The Press.
London, England, 1855-08-25 00:00:00

NEW NOVELS.

IT chances at times that a reviewer has to
glance at works of the most opposite charac-
ter. His table is a world in miniature, where
soldiers and divines, and lawyers and phy-
sicians, and poets and romancists, and money-
brokers and savans, and engineers and
travellers, jostle each other in admired con
fusion. The editor tries, of course, to classify
these various species of literary life, to give
the right book to the right reviewer, but con-
fusion will sometimes ensue. Contributors
have a curious habit of turning over a whole
tableful' of works, and of selecting some
which are not much in accordance with their
usual pursuits. But there is great charm in
novelty. It is this charm, in fact, which
makes the work of reviewing so attractive as
it is. A literary man likes to know something
of all that passes in the realm of mind.
Thought of eve►;y kind is precious to him ; and
let him take up what book be may, it is next
to certain that he will find something to in
terest him in it.

The question has been much discussed
whether systematic or miscellaneous reeding

THE PRESS.

is most profitable. Reading or study must, of
course, be systematic when some profession
or distinct object is in view ; but when books
are taken up for amusement or scant know
ledge, and the end desired, whetuer con-
sciously or unconsciously, is to open mind and
heart—to give the intellect broader views and
the affections wider sympathies—then mis-
cellaneous reading is to be preferred, and the
balance of authority will be found to incline
in its favour. Locke laughed at people who
devcted all their leisure to some one petty
pursuit; and the late Dr. Arnold said that if
one conviction was fixed more deeply in his
mind than another, it was that in favour of
widely-varied reading. Our reading, like our
social intercourse, should be varied, if we
would not fall under the dominion of a few
fixed ideas, and become in our intellectual
tastes narrow and intolerant.

For ourselves, we confess to a most catholic
taste in literature ; and hence, when selecting
a number of novels the other day for an article,
we packed up with them a book which seemed
by the dust on its covers to have been over-
looked for some weeks or months, the " Daily
Life "of the Rev. Dr. Cumming. We had not
read far in it before we came upon a passage
having immediate reference to our subject.
Here is what the indefatigable and prolific
divine says upon novel-reading. After enume-
rating various hindrances to the Study of pro-
phecy, he proceeds
Next is the dissipation engendered by the practice of
reading novels and romances. Of all mischievous habits
this is the worst. [Alas! how much have we to answer
for !1 Many minds cannot do it. If I may refer to per-
sonal experience, I may add, I tried long ago to read a
novel, but could not finish it [Oh fortunate Dr. Cum•
ming ! and the more fortunate as " sua si bona noiint "
does not apply to thee.], for the simple reason that in the
most unexceptionable of all, I mean Scott's, I felt at every
sense haunted with a sense of unreality : " This is not
real ; it is not truth." Romance is very different from
poetry. I can read true poetry, because it glories in bring-
ing up bidden thoughts, in laying bare delicate links and
affinities that lie in the silent depths of nature waiting for
the master mind to bring what are to us airy nothings into
a body and a shape. But the mere novel, which is a tale
worked up into the appearance of a reality, and full of
vapid and spurious excitement, is not natural or whole-
some food. The habit of novel-reading is most injurious
to real religion. It is exactly to the mind what drinking
alcohol aU day isto the body. And the consequence of a
long indulgence in novel or romance reading is that
mental or moral delirium tremens which, in its despair
and its agony, flees either to the atheism of Voltaire, or
sends for the advice of Cardinal Wiseman. Unquestion-
ably, of all habits that of novel and romance reading tends
most to shake the mind, to dispossess it of its equilibrium,
and to make it ready for the reception of the next new
crotchet, or the wildest pantheism and infidelity.

This is terribly severe, and we feel it the
more, as not only have we read novels greedily,
but must confess to the sin of having added
to the stock of them, never thinking of the
pernicious work we were aiding. Why, ac-
cording to this worthy Presbyterian lecturer,
every novelist is enlisted under the banners of
Satan, and actively engaged in his service.
Why is there no teetotal literary league, with a
Presbyterian divine to bless medals of absti-
nence from romance ? Why is there no Maine
novel law, and a staff of literary excisemen to
root out all ingredients of fiction from the
publishing trade ? And why is not that great
manufacture of the " soul-killing" commodity,
the house of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, put
down by act of Parliament or levelled to the
ground by a brigade of Dr. Cummings most
ardent admirers?

