over the construction of historical novels. How ever, these blemishes are few and far between, and we may congratulate Mr. Leatham on having produced a readable and interesting story with a very creditable amount of ad herence to classical proprieties. The Three Chances. By the Authoress of ," The Fair Carew." London : Smith and Elder. " THE Three Chances " is the story of a gentleman who, having been jilted by the lady to whom he is engaged because he has become deaf, gains without knowing it the affections of a second damsel engaged to some one else, and is " hooked " by a third who has laid herself out to attract him by ministering to his afflicted state. A sudden restoration to hearing disenchants him from the latter—causes the self destruction of :he second—and finally restores him to the first, whom the other two, for different motives, had kept from effecting her intended re conciliation before his recovery. The "motive " of this story is tolerably new, and though it will no doubt prove repul-ive to many readers, is managed with a good deal of cleverness and truth to nature. The faults of the book are, that there is no one of the characters whom we can either like or respect; all are knavish, weak, or disagreeable. Another is that of far too great a tendency to overload the story with a mass of trivial remarks, and to make deserip tion stand too often in the place of dialogue. Just when the narrative becomes interesting, we are stopped by a strain of mild would-be-Shandean moralising' such as might be written by a rather egoti s ti ca l country recluse addicted to the study of " Proverbial Philoso. phy." We wonder that the doubtless intelligent " readet " of Messrs Smith and Elder did not strike his pen through about one fifth of the MS.; if he had h e would considerably have improved it; at pres !at it contains a great deal of "skip." It bas, however, the great merit of not immediately disclosing the con clusion—and of thus exciting sufficient interest to induce us to wade through the masses of adipos e matter to which we have alluded. It shows also a good deal of observation, considerable knowledge of a certain sort of life, and is not wanting in shrewd and sensible remark. There is no very deep analysis of character, but the outward forms in which cha racter expresses itself are grasped with much ability, and the incidents which forward the plot are so ingeniously selected as to show somewhat of dram at i c power. Considered as an original novel it is cer tainly above the average, though its rather old fashioned style may prove an obstacle to its success. We have great difficulty in believing that it is written by a woman. Margaret Hamilton. By Mrs. C. J. Newby. Three Vols. London : Bentley. Tins is one of the best specimens of what is some times called " the circulating.library novel " that we have met with for some time. There is no great originality in the conception of character, nor much " power" in its presentation; nor do the reflections on life or manner possess that depth which would lead any one to extract them in a commonplace-book. But a novel may be very readable without any of these characteristics ; and Margaret Hamilton," from the easy flow of its narrative, the unaffected nature of its dialogue, and the abundance of its inci. dent, constitutes a very pleasing whole, which will suffer less in comparison with more ambitious works than might be supposed from the deficiencies to which we have alluded. It describes the career of a family who have been suddenly reduced to poverty, and who display their various characters in the man ner in which they respectively act under their mis fortunes. The shifts of genteel penury are related with some humour and pathos, and the struggles of Margaret and her sisters at home, and of her brother in his profession, will awake sympathy in many readers. Mrs. Newby writes like a lady, and appears conversant with good society. Her male characters are a trifle too perfect, as is apt to be the case with lady novelists; but, on the whole, there is less igno rance of the opposite sex than is usual with them, and the filling in of subordinate personages is lifelike and probable. " Margaret Hamilton "is the best novel Mrs. Newby has produced, and confirmed novel. readers will not be wrong in sending for it. Mr. Leatharn ha excellencies of bot His erudition, th professor, is extcn and conics natur narrative without HISTORY. 1. The Earliest Inhabitants of Italy. From Tea. dore Mommsen's History of Rome. Trans. lated by George Robertson. With Preface by Dr. Schmitz. London :J. NV. Parker and Son. 2. A Short Course of History. By H. L. Chapman. Series IL London : , h ittaker. 3. Landmarks of Modern History. By the Author of " The Heir of Redclyffe." London Newby. 1. THE: theory here enunciated by Professor' Momm sen does not materially differ from that which has been generally adopted in this country. Piemisiug that in Italy there are no traces of that Mongolian population which in other parts of Europe preceded the advent of the Indo-Germanic races, he indicates an opinion that the first inhabitants of that penin sula of whom we know anything were the people called the Tapygians. Other historians have held that the first great wave of population, which, coming from the East through Asia Minor, spread over Greece and Italy, is represented to us by the word Pelasgi. In what relation his Tapygians stand to those Pelasgi, Professor Mommsen does not tell us. We should be glad to know whether he considers them identical, or a branch of the main stock, or a later immigration altogether; but on this point he is silent. The second great wave, which, proceeding more inland from the plains of Persia by the Black Sea, Scythia, and Thrace, rushed down upon Italy from the north, is commonly thought to have con sisted of the Etruscans, Opicans or Oscans, and Sabellians, of whom the third were pushed further southwards by the second, till checked by the remnant of the Pelasgi in Apulia and Calabria: while the Opicans themselves held Central Italy, and were regarded by the Greeks as par excellence the Italians. Professor Mommsen regards the Dpicans as a main stem, divided into Sabelli and Latini ; but the difference between this theory and that which regards all three as successive influxes of one great migration then crossing into Europe is not great.