The Press. — London, England, 1855-09-22 00:00:00

SEPT. 22,1855. love he feels for his daughter, so that she has no difficulty in making him the instrument of all her false and intriguing tricks. Had Mrs. Trollope really understood the character she was delineating she might have made the book of a much higher order than it is, but she has missed the real strength of the Baron's nature for narrative, and has simply exhibited its ludicrous side. There are touches, however, in which the authoress seems in spite of herself to have brought forth the bright side of his character. He has received Rupert Odenthal, a lad born on his estate, into his house from gratitude for his service in saving the life of his daughter when a child. The result may be imagined. The young lady choses the youth's mother, Madame Odenthal, as her companion. When, in consequence of his ready compliance with his daughter's extravagant notions at Paris, his circumstances are embarrassed, Madame Odental suggests a mode of relief:— It was in vain that Madame Odenthal pointed out to him the very consolatory fact, that the deficiency was by no means large enough to occasion him any permanent incon venience ; and that if he would please to write a letter to Rupert, directing him what tenants to apply to, and fur nishing him with the necessary authority for collecting the sum required, he would be sure to transmit the money to the Paris banker long before any of the tradesmen he employed would think of troubling him about the payment of their accounts. The Baron listened to her with a countenance that be came redder and fiercer with every word she spoke ; so much so, indeed,'that she became frightened and stopped short, long before she had said all that it was in her power to say, respecting the perfect facility with which a gentle man in his position might obtain what he wanted without the slightest difficulty of any kind. " What ! " he exclaimed, in the very loudest tone to which his very loud voice could be raised ; " what ! do you suppose I am going to send about begging-petitions to my tenants, imploring them for charity, to pay me my rents before they are due ? Woman ! are you mad ? What have you ever seen in my conduct or in my character, which can justify your holding so base an opinion of me? I go begging to my tenants? I? And which among them do you think would do me the great wrong of believing that such a message could come from me ? Your son is a very worthy, respect able youth, my good woman, and the manner in which I have permitted him to domesticate himself with me. has conferred upon him a degree of distinction which nothing else could have done ; and, as you must have observed both in his case and your own, has induced that distinguished portion of society to which I belong, to permit his approach to them, as if, in some mysterious manner, he really belonged to their class. T am as much aware the effect my patronage has produced, as either you or he can be ; but I am not so bewildered in intellect as to suppose that if he were to be the bearer of such a message to my tenants, as you have named, they would any one of them believe that such a message ever came from me." When at last he is persuaded to comply with this suggestion, the consequence ex torts, in a manner, this admission from the authoress : He knew himself to be an immensely great man, and assuredly enjoyed the consciousness of being so not a little ; but he really did not know that he was, moreover, a very kind and liberal one, into the bargain. But his prosperous tenants knew it, if he did not; and the lively description which Rupert gave of the delight, ay, and the gratitude also, with which his application to them had been received, awakened such a pleasant consciousness of this truth also, in the mind of the worthy Baron, that he was evidently more touched at heart by it than he had ever before been seen to be by anything in which his daughter was not personally concerned. Gertrude watched all this with a sort of pleasure that was quite new to her; and when a quiet smile, having no reference whatever to his grandeur, softened his proud fea tures as he listened to Rupert's very graphic narrative, Gertrude was so touched by it that she sprang from her chair, and impressed a kiss of very genuine fondness on Ilia forehead. "It pleases you to hear all this, my dear child!" said her father, throwing his arm round her. " And so it does me, Gertrude," he added with great simplicity. " I am sure I don't know how it has happened that it never came into my head before, that they might feel that sort of love for me that Rupert describes. 1 have never done any thing for them except just not using them ill, but I really like to hear that they take it so kindly." With more delicate handling, the Baton might have been made a masterpiece; but Mrs. Trollope is too coarse in her conceptions to comprehend the opportunity she has lost. The construction of the novel is singular. The opening chapter relates to events near the end of the book. With the marriage, indeed, or soon after it, the narrative might advantageously have closed. All the " lying in" part of the story, with the artifices used to conceal the parentage of the babe, is in vile taste. Mrs. Trollope has departed widely from established models of romance, but we cannot congratulate her on the success of her THE PRESS. experiment; there is enough latitude for fic tion without entering on details and inuendoes which should be sacred to midwifery. The Married Life