One of his critical canons is surely open to
question—" Romance is very different from
" poetry." It has always appeared to us that
a very narrow line divides them. Dr. Cum•
ming, if we recollect rightly, professes great
admiration of Shakspsare. Yet, are not his
plays essentially romances in a dramatic
shape ? What is the verbal difference be-
tween Scott's poems and his novels, or be-
tween the poetic tales of Cmbbe and the
prose tales of Miss Edgeworth? Yet great
moralists have thought that the tales of
Crabbe are as eloquent in instruction as any
discourse ever delivered from the pulpit of a
Scotch church. A great moralist wrote
" Rasselas"; but is that tale, with the " Vicar
of Wakefield." and a thousand other of the
happiest flights of genius, to lie under the
ban of generating " moral delirium ttemens"?
If romance is to be banished front our litera-
ture, then the greater part of our poetry, from

813

the tales of Chaucer to the tales of Tennyson,
will have to share its exclusion.
The reverend doctor assumes that what its
not real is also not true. What a confusion of
mind is here ! There is a great distinction
between truth and fact; and so much even his
scriptural studies might have taught him. If
he can bear nothing but what is real, pray
what does ho think of the Rook of Job and of
the Parables of our Lord? Does ho imagine
that the history of the Prodigal Son was fact ;
that there was a real Dives and a real Lazuli's;
that the master existed • who intrusted his ser-
vants with the charge of various talents ; that
the hiring of labourers in the marketplace at
different hours of the day actually took place,
with the results stated? Think for a moment,
Dr. Cumming, what you would certainly have
styled any starched few who objected to those
most lovely and exquisite tales of a Divine
imagination, that they were not real, and then
confess that Pharisaical pride and pretension
may exist in a Scotch church in crowded
London iu this present year 1855 as well as in
the temples of Jerusalem in the year 1.
Even you, Dr. Cumming, have dabbled in
fiction in your time, and in a somewhat ob-
jectionable manner too. Do you not recoil( et
writing some dialogues, four or five years back,
in which you brought forward Cardinal Wise-
man in propria persona as being opposed to
yourself in argument? You invariably got the
better of the Cardinal in controversy, and
made him look very small ; but surely no one
could read those dialogues of yours without
being "haunted by a sense of their unreality,"
and without confessing that romance entered
largely into their composition.
Romance is not natural, says Dr. Cumming.
How shall we determine what is natural except
by reference to the universal instincts of
humanity ? Did there ever exist a race who had
not some feeling for romance? It exists in the
rude Indian wigwam as well as in the palaces
of the West It is the oldest of all old things
and the most universal of all sentiments. The
story-teller is sure of an audience all over the
world. Even the Laplanders have their tales
with which to beguile their night of months,
and the slavery of the negro is soothed by the
rc mance of his song.
It is by romance that the hearts and con-
sciences of men are often appealed to moat
forcibly. What is a large portion of profane,
history but romance? Does Dr. Cumming
suppose that Nathan spoke reality to David
when he told of the poor man's pet lamb ;
or, when the terrible revelation burst on the
King of Israel, " Thou art the man," did he
turn on the Prophet and say—This is not fact?
Dr. Cumming should be a little more care-
ful in his denunciations of so large a literary
class as the romancists. Think what a weight
his censures must carry. We see advertised a
sixteenth thousand of " Apocalyptic Sketches,"
and at the end of this very volume, Daily Lffe,*
we find enumerated no less than thirty-two
distinct publications by the reverend doctor.
Some of them are put forth as sanctioned by,
or as proceeding from, Divine authority One
is announced as a " Message from God,"
another as " The Finger of God." Can wo
think such titles reverent? May there not be
a species of religious fantasy more likely to
shake the mind, to dispossess it of its equili-
brium, to engendermoral and mental delirium
tremens, than the sometimes silly but usually
harmless fictions of romance? The critics have
not had much to say to Dr. Cumming as yet,
but should they pounce upon his thirty two
'publications, not all their tenth and sixteenth
thousands would save them from scathing
scrutiny.
In spite of Dr. Cumming's foolish dictum
the taste for romance is so natural, that
it will be gratified, and the only ques-
tion is what kind of romance shall pre-
vail. Let Dr. Cumming ask his boys what
books they buy at railway stalls, and we are
much mistaken if the answer does not show
him that the love of fiction is much too
natural and deep-seated for his eloquent die-
suasives to uproot. There is a kind of fiction
which we are quite ready to join with Dr.
Cumming
in denouncing, and that is cant.
He rebels against abstinence in the matter of

• Daily Life. By Rev. J. Cumming, I.D. London:
Virtue, and Co.

