The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-09 00:00:00

DECEMBER 9, 1854. separate. Lord Carleton marries suitably, and Margaret remains single. One pursuit only does she cultivate with ardour : she studies insanity under every form in which it has been manifested ; she reads every work written on it, and carefully treasures in her mind every curative mode recommended. Misfortunes fall thick on the earl's family. When the malady attacks him Margaret is at hand to afford assistance and soothe his frenzy; and when one of his sons is attacked, it is to Margaret's care that he is committed. Years pass by, and Lady Carleton, a character in many lineaments beautifully drawn, is worn down to the grave by anxiety. The earl has forgotten his early passion for Margaret ; he sees in her only an attached adherent, and one most capable of managing his home and caring for his family So, partly from gratitude for her attention, partly because he is used to her, and the arrangement would be convenient, he asks her for the second time to become Lady Carleton. The scene in which this offer is made is the best in the book ; but we can afford space only for passages of it. Lord Carleton visits Margaret in the well-remembered house where he had seen her in her youth : "Is your aunt at home, my dear ?" asked Lord Carle ton, measuring with his eye a fine acacia on the lawn, and comparing it with his recollection of the same tree twenty five years before. " Yes • but she is so unwell, that—" " Indeed !" interrupted Lord Carleton—" I am sorry to hear that! Is she confined to her room —or, can she see me r " She is not in her room, my lord : she is in that arbour, yonder." " Ah! the old jessamine bower !" He knew it well; for with his own young hands he had made that bower and planted the jessamine on the eighteenth birthday of the woman who now sat within its luxuriant shade, and watched him approaching. Why are her hands clasped so nervously ? why does the heart within her beat audibly, and send the blood once more like lightning through her veins? Why is this ? Is she not a calm, sensible woman, in the autumn of her days? What means this stirring of the spring-time within her bosom ? She is astonished at her own emo tion. " I did not know I could feel so any more. I thought it was all gone—all dead. Cannot I see him without recalling the long-forgotten past? Surely there is something unnatural in my sensations this day! All nature impresses my spirit more vividly than usual. Thought and feeling are as acute and brilliant as if I were young again. Is it the sudden leaping up of the flame before the lamp is extinguished ?" The last question still lingered in her mind as Lord Carleton ascended the grassy mound on which stood the bower—its entrance curtained by the waving dark green leaves. By the time Lord Carleton had lifted the curtain of tangled wreaths which veiled the entrance of the bower, Miss Hastings hadrecovered her usual calmness of manner. She held out her hand with the seriousness— almost amounting to solemnity—which always characterised her greeting of Lord Carleton ; she never smiled or aftbcted in difference when they met ; she was above all small womanly deceits, and would not belie the feeling which the sight of him always produced in her. She was of a sallow complexion generally, but Lord Carleton thought there was something almost deathly in her hue as he took his seat beside her. " Your niece told me you were unwell. You are very pale today !" he Raid, looking kindly at her. " Paler than usual am 1? I dare say the greenish light which struggles into this place has something to do with it. Are you well ? And your sons ? I saw Arundel come in with you." "We are all well," he replied ; "at least physically.— Ah ! I remember when we selected this spot for a bower !" he exclaimed half to himself.—" That shrubbery has grown out of all memory ; the house is mantled with creepers now ; the acacia, the two elms, and even the slow-growing arbor vitae there, on the lawn, have improved wonderfully in a quarter of a century. Those things are longer lived than we." Margaret answers him so quietly and sedately that the earl replies : " Still u fall of moral principle as ever I" he said, smiling somewhat bitterly. " Did you expect to find me changed this morning ?" " Nay ; but I may have had a faint hope that old times and old feelings were not quite forgotten ; and that when you and I sit on this seat together, marked with our entwined initials—( see ! they are not yet quite effaced, Margaretl—l may have had a faint hope that you would listen to what 1 am about to say with something of the woman and nothing of the moralist !