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

1168 •i#traturt. Sketches of Irish Character. By Mrs. S. C. Hall. Fifth Edition. London : Nattali and Bond. IT is always a pleasing duty to notice a new edition of a work so deservedly popular as these " Sketches of Irish Character." They first introduced Mrs. Hall to the public as an original and gifted authoress, and her whole subsequent career has been a continued and successful endeavour to merit the favour with which these early productions were received. Though not one of our most prolific writers, — for a true woman, especially if she be a wife, cannot suffer her pen to engross her whole time,—she has contributed many most agree able, and, in a high sense, most useful volumes to our literature ; but for the truth, grace, pathos, and animation required to set forth the happy portraiture of natural charac ter, she has assuredly never surpassed these sketches. They are the first draft of her mind, and have all the freedom and freshness of im pulsive thought. To this fifth edition of the book she has contributed a new preface, on which we have a few words to say. In the first place, it is worth knowing that these sketches were all drawn from actual nature. The characters sat for their pictures, as truly as a model sits to an artist, though, perhaps, in this case the sketch is more strongly lighted by imagination than is permissible when canvass and colours have to be employed. Two or three weeks back we quoted from Mrs. Jameson's volume the observation of Lavater, that there is a marked and distinctive character in the hand of each individual, and we printed some passages from Wilkie to show that in travelling through the Netherlands he could detect how closely the beat Flemish masters had repre sented the natural features of their country. No one can look at Wilkie's own works—espe cially his earlier ones—without perceiving how well his practice must have qualified him for the perception of this truthfulness, and an anecdote is told of him in Mrs. Thomson's " Recollections of Literary Characters " which proves that even his boyish years were passed in storing his mind with sketches for his pictures . When I first knew Wilkie, his home had recently been enlivened by the arrival of his venerable mother from Scot land. With the dutiful feeling of a true Scot, who, what ever he may do with re%pect to his other ties, has the filial affections strong within him, Wilkie, as soon as competence enabled him to offer his mother a home, wrote to her to come and live with him. ♦ • • Mothers are much more fond of talking of their eons' gifts and virtues than wives are of their husbands'. Old Mrs. Wilkie loved to be asked questions about "Davis.' 1 inquired one day whether he had early displayed much talent in drawing. " Aweel," said she, " I mind that he was se scrawling, and scratching, 1 did na ken what, and he had an idle fashion o' making likenesses and csricatoores like of all the folk as came. And there was an auld blind mon, Willie, the fiddler, just an idle sort of a beggar-mon, that used to come wi' his noise, and set all the women servants a jigging wi' his scratching and scraping; and Davie was ae Liking o' this pair bodie into the hoose, and gieing hint a drap o' toddy ; and 1 used to cry shame on the lad for encouraging such lasy vagabonds about the hoose. Weel," pursued the old lady, " but ye maun ken he was an ill-favoured, daft sort of a creatur, that pair blind bodie, weel eno' in his way, but not the sort o' folk to be along wi Davie; yet the lad was always a saying tome, Mither, gie's a bawbie for pair blind W illie.' This," she added with a sigh, " sir, was *hen we lived at the Manse." I listened eagerly to the simple commencement of the anecdote. The homely manse—the shoeless women-folk — the blind intruder welcome from charity, but not too often —and the young student of nature, delighting, almost un consciously to himself, in the picturesque, were before me. The lively countenance of the minister's widow glistened as she proceeded. (She was unlike her son in face; the father must have owned those large, cold eyes.) " Aweel, sir, they told me—it was mony years after the puir blind body was gene hame, sh—that Davie had painted a grand pictur ; and he wrote me to go to Edinburgh to see it; and. I went, and sure ono' there was puir old Willie, the very like o' him, his fiddle and a'. I was wud wi' surprise ; and there was Davie standing a laughing at me, and saying,' Mither, mony's the time that ye ha heard that fiddle to the toon o' " the Campbells are coming."' " We suppose this anecdote may be relied on, though it is certainly to be regretted that Mrs. Thomson has not adhered more closely to actual truth in her manner of relating her reminiscences, and we quote it as it indicates