The Press. — London, England, 1857-05-30 00:00:00

MAY 30, 1857. and we should think will secure a very con siderable public Mr. Johnson's route was across France to Bordeaux, then on to Pau, and from thence to Bagneres. During his stay at the latter places he made numerous excursions into the surrounding country, and these it is which constitute the staple of his volume. In his his torical sketches and reminiscences Mr Johnson is not, however, always sufficiently accurate, or careful of what his readers might expect to be told. In an otherwise nicely written account of the battle of Orthez he fails to mention the celebrated charge of the 7th Hussars, which under Sir Stapleton Cotton inflicted such havoc un the retreating French. 3 In his description of the same town, he introduces a history of Gaston de Foix, a celebrated personage in the days of the Black Prince, and the reader is astonished to find not a single allusion to the young hero of Ravenna, or anything said about his relation ship to the " Gaston Phoebus " of Mr. John son. In another chapter Mr. Johnson has, we think, done great injustice to the character of a gallant soldier. Of the famous Gabriel de Montgomery, by whom Henry 11. of France was accidentally slain, he writes in these terms : Though threatened by France and Spain with the loss of her dominions as a heretic, the Queen was not one to be easily intimidated. Beady-witted and full of resources, like most of her sex in the hour of danger, she raised money from England ; and lacking the power to wield the sword herself, she hired a strong and not over-scrupulous English arm to do it for her. This was Montgomery, the accidental slayer of Henri 11. at a tournament, and a fair sample of the Dalgetty school, with the cruelty of the middle ages added to its mercenary vices. He assumed vigorous command of her army ; overthrew all opposition ; drove the French forces from the field ; carried their fort resses by assault and butchered their defenders; killed without mercy all opponents, lay or clerical ; and fairly earned the character of a brave, cruel, and ferocious ruffian. At Trie, in the Bigorre, this disgrace to his country and knighthood, stormed a monastery, hung the prior at the door of the chapel, and flung twenty miserable monks into the wells of the cloister ; all for the honour and glory of the true faith, and bis august mistress. Now, Montgomery was by no means a merce nary soldier, in the same sense as Dugald Dalgetty : neither can he exactly be called an Englishman. A cadet of the house of Eglinton had entered the French service in the reign of Francis I. Either himself or his son James was captain-general of the Archer Guard, received the Lordship of Lorge from the French Crown, and, what is more interesting, succeeded in repurchasing the old fief of Montgomerie, near Lisieux, in Normandy, from which his ancestor, Roger de Montgomerie, had set out to participate in the conquest of England. The son of James, Gabriel de Lorge was esteemed one of the most accomplished gen tlemen in Europe, and, until the unfortunate accident which resulted in the King's death, none stood higher in the estimation of the French Court. He was thus a distinguished and probably wealthy member of the French aristocracy, and it was nothing but the relentless hostility of Henry's mother, Catherine de Medici, that drove him to seek refuge with the Huguenot Queen. That his manners were not of the mildest sort is very probable. He is said to have knocked down Cardinal Beatoun when Ambassador to Scotland. But there is nothing whatever in his career to show that he was either mercenary or a bravo, And his death, earned by apparently true zeal for the Huguenot cause, was that of a gentleman and a Christian. Mr. Johnson has brought together a good many amusing anecdotes. Here is one of Henry IV. : There are scenes in the Chateau of Pau, ascribed to Henri, which would form a volume for the romancer or the dramatist, without requiring the congenial exaggera• tion of M. Dumas to heighten the colouring. Oue has been related on canvas, of a there amie, who, during his absence from the chateau, had been feteing a humbler admirer, and was surprised at breakfast by the King's unexpected return. The sharp eyed monarch, detecting a pair of legs only partially concealed beneath a couch, maliciously finished the gallant's intended meal; after wards handing the bones into his place of refuge with the charitable apothegm, " 11 rant que tout le monde vive,"—and said no more about it ; an example which, we dare say, every body else concerned took care to follow. The following is an