814

spirituous liquors ; he feels himself, he tells
us, all the better for his bottle of good port—
why, then, should he set himself up as the
George Cruikshank of a movement for imagi-
native teetotalism? The tolerance he claims
let him accord. He is safe, through his peculiar
temperament, from the influences of romance;
but he has no more right on that account to
denounce the pleasures of imagination than
a deaf man would have to inveigh against the
cultivation of harmony.
The novels' to which the strictures of Dr.
Cumming would apply are becoming rare in
our day. It is not true that modern fictions
are generally marked by unreality. They are
often too real for our taste, for we do not
reckon reality as the highest requisite of
fiction. A purely imaginative tale like " Un-
dine " is to be preferred to all the real stories
ever written. For romance we desire above
all things an union of imagination and art ;
but that union is met with only in writers of
the highest class.
Some of the novels before us are, in their
general plan and outline, too much like fact
to bo altogether pleasing. Mrs. Maberley's
" Display," with the exceptions we pointed
out when it was in our hands, is a model of
social portraiture, never approaching fact too
closely, yet always appearing natural. Wo•
man's Devotion 4, is in this respect less suc-
cessful. It is altogether a cruder performance,
and positively spoilt by that reality for which
it should find favour in the eyes of Dr. Cum-
ming. We know very well that beautiful
young widows with large fortune need not
wait long for a second husband. Their mar-
riage is common enough in actual life, but we
do not like a novel made up of such materials
as these :—A handsome, amiable young lad
meets with a beautiful girl on the coast of
Wales ; marries her, to the great mortification
of his lady mother; loves her with all his
heart; sees with pleasure how much she is
esteemed by his cousin, a young duke ; is
blessed with a beautiful boy ; is forced into a
duel and gets accidentally hurt ; is ill for a
long time, during which his mind gets im-
paired ; dies at last, and is magnificently
interred ; his widow a twelvemonth later being
united to the duke who had always admired
her. _ _ _

The fashion of conducting a heroine through
all the ceremonies of a first marriage, of child-
birth, of widowhood, and of a second mar•
riage, though it may be relit, is, very far from
agreeable. Why couldn't shetbe. made a duchess
at once? 1n this idstaVe. the process is the
more unsatisiktory ast.she witp ho perfectly
content with her first choice. The title of the
book is a misnumer. What is meant by
" Woman's Devotion "? It' is impossible to
find any other answer for the question than—
marrying a second husband as soon as a
widow's cap can be decently discarded.
After the raptures of a first love the raptures
of a second are very stale. Her first lord had
cherished his pretty, innocent, unsophisticated
bride, with such affection as Hamlet's father
showed his queen :

so loving,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.
Yet at the close of the book it is thus that the
pretty Nest is represented in company with
her second husband :
" My Nest, how your eyes speak," said her husband,
bending over her, after the boys had lovingly left the room,
encircled in each other's arms. " Shall I tell you what
they say?
She smiled an affirmative.

He whispered in her ear—
" They said,' I love you, Elmore, I am happy. "
She stole her hand into his, and whispered back, " If
they said no more, my husband, they did not speak
enough."
Good taste revolts from this conclusion. In
real life impressions fade slowly ; there is at
least an interval between the death of one at-
tachment and the birth of another; but in
fiction the interval cannot be sensibly marked.
Here the results are brought so closely together
as to excite a positively painful sentiment.
The grand defect of the book is, that it is con-
structed in ignorance of every principle of art.
It is freshly, cleverly, and in parts powerfully
written, but the design is so radically bad as

• Woman's Devotion. A Novel. 3 vols. London : Hurst and
JilsoketU

THE PRESS.

