The Press. — London, England, 1858-04-10 00:00:00

J am es, however, detected at once the weakness ' of Mr. Vaughan's style. " Occasionally," says he, " the landmarks between prose and poetry " are broken dawn." We cannot help fancying that this letter m ay have had an injurious effect upon Mr Vaughan's style. Subsequently he allowed his love of illustration to run riot ; nor does he seem capable of distinguishing between what is really new and striking and the veriest dregs of the metaphor-monger. In the article on Nlackay's " Religious Development in Greece," we have counted no fewer than seven teen, of which scarcely one has any peculiar propriety or any true wit. In the first six pages we have the eight following ones : The teeth of St. Apollonis were once believed effectual to cure the tooth-ache. Edward VI. ordered them to be collected—each possessor of one of the inestimable grinders was to give it in to a public officer—and, saith Fuller, they filled a tun therewith." Their number was fatal to their credit. The profusion of our author's references is similarly suspicions. But, alas ! we are persuaded that he has sacrilegiously facilitated his journey, and has attempted to secure the praise without the pain, acting as that naughty old lady did, who, having vowed a barefoot pilgrimage to a distant shrine, took off her shoes and stockings, and travelled thither in a sedan•chair. It is said that the Australian aborigines may always be kept at a distance from the habitation of the intrusive European if he takes care to bury a dead man before his threshold, for they have a superst►tious dread of crossing a grave. The man who divided bread into the three classes of white bread, brown bread, and French rolls, was an Aris totle at classification compared with Mr. Mackay. In such dry places the foot-notes are at least so far a boon that they direct you allay from the lucubrations of your author. One welcomes them much as a man, de siring to find his way oat from some place of entertain ment which has proved utterly flat and unprofitable, brightens up on seeing painted in large characters—THE WAY OUT. He resembles the giant he himself tells us of, who was suffocated by his own wisdom. Perched on an Olympus of German books, he scans the panorama of old Greece through a modern opera•glass. Humboldt tells us that he met one day in his travels with a naked Indian, who had painted his body so as to represent a blue jacket and trousers, with black buttons. The religion of Mr. Mackay presents a similar substitute of colour for attire. If that Indian might be pronounced dressed, Mr. Mackay may be called a Christian. There is, however, one merit in these essays which is rare in young writers. Mr. Vaughan has the art of keening close to his subject. The review from which the above extracts are taken is in this respect admirable. The critic dogs Mr. Mackay through all his turnings and windings, strips him of fallacy after fallacy, and leaves him naked and contemptible. This is, perhaps, the truest ground for praise which we can dis cover in the volumes before us. We should be sincerely sorry to have wounded the feelings of Mr. Vaughan's surviving relatives. But we must speak the truth. We honestly believe thtt the republication of such essays as these is either profitable to the writer's fame, nor beneficial to literature or philosophy. It may be wonderful, as Sir J. Stephen said, for a young man of one and twenty to have written the essay upon Origen. But that is not to the point. Is it such as a middle-aged man of one and forty would care to read ? We fear not. NEW NOVELS. 1. Paved With Gold. By the Brothers Mayhew. London : Chapman and Hall. 2. A Lover's Quarrel. By the Author of "Cousin Geoffrey." Three Vols. London: Hurst and Elackett. 3. The Old Palace. By Julia Tilt. Two Vol 9. Lon don : Beutley. 4. The Netherwoods of Otttrpool. Three Vols. Lon. don : Bentley. 5. Katherine Randolph ; or, Self Devotion. By the Author of " The Only Daughter." Edited by the Rev. G. R. Gleig. London : Hodgson. 1. WE have so often noticed the numbers of " Paved With Gold" on their monthly appearance that we need do no more than draw attention to the hook in its complete form. It is in some respects of the same cle.ss as " Cream," but differs from it in being made up of a large number of scenes and cha racters, such as Mr. Reade describes, woven into a whole by a plot of the ordinary kind. The incidents, personages, and localities are realistic, and appear drawn from life ; the string on which they are threaded would probably be reckoned by Mr. Reade among the "oily probabilities', which, as we THE PRESS, APRIL 10, 1858. saw last week, he warns us to distrust. What ever suspicion we may entertain respecting the poetical justice which is dealt out by Mr. May hew, we have nothing but admiration to ex press of the scenes and situations he has so graphi cally described, and in which probably no writer is so well versed as hims.:lC. The illustrations are ex cellent, and enter completely into the spirit of the work, and the volume altogether is one which will be read through with curiosity, 'interest, and wonder by all who may happen to glance at its pages. 