The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-02 00:00:00

NEW NOVELS.

1. Orphans. By the Author of " Margaret
Maitland." One Vol. London: Hurst
and Blackett.
2. The Year Nine. By the Author of " Mnry
Powell." One Vol. London : Hall, Vir-
tue, and Co.
3. The White House by the Sea. A Love Story.
By M. Bethain-Edwards. Two Vole.
London: Smith and Elder.
4. Clara Leicester. By Captain G. de In Poor
Beresford. Three Vols. London : Hurst
and Blackett.

1. THE authoress of " Margaret INlaitland" is
one of the few female novelists of the present
day who have the art of describing their cha-
racters with impartiality. Most lady writers
whose works come befure us seem unable to
avoid identifying themselves with the hero or
heroine, and making their wrongs and mis-
fortunes a sort of personal question. This
mode of proceeding is apt to grow hysterical,
and to affect the reader with the same sensa-
tions that he would experience if conversing
with a living specimen of the sex accustomed
to retail her grievances to all listeners suffi-
ciently complaisant to attend to them. In the
Orphans," however, even more than in other
works by the same author, there is a certain
dignity and feminine reserve which impresser
us with the feeling that the narratrix has
learned to see herself with the eyes of others,
and is just as much alive to her own faults and
weaknesses as to those which she observes in
the characters of her friends. The idea of the
"Orphans" is original. The moral conveyed
is merely that

There's a Providence that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them as we will.
Clara Nugent, left rich-and an orphan at eight-
and-twenty, having had a disappointment in
love which has made her renounce all idea of
marriage, conceives the idea of finny/ her
house with her poor relations. They all come
(upon trial), and we are presented with a cle-
verly-drawn portrait-gallery of very disagree-
able people. Miss Nugent finds them as dis-
agreeable as we do, and forthwith turns her
house into a receptacle for orphan children,
whom she promises herself to educate and pro-
vide for. She hears that her former lover,
whom, it seems, she rejected for love of her
own parents, is to be married to a dear friend,
and undergoes some natural pangs as the
wedding-day approaches. All, however, is set
right by finding that the bridegroom is not
her lover, but a relative of the same name, and
the result is a renewal of her former engage-
ment. Of course, her philanthropic schemes
fall to the ground, and their failure enforces
the lesson we have above indicated. The plea-
sure we feel in reading this ravel does not
arise from any interest felt in the plot, which
is rather improbable in its main outlines and.
rather hackneyed in its denouement; but the
characters are described with so mush insight
and keenness of observation that we read on
for the sake of their analysis, without caring
much what is to become of them in the end.
Miss Greenfield is perhaps the most agree-
able, Mrs. Herbert the most delicately-finished,
portrait. The authoress promises a continua-
tion of the story, and this we shall look for
with interest, though it is not very evident
that there is scope for its further develop-
ment.

2. The author of " Mary Powell" has
achi-ved a popularity which many writers of
a more ambitious stamp doubtless despise,
but the causes of which they would do well to
study. One of these causes is, no doubt, the
neatness and tact shown in her (?) way of

is

telling a story. She never dwells too long on
a sumac incident, and all the scenes and oc-
currences described contribute in some manner
to the development of the plot. There is no
great originality in the conception of cha-
rac:er, but, on the other hand, there is an
avoidance of those puzzling and abnormal
types which so many writers affect, and an
adherence to the old sources of emotion—the
loves, fears, and ambitions of humanity—which
always interest when treated with oven a mo•
derate amount of skill and rightness of feel-
ing. Hofer is the hero of " The Year Nine,"
and the characters of the chief actors in that
glorious but unfortunate affair are neatly deli-
neated, and supported by a vivid and appro-
priate background of Tyrolese scenery. The
book will furnish an hour's pleasant reading
to all who wish to refresh their recollections
of this episode of history, and may perhaps
send a tourist or two to Innsbruck and the
gorge of the Eisaeh.
3. " The White House by the Sea " is a
first attempt, and not a very vigorous one, but
the authoress has much sympathy with what
is good and noble, and is not by any means
destitute of inventive power. What she seems
to require is a wider knowledge of life and a
more extended sphere of observation. The
most prominent character in her novel is a fasci-
nating gentleman who manages to make three
young ladies in love with him at once, and is
finally e irried off by the worst of them. The
other two are so soft as to forgive him, and the
heroine, who tells her own story, seems to
offer the other cheek to the smites, and friend-
ship in the place of love, with very Christian,
but very improbable, humility. The tale in
its chief " motives" reminds us of that very
charming book " A Lost Love "—sufficiently
so to make it worth whsle for the authoress
before us to observe the manner in which
" Ashford Owen " has treated some very
similar characters and situations. In " The
White House by the Sea" a degree of cares-
sing familiarity establishes itself between the
male and female characters which is hardly,
we should hope, a reflex of the manners pre-
valent in the authoress.'s own circle. " Kiss-
ing" and " stroking of hair" take place on
the very slightest provocation, and are appa-
rently supposed to have no meaning whatever.
The book is well written and has many good
points, but the characters are too much like
those pretty annelids which shrink and retire
when hurt, but expand again with that insen-
sibility to damage characteristic of a low order
of vitality.
4. On the strength of a familiarity with
polite society, and of a tour in Spain, Captain
Beresford has written a novel of the very
weakest and trashiest character it has ever
been our misfortune to read. Nearly the
whole of the first volume is devoted to the
account of the travels of a fashionable party—
of the very highest rank—from Gibraltar to
Ronda, where the author thinks it worth while
to give complete accounts of the city, scenery,
and bull-fights. The incident properly be-
longing to the novel is an intrigue, followed
by an elopement, which of course leads to
most distressing results in the remainder of
the book. Captain Beresford is not like the
hero of " Sybil "—he does not " stand by his
order." Mr. G. M. W. Reynolds himself never
described the aristocracy in a more heartless,
vicious, and foolish light than the author of
these volumes. They show as little wit in
their conversation as honesty in their lives,
and the few who take the charitable and vir-
tuous line are as weak as the others are
wicked. Captain Beresford may have seen a
good deal of life, but clearly not of that " life "
lie has attempted to describe. We do hops
that before be ventures a second appearance
on the stage of fiction, he will study more
carefully, and delineate more accurately, the
manners and customs prevalent in that society
of which he is so profoundly ignorant

General Report on the Administration of the
Several Presidencies and Provinces of British
India during the Year 1855-56. Calcutta :
Published at the Gazette Office.
THE first of the annual Illue•books on the
Indian Presidencies has just been issued from
the Gazette office at Calcutta. It is in two