The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-20 00:00:00

906 condescended to accept the hand of a middle-aged man, who was also a widower with encumbrances, still she did not like the latter to be thrust into public notice on her wedding•day, before her friends and former associates: many of whom were aware of her earlier pretensions and expectations, and now sneered and looked sympathetic at her being obliged to put up with such humble matrinto• nial fare at last. Besides, she had three thousand pounds fortune (which sum was settled on herself) and "expects. tions" to an incalculable amount, so that she could afford to be dictatorial; and on this occasion she was so, some• what to her bridegroom's chagrin, but not st all to mine. Well, she came - . We weredressed in our best to receive her, but it was past ten o'clock, and we looked sleepy and sad. She was apparelled in bridal white, and wore a ban• dean of pearls in her raven black hair. Her face was long, thin, and wan, and every feature wore a pinched and fretted appearance of its awn. Thus, her forehead above the eyes was puckered with a premature wrinkle or two, that seemed to keep perpetual watch over the small, pierc ing, jet•black, angry-looking eyes below them, and which appeared to be always on the look out for something to be displeased with ; her nose had been very handsome in its day, but now the nostrils had shrunk into the bridge, and the skin seemed tightened as though it would burst away from the bone if it were tightened any more. Her chin protruded sharply and angularly, and her lips, as thin as lips could wall be, were compressed and sucked in, as it were, in order to keep them braced over her teeth ; which in early life hail been white and regular, but were now over• arge, from the gums having receded, and they began to .how a dark mark here and there in the intervals, as well. My first notion, as I looked at her, was an odd one: I thought to myself how much better poor aunt Mary looked in her shroud than did her successor in all her bridal bravery. That is well told, and the writer's pen rarely trips in narration. Part of the foregoing has a savour of " Jane Eyre's " style of describing unpleasant persons. What follows, however, is not so good : We arose as she entered the room, gallantly led by my uncle, who was as gay, bustling. and debonair as gentle. men of forty three or four usually are on such interesting occasions ; but who, even at that incipient stage of his new career, seemed to stand a good deal in awe of the magnificent partner he had taken such pains to secure, and appeared to be particularly anxious that every thing should be done to meet her approval from the first. Perhaps this appearance of over anxiety on his part acted iu a contrary spirit in what he desired ; or it may be that she had resolved beforehand to take a decided stand at the outset, as determined and far-seeing ladies have sometimes been known to do. At, all events, she was as little demonstrative as any bride of some hours old, and married to the man of her own choice, could well be. She kissed Brent on the forehead and Mary on the cheek; but it was such a kiss as the perjured witness, predeter• mined to forswear himself, leaves on the Holy Book— cold, clammy, apprehensive, and unnatural ; while to me she simply extended the forefinger of her kid•gloved hand (it was the left hand too, I remarked). and said, " Well, Eveleen, 1 have come to take the keys from you ;" she then, without waiting for an answer, threw herself on a chair and asked for a glass of water. "To be sure, my love," assented my uncle at once.; " but don't take water. Go, Eveleen, my dear, and order up the wine ' Not for me," interposed the haughty bride; " I don't wish for wine, thank you! Stay where yon are, Eveleen, if you please: I asked for a glass of water—l require nothing more." "But, sniper is ready in the other room, my love," urged Mr. Barrington with his best smile. " I never eat supper," was her reply ; " it is a useless and most unwholesome meal, and I hardly pity any one who suffers sharply, or dies suddenly, from indulging in such an abominable practice." There was a dead silence after this decided avowal. For the last twenty years Mr. Barrington had eaten a hearty supper every night of his life : in fact, it was his favorite meal. " Do you not think, Mr. Barrington, that they (she did not say children) ought to go to bed? I hope they are not allowed to remain np so late every night?' "God bless me ! no, by no mews," he hastily replied : "only to-night they were kept up to welcome you, Maria." "Thanks! Well, little people, I think 3nu bad better go to sleep," she said, with a slight yawn; " and you, Eveleen, u you to, just order somebody or other to bring me a glass of water. Don't trouble yourself to ring the bell, Mr. Barrington it will only cause confusion, and brine ' something we don't want. A glass of wAter, Eveleen, and good night all." Mrs. Barrington is extremely overdrawn in that passage, and the reader is at once made to recollect that he is perusing a novel. A new mistress of the house would never have shown her power so soon. Such a lady would rather have assumed a demeanour fit for the sister of a Joseph Surface, and endeavoured to ingratiate herself at first. Here is some of the writer's character-painting:— George Boaverie, without a particle of forwardness, much less of assurance, spoke evidently from the fulness of his own light heart, and became, without any exertion OD his part, a sort of general referee, to whom