to suggest a strange want of delicacy and tact
in the mind of the lady writer.
We know what examples of " Woman's
Devotion" have been given in past times, and
how girls of such mingled strength and soft•
ness of character as Nest is represented to
possess have mourned their husbands we
recollect the case of the young Marchioness of
Tavistock, who would never suffer her hus-
band's miniature to leave her hand till she
sunk broken-hearted into his grave : and we
do not care to meet in fiction with such a
thriving widowhood and prosperous second
marriage as are here presented to us.
The inexperience of the writer is visible in
other passages. The " upholstery business "
is too laboured. In one place we read :

A powdered footman entered, bearing on a massive salver
the post of the day.
At a dinner-party the lady exclaims :

I have desired Jervois to serve the banquet.
When Nest is first introduced to the company
assembled to meet her at her lord's seat, she
exclaims :

This room is so beautiful, the lights are so brilliant, and
the company so gorgeously arrayed, that J feel something
as if I was a little daisy, misplaced amid the rarest and
most resplendent flowers.
- -

The fittings of the apartments occupied by
the Lady Jane are catalogued with auctioneer-
ing particularity:—
-•• • -

The sofas had carved ivory legs, the chairs were inlaid
with mother-of-pearl ; the tables were malachite, white
marble, and ornamented with borders of jaspers, lapis
lazulis, and other stones more precious ; screens of match-
less Indian embroidery were supported on stems of fila-
greed silver; while jars of fabulous size and extraordinary
beauty supported old Indian cabinets, rare bronze figures,
marble statues, and objects of vend.

All this may be merely intended for effect,
but the style is bad. There is also needless
exaggeration in the language of some of the
characters, as in this bit of absurdity proceed.
ing from a Lady Julia:—
- - •

...
I observe you never fail to attend church. I admire it
in you, my dear niece, being so regular ; I wish I could do
the same; but really until they have separate churches for
us and the common people, I cannot go, particularly in a
country church. I declare positively, in a country church
you may have your servants seated in the very next pew.
Now, how can you bear that, my dear niece

A confirmed profligate would hardly have
addressed the heroine in such a manner as the
following :
lam rid of my wife ; our divorce is nearly past. Your
husband is dying ; a slow, lingering death it may be, but
he will never recover ; remember my words. Now answer,
promise, should you evee be free, promise to be mine, and
I will wait, wait like a p ►tient, beaten spaniel under your
feet; wait like the humblest slave, wait like a very dog.
And oh, Nest, think what you will do, save a soul, a soul
so smothered, so pent up in crime, that angels cease to
visit it, and regard it as a dreadful, loathsome thing.
Make but this promise, and no pilgrim shall be more
devout, no proselyte more sincere. Make but this pro-
mise, make it, and save me.

But with its defects, which are serious, the
book has undoubted merit. Some of the cha-
racters are finely drawn. Nest herself in the
two first volumes is a charming personage,
most picturesque. in dress and appearance,
and most captivating in disposition and con-
duct—innocent, loving, and amiable, but
withal high-spirited. She behaves admirably
in the trials of her married life, particularly
when confronted with her haughty mother-in
law : and at times there are endearing touches
of pathos in her demeanour. She has warmly
attached herself to her husband's sister, and
when this sister, who is headstrong and pas-
sionate, has long been sulky, Neat each night
endeavours to coax her into forgiveness, and
at last succeeds :

Perhaps to-morrow I may not be able to visit my dear
sister. Soon I may be a prisoner on a sick-bed. I may
no longer be able to give m)salf this pleasure, to look at
her, to kiss her thus, and ask God to bless her and forgive
her for her unkindness to her Nest. Perhaps our Al-
mighty Father may take me to himself, and leave Mimi
but a little child to remember her sister by. And will
Mimi he gaod to my little child, will she be as unkind
to it as she is to me ? _

At this stage of Nest's harangue, there was a decided
trembling of the bed.
" Perhaps 1 shall die," continued Nest, " thinking that
no kini aunt Mimi will be a mother to my child."

A violent hysterical sob burst from the bed ; two vehe-
ment arms were thrust out, and Nest was clasped to her
sister's heart, amid a storm of tears, self-upbraidings, self-
reproaches, and the sweetest, gentlest, dearest epithets.

