The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

sufficiently true to present a reflection of the
times in which the action passes.
" Nanette and her Lovers" must have been
suggested to Mr. Gwynne, we suspect, by the
pretty ballad of "Jeannette and Jeannot."
The sentiment is the same, and in the inci-

dents the misgivings of poor Jeannette,
" I fear that you'll forget all the promises you've made,"
are touchingly realised. Jeannette through-
out the volume is the loving, trusting, true
hearted little peasant girl, and Jeannot the
bold, confident soldier, rising to high rank under
Napoleon's command, forgetting poor Jean-
nette, and taking a tine lady fin• hts bride. The
narrative in all its details is as simple as the
leading idea, but this simplicity carries with
it a conviction of truth, and is accompanied
by so much genuine feeling as never to seem

The revolutionary storm which swept over
France, and the foreign wars which succeeded
to it, are carefully indicated by their effects
on rural fife. A sketch of the drilling of na-
tional guards in Normandy affords occasion
for presenting a figure in the foreground of a
female drummer :

Each regiment arrived with its drummer; that of Saen,
the strongest of the whole, having two drummers and a
sapeur! The latter was the village blacksmith, who
filled the post in virtue of his leather apron ; which
carried it over the woodcutter's axe, because the apron was
far too large for the woodcutter, who, being a good-
natured fellow, figured in the ranks, and gave up his axe
to the strong-armed blacksmith.
One of the drummers of Seen was a most remarkable
person ; and teacher of drum-beating to those of all the
neighbouring corps.
This extraordinary drummer was neither more nor less
than—an old woman !
Yes! an old woman : and there she stood in her fete
dress, snowy-white cap, and smart black sabots; her drum
by her side, and her black drum-sticks held in true scien-
tific style. l.a mere Mieot was • drummer's daughter,
born in the regiment to which her father was attached ; in
which she afterwards married the smartest drummer, and
brought forth four boys, who in due time actually became
drummers in their mamma's native corps.
A drum had been la mere Mica's first plaything ; she
hail been dandled, carried about, spoiled, and petted by
drummers; drum-boys had been her playmates; beating
the drum had been her show-off accomplishment, and her
first effort at learning : in short, la mere Micut and a drum
seemed destined for each other.
When she became drummer in the national guard she
was a merry old widow ; dwelling with an old bachelqr
brother at Seen. She was really merry ; as merry as a
cricket, which little brown thing she somewhat resembled,
being small, thin, light, active, and bunt:tat.
La mere Micot was near seventy; hale and strong : a
kind of ambulating mummy. Her tanned face was
covered with wrinkles and puckers, after the fashion of a
walnut; her mouth fell in for lack of teeth ; but her fine
black eyes burnt like coals, with all the fire of seventeen.
Her snow-white hair was turned off her forehead and sur-
mounted by her Norman cap, which she had decorated
with a tricoloured riband and cockade. Her little smait,
thin, blue-stockinged legs were firmly planted on her
sabots; her short scarlet petticoat was striped with broad

black stripes.
It must not be supposed that la mere Micot was a
masculine woman ; not at all: she had the Frenchwoman's
gift of being able to do man's work in a feminine manner,
without disgusting the bystanders by affecting masculine
attitudes and tones. La mere Micot beat her drum and
taught the same, to the best of her ability, as a matter of
course ; without setting up for a man, or neglecting her
knitting and spinning when she was "off duty."
As Jeannot, notwithstanding his courage, is
a vain silly fellow, the writer prettily moralises
on the pains which such persons take to get
up a sham :
Nanette had learned from her lover of his illness, and
of his present employment; all his accounts of himself
being greatly exaggerated with a view to produce an
effect.
To produce an effect!
Oh ! weakness of a tawdry mind ! What steps will not
such a mind take, to compass such an end?
To produce an effect !
What steps will not a vain man take ? what sacrifices will
he not snake ? what sins will he not commit, to try and
astonish his fellow-worms?
Oh ! man of vanity, despised by the wise ; hated by the
weak. in whom thou succeedest in raising envy; wherefore
dust thou so disquiet thyself—wherefore dost thou so lose
thyself, blind as thou art, for so poor, so dubious a gratifi-
cation as the admiration of mankind? a slave to others ;
seeking that which may be withheld after all thy restless
endeavours ?
Nanette, simple and full of love, read, trembled,
pitied, and adored, with all thetender passion of her gentle
heart.
The contrast between their two natures is
effectively drawn on occasion of the young
officer paying his first visit to his native place
after his success:—
The lieutenant fully enjoyed the pleasure of a good
supper, after having jolted along the whole day on the top
of a diligence in a cloud of dust.

