The Press. — London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

I 880 THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 11, 1.58. the good services of the Meerut Volunteer Horse, better known as the Khakee Ressalah, or " earth coloured squadron." The brief narrative of their achievements will repay the trouble of perusal, and is altogether an acceptable addition to the Indian literature of the day. We have not room for many extracts, but the following illustrations of the helplessness of Englishmen in a mass, and their thorough independence of character as individuals, are too striking to be omitted. We give precedence to the former example : At 1 Infra, we heard of the arrival in a neighbouring village of reinforcements from Meorut, two llorse Artillery guns, and a party of earbineers, who had orders to hold the (That for us. They had been marching, like on. selves, all night; but not having any of the Meerut district officer► with them, and the Ranghur village of Kiwai, at which they halted, being badly affected, they had nothing to eat. When I rode over in the evening, the soldiers had been starving for nearly twenty four hours ; but English soldiers are wonderfully helpless as to foraging, bivouacking, and cooking, unless the commissariat is complete. lat once entered the village to arrest the head men, telling them that they would be paid if they brought food, and their houses fired if they did not. Seeing a couple of calves careering about, I seized one, and one of my orderlies another : these we presented to the Car bineers, who helplessly remarked, "that they could not do anything with them, as they had no knives to cut them up with." Imagine a Zouave, with a lung sword at his side, making such a speech ! The other refers to Mr. John Cmeroft Wilson, one of the most intelligent and resolute officers of the Bengal Civil Service : The hero, Maurice Delamere, the son of a stern father and an indulgent mother, is mentally and personally, as a child, and afterwards as a man, almost all that can be desired. Unfortunately, he is deeply tainted with both moral and phy sical cowardice of that peculiar and uncertain sort which betrays itself chiefly by shyness and concealment in one class of difficulties, and in want of presence of mind in another. Thus he prevaricates through habitual dread of his father, though certain to he instantly tbund out and punished, and runs away at the threatening as pect of a cow, but immediately afterwards strikes a bigger boy than himself for sneering at him. At Eton he endures a variety of torments, and severe bodily pain, caused by an accident, with the fortitude of a martyr, but makes no stand against bullying till it is too late, and never ac quires the gift of making the right explanation at the right time. His chief enemy is a boy named Grenville, whom he has struck as we have mentioned, and who pursues hint through his school career with a relentless hatred which, though it may exist at that age, is not then usually manifested in the manner the author would lead us to believe. From this and from some other indications we arc inclined to suspect that his ideas of Eton are not drawn from actual ex perience either of that or of any other public school. Schoolboys are certainly brutal and mischievous enough, and, through the desire to reach the tender fibre of some stoical fag who will neither cry nor tell his sisters' names, or through some absurd sentiment of outraged upper-school dignity, they may be led into bar barities of the same class as those which some times bring merchant captains under the cogni zance of a Liverpool jury; but their offences are seldom those of meanness and cunning revenge, and it seems to us a violation of probability to describe a sixth-form boy at Eton scheming to get an obnoxious " sap" into disgrace, by tbrging in his style a caricature of the authorities and bringing it under the eye of a master. Grenville, indeed, is almost " a Borgia or a Catiline " ; he combines all the attractive ness and manly qualities of Steerforth with the perfidy of Blifil, and is one of the impossible monsters who, though apparently necessary for the purposes of novelists, are luckily as excep tional to most people's experience as the other phenomena mentioned in Pope's couplet.—On leaving Eton, in consequence of an injury in flicted-by Grenville, and which causes the latter's expulsion, Maurice is driven by his father into the army as a means of eradicating his fault, and shows his weakness by yielding. He is wounded in the Peninsula, where he is understood to have somewhat distinguished himself, but on his return on sick leave, resolutely refuses to make his services the ground of an application for an appointment which as a younger son it is de sirable for him to obtain ; and dawdles away his time at home, keeping his father in a state of chronic irritation, and himself the prey to a despondency which no one can account for. He mixes a little in society, and forms the acquain tance of a lady, Isabella, and her cousin, Eugenia—the former, who is generally disliked, he cultivates for the sake of her conversation, while with the latter, who is young, unformed, but clever and intrinsically worthy, he gradually becomes fascinated, and eventually finds his feel ings returned. The knot of the story consists in the fact that Isabella—who soon falls in love with Maurice, though against her judgment—is the sister of his old foe Grenville, and that the latter is Grenville's affianced wife, though, on account of his absence, the engagement is not yet made public. Isabella is divided between her allegiance to her brother, whom she has pro mised to watch over his betrothed, and her feel ing for Maurice, to whose happiness with Eugenia she is quite ready to sacrifice her own attachment. She decides tbr her brother, and succeeds in breaking off the acquaintance of the lovers. Matters become still more complicated by the determination of Isalxlla's mother, Lady Amelia, who is of the "manwuvring" sort, to fix Maurice for her son-in-law, and by Maurice's suspicion that he has really won the lady's affec tions, and his consequent opinion that he ought to marry her. At this juncture Grenville, who has had a long and dangerous illness abroad, returns to England to claim his bride, and Mau rice, invited to his house by Lady Amelia, accepts, in order to ascertain whether his suspi- One of the most active and energetic assistants in this duty was J. C. W—, e: judge of Moradabad. He had come to Meerut after the mutiny at that station, sur rounded by about thirty sowars of the tith Irregular Itegi• went, over whom he exercised an extraordinary influence. They were men of the most dangerous class, Pathan Mus sulmans of liohilcurl. Yet W—, refusing to join our volunteers, rode about the country with these highly suspicious characters, making them escort treasure, or bang criminals, as might be required. That they could be treacherous as the rest of their class was proved by the treason of Nusseer Khan before mentioned ; and