how exactly authors and artists resemble each THE PRESS. other in their faculties of observation, and in unconsciously gathering materials for their future use at a very early age. Exactly as the portraits in the " Blind Fiddler " fixed them selves in Wilkie's mind long before he thought of turning them to any account, did these sketches of Irish character fasten themselves on Mrs. Hall's imagination in her early days when the originals were constantly before her. She relates : I have said the characters and sketches in this volume are more decidedly taken from " the life " than any that followed; as I became more skilled in " authorcraft," I learned how I could better employ my materials, and com bine, as well at copy, grafting invention upon facts, and facts upon invention ; but the characters here are all por traits, copied with fidelity and earnestness of purpose. She proceeds to notice in few words the real persons from whom her sketches are drawn. " Master Ben," the Cullinstown schoolmaster, who taught her arithmetic; John Williams, the " Bannow postman ; " " Father Mike," the Roman Catholic priest of the parish, as Roman Catholics were before the bigotry of that most noxious institution Maynooth had vulgarised them in soul and mind ; with " Peggy the Fisher," the " Bannow Boatman," and many others, were the beings with whose lineaments and characters she was most familiar in her youth ; and, to speak candidly, it is this copy ing, as she terms it, from " the life" which will preserve this book long after her best speci mens of " authorcraft " are forgotten. We notice this preface for another reason. Mrs. Hall has been in Ireland lately and visited the scenes where her early years were passed. No one is entitled to speak with more authority on the changes which have taken place in the locality which she knew so well, and this is what she says : Miles, and miles, and miles we passed in 18-52 without meeting one human being ! Miles— up hills, down dales, over those bounding leaping rivers—and no creature to greet us with " God save you, and send you a good journey ;" or, " God be praised for a fine day ;" or, " Take it easy up the hill—may-be the lady would like an air of the fire within there, and the mealy potatoes are just on the boil." No smoke from the cottiers' evening fires curling up the mountains, or climbing like incense up the blue vault of heaven, until it mingled with the atmosphere. If the deserted cottages had been fairly levelled, and the plough passed over their graves, it would have been paradise in comparison to the bleared and burnt effect of the shattered and roofless walls. More than once I saw the living skeleton of a poor cat, clinging with the instinct of its race to the abandoned dwelling, and staring, unconscious of danger, and incapable of flight, at the carriage as it passed. I dare say, nay, I am sure, the people are better away— better in another land than in the one where those they loved starved and died; but of all the wants the heart aches for is the want of forms and voices where they once were seen and heard. Yes ! it is better for the landlords to have those people away, and better for the people to be away from the land- lords. And in fifty years, or less, those who have moved off in that mighty exodus will have sunk into foreign graves, and their children have become units in the mass of a young and vigorous population—spreading their thousands and tens of thousands over the unmeasured breadths, and lengths, and depths of the new world! Were 1 now to kneel upon my grandmother's square grey tomb in 13annow Church, when the moon was rising, the tide flowing gently in, the Hook light flinging its arrows of warning and guidance over the billows, I could easily, in that lonely place, fancy myself the last woman—the very last iiving creature, where once I was surrounded by young life ! Alas ! I could now wander from the church, through the moor of Bannow, up the hill of Graige, past the windmill and the forge, and where the cottages stood, and not recog nise a single countenance, or hear a single blessing! The children, the few left in the land, to wait until sent for to the new home of their fathers, would regard me as a stranger. There is the Bay of Graige !