The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-21 00:00:00

64

it never barked again; the other dog followed,—it was
harder to manage, and gave one dismal yell as it yielded
its life.
Higgins now had some misgivings. " Bull! Fangs !
at hint! at him !" shouted he from without. All
silence. "Dogs ! devil ! at him, I say !" Not a word
anywhere. Then he fired his remaining pistol straight in
the direction where he had seen the man leap ; from hill
to hill the sound reverberated, and then died away into
perfect silence.
Our readers will see by these passages that
the authoress of " The Slave Son' has de-
scriptive merits of her own. Her views upon
slavery are tempered with a strong sense of
the difficulties with which "race" and " class"
have environed the question. While she is
decidedly opposed to " slavery," her knowledge
of the position of the planters and her own
colonial sympathies combine to present to us
the proprietors in a much less odious light
than they are generally looked upon. Not the
least remarkable part of this very interesting
volume are the dialogues in which St. Hilaire
Cardon mocks at the British humanitarians.
We extract a short bit from one of his sar-

-•-
castle tirades :
Mr. Cardcm had it all his own way; it was useless for
Mr. Dorset to oppose a remark before the vehemence, the
power, the eloquence of expression and gesture, which
eminently belonged to the planter.
" Prejudice of caste ?—parbleu! they have none—oh no !
And pray what is that stand-off reserve which keeps so
effectual a barrier between the moneyed man and the
panper,—the noble and the trader,—the master and the
servant? Why, you know right well that you would rather
die than shake hands before company with the footman
who waits at your table, though he may have saved your
life in the morning."
" Sir ! Mr. Carden 1"
" Bah ! I am not speaking personally, I tell you. I only
say you because I have no one else to say it to ; you stand
for the English nation, and you must listen to me. How
do you treat your servants ? Why, as if they had been
created merely for your convenience and pleasure. Yon
give them wages scarcely adequate to provide them with
the decent clothing you require them to appear in. Yon take
the health and the strength of their youth ; and how do you
reward them in their old age? Do yon pension them and
support them, as we do our old negroes? No ! you leave
them to rot. What feeds the abominations of the English
streets at night? Servants ont of place, sempstreeses, and
others who have no future before them. Who prey upon
them? Why, I tell you, the most licentious estate of the
most licentious planter never presented one4handredth of
the nightly horrors of one street of your Babylon. Oh no !
there is no slave-hunting, nor slave-dealing, nor slave-
buying, nor slave-mnrdering in dear moral England! and
that among not these half-brute baboons, but. just among
God's loveliest creatures—women, soot among us to lead
us to heaven. Pray where are your saints, your excessively
virtuous saints, that they suffer these things to be ?"
While we cordially praise the freshness and
talent of " The Slave Son," we must caution
our readers against supposing that the work
N equal in ability to " Uncle Tom." Mrs.
Stowe excelled in giving language to her va-
rious characters ; and it is in that respect that
Mrs. Wilkins decidedly fails. She is almost
totally deficient in dramatic art ; but, on the
other hand, her descriptions are very elo-
quent, and her matter has much novelty for
readers of fiction, though much of it may he
familiar to persons acquainted with the West
Indies. But, with its shortcomings, " The
Slave Son " may be strongly recommended as
one of the most readable fictions that have
been published for a long time.

Cobilenic Policy the Internal Enemy of England.
The Penes Society, its Combativeness, fte. Ity
Alexander Somerville, " One who has
Whistled at the Plough." London : Hard-
wicke.
As the events of which this little miscellany
chiefly treats occurred a long tint (almost ten
years) since, when King Louis Philippe was on
the throne of the barricades, before England
had borne her Great Duke to the grave, when
the Anti-Corn League was in its vigour and
the Corn Laws yet existed, it may be as well
for the benefit of our younger readers to men-
tion who Mr. Somerville, the author of this
work, is, and what are his antecedents in life,
town to the
comparative
time of the
in the Scots
ical discus-
; committed
this offence
flogged, but
by military
moral base-

for, tough he was then well kn(
world, he has since lived in c(
obseu , optavAle, nt the
.t.
Refor 4 14 li ~..i Itifiri•alc Robber n
ore .i.j111:7-tiit: -1.,..4.4 he politii
sio,'"(l. j 3 --) ••• .. :o doing
a b 7,1`.,..,•••7%.,...._,.: 1- ,',, k e ; fort
t
he 4 l -I''''''T;Z:o`el.,..., • ' I and fl
his 4,1 • , •; - 4.1. 7- ~ rented I
law, ;.*,,,--.;41, %-•: .'• •: , • die:.' •f •
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11 a ciVirShl2 2;