—You were not always so purely rational, Margaret." Then he explains to her his position es the head of his family, and asks her advice : " You must marry again," said Miss Hastings, quietly, but without looking at him. " Was that your thought ?" "It was. Is the thought right or wrong ?" " Men are not wont to be guided by the opinion of others in such matters," replied Miss Hastings, closing her eyes for a moment, and placing her hand on her side. Lord Carleton did not observe the movement, so indicative of sharp, physical pain, and went on with what he had to say. " Yes, I think 1 must marry again I—Caroline foresaw THE PRESS. t circumstances might render such a step desirable for me ; and two days before her death she wrote a letter on this subject, which she enjoined me not to open until a year alter her death. When 1 did open it, 1 understood better than I had ever done before the enduring and un selfish nature of that woman's love ! Love was all in all with her ; every faculty was made subordinate to her love as wife and mother !" " Happy woman !" murmered Miss Hastings. " Nay ; wouldto God she had been happy ! — above all , that Iha not been the instrument of her unhappiness! Sweet Caroline ! gentle, loving, self sacrificing, prematurely killed by brooding over the ills that encompassed those she loved !—No ! she was not happy ; and that thought haunts me like the memory of a crime !" Miss Hastings turned towards her agitated friend. "Do not reproach yourself too mach!—she was happy as your wife—she loved you !—There was no reason why she should not stretch a hand across the grave to aid Null in your earthly course. She was one of the moat generous, most amiable beings 1 ever knew. You will not have a second wife like her. "Like her ! There are none like her. Few women are capable of such love. No; I do not, at my present age, seek a renewal of that blessing of my manhood. With Caroline I buried all love for woman. I think you know this !—But perhaps you do not know how thoroughly both Caroline and I understood and appreciated your character." A momentary elevation of the eyebrows was all the reply which Miss Hastings made to this : but she listened attentively, with slightly compressed lips, as if she suffered pain,—whether mental or physical it would have been di& cult to decide. He proceeds to speak of their " girl and boy attachment ;" how that feeling has now quite gone, how mistaken he was in her character when he believed that her passion would control her intellect, and how he had found in his lost Caroline all that he had imagined her to be, and he adds : You never loved me, as I once fancied.—Yon, with your calm nature, discovered your error soon enough not to suffer much from it —Was it not so, my friend ? " " I never deceived myself on that point! " she replied, faintly ;—finding that he waited for an answer. "No matter ! Whether you were loving or loveless in those past days, you and I can never be wholly indifferent to each other, Margaret!" " Never !—neither here nor beyond the grave !" she said quickly, and as if the words were forced from her. Lord Carleton's manner became warmer. " God bless you, my friend !—There was something like affection in those words—something which makes me hope you will let me add to your happiness by enabling you to exercise your benevolence in a larger sphere than you have hitherto done.—Something that makes me almost sure my Caroline's wish was prophetic, and that you will consent to become the second Lady Carleton—rule my household—be a mother to my boys—and the best and wisest friend to one who tells you candidly that he has no love to give. Will you be my wife, now, Margaret? You refused me once, twice, thrice. We were young then, and we loved—at least I loved.—We are growing old now ! Shall we grow old together, Margaret?" He had taken her hand. She returned the pressure of his, and looked at him with a strange expression. " What is this ?—You are ill ?—I have been thoughtless to enter on this matter now !—Let me lead you to the house !"—he said, with alarm. " Stay !—one moment !—it will keep off one moment !" —she spoke in a gasping, broken voice, and with a strong effort to master some physical pang.—" Listen!—you do not know me !—my life !—you are wrong !—all wrong ! Frederick! Be your wife ?—not the wife of your love— the head housekeeper—care for your sons—your wards— talk with you when you are in the mood—l would even degrade myself to serve you thus—because—ah ! God! he has not known it!—But there is another obstacle now!— Again, I cannot be your wife ! " " What is this ? Calm yourself, my dear friend ! Margaret ! What is the matter ?" he exclaimed, much alarmed at her excited manner.—" Bny, in one word, what obstacle there is." "Another time—l—l—" and, overcome with acute pain, she fell back insensible. Lord Carleton carried her across the lawn to the house, and laid her on a sofa, in the first room he came to.—Seeing no one about, he rang the bell violently, and gazed with mingled pity and wonder at the emaciated form he remembered so well adorned with all the graces of youth and the imagination of a lover. — There was nothing there, now, that he could call beau tiful. "Ah ! if she had lived in the affections instead of in the intellect," he thought, " she would have been beautiful and amiable, now !—Surely her life has been a mistake!—What did she mean just now ?—Not know her?