The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-11 00:00:00

from home, when stricken by Mary's reproaches. In fact, if the book had not better, or at least more attractive, points i than the lights and shades of married life, it would fail to engage attention. It is impossible to feel much interest for either Mary or her husband. Shortly after their settlement in Australia, they are joined by the whole of Mary's family, who, though always used to the quiet life of a sleepy English village, have been induced to emigrate through the favorable accounts sent home by North. Mary gets her sister, Rose Lancaster, to reside with her. This girl is a very charming personage, with a mind, naturally of a high cast, improved by intellec tual culture; but gifted at the same time with the warm feminine sensibility which enables a woman to adapt herself to the trifles of domes t'', life, and to merge herself and her desires in such home things as the sports of children and the household cares of relatives and friends. The beauty, good sense, and warm heartedness of Rose secure her many lovers, and it is in the trial of her heart and principle, caused by the unworthiness of the man she favours, that the chief interest of the book lies. All this part of it is pleasingly tinged by romance ; and the sad story of Lizzie Newton, like that of Crabbe's Phcebe Dawson, is of a nature—old as the tale is—to moisten the eyes of young and old. Her seducer, Dava nent, is all but the accepted lover of Rose. She discovers the blot of his life, and when, after an absence of some weeks, he returns to Adelaide, he pours out his soul to Rose, and implores her to return his devoted love : Silence is generally thought to be encouraging, but Rose's silence was peculiar. He fancied that she hesitated about going to the bush with him; be had never hinted at having a town establishment, and be knew how passion ately she loved her sister. " Do not think, my beloved, my idolised Rose, that I am so selfish as to think of tearing you away from all those you love. I would not have you banished to my distant station ; you shall remain in town or near it, and I can come and go. Your sister would miss you." " That is all very well for you and me, I dare ray," said Rose slowly. "I suppose you would not like to take me to the same place that you took poor Liu) , Newton to — but what is to become of her ?" Davanent started to his feet in the suddenness of his surprise. " Good God! what of her ?" He could not deny anything•—he had not time. " I thought you planned very well for yourself, but you left her and your child out of the question altogether." " She is provided for, Rose, dearest Rose; I have parted from her for ever, or I would not have dared to speak to you ; she made no objections." " She dared not object. Davanent, was this the busi ness you had to do before you could speak to me, and ask my hand when you had already won my heart ? Was that floor girl to be the sacrifice? Was I to tread upon her bleed lig heart to the position of your wife ?" Forgive me: Rose, Miss Lancaster, forgive me," and the drops stood on his forehead. He would have taken her hand, but she shook it off as if there was contagion in the touch. " Yes," said she deliberately, " I will forgive you, Davanent. What harm have you done to me, compara- tively speaking? (His face brightened.) I will forgive you from my heart, if you will marry her—do her the poor justice that remains in your power." " Marry her, and I love you! You! And oh, hiw in. finitely more and better than ever I did her! Vow love to one woman while every pulse is beating for another ! Place an insuperable, an e•ernal bar between you and me I" " You have done that already, Davanent. You loved her once ; you can revive your love." " Have the whole world laugh at and despise me and my wife?" " I will honour you," said Rose, with the old inspiring cleam in her eyes ; " and God will bless you, and your own .uscienee will approve. Oh, Davanent, you would have tried hard to gain my love, will you not do that to re gain my esteem ? " He seemed to hesitate ; she took the hands she had shrunk from before, and clasped them in the earnestness of her entreaty. He looked on the thin white baud, the wasted arm, with a curious mixture of compassion, pride, and seltreproach. " have suffered, you see; I have mourned over your un worthiness with a bitterness which I never felt before; but do as I beseech you—marry her. She is young, and beautiful, and innocent, but for you. I cannot believe that the daughter of so good a mother can have a bad heart- Davanent, suppose she is ignorant, you can in struct her ; if she is petulant, you can instruct her; if she has