after the taking of Delhi, numerous letters filled with treasonable conspiracies, and plans for attacking Meerut, were found in the King's office, written by Kaim Khan, one of W—'s principal native officers. W— is one of those men whose labours fora quarter of a century have, as far as his own fame and fortune is concerned, been hearly thrown away; whereas his energy and abilitr, if engaged in any of our colonies, would have won for him a position and a name. Of Mr. Winter's pleasant little volume on Burmah it is unnecessary to say more than that it is an agreeable digest of the more voluminous works of preceding writers, such as Mason, Bigandet, and Snodgrass. To those who are un acquainted with the labours of these well-known authors, we can very honestly recommend Mr. Winter's " Six Months in Burmah." dons with regard to Isabella are correct Th e latter conceals her kelings, and the result is that a full explanation between Maurice and Eurrenia takes place. Grenville, though unaware oethis, has discovered the cause of Maurice's secret despondency, and establishes it as a permanent "raw." (It is, after all, nothing more than the fact that in his first action, the storm of liatlajos, he had started aside at the explosion of a m►ne, and entered last, instead of at the head of h►.s storming party.) Ile is grossly and repeatedly insulted by Grenville, but, owing to a prom ►se exacted by Eugenia, returns home without attempting to obtain the satisfaction he now burns to exact. Meantime, Eugenia, unable, after Maurice's declaration of love, to endure the thought of marriage with Grenville, flies at the eleventh hour from the house, and takes ref►►ge with a friend near London. Here she is found by her lover, and, Grenville having had a relapse of his illness on hearing of her flight, she is received at Framleigh by Maurice's family as his future wife. On the eve of their marriage, how ever, Grenville, whose revenge has only been in abeyance, rises from a sick-bed to make a last attempt to force his now successful rival to a duel, but on his arrival at Framleigh bursts a bloodvessel from rage, and is obliged to be nursed in the house. While he lies there, it takes fire, and Maurice saves Grenville from the flames at the risk of his own life and at the cost of severe physical suffering. But the latter is past re covery, and leis last act is that of reconciliation with :Maurice, whose marriage with Eugenia of course follows. An abridged analysis like the above, though it necessarily does injustice to the characters, is no bad test of the mechanism of a story. Transac tions over which we glide easily in the fascinating style of a good novelist, are more rigidly weighed when presented in their crude form. There is much the same difference between the two aspects of them as there is beween the accounts ofa bank in the report of its directors, and the same accounts in the unvarnished exposure ofa judicial inquiry. Viewed in such a light, "Framleigh Hall " presents not a few improbabilities. As is the case with so many other novels, the story turns, in many parts, on misunderstandings which a few words of explanation would have set right, and, however great the moral cowardice of Maurice may have been, it is difficult to believe that they could in all cases have re mained unaltered. The complete misapprehen sion of his son's character by the elder Dclamere. who is represented as a man of ability, is also somewhat remarkable, as is also the vicar's non interference in the young man's destination. To the want of likelihood in some of the Eton scenes we have already alluded. But a more flagrant instance of the same fault is 31am-ice's acceptance. under any circumstances, of an invitation to the house of a man whom he knew to be his bitterest enemy, and whom he knew himself to be anxious to supplant,—and not less so is the violation 01 the law of hospitality in Grenville's own behaviour. Such matters as these prevent our being carried along with the author as cordially as we should like. The hero's character is, as we have intimated, one for which many persons Rdl find it difficult to entertain any sympathy, and it must be considered wonderful that the bold attempt of engaging even interest in his pro ceedings should meet with any success. Though far from being a mean or abject coward, there is something in his moral even more than his physical weakness, and in his habit of coveringhis face with his hands under strong emotion, which to many readers will be provocative of nothing but irritation and disgust. The author s ingenuity has been severely taxed to show how his hero could possibly be attractive to the two ladies who were in love with him, and the cleverness with which this is managed dam' not prevent our feeling a certain degree of com: paasion for the fair Eugenia not usually bestowed on young ladies when they are united . to man of their choice ; for, though Alaunce s c?u duct at the fire, like his endurance of pain during his early Mums, is in every way admirable, Yet . we cannot feel that his character is really changed, and could hardly trust him in a case of midden peril or emergency. The author succeed, best in the delineation of female character. the Those of Lady Delaniere and her sister arc not far removed from common types, but they are clearly and freshly worked out. Eugenia is I. Framleigh Hall. Three Vols. London : Hurst and Illackett. 2. Rita. An Autobiography. Two Vols. Lon don : Bentley. 1. A REALLY interesting novel is so rare an event in our experience, and forms so pleasant a relief to the monotony of books which can only be got through by a severe moral and mental effort, that when we meet with one we are inclined to forgive, in consideration of the amusement afforded, many faults which a purely critical eye would be bound not to pass over. Thus, "Framleigh Hall" is by no means a perfect book, but we have read it through from beginning to end without stop ping, which is more than we can say of any novel of this year; in fact, it is so long since such a thing happened that we have almost forgotten thn. circumstance. The merits of the book seem to consist, first, in the style, which is in the nar rative part concise, easy, and fluent, while in many scenes and reflective passages it rises into eloquence ; next, in the characters, the more conventional of which arc freshly and poetically presented, while the newer ones arc conceived with an unusual degree of originality, and exe cuted with much grace and care; and thirdly, in the ilia that, up to a late period in the story, the fate of the personages in whom we are most in terested is still doubtful enough to insure the continued curiosity of the reader. We have, however, a duty to perform to the latter which obliges us to warn him that the principal cha racter of the tale—an important point—is one by no means certain to engage universal sym pathy and interest ; indeed, it is possible that many persons whom our recommendation might induce to send lbr it would find iu this respect an insuperable objection.