2. The purpose of " A Lover's Quarrel " is to pro• test against the truth of Terence'a famous and ott quoted line. The heroine is engaged to a model clergyman, who brings her presents in a " casket " (your conventional novelist delights in a " casket "), but quarrels with him in chap. i., and the lovers are consequently kept apart till the end of the third volume. The lady of course runs all manners of risks in the interim, and very nearly marries a gentleman who has an unlawful estab lishment already, a mother of extremely doubtful antecedcnts,and is himself capable of interpolating a parish register. Bigamy, forgery, and the humours of parvenu families, with a somewhat intricate plot, compose a mixture uniting the peculiar merits of penny romances with the rose-pink elegance of novels of fashionable life. The result is somewhat be wildering, and the reader is onfy enabled to persevere by being kept in a state of mild excitement as to what odd thing will next happen to the characters, or be said by the writer. Somo writers of fiction can describe bores without becoming tiresome, and vulgarity without being vulgar. The authoress of " A Lover's Quarrel " has no such talent. The two subjects on which sl:e is most fluent are dress and eating, and though professing to laugh at the ex pense of those who indulge in them, she describes both with such evident sympathy as to cast a doubt upon the genuineness of her sarcasm:— Three very large French deal boxes were on the floor ; their contents were spread on the bed and the sofa. " What is all this, Mamma? Who has sent these costly, these exquisite things ?" "My uncle, Lord Rockalpine. It seems Claverhouse has told him of the ball, and he has ordered of the Empress's modiste the most elegant toilettes for us, all that taste could devise or money purchase. Nothing is forgotten—head-dresses, gloves, shoes, fans, wreaths, even mouchoira. Mabel has examined the dresses, and declares they are certain to fit. Did you ever see anything so ex quisite? Just look at mine! could anything be more suitable, more becoming ! This velvet is the richest Genoa, and of a rose-colour never seen in England ; just notice the trimmings of the skirt and the jacket, the superb blonde and graceful feathers of the head-dress, the sleeves and the chemisette ! It reminds me of old times, when no girl ever took more delight in dressing her doll, than my dear, dear uncle in dressing me ; and the doll was not more thankless," she added, wiping away a tear. " And now look at your dress and Cecile's, remark the taste of those bodaices, the delicate brilliancy of the silver embroidery of those five tunics to each skirt—the milliner has forgotten nothing, even the Eugenie crinoline is there, to give the exact amount of tout-woe that is now the fashion in Paris. A' for the wreaths, they are pet feet ion; the only difference, that yours is all white, while a delicate blush in the roses adapts Cecile's better to her hair and complexion." The Nemesis attendant on this unholy finery, when the wearer thinks of her dis3arded clergyman and is sad, contains a touch of nature which we have ven tured to italicise : All this passed through Cecile's mind, as she, the acknowledged beauty of the evening, stood surrounded by the officers of the regiment of Dragoons—admired by all the men—hated, envied, by all the women, Miss Cosa especially, Courtney Claverhouse in such close attendance, and so pointedly devoted, that it was soon decided he was a favoured aspirant! Cecile let him hold her bouquet, fan, flacon—accepted the hand he offered, and drank the iced lemonade he tendeted. But almost unconsciously did she give this passive en couragement, and quite regardless was she of the glances, sighs, stares, and ogles directed at her. Yes! in her bril liant and fairy-like draperies of gauze and silver (the Queen of Beauty with her court around ber), her woman heart :vas yet dwelling with ineffable regret on tbat time so recently past, and yet which seemed so very long ago, when she was Dudley Ffarcourt's companion in his visits to the poor and sick. She almost loathed the costly elegance of her ball dress, ell she thought of the pink or liloc gingham* he loved so well! There is a passage descriptive of what the authoress, who likes to parade her French, calls a " petit souper," which is positively succulent in its tone, and if read in Lent, would probably excite " growling" in any well-organized frame : but we spare our readers the trial. However, the book is not without some gleams of common sense ; witness the following bit, on gover nesses, correcting a view now almost too prevalent . It is quite tree that governes3es are generally Unrested, over-worked, blighted, miserably remunerated, and cruelly humbled ; the majority are much to be admired, pitied and respected Still, there is another side to the picture—there is even the tyrant governess, whom every one dreads and bows to; there is the coquettish governess, who tries to captivate and subdue all husbands, brothers, sons, ite. dze.; and there is the scheming governess, whose great object is, in spite of the disadvantages of her position, to get herself marri.d, and who neglects