The Press.
London, England, 1857-04-18 00:00:00

APRIL 18, 1857.

Sittraturt.

Dynevor Terrace ; or, Ms Clue of Life. By the
Author of " The Heir of Redclyffe." Two
Vols. London : J. W. Parker and Son.
THE authoress of this book is one of the most
fortunate of modern novelists. Her works are
evidently penned with great facility, and they
command a price in the literary mitrket which
appears marvellous when compared with their
modest pretensions. We have heard that a
thousand pounds was offered for " Daisy
Chain" and refused. We doubt whether so
large a sum was ever offered for a child's book
before; for it is a peculiarity of these produc-
tions that they are but a superior kind of
children's books. Not only do they want
depth and strength, but they are deficient in
the constructive skill which can dispose simple
materials in a symmetrical form. They have
none of that elaboration which the true artist
in every department feels to be essential to
the perfection of his works.

In " Dynevor Terrace " tile characters are
about three times as numerous, and the inci-
dents ten times as many, as an author of more
artistic ability would think it necessary to
introduce. At the beginning of the story an
elaborate pedigree is printed to explain the
relationship which different sets of characters
bear to each other. They embrace three
generations. We have, to begin with, a grand-
mama, two uncles, an aunt, and four cousins,
with numerous collateral relatives and con-
nections, with old servants and young depen-
dants. Thus, the aunt, Mrs. Ponsonby, has a
sister, Miss Ponsonby, and a husband, Mr.
Ponsouby, who when Mrs. Ponsouby is re-
moved from the scene marries a senorita at
Lima, and does nothing but plague his
daughter by his first marriage, Mary Pon-
sonby. Then one of the uncles, Lord Ormers-
field, has a sister-in-law, Lady Conway, who
has a family of her own, and who entertains a
►laughter of her husband by a former mar-
riage, and who employs a butler, one Mr.
Delaford, who is made to play a conspicuous
part in the story. Now, as Lord Ormersfield
is first cousin to the first Mrs. Ponsonby, it
becomes rather difficult to discover what is the
precise degree of relationship between the
daughter of this first Mrs. Ponsonby and
the daughter of Lady Conway's husband by
his first marriage, Miss Isabel Conway; and
still more difficult to find out in what degree
of cousinhood this Isabel Conway stands to
Mr. James Frost, the grandson of Lord Ormers-
field's mother's sister, the venerable Mrs.
Frost.

The incidents are as tangled as the charac-
ters. One of the uncles, Mr. Oliver Frost,
spends a lifetime in Peru to amass a fortune,
that he may repurchase his family estates ; he
comes home to buy them, and finishes by
losing them again, through the bankruptcy of
his foreign enterprises. Mary Ponsonby comes
home from Peru with her mother, then goes
out again to see her father, then returns when
she hears of his marriage, then crosses the
Atlantic once more, and finally once more
returns. As for the young people, they rarely
seem to know their own minds ; they fall into
love and fall out again. Whether Lord Fitz-
jocelyn will marry Mary Ponsouby, or Isabel
Conway, or Clara Frost, is for along time kept
in suspense ; and the like uncertainty is main.
tained whether the little maid-servant Char.
lotte will ultimately be the prize of the fine
Mr. Delaford, or the humble Tom Madison.

This crowding of characters, and cross-pur-
pose kind of action, produces an effect which
we know not how otherwise to describe than
as "higgledy-piggledy." The reader's mind is
not permitted to repose on a pretty piece of
description, or a pleasing passage of narra-
tive. If he skips a dozen lines, the chance is
that he misses a circumstance which changes
the current of the story. Somebody appears
unexpectedly on the carpet, or some one sud-
denly dies, or something unlooked fur happens.
We never met with any books which had so
much of what on the stage is called " busi-
ness " in them—that is, movement without
any other purpose than for a time to fill the
scene.