by tacit assent every one looked np as a pleasant interpreter of sassing thouirlits, and a willing director as well as contri• b 'tor either to conversation or hilarity. Perfectly new to tie world as Mary and I were, and completely unversed in i.e social pht+es, his tone and manner, as well as the sub• jects on which he spoke, had all the freshness of novelty as well as of originality ; and as he dashed off his sketches THE PRESS. of persons and things, which hitherto had only reached us through the misty medium of mere hearsay or newspaper gossip, and rattled away, for amusement, over ground and through scenes and places which we had only casually heard of, but which seemed to him as familiar as house hold things, I began to wonder whether one so young (for he was not more than twenty-one, if that age) could have really seen so much; while Mary, quite absorbed in the narration, and evidently more wonderstruck than I was, listened, and smiled, and appeared by her puzzled air to think it all very marvellous but very true. Alfred Montiomerie, who was a year or two older, formed a striking contrast to his lighter-spirited kinsman: in fact, I very soon began to perceive that in temperament and character the young men differed in many essential points. The elder one, after the first few minutes, suffered his cousin to take the lead, and listened and smiled in a listless, semi-apathetic sort of way to his most animated details; but he never originated anything himself, although he sometimes conected and sometimes plumed at the superabundant vivacity of his enthusiastic relative. They had been at College together at Cambridge—had mixed since then a good dell in London society—had taken a hasty run•throngh France, Germany, and part of northern Italy—and were now on a summer trip through the south of Ireland, without having any particular object in view. In these perambulations the difference between them seemed to be this—that whereas the younger saw every thing, inquired into every thing, and enjoyed all with the zest of youth and high spirits, his companion apparently changed his location in order to get rid of his time ; travel ling from point to point and country to country, in search, not of new scenes but of fresh sensations, which either his constitutional indolence, or a dreamy and wayward sort of pride taking refuge in reserve, prevented him from pro fiting by when they came. I am now giving my perceptions of character, it may be, a little in advance ; but, in truth, it required scarcely more than a passing interview to perceive and distinguish at least the superficial points of difference between them. It was not, however, that the elder was either ignorant or a fool, for what he said he said well, and there was both brilliancy and novelty in his remarks, when he roused himself so far as to make them ; but there was a sort of sickly fastidiousness about him, which seconded his sloth, or what appeared to be so, and influenced his thoughts, acts, and comments ; so that, although his intellect seemed quite as acute and far more discriminative than that of his relative, yet he disdained to make use of it, or only did so in order to criticise harshly what others advanced or admired, and to reduce every thing, by a callous and co'd blooded philosophy of his own, to the lowest standard to which it was possible to level it. Mr. Alfred Montgomerie (in a manner that we shall not explain) turns out to be Lord Lan dove, before the first volume is over, and Eveleen is of course in love with him ; but matters do not go straight. The following passage is not natural. Eveleen meets Mr A. Montgomerie," knowing well who he really was : Evidently, he expected to be cordially if not warmly met by me, for he stretched forth his hand and expressed his delight in almost unmeasured terms ; while I, with a throbbing heart, but a measured and grave demeanour, responded to his advances after the predetermined fashion which I had marked out for myself. A reception like this was evidently nolooked for, and unwelcome to him. His colour rose, and his eye fell. He paused—faltered, and then, when he addressed me again, his voice, which had been all eagerness at first, became almost as ineuared and frigid as my own— "Am I to have the great unhappiness to believe that you are displeased to recognise me, Miss Redgreave ?" he demanded. " By no moans displeased, my lord," was my guarded reply. He started, and stared at me— "My lord !" he exclaimed. " And how do you know that I am a lord —or, if I am, should that be the canse of my being received rather as a stranger than a friend?" " Are you not the Earl of Landure ?" was my indirect reply to the donble query of his. " I admit it : but, nevertheless, I am Alfred Montgo merle also," he rejoined. " I have a patronymic as well as a title, and, as 1 find it much the more convenient of the two, I generally adopt it when I can. And now may I venture to repeat my wish to know how yon discovered that Alfred Montgomerie and Lord Landore were one and the same person?" _ _ . "1 head Miss Hetherington describe you, my lord,' I replied, gravely; " and from what she said I drew my own deductions. But the qnestion of your identity has nothing whatever to do with the purpose which brought me here, in the hope of meeting you before you entered my uncle's house." But why did not Eveleen meet his advances more readily, as the ye ung peer was so well inclined towards her ? That was because she conceived " a singular purpose " (p. 197), of which one result should be, finding subject