401

The wino was good, cool, and refreshing; the food
well-dressed ; tharpentier drowsy, yet not too drowsy ;
the tire brisk ; and the autumn wind pleasantly moaning
without.
As lie ate he thought of Nanette, coming to the
resolution that he cared very little about her; that bhe
was much altered; that years and labours would not
improve her; and that she was in a grade of life tar
beneath him.
" If it was not for my father. 1 should never come near
the place again,- he said to himself, as he loaded his plate
with cream cheese and salad.
At that very moment Nanette's fond heart was
overflowing with love for him, as her weary head sunk on
her hard pillow ; and she thought how nuw orthy she was
of so kind and so noble a man as the lover of her girlish
days.
These extracts give a fair notion of Mr
Gwynne's style. It is tinged by affectation,
but some little mannerism may easily b
excused in a writer of so much talent. He
has been very successful in producing an
affecting simple story of love and war.

Autobiography of an Indian Army Surgeon
London : Bentley.
THIS is an autobiographical romance, in which
the fortunes of au Indian medical man are
described with evident knowledge, and in a
fresh vigorous style. An army surgeon gene-
rally leads a monotonous life—early provided
for, and rising by regular grades not so
the hero of this volume. What with episodes
of a Parisian education—quarters at an out-
station in the " Mofussil "—speculation and
ruin in Calcutta—opium-smuggling on the
Chinese coast—and a Punjab campaign—the
author has managed to crowd into 300 pages
an unusually large variety of characters and
events. Not all of these are, in the couven
tional sense of the word, " natural ;" yet na-
ture among certain classes of society assumes
strange forms, and he must be a bold painter
who should exaggerate in fiction the genuine
eccentricities of European existence in the
tropics.
A book of this kind, professedly a chapter
out of real life, seems to us au improved sub-
stitute for the hackneyed " novel " of the
old school, inasmuch as it admits a wider range
of topics and a closer approximation to the
ideas and feelings of ordinary men. The
danger is lest want of plan should be carried
too far, and the regular narrative Five place to
a mere desultory series of gossiping reminis-
cences. But fictions of this kind are hardly to
be tried by rules of art: if they amuse, and
sell, their object is accomplished.
Here is a sketch of the great lights of sur-
gical science at the Parisian hospitals some
five-and-twenty years ago :
Baron Dupuytreti was a little squat man, with a massive
under-jaw, a capacious skull, and eyes as piercing as
diamond chips. He bore a singular resemblance to Nupo.
Icon ;it was said he was a Jesuit—be that as it may, its
influence did not extend to cutting off lees and arms. An
old statute in connection with his office was that of a
hospital roll of bread (twisted " more Parisiuno," and much
like a junk chopped off the end of a hempen cable) and a
bottle of wine being placed at his disposal daily. The
baron, on leaving after his morning's duties, never omitted
to trudge off with the roll under his arm; the bottle of wine
he never took ; probably it was too enniberwmie.
Baron Larrey was the light of military surgery at Val de
trace. He was a little fussy man. It struck me that the
style of his surgery was behind the times; he adhered too
much to the horrors of the art, which some considered as
one result of the Russian campaign, in the miseries of
which the baron had his full share. He was invariably
followed in the ward by assistants carrying charcoal, irons
of all shapes and sizes, and a pair of bellows, for the perfor-
mance of the actual cautery, his favourite method of counter-
irritation. The heated iron was in constant use ; he scored
limbs and back-bones most unmercifully, and turned
therefrom to tell us an anecdote of the " grande armee "
and the Emperor, with which extraordinary man he was a
great favourite. He would bind up a fracture in dozens of
folds of sent-cloth, keeping in for many weeks the products
of inflammatory action, which on being opened would
display a nicely-united limb among a filthy accumulation.
Lisfranc presided over the surgical department at La
Pine. lie wee a noble-looking person of great energy and
courage, and &strong contrast in appearance to his medical
colleague I)r. Louis, whose researches into the nature of
pulmonary consumption were feelingly typified by the
narrow flat-chested physician, whose physical conformation
told too truly what had led him to the investigation. He
was a long, pale, hollow-breasted man, with high shoulders.
The same feeling led Laennec to that train of reasoning
which gave rise to the invention and use of the stethescope,
a simple wooden tube to listen through. In those days
it was a grand subject for ridicule. N.% hat a deal of wit re-
sulted from it! It was a wise generation that laughed at
poor Laennec, wha, like I)r. Louis, and before him, sunk
under the disease upon which they certainly threw mere
light than any men before or since.