her solemn deities, and high office, to advance her own interest and oariy out her own schemes. Governesses are not all young, guileless, will born, beautiful, mil oppressed. To some it is a great rise in life to be governesses, and even some, who are by birth ladies, do not act as such in their " situations." Invetarate novel-readers may possibly like "A. Lover's Quarrel," but those who look for careful study of character or probability of narrative cannot be advised to send for it. :3. In "'"he Old Palace "—to which is subjoined a second story called " A Passage from Real Life " Miss Tilt has considerably improved upon " May Hamilton." Her former effort was open to the objec tion we have made to the subject of the preceding notice—that of falling into vulgarity and tediousness in the attempt to represent vulgar or tedious people. The present work is less ambitious and more stucessful, the characters are more quietly described, and there is a certain degree of originality about the motive of the story. Unfortunately, Miss Tilt, having seized on an idea not quite worn thread bare, immediately proceeds to make it so, and uses it as the foundation of both her stories ! This shows a poverty of invention which we should not have expected from so lively a writer. We have also to complain of a certain want of taste shown in the authoress's manner of expressing herself on religious subjects, and of a certain hardness of mind which fails to see that the heroine she has drawn is not an attractive, but a remarkably selfish character. How • ever, as we have said, she has made an advance, and we will hope that these faults, too, may be got rid of in a next attempt. 4. " The Netherwoods of Otterpool " is a long history of family estrangement. Squire Philip Netherwood of Otterpool in Derbyshire, with 50,0001. a year, is thwarted by his only son, Frank, whom he wishes to marry an earl's daughter, but who has made his own choice in the daughter of a neighbouring baronet at feud with his father. Frank persists in his intention, and is disinherited in favour of his sister, who however, with her husband's con currence, magnanimously resolves not to take advan tage of this good fortune. Frank will be heir to 10.0001. a year on the death of his uncle, bat in consequence of his father-in-law dying without having provided for his daughter, has to go through a good deal of genteel poverty, and is perse cuted by the revenge of the lady he has re fused to marry. Providential misfortunes come on the relentless old squire in the deaths of his daughter, her husband, and their infant son ; a daughter, Annie, is left, whom he brings up. In consequence of Frank's absence from the village, matters go wrong, and poachers wax turbulent. In a subsequent affray with some of these, the squire is dreadfully mauled, and is obliged to be sent to Nice, where the warm climate has the effect of softening his heart. His son and daughter-in-law are sent for and receive his blessing. Here may be said to com mence a second portion of the story. Frank has a son, Philip, with whom Annie falls in love, and an engagement results, but in consequence of a rival, the lady's attachment is returned with so little ardour that she at length resolves to break it off and make over the property to her cousin, for whiali a semi testamentary document given by her grandfather to her uncle affords facilities. When Philip finds him self on the point of losing the lady, he begins to alter his mind, but Annie to avoid his importunities flies to London, and induces a further complication of events of a totally unexpected character, and in themselves almost sufficient to furnish material for another novel. There is plenty of incident here, as will be seen, and indeed our enumeration of it only extends to the end of the second volume ; but in spite of this, and of tolerably large print, the work is a little tedious. There is nothing like humour or piquancy of description, and the tone throughout is rather matter-of fact. There is also a great variety of subordinate characters who talk in the Derbyshire language, which from the specimens given appears to be a difficult one, and a black nurse who speaks broad Scotch; and none of these people say anything worth the trouble of decyphering. As to the characters and coaduct of the story—the squire's wrath goes beyond all probable limits, and he influence of Lady Elizabeth in driving Frank about and annoying him, and in getting his brother in-law's regiment kept in England in order that he may continue to stand in his way, is grossly exag gerated even for the Circumlocution-office. The servants are of that wonderfully benevolent and devoted type of which we have not in these degene rate times much experience, and there is not much evidence of observation of life in general. How ever, as circulating -library novels go, this is not a bad one, and will, we daresay, be found readable enough by those who are not disposed to be critical. 5. The " self-devotion " described in this story is that of a sister for a brother. The latter, having been heir to a large fortune, and aeoepted on the strength Of it by a lady of noble birth, loses his wealth and is