The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 3, 1855. threats. George 111. would sooner have laid his own head on the block than have signed the death warrant of Strafford. To the reso lution of the sovereigns of this house must their invariable success as rulers be attri buted, as the calamities of the Stuarts must in great part be ascribed to their vacillation. To sum up our opinion of Mr. Massey's volume, the style is easy, and as a chronicle it fairly embodies the facts contained in recent authentic publications. But he does not always comprehend their importance. His matter wants better arrangement, and we sus pect from the tinge of prejudice which colours his narrative, when he evidently wishes it to be impartial, that he has not strength of mind to form a really independent judgment on characters and events, or to survey them from that intellectual height which enables the historian to discern leading principles amidst the intricacies of the past, and to s t them forth with breadth and distinctness. Tit for Tat; or, American Fixings of English Humanity. " Tit for Tat is sharp sauce." By a Lady from New Orleans. London ; Clarke and Beeton. THAT " ' Tit for Tat' is sharp sauce," accord ing to the old English proverb, we have no wish to deny, but that it loses very much of its original pungency when mixed by American hands, we think every ono will allow who glances over these " Fixings." There are only three kinds of repartee, says Charles Reade in " Peg Woffington "—Ts quoque, to mentiris, ed tl9B dantnemini—and the " Lady " from Now Orleans has chosen the first and feeblest of the three. When we took up the book, we frankly admit that we expected to find some thing more than a tirade of trumpery taunts—we anticipated some hard facts, which would remind us of another old proverb about people living in glass houses, &c., and we thought, indeed we hoped, that the men who roasted negroes and flayed regresses, who flogged, tortured, starved, and cruelly ill-treated in every way those whom dollars and rascality had subjected to their will—we thought that these enlightened gentle men would have been able to write a good book, or at all events to get a good book written for them, upon some of our social evils, by way of retaliation for the enthusiasm which was dis played in this country for Uncle Tom and Mrs. Stowe. But we have been disappointed, and " those proprietors, male or female, who " are resolved unflinchingly to uphold the " domestic institutions of the southern States,' will, we fear, suffer as much personal pique us pecuniary loss when they hear how slight has been the effect of these " Fixings" amongst us. We doubt much if those " Britishers who wept " a Mississippi of tears" over " Uncle Tom" will be moved to that extent by this story, the ob ject of which is to show to the world that we, as a nation, have no right to complain of slavery when we allow the most cruel system of oppres • sion to be inflicted upon " the chimney sweep." But there is a wide distinction to be drawn between a legalised system o: slavery and an illegal evasion of the law. We admit that the evidence taken before parliamentary committees in 1852-3, disclosed a lamentable amount of cruelty and vice among the class of chimney -sweeps, and also a great evasion of the law with regard to cleansing flues; but why such an evasion of the law in England is to he made the basis of a defence for such a " happy domestic system" of slavery as exists in the southern States of America, we are rather at a loss to conceive. But to the story. A certain gaunt Marquis of Hardheart, " who "had been brought up to the profession of arms, "and once wore the steel and purple of the " Royal Horse Guards Blue" (how this reminds us of Thackeray in some of his military sketches !), has a great house and large estates in the country, preserves strictly, and is the terror ofall poachers. Transporting one of these gentry, the most innocent of the gang, as the case always is in a fiction, the marquis incurs the intense hatred of the young man's father, who swears the most terrible revenge. Among the peculiarities of the marquis, who is impe rious, unamiable, and saving, is a remarkable disregard for the laws of his country in THE PRESS. general, and for that law in particular which compels the cleansing of flues by machines instead of children—an amiable eccent►icity, we are told, peculiar to the aristocracy. The Marquis of Hardheart will build his own chimneys, and will not have any soot-doors in them, against the advice of his archi tect, who is discharged for his interfer• ence, while the marquis continues the altera tions and builds his chimneys upon the most approved principles for