faults that you cannot conquer, you ought to bear with them, for you know that you are far from perfect yourself. Ltt me not think that Rose Lancaster has come across Your path to lead you to greater sin, and that poor young gui to greater misery. Marry her, restore her to re spectability, and her poor broken-hearted mother to ber r ght—to a mother's pride ; claim your little boy, and thrust him not forth into the wide world nameless and un regsrded—marry her, and I shall think my own sufferings well repaid. I know what you can do with &woman whom You love, and wbo loves you. Yon can make her happy, and _yourself with her." " Rose," said Davanent, with a quivering lip, and almost inarticulately, " I could scarce refuse you anything that you ask with that white face, and those earnest eyes. I would give my life and my happiness to recover your esteem ; but what you ask is not in my power. Lizzy is married !" Rose sank back in her chair, and burst into a torrent of tears. He dared not approach her. " Yes, that was your arrangement, and she agreed to it willingly—very willingly, no doubt ! This is the greatest sin of all. I thought I might have prevented it, but I am too late—too late!" This is beautiful writing, and there is much more quite equal to it. Rose saciifices her affection to her principle. She is not one of Mr. Moore's heroines : I know not, I sok if guilt'. in that heart ; I but know that I love thee whatever thou art. The sober tone of the book does not require great suffering to sustain it. Rose blooms again, and is cured of that tendency to ex pect very high intellectual qualities in a husband, which the authoress indicates as a fault in her character. " Tender and True," though in parts a little prosaic, is a great advance on the authoress's previous tale of " Clara Morison." It is in the best style of the sensible novel—a class which Miss Austen brought into vogue, and which must always command great popularity. We always thought Miss Austen's novels were too deficient in the imaginative element. That defect is less noticeable here. The story is skilfully managed, the tone is very pure, and altogether the fiction is marked by sense, and spirit, and by readers who love to find instruction mingled with amusement will be universally considered very improving. On Truth and Error. Thoughts in Prose and Verse. By John Hamilton, of St. Ernan's. Mn. HAMILTON seems to possess a freedom from prejudice, and a philosophic turn of thought, which, if united with a rather more popular method than he has here employed, would enable him, we think, in time to gain a good position as a moral essayist. Wherever he indulges in pure dissertation, his style is clear, his ideas original, and his aim useful and practical. But as soon as he plunges into verse, or endeavours to throw his arguments into a dramatic form, our approbation of truth is overpowered by our sense of incon gruity and dislike of unimpressive oddities. We shall quote some average specimens of each, and our readers will judge fur them selves. The following style of verse would ap pear to be meant for an imitation of the choruses in " Samson Agonistes ": HELL. Hell ! where God is hated, Who can know thy depths? Where destruction livetb, Where existence is death ; And where false joys are proved false— False beyond deception's power, To make it's victim fancy he has joy. 1 ' Perdition !" "damnation !" Words at which men quail, Who can know your depths? Your awful burning black realities? He, and only he, who knows The opposite; He, and only he, who has believed In lure that ,ever fails, Who has the bliss experienced Of loving Him who loveth with that love; He only by a dread comparison, Can estimate the fire and the worm Which the lost find In Hell ! When. God (the God he loves) Is hated; Where bliss (the bliss he tastes In loving God) Is destroyed ; Where existence (which to him Is precious, full of joys, Because the presence of the God he loves Is ever with him) is pure misery— In the game glorious presence, Misery and destruction ! Because they hate the very God he loves. Now, these lines are not absolutely destitute of vigour, nor without one or two fine thoughts. But what end can Mr. Hamilton hope to gain by throwing them into verse? It does not seem to us that the following thoughts gain anything by being put in the form of a dialogue. It is from a death-bed scene : Then with a ghastly look he said slowly : " Did you never help a soul to hell? If you did not NOll must have been always good. And if you did, do you expect to be harpy in heaven, while they are in bell,eh?" had often and long considered the subject, tho' not exactly in this view of it ; su that, altho' much moved by