The Press. — London, England, 1858-03-20 00:00:00

W glanced at the picture-covered walls. What was it he saw there, which made him turn away with a shudder? Alas ! for art, when it serves but to minister to base passions, and is the harlot-slave of a depraved fancy! Here was a person, well to do in the world, in appearance a gentleman, who daily breathed an atmosphere of moral poison, whose room was filled with pictures, " earthly, sensual and devilish ;" the refuse sweepings of the common sewer of Paris and Rome; the dregs of the cup of shame tilled to the brim and overflowing. Can such things indeed be? Alas, they are. The hot blood swept indignantly through the young man's veins and tinged his cheek ; and a mingled feeling of pity and contempt filled his heart for the un happy wretch who was chatting so pleasantly and cheer fully on that comfortable sofa. Let me say at once that the firm of Skillet, Kettle and Co., will appear no more on our stage. We trust not, indeed. However, that there is better stuff in the author than this, will be seen by any reader who survives to the last few chapters. Here the story flows more easily and intelligibly, and some of the descriptions are not without pathos. Of the more reflective portions, the following is a good specimen. It describes Brown's first attempt as an al tilt 7- Historical painting! High art! This was the goal at which he would aim henceforth. Yes, he would produce a picture of world-wide fame ; a picture that should live through long years, and bring him wealth and honour. " Let me see, what shall be the subject? Shakspeare and the poets, or history, past or present? Well, it will be time enough to think of that presently." And so he abandoned the practical, as was his wont, and let the fancy loose to wander at will over untrodden fields of triumph. At any rate he bought some mighty rolls of canvas; and thee, then he strolled through the National Gallery, perhaps as an incentive and spur to his determination. Now had he been a man of great genius, it is probable that he would have gone to work in quite another way. But being a man of talents rather than of genius, fanciful rather than Imaginative, he must needs set down with the determina tion of painting a great picture, not wholly for love's sake, not that there was an impulse within which must find a voice and declare itself, but rather looking onwards to the result, in vague longings and powerless aspirations ; and not in such a way has the work of great men been wrought out. And so when Leonard reached home again, and bad put up his easel in his little garret room, he set to work to think out his subject. He tried to develop it gradually , as an unimaginative man generally does. He did not see it present before his eyes a living and actual fact, an entire whole, from which nothing could be abstracted, to which nothing could be added without injury. He made it np by piecemeal. He made a dozen sketches of separate figures, and then put them together as best he could. The result was unsatisfactory, of course, even to himself. Had there been more of this kind of writing the book would have been a remarkable one. The author can do much better if he likes, and when he is less contented with his own work than he seems to be at present, be will probably produce something really worth reading. When that time arrives, none, we can assure him, will be more ready than ourselves to bestow the praise which we have felt compelled to withhold from his present effort. '2. This is one of the most original novels we have lately met with, and it has this remarkable feature,—that the style is intensely commonplace and flatulent, while the matter and the characters appear either faithfully studied from nature, or, where they are not so, to have been carefully elaborated in the author's imagination, with as much regard to pro bability as that method of construction permits. We do not recollect a book with so much sap and substance at its core, clothed in such a quantity of dead wood and useless vegetation. We cannot fancy a reader of average education, at any page of the book (as is ot'ten said while reading), saying to him self, " Well, I could oat have expressed that so forcibly." All is fluent, level, and penny-a-liner-ish. But the characters really show a great deal of power, and such as may achieve very great success if the author will only pursue the method which Virgil, Pope, Rosuseau, and Bishop Butler are said to have employed, and condense every volume he writes into two-thirds at most of its bulk. His book is at pre sent much longer than the generality of three volume novels, and is expanded to that size by matters which could very well be spared. The " Moors " aro those of Scotland, the "Fens " those of Lincolnshire. The heroine is brought up among the former, the hero in the latter, in an ancestral mansion like Poe's " House of Usher." He is the elder son of a baronet, rich, but almost withont natural affection, and more entirely a miser than any character we remember in the whole compass of fiction. Taking after his sire in some respects, the eldest-born determines to stay at home to protect his own interests, while the younger brother goes to seek his fortune in the world. Here, however, a technical error must be noticed. Legal mistakes are frequent with novelists, but we hold it pedantic to criticise them unless they materially affect the story. In the one before us we observe a slip of each kind. In one instance two relations, expectant of a