matter for three volumes. Further, then she attempts to give loose to her feelings, and describe her sensations : Hitherto I had evaded this necessary task by practising one of those pieces of mental jugglery more frequently adopted than owned, and which, like the cloud of smoke that overhang-4 the field of battle, conceals the many perils which it connot prevent. Strong in my own resolve, and guided by a principle which I had chivalrously adopted with all the enthusiastic ardour of eighteen, had thought less of the consequence than the cause, and seriously proposed to myself the difficult task of damming SATURDAY, up the well-head of passion, without reflecting that the living waters were boiling and bubbling beneath. I thought 1 was a philosopher ; but alas ! [ was only a woman after all. I waa cold as winter on the surface ; • but the ice once broken, the pressure once taken off , and what then became of the stoicism which exorcised indulgence, and proposed to convert human feeling into something that resembled a well regulated timeline .1' Fool that I was! my very look, my very gait, every movement of my limbs, every pulse of my throbbing heart, betrayed me. 1 had ventured to engage in a contest with passim, and felt that I was conquered in my own despite. I had sat on the seashore like Canute; but, unlike him, although I had read a lesson to others, I had not profited by it myself. I loved I loved ! The very delirium of passion was on me : I felt it to be so as I paced up and down my narrow chamber, and threw open the lattice to give myself breath. The struggles of another had awakened my own ; the mysterious influences which had prostrated the proud beauty, the vain woman, the very creature of conventionality—taught her to forget the world, to abjure the principles of a life spent amongst the heartless and the wisdom learned in their school—had compelled me to succumb as well as her. I could not think, could only feel—feel that I loved, feel that I was beloved: that draught quaffed out of the crystal cup of paradise, and bringing always intoxication, and sometimes ruin, madness, and despair to those who drink. Reason had. no part in me at present ; it might come again, by and by, when my brain cooled and my blood resumed its wonted flow ; but now I could only wonder at myself for wanting it—could only smile at the folly, yet sigh to think that it must end—could only struggle in the toils. which every effort of mine showed me 1 was powerless to break. Intense writing, truly, of the kind called " gushing " by Mr. Charles Dickens (to whom thiv. novel is dedicated). But the passage then proceeds into what we must call hysteri cal Milesianisin of the old school of dislocated metaphors and stunning similes : I had hitherto turned the mirror of my own mind with its face to the wall, and steadily refused to look into it, lest another form should appear in it as well as my own ; I had carefully closed the gates of young imagination—bolted and barred them, as I thought, against the intrusion of any shapes, sere those which I chose to admit myself ; and, lo ! now, against my sill, the mirror resolved and the portal opened ! There, on the disc of the one and at tho threshold of the other, stood the Past with its pleasant memories, the Present with its intense feelings and many drawbacks, and the Future looming in the distance and beckoning with its shadowy finger, as if, like Macbeth's airy dagger, " to marshal me the way that I was going." " Mirror of my mind "—" gates of young imagination " (!)—" disc of one, and threshold of the other "—" Future looming in the dis tance"—" shadowy finger "—ail crammed into a dozen lines ! A jolly high sheriff, in re turning thanks for his health at a late county meeting, is reported to have described himself as being " catawampously chawed up ;" and the foregoing passage is enough to impart a similar sensation, and is as wonderful as any " enormous melon " recorded at this unevent ful period of the year. In spite of its deficiencies, " Eveleen" ex hibits talent, and gives strong ground for believing that its author is capable of doing better things. The same can rarely be affirmed of novels by novices in the art of fiction. Let the writer study Shakes: eare and nature, and her conceptions of character will acquire more dramatic reality. Her constructive ability in putting a plot together is of a high order, and reminds us of the late Miss Ellen Pickering's special talent in that branch, so important to a novelist. The Influence of Christianity upon International Law. Hulsean Prizo Essay in the Univer sity of Cambridge,lB34. By C. M. Kennedy, B.A. Cambridge : Macmillan and Co. IN drawing a comparison between the nations of antiquity and those of Christendom relative to such a question as the above, due care must be taken not to lose sight of many disadvan tages under which the former laboured, ii,de pendent of their ignorance of divine truth. In the first place, when the limits of this earth were so inaccurately known, and its surface so thinly populated—when civilisation was so partial, and concentrated in such compara tively petty localities, beyond which the human race existed only in a state of bar barism, either luxurious as in Asia, or savage as in Gaul and Spain—it was inevitable that States such as Athens and Rome should be !taunted by very different sentiments towards their neighbours than is enjoined by the superior enlightenment of modern times. All the rest of the world was barbarian ; and this inferiority alone constituted, it was thought,