his hopeless agony, I aaw the error that caused it. But never did the dreadfulness of that error force itself so upon me. . . . I asked him : "Why do you say they are damned be. yond all hope, beyond all salvation ?" " Because they are dead." " And cannot God's power reach the dead ?" " To be sure it can, but it won't." " Why? " "Why! Why how can you ask? Does not every one know that after a nun is dead all hope is gone ?" " Nay—l do not know it." " Yon don't know it! yet you know the Bible better far than I do. 0 ! tell me, tell me, what possible hope can you have for sinners that die in their sins ? " "Just the same as fur those that lire iu their sine— damnation is their portion !" " Ah ! but while we live we may be rescued from the terrible danger." " No, my friend, no ! lie who lives in sin is in no danger of damnation." " No danger ? " " No, for he is damned! lost ! " "And no hope, then, for any one ?" " None except one hope." " What is that ?" " God's love shown in Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which is lost." " But that love ceases if we die in our sins." " What makes it cease—ls it the great crime of dying, or being killed, that can quench the love that our enmity and our sin could not quench ?" This is a point which might furnish matter for a theological essay; but the conversation merely takes up room without anything being elicited which really bears upon the question. Of the kind of essays which this volume contains we can only afford two or three short examples. One very brief, but very sensible little piece is entitled "On success and failuro in explanation ": In order to a satisfactory resnit, when one person iraa to explain anything to another, it is chiefly necessary that the person to whom the explanation is offered should really and sincerely try to understand what the other would express. It is very desirable that the explainer should use such words and such manner as shall best express his mind; but though he speak never so cleverly, if the other is listening without that real desire to understand, language will always afford to a disputer opportunity of raising questions, and of misrepresenting assertions—and so of confounding, as the disputer thinks, the other ; but really himself is the confounded one; for the other still knows what his own meaning is, tho' he may be grieved at his failure to lead his friend to understand it and profit by it ; while the disputer has missed what perhaps might have been a real increase of wisdom or knowledge to him, and certainly what would have been an opportunity of manly, friendly, and wise intercourse, and exchange of ideas. This is very, very true. We know not why the essay, in its old legitimate shape, should not be revived at the present day. We are convinced that short periodical exhortations to our daily duties, and the rights and wrongs of social intercourse, would be really bene ficial to the reading public, who now see nothing of the kind. "Notes from Life," " Guesses at Truth," and " Friends in Coun cil," are all excellent in their way, but are too full and too inaccessible for the purpose we speakof. A weekly periodical, in which a short essay of this description, in the style of the " Spectator", should form the kading feature would, we believe, be both rifnaunerative and useful. Mr. Hamilton's essay upon " Two Forms of Truth " will repay attention. It con tains a remarkably happy illustration of the fallacy of sensible impressions : A blind man might hear a loud cannon-shot a minute after it was fired ; and it would at first be bard to con vince him that you sato it fired at a great distance some time before he heard it. He would think his senses the best evidence to trust, and you would see that be was wrong. Just so a man whose mind is not opened thinks his sight must be correct, &c. We must now take our leave of Mr. Hamilton. His book contains a great deal that is valuable ; but it is so oddly put toga gether, and mixed up with so much that is wearisome, that it is to be feared few will have patience to profit by it. It is very suggestive, but we recommend the author to follow our advice on the subject of essays, and eschew poetry and dialogue. OCTOBER 11, 1856. THE PRESS. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.—Ocr. 9. Arthur Vaughan. Kent and Co; A flu lf-yearly Course of Reading Lessons in EngliAll //ion'," Groomhridge Bentley Woman's Life. Emilie Carlen. The Illustrated Webster Reader. First series. The Hawks of Hawk•hollow. The School of Life. Kate Corentry. An Autobiography. Beranger's Songs. .4 Bog's Voyage roma Me World. dthanced Test-book on Geology. j Ward and Lock Ditto Ditto John W. Parker Addey and Co. Ditto Blackwood& 977