bequest, are called in to witness a will their attestation to which, though the author is evidently unaware of it, would invalidate their legacy. This, if it had st oo d a l one , we s h ou ld n ot have mentioned, for nothing turns upon it. But the other instance is THE PRESS, MARCH 20, 1858. more important. The elder son is described u being influenced in the whole scheme of his life and af fected in the formation of his character by the fact that his father has mortgaged the estate, and will perhaps leave the money thus raised to some one else ; while the estate itself is described as being entailed upon the son. The author seems to be ignorant that this is a contradiction. The estate would in such a case be the father's only for life, and the " fee " or absolute ownership of it could not be disposed of without the concurrence of the son. Yet it is represented, in the end, as being left to him by will(!) encumbered with the mortgages, and therefore practically valueless. In reality the father had nothing but his life interest to deal with, and that would be the whole security that a lender could have. But, as this motive is the ono on which the whole plot is built, at it is continually referred to, and as the heroine comes in for a fortune apparently only in order that it may he used to pay off the mortgages, we fear the error must be considered as fatally vitiating the structure of the story ; which in other respects shows quite sufficient ingenuity to make us believe that the author could have easily invented a less hazardous method of developing the vicissitudes of his narrative. A character nearly equal in power to the miser's is that of " Cecilia," a dangerous blonde beauty, whose chief pastime is beguiling the opposite sex and torturing her own. We have no objection to make to the way the charac ters are brought out, except that in the latter case dialogue should have been more freely used than description. Had we room for quotation we should select as an example of vigorous handling the death of the miser's sister, which might almost be a pendant to the parting interview of Ulrica and Front-de Bout. The author has rather a fondness for disagreeable people. With a few brighter figures, and a large use of what theatrical people term " cuts," he will another time probably produce a first-rate novel. 3. Mr. Wraxall, hitherto known as the writer of some smart articles in various magazines, has in " Wild Oats" produced a very amusing and clever novel, of that kind which is admirably calculated to while away the hours passed in a railway train. It belongs to that large class of books which, like Mr. Albert Smith's "Scattergood Family," aim at the description of "life" in its faster phases, and effect their object with more or less success. Its cha racter is sufficiently suggested by its title, though it is due to the author to observe that the peculiar farinaceous food on which young men are supposed to subsist is not in this instance made the medium of any revelations which woule "summon a blush " to the pure cheek of modesty," or excite any other emotion than that of continued wonder as to where the author picked up his vast variety of information. Mr. Wraxall's hero begins at Oxford, and passes through the usual stages of debts, duns, dissipation, " nights upon town," horseracing swindles, kite flying, which usually await a youth with limited cash and an unlimited desire for " the best of everything "and plenty of it." Of course, love is not omitted from the list of his troubles ; and what is more un usual, the young lady of his affections is obliged to knock about the world (which of course she does with the same safety as the lady in Moore's ballad) almost as much as her lover. There is a plot of an intensely enthralling character, turning partly on the incidents of murder and bigamy, which serves very well to connect the various scenes with each other, but most readers will find that the rapid tran sitions of the latter render them almost insensible to the unwinding of the clue of the story. The author evidently describes what he knows from personal experience, and has managed to interweave some of the continental events of IS-IS into the course of his narrative with considerable effect. The ups and downs of a literary career stand Mr. Wraxall in stead for a chapter or two, and most of those who have mixed is any degree in such matters will be able to identify the places if not persons described, and will no doubt bear witness that they are on the whole portrayed with fidelity and fairness. The cor rectness of the author's views of certain University matters (such as the institution of " servitors ") is more open to objection, and we are inclined to think his proctor story impossible. However, we have no idea of applying rigorous canons of evidence to such points, and can enjoy the revelations of a book, the moral of which is "Don't do likewise," without being too curious whence they are derived. The style is of course that of a practised writer, and frequently contains good sayings, though perpetual point is not apparently its aim. After the "mild skim-milk" of many of its goody rivals, it will probably prove a piquant dish. 4. These stories are from the G - mman. " Kathe rine " is the story of a girl in humble life who attracts the attention of a man much her superior in rank. The interest of the tale moves partly round the gentleman, who is in danger from the machina tions of Katherine's brothers; partly round the girl herself, who as a