torturing the poor children who will have to sweep them. But a retributive ,justice lived in each brick, and as sure as this obstinate peer planned chim neys with right angles and long flats in them, so sure was he doomed to meet with& hor rible punishment by our" Lady" of Orleans The Marquis of Hardheart has an only son, a beau tiful boy of course, with flaxen curls and light blue eyes, the Earl of Hopemore, and within a week after the country chimneys have been successfully swept for the first time, and the marquis has come to town for the season, the bright-eyed little earl, during his father's dinner one evening, is beguiled away from the house, kidnapped by some vagabonds, carried off in a butcher's cart and taken to Manchester, where, thrust into a cellar, his lovely curls are cut off, and, clothed in sooty rags, this heir to a marquisate is condemned to be a chimney-sweep ! This is the revenge of the poacher's father. The noble marquis then goes mad, catches the smallpox, and is fright fully disfigured for the rest of his life ; while his boy, "the pride of his heart and " the joy of his house," is condemned to slave and work, and suffer all the tortures and hardships which were proved in evidence to have been inflicted upon the climbing-boys After a lapse of years the boy at length escapes from his servitude, is adopted by a lady of rank, educated and sent to sea, and at length, just as this war breaks out, finds himself in the service of the Emperor of Russia, superintend ing the fortifications of Cronstadt. He escapes from his position, reaches England safely, and is immediately introduced to the Lord Presi dent of the Council, and invited to an evening party at his lordship's residence. Of course he is discovered, and is restored to his long lost. father, who dies in his son's arms, and thus expiates his contempt for the laws of his country and his obstinate predilection for climbing-boys and chimneys with two right angles and a dead fiat. And this is the story which is, we suppose, to make us weep a " Mississippi of tears," and suffer a Vesuvius of burning shame for our social evils! We have given more space to this nonsense than it deserves, as there is at the present moment a very charming Tit for Tat to be heard and seen at one of our theatres, and we would wish our readers most distinctly to understand that that excellent version of the subject has no connection whatever with this trumpery fiction from the shop " over the way." NEW FICTIONS. A NUMBER of fictions have accumulated on our table which we must dispose of summarily, though some of them, from their originality and merit, well de serve more lengthened notice. The form in which a majority of them are published shows that this kind of literature meets with a large and increasing pri vate sale. The two neat pocket volumes, commonly containing a domestic tale, seem to answer well, from the number of them we meet with, particularly in country houses. But we must first notice some of the three-volume novels—the mould until lately in which nearly all fiction was cast. It has assumed, on the whole, a healthier tone since it has been emancipated from its fetters, and since it has ad dressed itself to the taste of book-buyers, instead of trusting wholly to the demand of circulating libraries. Mrs. Gore can well afford to come before the public in the established three volumes, as her repu tation is sure to create a run for her book. "The Hardships of an Heiress is written with her usual vivacity. Were such a being as a "lady aboujtown" possible, one would swear that Mrs. Gore belonged to the class. She knows everything—sporting and gastronomy, Latin and seamanship—is as familiar with the tricks of the Stock Exchange as with the flirtations at Almack's, and is always well up in the latest forms of fashionable slang. Let the pace of the age be as "fast" as it may, she manages to keep lip with it. It was a saying in the last age that no one could possibly be so wise as Thurlow looked, • Mammon; or, Hardships of an Heiress. By MrP. Oure. Hurst and Blackett. and we aver that no one can possibly be so knowing as Sits. Gore seems. However, her crisp thyle and happy audacity of invention always sustain the spirit of her narrative, audit must be allowed, if her know ledge of men and things is often made up of scraps, she manages to retail them with wonderful skill. Her tattle comes perfectly natural to her. A gentle man entering his stables, tries to obtain some infor mation from a little drudge of the servants, and fails : Perceiving that it would be easier to ezt-act a rational neigh from any one of the tine animals enjoying their churn cum divailate, and hay, cam corn, in the polished oaken stalls of his magnificent stables—" forty seeding like one," Sir John, &c. Does not every one in an instant recognise the— stmle shall we say ?