interesting trait in the Empress Eugenie : It was among the 13agnerais that the present Empress of France spent many of her youthful summers, when Mademoiselle de lgontijo, and the warmhearted people THE PRESS. still refer enthusiastically to the beauty and goodness of la belle Eugene. One Sunday morning, in the grey dawn, Bagneres was aroused by a roar of artillery that brought half the popu• lation out of bed, in expectation of one of the earthquakes, which now and then shoot quite harmlessly throlgli the Fyrenees. It was to proclaim that France had that day gained an heir to the throne, and all classes were congra tulating each other on the subject; not so much upon its political bearings, as that their dear spirituelle little guest of lormer times was safely a mother. One old lady who prided herself upon having lodged the now new Empress, especially recounted how /a charmante mignonne robbed the fruit garden in spite of every watchfulness, and would slide down the oaken baluatratie of the staircase, " because it was shorter and nicer than plodding down the stairs ;" "and now she was the hope of France, the best pledge of peace and order! Well! the good God must have created her for the work, or she could never have been so singu larl chosen !" In all quarters anecdotes are told of this lady,—" gracioaa y amiable," her countrymen call her, — and of her unaffected kindheartedness ; one coming within our own knowledge deserves recording. A gover- ness, who had taught English to the family some years before, and who had been admitted to some intimacy, applied to the Empress soon after her marriage for the patronage which could be so easily given, and se invaluably applied. The answer was an order to attend at the Tuileries, where her illustrious pupil received the humble teacher with unaffected warmth and kindness ; inquired after her prospects and at once promised what she re quested. The same evening a communication was for warded from the palace, to the effect that her Majesty had conferred upon her visitor of the morning a yearly allow ance of forty pounds, as an acknowledgment of former services. * The accommodation and the society to be found in Pau and Bagneres, with the expenses of living, are described by Mr. Johnson with great clearness, and will be found very useful to all invalids who may contemplate a trip to the South. Subjoined is a good dissertation on the climate and mineral waters. corrobora ting the views expressed by Dr. Taylor in a work noticed in these columns last autumn. NOVELS AND TALES. 1. Good in Everything. A Tale. By Mrs. Foot. Two Volumes. London: Hurst and Blackett. 2. The Wreckers. By the Author of " Smug glers and Foresters." London : Newby. 3. Under the Lime Trees. By Caroline Ricketts. Loudon : Booth. 4. A Twine of Wayside Ivy. By Margaret Casson. London : Moxon. 5. Stories and Sketches. By James Payne. London: Smith end Elder. WE do not think Mrs. Foot has chosen a very felicitous title for the work placed at the head of our list. It is a story of great crimes and great sorrows. But the one are inadequately punished, and the other are quite superfluous. Mabel Beresford, a murderess and a destroyer of the happiness she sees about to be con summated, is permitted to succeed in all her designs, and, though eventually stricken with madness, escapes exposure and the scaffold, while the victims of her wickedness are too noble and innocent to require so severe an ordeal for the purification and elevation of their characters. The punishment of Fre• derick Beresford and Helen Monmouth seems perfectly wanton, and so far from being likely to work any good effect, rather tends to im pugn the moral government of the world. In addition to this defect the incidents of the story are exceedingly strained and improbable. Characters and crimes like Mabel's. •when handled with the consummate skill displayed by Sir Bulwer Lytton in his novel of " Lucretia," are really tragic, and excite terror and pity ; but in less practised hands they degenerate into melc.drama and savour of transpontine horrors. In justice, however, to Mrs. Foot, we must say that she has contrived to produce an exciting, if not an interesting, fiction ; and those readers who can for the time lay aside the critical spirit will probably find their attention enchained by it. 2. " The Wreckers " is a story through which shine glimpses of very considerable ability. But it is something like a spoiled photograph. We can only guess of what the subject might be capable under more successful treatment. We discern certain features pretty clearly which we can at once pronounce good, but the