—How can I be wrong?" Here the history of the first Margaret ends — we need not tell her fate—and the tale of the son and the niece succeeds. It is less pleasing, for this among other reasons, that they are brought into closer proximity, and that, after some mistakes on his part and trials on hers, they are united in affection, and in the inter course of daily life, as brother and sister, though on both sides the attachment is of a much warmer kind. The book has many faults, and we strongly object to what may be termed the moral or sentiment of it ; but of all false canons of criticism the falsest is that which judges a book by its freedom from defects and not by its 1169 positive merits. This romance is marked by great originality, strong descriptive power, considerable eloquence, particularly in the portrayal of character and feeling, and by acute observation of nature. But it is in many parts wildly extravagant and very unartisti eally put together. We conceive the narrative would have been improved had the part of the fortunate young gen tl e man—susceptible_ as he is represented to be, who succeeds to 40,000/. a year, and whose exceedingly comfortable condi tion does not well accord with the romance of the story—been altogether omitted. Though not a pleasing story, it sustains attention, and for this merit alone will no doubt be widely circulated. The opening paper of Blackwood, " Story of the Campaign," from the pen of an officer, is neither 80 well written nor so amusingly told as we expected. We have had so many clever and characteristic sketches from able pens, so full in detail and so accurate in description, that one tires over a simple personal narrative which is necessarily meagre in account, and, from the harrassing duties of the writer, perhaps rather hastily composed; but, never theless, some of the remarks are worthy of notice, as expressive in a degree of the feelings of the army. Speaking of the failure of the Russians to capture Silistria, and their retreat across the Danube, the gallant officer remarks that:— It was now expected that the allies would push on ; but for this they were not prepared. Overrating the resources of the enemy from the beginning, an advance into the prin cipalities does not seem to have entered into their calcu lations. Various reasons for our inactivity were circulated ; the commissariat could not supply us on the march ; there was no transport for the reserve ammunition; we were waiting to see what Austria would do. Leaving diplomatists to attach a value to the last reason, I may say, that the commissariat would probably, if they had been called on, have found means to supply the army, but that the want of animals to carry the ammunition formed a more serious obstacle. When the cholera broke out so fiercely, and even followed the army after they bad embarked, we read a horrible anecdote of the dead bodies fleeting up in the Bay of Balchick : Thither the cholera still pursued us, and every day boats might be seen leaving ships, towing a boat astern, whet ein was a long motionless object covered by a flag. After a time the corpses, sewed in blankets or hammocks, and swollen to giant sire, rose to the surface and floated upright among the ships, their feet being kept down by the shot used to sink them. One of these hideous visitants lingered about the foot of the accommodation ladder of one of the trans ports, till men going down the side passed cords with weights attached over its neck, when it slowly sank. The battle of Alma and the flank march are fairly described. Our position in the wood on the march appears to have been very critical. The " story " is only continued down to the arrival of the army at Balaklava, The first part of a new romance, " Zaidee," the scenery old English and Cheshire, the family modern and rustic, reads well. A paper upon the " Education of the Royal Artillery " reviews the system of education pursued in the Go vernment institutions at Carshalton and Woolwich for cadets, and in the regimental schools for the children of non-commissioned officers and privates. " The Influence of Gold upon the Social and Commercial Condition of the World " is an able review of the increase of the precious metals subsequent to the first discovery of Mexico and Peru, and the effect produced upon the growth of Russia and the general commerce of the world by the discovery and increased yield of the mines of Siberia and the Ural mountains. Of the Government policy with regard to neutral trading, the writer considers that We have committed a suicidal mistake in permitting Russia to enjoy the indirect facilities, afforded by Prussia and other States, of carrying on an export trade, little di minished from its former amount; and, as the result of our weakness and folly, it is well nigh certain that she will be enabled, after all the reverses she has sustained, to enter upon a new campaign in the ensuing spring with resources but little impaired. "'The Prospects of the Modern Drama" is an amusing review of the current plays and players upon the stage. Passing " Peace and War," as inferior to its first part last month, we come to some "Reminiscences of Christopher North," which are certainly a mistake on Mr. Warren's part, and as much below his reputation as they are unworthy Professor Wilson's genius. The present is a lively number of Bentley's Miscellany, as far as variety of subject is concerned. We have first "The Events of the Year" noticed; then a review of Austrian policy in "The Attitude of Austria in the East; " a very good chapter of " Aspen Court," in which a street row and a descrip tion of a fighting-man are cleverly drawn, and a Welsh 'village sketched in all its bleak barrenness.