—of our saucy, rattling novelist in this passage, as carelessly lavish of her words as a coquette of her smiles, and for the same reason that she knows they will be sure to please. Fine delinea tions of character are not her for.e. Most of her personages bear the vaudeville stamp, and their range is not very wide. The curtain falls on them in one dress, and rises on them in another. The bigotted old Tory and enlightened liberal philan thropist have done duty so often that it is time they were dismissed, with other creations of her fancy, to the " tomb of the Capulets." There is very little story in her last novel. The son of a grasping, old, Tory baronet marries for love, albeit he has an " old head on young shoulders," and is rewarded just as he tires of his bargain by a legacy of 70,00111. a year, which goes to his second son or eldest daughter. In due time he becomes possessed of his paternal estates, 8,0001. a year more, and of his mother's fortune, 150,0001., in addition. The heiress is his daughter, and the narrative is oc cupied chiefly with the petty miseries she encounters till she is settled just in the style a well-behaved, amiable, pretty, young lady with such a fortune as hers should be. The story wants pith and point; but its scenes of many-coloured life—chiefly fashion able, of course—carry it forward with animation, and the broad dioramic sketches of society give reality to the whole composition. One of the cleverest passages is the letter of Reuben Howard (iii. 3(0.302), but it will not do for quotation. The presentation a the heiress at the last drawing-room of the season will supply us with a good example of Mrs. Gore's slap dash manner. Every one, of course, knows the young slips of aristocracy in satin and lace who have the honour of attending Majesty on state occasions : Even the little pages of the household, no higher than grenadier's cap, were eager for a glimpse of the debutante. Look at the girl in white and silver, Georgy," said one of them to his companion page, who was at home from Eton for the day. " That's the famous Miss Wraysbury, the greatest heiress in England; beats Miss Coutts by ever so many chalks. How l should like to run away with her I Wouldn't I have a stunning brace of guns, and hire a deer forest, and build a swam-yacht—that's all." " As if such a bundle of bank notes would stoop to an ensign in the Guards—the most you'll ever be, Bob, even if you're not spun in your examination. Why they say that a duke was bespoke for her the very day she was born; and Alan Hill, my long cousin in the Life Guards (whose mother presents Miss Wraysbuty to-day), declares that her father spends his life with " Burke's Peerage" in his hand, pricking for a son-in-law." " What a bore, to know that your daughter will be mar ried for motley ; and have to shell out to some Shylock in peer's robes, who would not care if she were hanged!" " Only right that there should be some hardships even for an heiress," retorted the precocious philosopher of the white satin aiguilette. But look at her governor. What snob ! What a sneak! He looks thoroughly ashamed of himself ; but not half so much as I should be of him were I to marry the girl." The novel is exhilirating in tone, and exhibits follies and weaknesses of life in a spirit of playful sarcasm. The manner is better than the matter; but this must often be the case in representations of good society, where, on the whole, comedy prevails much more widely than tragedy. If, as the Spanish fabulist Yriarte supposes, the manufacture of the brain bears some analogy to that of the hands, we should say that this latest work of Mrs. Gore's pen resembles thread lace, in being infinitely more valuable from its style than its material. " Philip Lancaster"• is a well-written tale of do mestic life. Without containing much to excite the imagination or stimulate the curiosity of the reader, it fascinates his attention by the simplicity and quiet grace of the. narrative. The scene is laid in a village near Oxford, and, in her delineations of country life, the authoress reminds us of Miss Austen, though she more than rivals that lady in portraying the persons who take part in the story. Every character she introduces is drawn with daguerreotype fidelity. The wicked Lord Pennington; the easy, good-natured, vhist-loving, old rector; his successor, a disciple of Anglican party; and the intelligent, God-fearing, 'ing minister, Mr. Morris, are brought vividly s eye of the reader. The authoress depicts • - %%i11y as she does character. Some of eery as woodls • Philip Lancaster.