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402

At the Sorbonne Gay Lussac lectured, that leviathan of ,
science, in little unprepossessing bulk. Besides these,
there were Cruveilhier, great in anatomy; and Orfila, the
great poison-chemist. These are men whose voices it is
something to have listened to. Each in his department
could get no higher—they {were planets around which a
body of student satellites revolved daily. Without de-
tracting from the admiration which such minds drew
from the ingenuous youth who listened to them, there was
one effect of such converse which could not be concealed—
namely, a devotion to the professional views of the teacher,
on account of the man who taught them. However credit-
able this may be to the affection, it is fatal to the progress,
of the physician ; and yet it is a feature of every school,
and of every age ; part and parcel of medical science,
perhaps of human nature.
There is a good scene farther on, where
the author, a stanch phrenologist, examines
a convict on his way to gaol, whose cerebral
development seems to belie his guilt. The in-
spection duly made, and proving its subject to
be endowed with all the cardinal virtues, that
of benevolence especially,—

I turned rather indignantly to the badge-holder in charge
of these convicts (most of whom looked as if deserving of
their fate), and requested to know what connection this old
man might have with such as these. This official had been
accustomed to the vernacular of new arrivals, and soon
arrived at my meaning. The prisoners were Thugs, con•
victed of lives spent in assassination, and this old man was
far before the others in " thuggee." He looked on
placidly, and listened to this accunt of him ; I expected an
indignant denial every moment by him, especially when it
was stated that the old man had tied the " fillet " round the
necks of some eleven hundred human beings. As I looked
at him again, with a phrenological eye, I was within an ace
of giving the lie to the native gentleman in charge, when
the old man muttered :
" Sutch-bat ! (or, ' just so!')"
He had no wish, then, to misrepresent matters; indeed,
he was unwilling to forego the renown he had acquired.
That night, Phrenology and I had a strong tussel ; and she
had much difficulty in re-establishing herself in my
estimation, for this specimen of the " mild Hindoo " had
given her the lie direct. I was not satisfied, therefore,
until I had had a further confidential talk with the vene-
rable Thug; and thereafter Phrenology came out immacu-
late, for I found that this old man, born with the best of
bumps, had been reared in the belief that to keep down an
increasing population was a good thing, and that every
Thug was sure to go to heaven, as his " thugging" fore-
fathers must have done before him. Old Baharee Lall, the
" Thug," therefore considered that his grey hairs were
going down with honour to the grave, and in the utmost
odour of sancity ; and it would have given him great satis-
faction to be permitted to add a few more victims to his
unexampled exploits ; but to this there were objections.
The book is clever, of no high merit, but
quite good enough to supply an evening's en-
tertainment.