whole effect is that of a daub. The author's descriptive power is high. His smugglers and wreckers are hot mere shadows, and his 537 storms are singularly vivid and impressive. But the plot is so utterly wild, the positicn of Beatrice in the old wrecker's house so near to an impossibility, and her gradual change of feeling so clumsily and abruptly told, that we feel sure the author must have considerable labour yet before him ere he can hope to gain the ear of the public. The Rayners are a family of whom, to use a vulgar phrase, " we 'can make neither head nor tail " ; and Stephen himself, whom we presume is meant for the ehef•d'csuvre of the story, is not only uninteresting, but repulsive. The book, we repeat, is very unequal, and contains more evidence of imagination than literary skill or knowledge of life. 3. " Under the Lime Trees" inclines to the " namby-pamby " school. The circumstances under which it was composed are stated in the preface to be as follows : I had been spending a portion of the summer with my relations at Seaton Court. The season had been unusually wet, confining us (a large and merry party consisting puiccipally of young people), far more than we approved of, to the house. It had been proposed, in order to beguile the time thus inactively spent, that each should relate a story for the benefit of the rest. While the tales were in contemplation, the weather changed. Intense heat succeeded the storms and rains that had shattered the roses and well-nigh desolated the garden. The wood fires, which had been lighted in hall and sitting room, to dry the air of the large and rambling house, were quickly abandoned. We sate with open doors and windows ; we gasped ; we consulted the thermometer. It stood at SO deg. Employment was out of the question : existence was barely supportable, until some one suggested the Lime avenue ; and thither, like an impetuous strum, we rushed simultaneously. These little stories, however, are not deficient in elegance or pathos. If they do not stir us up very deeply, they, at all events, afford a gentle distraction, anti are to be recommeuded as wholesome after-dinner reading. The two best are " Lucy Dawson" and " Limenian Life." 4. "A Twine of Wayside Ivy" contains three tales, written in a rather old-fashioned style. Their second title, namely, " Leaves from an Old Maid's Notebook," is the more appropriate of the two. " The Haunted Nell" is a very dismal tale, intended as a warning to all young ladies tempted to indulge in that " soul-subduing " pastime which the world harshly styles flirtation. Seeing, how ever, that the fair delinquent was in this case rewarded by three husbands instead of one, we are doubtful to what extent our lady readers will profit by the lesson. " Evelyn Shirley's Two Balls " is nicely written ; but the catastrophe is a trite one, and the charac ters are without individuality. " Constance Vere " is related, perhaps, with more power ; but it excites no curiosity, and, like the pre vious tale, hinges upon such a very familiar contretemps, that we scarcely muster interest enough to cut the leaves. These stories pur port to be actual experiences, and they may very well be so. But writers should remember that it does not follow because a thing is true that it is necessarily interesting. Many com binations of circumstances which when new were romantic, have now lost all power over the imagination, and must be indebted to ingenious treatment, or original illustration, for any charm they may possess. 5. The majority of Mr. Payne's sketches have appeared in Household Words, and the remainder in Chambers' Magazine Among them will be found many that excited great attention on their first appearance—especially " Change for Gold," " How we Lost Our Minis ter," and "By the Court." They now consti tute a most amusing volume, full of humorous adventure and pleasant satire, usually charac terised by great common sense and kindliness. A Saunter through Surrey. By M. C. Turner, Esq., of the Inner Temple. London: Walker. A LIVELY detail of the incidents of a vacation ramble through Surrey, comprising the pedestrian expe riences of the writer and of a couple of friends, who, starting from Charing-cross with 151. between them, saunter for as many days through Box-hill, Leatherhead, Ockley, to Selbourne in Hampshire ; and then back by Farnham, Guildford, Wootton, Dorking, Esher, to town. To any home tourists for the autumn we can recommend this little volume for matters of fact. Every desirable information is con tained in it ; no place' of interest was left unvisited; and the bt.ok would have formed a pleasant and