of Rachel Lady Russell. By M. GuisoL Translated from the French. London : Bosworth. Tars slight but interesting sketch of the life of Lady Rachel Russell first appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and has now, by desire of the pre sent Duke of Bedford, been translated as a valuable accompaniment to the recently-published edition of Lady Russell's letters. The chief incident of her unhappy life is too well known to need comment; suffice it to say, that the talent of the writer, and the deep feeling which he evinces, have in this instance lent peculiar interest to the subject. - - - As romance is so much in request (observes M. Guizot) why not search for it in history ? There will be found life with its most varied and dramatic scenes, the human heart with its strongest as well as its most gentle passions, and above all a sovereign charm, the charm of reality. I admire and appreciate as much as any person the creative power of imagination, which places before us, endowed with life, animation, and feeling, ideal beings invested with the attributes of humanity, and displaying all the riches of the mind through the ever•varying vicissitudes of fortune; but those persons who have really lived, who have actually experienced calamities, passions, joys, and sorrows, the contemplation of which is so interesting to us, fascinate me still more powerfully than the most perfect productions of poetry or romance. The living creature, the work of God, when seen under its divine aspects, is more beautiful than all human creation, and of all poets God is the greatest. And the life of Rachel Lady Russell bears sad witness to this text. Married and widowed in early years, she chose for her second husband a man by whom she was passionately adored, and to whom she was as passionately attached, only to lose him by a cruel death after a still shorter period of domestic happi ness. Condemned hereafter to a long and sad widowhood, she devoted herself to family duties ; and, though engrossed by her own inner world of grief, she was neither inattentive to nor uninterested in the welfare and happiness of her children and friends. Yet her heavy calamities did not cease with the death of her husband : in after years, in the full bloom of life and in possession of rank and honours showered on them by Willian 111., her son, then Duke of Bedford, was cut off by the smallpox, and her second daughter died in childbed. Amidst such terrible griefs she never lost that sincere trust in Divine Providence and lively appreciation of His mercies by which alone she endured her heavy trials, and bowed contented and sudmissive to His will. How hard the trial was may be seen by the fol lowing extracts from letters written shortly after the execution of her husband, and the death of her children : ------- All kinds of (painful ideas assail my weakened and deso- late heart, add when I have surmounted one I fall into another. If my affliction abates for a moment, a thousand reflections on the past arise before me. Who knows if some important act has not been omitted? If we had per- severed more, he would perhaps have gone away ; if such or such an error had been corrected during the trial, if other steps had been taken, he would perhaps have been acquitted, and he would have been still in the land of the living. . . . I think I am wrong to torment myself thus by all these unavailing regrets, but they not the less increase my grief. . . . Lord ! let me understand the reason of these dark and wounding providences, that I sink not under the discouragement of my own thoughts I I know I have deserved my punishment, and will be silent under it; but yet secretly my heart mourns, too sadly I fear, and cannot be comforted, because I have not the dear compa nion and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. I want him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with. All these things are irksome to me now ; the day unwelcome, and the night so too. All company and meals I would avoid, if it might be ; yet all this is, that I enjoy not the world in my own way, and this sure hinders my comfort. When I see my children before me, I remember the pleasure he took in them ; this makes my heart shrink ! . . . 0, if I did but stedfastly believe, I could not be dejected ! . . . I most willingly forsake this world—this vexatious, trouble- some world, in which I have no other business but to rid my soul of sin, secure by faith and a good conscience my eternal interests When Nature, who will be mistress, has in some mea sure with time relieved herself, then, and not till then, I trust the Goodness which bath no bounds, and whose power is irresistible, will assist me by His grace to rest contented with what His unerring providence has appointed and permitted. And I shall feel ease in this contemplation, that there was nothing uncomfortable in his death but the losing him. In summing up her character as a woman, her un ostentatious virtues call forth from M. Guizot an eloquent appeal against the social doctrines of the present age : Oar age is tainted with a deplorable malady ; it believes in no passion, unless accompanied with exaggeration ; un bounded love, perfect devotion, all those exalted and ardent feelings, the masters of the mind, only seem possible to it when carried beyond the pale of the laws of morality and social propriety ; all order is in its eyes a yoke which para lyses all submission, a slavery which debases ; every flame is extinguished if it does not become a