There are many such pretty passages as
this. But we must say all our interest in
Nest vanishes when we find that she sets her

SATURDAY,

widow's cap at the duke. The book is spoilt
by the third volume.
- -

The next story, iu one volume, is of a totally
different complexion. To it the title of
" Woman's Devotion;'* might appropriately be
given. The love of Georgy Sandon is so deep,
so delicate, so generous, and so lasting, that
her character may take rank among the
loveliest creations of fiction. The tale is
simple, but worked out iu all its details with
the nicest finish. The social scenes are light
and easy. There is much pleasant chit-chat
in the domestic intercourse of town and
country homes, but the figure of Georgy is
never out of sight. She is an orphan, and
partially dependent upon the bounty of rela-
tives. Intelligent, but not remarkable for
beauty—
Her complexion was fair, and her grey eyes large and
handsome. Her mouth, too, was rather large, and the
lower part of her face had, especially when in repose, a
look of squareness, but was otherwise pretty.

When quite young, and understanding little
of the capacity of her heart, she had engaged
herself to an officer, a plain, honest, well•in-
tentioned person, who left her for a period to
join his regiment abroad. In his absence she
is introduced to a gentleman of very different
character—tho gay, accomplished, gifted James
Erskine. He looks on her with curiosity,
flirts with her a little, but thinks it no more
possible that she can lift her eyes to him than
that he should lower his to hers. But the
meeting has raised new feelings in Georgy's
heart. She finds she did not love Captain
Anstruther, and resolutely breaks off her en-
gagement with him, flying from her uncle's
home to avoid his anger. The handsome
Erskine is known to another lady, who ad-
mires him. The brilliant Constance Everett
is in all respects a contrast to the quiet
Georgy. She has high spirits, is extremely
clever, and has powers of fascination it is not
possible to resist. Her first marriage has
been very unfortunate. Her husband has
proved selfish and careless. He is a con-
firmed invalid, and, going to Italy for his
health, bids his wife stay at home that the ex-
pense may be lessened. James Erskine has
long known her, and worships her at a respect-
ful distance. Their friendship is interrupted
by an act of petulance on the lady's part, and,
while indignant at her caprice, he is cast by
an accident more into Georgy's society. He
is won by her sweet temper and the language
of her large, loving eyes. They have been
talking of marriage, and Georgy is piqued by
his apparent unconcern :

She got up quickly, and going to the window, sat down
there, and said, " It was very foolish of me : but I shall
make myself quite happy at Grainthorpe: I am not going
to marry at all."

"Not?"

" No."

She did not see him half smile at her effort to brave it
out unconcernedly. She had never looked so childlike as
when she uttered that deliberate decision, No ; and she was
too unconcerned to look at him. He sat down beside her
in the window, and bent very near her. He had bent down
so once before; and her heart beat as it had done once
before, by the piano at the Grange. There was so much
deference, and so much gentle respect in his manner, and
yet it was so calmly assured—it always fascinated and mas-
tered her.

" Do you love no ono, then ?"
He took her hand; but his sentence appeared so com-
pletely finished, that she drew back, and snatched her
hand away. It seemed as if he were cross-questioning her
at pleasure. For one instant he looked at her as she
crimsoned, and her eyes grow angry and full of tears; then
he said, quite humbly:
" Could you ever be my wife? Do you love me enough?"
She did not lift her eyes, and, as if the words were very
difficult to speak, she said: " lou know I do."

Their engagement is for a few days kept
secret, and meanwhile they again meet Con-
stance, now free through her husband's
death. Ignorant of Erskine's changed posi-
tion, she passionately asserts her dominion
over him, and makes Georgy the confidant of
her hopes. All this part of the story is written
with marvellous skill, the buoyant passion of
Constance effectively contrasting with the sad
despair of her listener. Georgy's decision is
soon taken. She bids Erskine farewell, and,
with a hope to still the restless craving in her
breast, consents to marry her old suitor, now
returned from abroad. Her subsequent life,
so still and resigned, is exquisitely described.

* A Lost Love. By Ashford Owen. 1 vol. London: lfezdth
end elder.

AUG. 25, 1855.