—there the Keroe and Saltee Islands—there the mountain of Forth, with its angry cloud cap—yonder I know are the houses of Grange and Kiltra, and Barriatown ; and the old castles of Coolhull and Danes are still smouldering away, and over the Scaur are the Seven Castles of Clonmines—and there stretches the borough of Ballytegue and Cullinatown, and over there— . " Bag and Bun, Where Ireland was loot and won." And yet they are but names and memories to me now—the old people are all gone—new priests, new ministers, new people I look into the valley, where my own home stood so firmly against hurricane and tempest. The wood has mar vellously increased. I can remember when much of it was planted. Well do I know where the hospitable home was seated—the long, awkward chimneys—the old gable, with its warning bell, the multitude of long narrow w►ndows, the high-backed roof, the in-and-out quaint little courts, the myrtle hedges, the old-fashioned " flower-knot," the temple and shell-house, and, more than all, my darling cottage—all levelled with the earth—all a legend, a tradition—misty as a dream ! And, but for one—my good and gentle mother —upon whose patient head the snows of eighty winters have fallen, but not pressed—l might think all Bannow a SATURDAY, mere dream ! all a mere dream—but for this dear and sweet reality beside me: still beside me, God be thanked, though five and twenty years have passed since, as an author, I first put " pen to paper 1" This exquisitely pathetic passage is more touching in its reality than the imaginary desertion of Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain. Ireland is unquestionably undergoing a great change. Within a very few years we have witnessed the progress of "agitation," distress famine, pestilence, emigration. Now there is quiet. May we dare to hope that prosperity will complete the cycle? This book has the plates by Maclise of former editions, with many pretty woodcuts, and is published at an extremely moderate price. The House of Raby ; or, Our Lady of Darkness. London: Chapman and Hall. IT is di ffi cult to give an adequate notion of this strange romance, which includes the his tory of a family for three generations. At the opening of the story—though not of the book, for the narrative commences at a date long subsequent to the real beginning of the tale— mention is made of Marie Antoinette, then in her prime of beauty and sovereignty, and from that period we follow the fortunes of the house of Baby down to this year of grace, 1854, just catching glimpses as we proceed, to mark the lapse of time, of the French Revo lution and its consequent wars, of the manu• facturing discontent which ensued on the peace, of the Reform excitement, and, lastly, of the happy era of social improvement, with national school, church • accommodation, and model-cottages' fervour. The action and in cidents of this long narrative are so disjointed that, though there is a thread of connection in it, it can scarcely be called a story. We hardly know whether to sympathise most with the personages at the close or with those at the beginning of the book, with the grand children or the grandparents. The whole work has a phantasmagoria) character, real things being represented in such strange combination and distorted shape as to appear unreal. Tho castle of the Rabys, the ancestral abode of the family, is a connecting link in the narrative. It is a magnificent and solemn residence, and a wealthy domain is attached to it. The noble family seems at first sight endowed with the choicest gifts of fortune, with splendid position, great talent and endowments, and rare personal beauty. But a dark shadow moves through the castle-halls, and casts a sentiment of melancholy on the beautiful portraits of its gallery—a taint of insanity runs through the blood. Yet this shadow is accompanied by a beam of light. As insanity breaks out in the two most con spicuous members of the house, devoted affection on the part of a neighbouring, but much humbler, family is developed with it. This affection is so ardent and so elevated that it esteems no sacrifice too great that it may fulfil the humble duties of watchfulness and. care. Two Rabys in hereditary succes sion are nursed by two Margarets of the family of Hastings—a beautiful young girl in each case, freely casting away all common hopes of life, that she may live near the form, and watch the eccentricities, of the afflicted being she loves. The narrative is unnatural ; but, apart from this objection, the repetition of substantially the same story, though no doubt designed, and not to be ascribed to poverty of invention, has an unpleasing effect. The second Margaret Hastings appears to be the favourite of the author, but the character of the first Margaret is more vigorously conceived. The Earl of Carle ton is her brother's best friend. Mr, Hastings has the rectory of Carleton, and at his house the young peer is a frequent resi dent. He loves Margaret, and makes her an offer of his hand ; but the taint of insanity has been manifested in the family, and, acting on the counsel of her friends, and supported by high principle, she declines the offer, none suspecting that, under her calm exterior, she nourishes an ardent and ineradicable passion for her amiable and gifted, but unfortunate , suitor. Thenceforth their ways of life are s I\