daughter-in-law is of course ex cessively odious to her lover's mother ; partly round the mother herself, about whom there is a mystery contained in a packet of letters in her son's posses sion, enabling him to exercise a certain degree of influence over her. Neither the reason for the hatred of the brothers to Herr Eugene, nor the nature of the mystery respecting his mother, is very clearly explained. Katherine, however, settles one difficulty, and Eugene, by means of the letters held in terrarem over his parent, disarms the other ; and the two extremes of society are finally united in a manner which woutd shock M. Freytag, who likes to keep all ranks in their proper places. The plot is well enough, but is spun out by a great deal of German gossip and German "chaff," which are not ingre• dients of a very effervescing order. But there are more exciting incidents of the horrible kind, judi ciously introduced near the end of the story, which we will leave to produce their attractimi on our readers.—The " Moment of Fortune" is a story of a livelier class. It is a sort of expanded fairy tale in modern guise, apparently intended to show the importance of seizing small opportunities of getting on in the world. The scene is a German Court, and the methods are tact and honesty in the midst of Court intrigue. This story is perhaps the more amusing of the two. Both are a little tedious, but novel-readers may do worse than send for the three volumes. 5. This is a tale which is exclusively concerned with the society and manners of some such German Court as that which Mr. Thackeray satirizes under the name of Pumpernickel. It is a disguised me moir, very well written in point of style, but in our opinion would have been much more interesting if told as the truth and presented to the public merely as a veracious picture of German " Transparencies " in their softer moments. AR it is, it is too historical in its air for a novel, and too much " cooked " to be taken as a history. We move in that rarefied air which is pervaded by Russian influence, and troubled by all sorts of Court intrigues, some of which are ludicrous, the rest discreditable, and where morga natic marriages, and other contrivances for making social laws bend to the convenience of the " Von " class, flourish in great vigour. We confess to not feeling very deeply interested in these exalted beings, whose difficulties seem chiefly occasioned by the solid trammels of etiquette which environ tbem, and who manage matters rather clumsily when they con descend to love an•l hate like ordinary mortals , . Those who are very fond of mixing (in imagination) with such society will find it rather more amusing than the " Almanach de Gotha," but to persons accustomed to the stimulating food wbioh most novelists now prepare, Mrs. Cartwright's volumes will seem, we fear, but a species of invalid diet. The Good Soldier. A Memoir of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, of Lucknow, Bart., K.C.B. Compiled from Authentic Sources by the Rev. W. Owen. London : Sirnpkin and Marshall. THI4 is another cheap addition to the " Havelock Library." Its price is one shilling and sixpence, and it is a compilation of the main facts in that illus trious man's career, as far as they are yet known. Large extracts from his work on " Affghanistan " are given, and also from the various public de spatches. Of original knowledge we see but few traces, and the various " illustrated" journals have, already familiarised the pubiic with the genealogy of Havelock's family. The merit of this volume is its being so seasonable, for after a great man has just passed away, every one likes to linger over his his tory. We have read with great interest the passages extracted from the general's writings on " Affghan. istan," and we surmise that the work will be re. printed. He had great powers of detailed desexii tion, that recall the style of Mr. Gleig's admirable, "Subaltern in America." His narrative of the siege, of Ghaznee is not so well known as it deserves to be, and many would prefer the quiet style of Have lock to the more gorgeous manner of Mr. William Russell. We do not think that the following letter from Havelock has been printed before : Bombay, 23th February, 18.53.11 My good Friend,—t was much gratified by receiving a few lines from you yesterday, written new year's day. Qat be praised I have had no interruption of health since my return to India. My boys Harry and Josh were both well by the latest accounts; and I have Been the object of in. numerable mercies since I was last in London. Harry is at Wurzurabad in the Punjaub in the post, as you tray have heard, of Adjutant to the 10th Foot. Josh is an engineer in the Bombay Natile Infantry at Hydmbadt iin Scinde. He has passed his examination in two native languages, and is diligently applying himself to that su perior knowledge of the duties of his profession which is now-a-days required. You know we have now Lord Frederick Fitz-Clarence, a very active and zealous general, as our commander.imcltief. We have excellent preaching here aril at Poona from the missionaries of the Free Church of Scotland, and in this town a very handsome place of worship of that denomination. Indeed, I am sorry to hear of Mrs. Cr.'s accident, but it is a cause of thankful. nese that she has so well got over the consequences. The tribute paid to the nation to the talents and integrity of the Duke of Wellington bad been well earned, by his noble defence of Spain and Portugal, his crowning victory, le na,lll