The closing chapters of the book have never
been surpassed for delicate pathos.
None but a woman could have written this
beautiful story, and the name of Ashford
Owen, like that of Currer Bell, has probably
been adopted to suggest male authority with-
out positively asserting it. Whether it pro-
ceeds from a new pen is more than we can
say. The design is highly poetic, and the
execution masterly, but we do not recognise
the style of any established author. It is a
tale at once so moving and winning, so natural
and romantic, so certain to raise all the finer
and better sympathies of the reader's nature,
that it would suffice of itself to put to shame
Dr. Cumming's harsh censure of fiction. The
book is not of a kind, perhaps, to acquire
rapid popularity, but the deep, pure sentiment,
admirable style, and composition, will win for
it, we imagine, a lasting place in English fix
tion, as one of the truest and most touching
pictures even drawn of woman's love.
Marthesi* is a very real story, somewhat
in Mr. Dickens's vein. But that Dr. Cum-
ming hates all fiction alike, it would delight
him to hear that all the misfortunes of the
heroine are owing to her perusal of a romance
from a circulating library. She is the daugh-
ter of a village vicar, and, desiring to be a
heroine, falls in love with a man who cruelly
ill-uses her, and reduces her to a state of the
greatest misery and distress. The tale is
coarse in texture, but extremely like fact, and
related with considerable talent.

Thorney Hall t has (been overlooked by
us so long that it is only necessary now to say
that we concur in the praise which has been
given to it by other critics. It illustrates the
success of high-spirited resolve. The lost
inheritance of an old family is won back by
the honourable striving of one of its junior
members ; and the tale is mainly occupied
with a narrative of his efforts, in the course of
which his character is developed.

Glaucu s ; or, the Wonders of the Shore. By the
Rev. C. Kingsley. London : Bell and Daldy.
SYDNEY SMITH tells us somewhere in his memoirs
how one of his illiterate parishioners of Foston once
called upon him, and in the course of conversation
admitted that he had been much engaged in reading
a new book. His excellent rector, anxious to discover
the tenor of his studies, and perhaps curious in that
distant part of the world to find out the new book,
kindly inquired its name. "Oh," said the Squire,
4' It's a capital book I assure you. I have been
"vastly entertained with it, and should certainly re-
" commend you to get it. It's called the Arabian
" Nights Entertainments' !"

Such precisely is the position in which Mr. Kings-
ley stands with regard to natural history. He has
taken up the subject himself of late, and desires with
all the ardour and assiduity of his nature to impress
everybody else with a love for that study with which
most people' save himself had some acquaintance
previously. In this little book, " Glaucus," he has
appropriated the wonders of the seashore to himself,
and follows his subject out with the persistence of a
sportsman insisting upon taking you across the
ploughed furrows and over fields of turnips after his
" stray bird," till you are so worn out and fatigued that
you would infinitely prefer to his turnips and choice
pheasant the humbler but more certain and
amusing work of rabbits and terriers. We question
very much if scientific pursuits can be forwarded by
works like " Glaucus " It is an agreeable, entertain-
ing, little book, but it contains mere drawing-room
knowledge, admirable, no doubt, for young ladies fresh
from potiehomanie, but comparatively useless for any
real purpose of information. Moreover,in all this class
of books there is an air of pretension about the tone
which leads you at once to believe that they are,
as Goethe says, written less with the desire to instruct
us than to inform us that the writer himself knows
something. Yet in Mr. Kingsley's books some ex-
cellencies are commonly to be found, and we note
here an earnest, truthful passage on the vacuity of
seaside occupations in general, and the benefits of a
more reasonable employment of the time :

You are going down, perhaps, by railway, to pass your
usual six weeks at some watering-place along the coast, and
as you roll along think more than once, and that not over-
cheerfully, of what you shall do when you get there. You
are half•tired, halfashanied, of making one more in the
`• ignoble army of idlers," who saunter about the cliffs.
and sands, and quays ; to whom every wharf is but a
" wharf of Lethe," by which they rot " dull as the oozy
weed." You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A

• Martha. A Sketch from Life. I vol. London : Hope
and Co.
+ Manley Halt A Story of an Old Family. By Holme Lee.
London : Smith and Fidel.