conflAgration. An evil the more serious, since it is not an attack of foyer, nor 911 the outbreak of exuberant force ; it has its source in per verse doctrines, in the rejection of all law, all faith, all superhuman existence, in the idolatry of man, putting himself in the place of his Creator—himself, and himself alone, his only pleasure and his sole desire : and to this evil another is added, not less deplorable---man not only does not worship inure than himself, but he worships him self only as one of the multitude iu which all individuality is lost ; he bears hatred and envy to all that rises above the common level ; all superiority, all individual greatness, of whatever kind or name, seems to such minds at once mad and degenerate, a sin and an oppression towards that chaos of undefined and ephemeral beings which they call humanity. When some great scandal is discovered in the highest ranks of society, some odious instance of vice and crime, they triumph, and bring forward these disgraceful coca rences against social superiority. They wish us to believe that these are the ordinary morals, the natural consequences of high birth, great wealth, and aristocratic rank, no matter by what title or on what foundation it is raised. When we have been assailed by these base doctrines, and the shame ful passions which give them birth and spring from them, when we have felt the repugnance and weighed the danger, it is a refreshing enjoyment to meet one A those noble examples which give them so brilliant a contradiction. As much as I respect human nature in its whole, so much I admire and love these exalted images of mankind, which personify and place on a lofty eminence, under visible features and with their real name, that which is most noble and most pure. Lady Russell presents to the mind this beautiful and honest gratification. She is a noble, Chris tian lady. In whatever point of view we contemplate her cha racter, we find an eminently pious, contented, and submissive mind, alike under the greatest earthly happiness or domestic calamity. Few of us can read her letters or her life without being fascinated by the purity of her love and the constancy of her g►ief. After a life of almost unequalled happiness at first, and then unexampled affliction and severe cala mity, she died at an advanced period of life, in the arms of her solo surviving child, faithful and de voted to the last. In a licentious age, she was the most virtuous and attached wife, the most tender and careful mother. Her fame and her virtues have achieved an immortality for her; at once a heroine and a saint, she lives in the hearts of all people a model of domestic virtue, true piety, and sincere submission. Female Life among the Mormons. fly the Wife of a Mormon Elder. London : Reutledge. THIS book professes to be a narrative of the adven tures of a young woman who, driven from her home, was inveigled into marrying a Mormon, and resided for some period of her life at Utah, the Sacred City, until she committed the crime of listen ing to a conversation concerning State secrets be tween two of the elders. Being discovered, to save her life she was forced to tly ; when, after a few uninteresting adventures, she ultimately returns to her disconsolate friends. In this narrative, so much con cerning matrimony in its plural sense and so many ma trimonial events are alone related—for, in point of fact, scarcely a chapter can be found without a proposal for a wife, or an account of a wedding—that we are in clined to look upon the book with suspicion. There is some little curiosity excited about the Mormons just now ; every mail from California brings us more or less intelligence about them : their agents, more over, are numerous in this country ; and pol ygamy has just so much novelty about it as to excite the curiosity of both sexes, so that a book containing vivid accounts of the domestic life of those men who treat themselves to a dozen wives would have a good chance of popularity. But the description given in this book of female life among the Mormons is poor stuff after all. We have only the most insipid improprieties—pictures of "sensual brutes" threatening " beautiful maidens ;" or of men with a "revolting exterior," with twelve wives and thirty children, proposing for the hands of a couple of sisters; or of respectable elderly married gentle men, who bad become Mormons, as they tell their wives, without exactly knowing what it meant, sud denly leaving the virtuous partners of their joys, seduced by some artful girl who has a design upon their money as well as morals. But all these things are related in that melodramatic, mock-modest, brummagem style which stamps them as impostures. In a word, the book just fails ; it is neither firm and honest enough in its tone to do good, if it ever had that intention, and too insipid to do harm ; it is a sort of compromise with the productions of "un recognised publishers ;" and as for incident or ad venture, it is utterly without an, pretension to into res or amuse. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. My First Season. Beatrice Reynolds. Smith and Elder. Illustrated, Historical, and Picturesque Guide to Boursessouih. Longman.. Ward and Lock. Routledge. Do. The Wild Tribee of London. The Kitchen Garden. E. S. Pelamer. The Old Commodore. Railway library. The Bombay Quarterly Review. Smith and Elder. The Limited Liability Act. J. H. James. Butterworth. The Subjective Logic of Hegel. John Chapman Ow the ReAnnation of Young Offenders. Routledge.