The Press.
London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

I

880 THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 11, 1.58.

the good services of the Meerut Volunteer Horse,
better known as the Khakee Ressalah, or " earth-
coloured squadron." The brief narrative of their
achievements will repay the trouble of perusal,
and is altogether an acceptable addition to the
Indian literature of the day. We have not room
for many extracts, but the following illustrations
of the helplessness of Englishmen in a mass, and
their thorough independence of character as
individuals, are too striking to be omitted. We
give precedence to the former example :

At 1 Infra, we heard of the arrival in a neighbouring
village of reinforcements from Meorut, two llorse Artillery
guns, and a party of earbineers, who had orders to hold
the (That for us. They had been marching, like on. selves,
all night; but not having any of the Meerut district
officer► with them, and the Ranghur village of Kiwai, at
which they halted, being badly affected, they had nothing
to eat. When I rode over in the evening, the soldiers
had been starving for nearly twenty four hours ; but
English soldiers are wonderfully helpless as to foraging,
bivouacking, and cooking, unless the commissariat is
complete. lat once entered the village to arrest the head
men, telling them that they would be paid if they brought
food, and their houses fired if they did not. Seeing a
couple of calves careering about, I seized one, and one of
my orderlies another : these we presented to the Car-
bineers, who helplessly remarked, "that they could not
do anything with them, as they had no knives to cut them
up with." Imagine a Zouave, with a lung sword at his
side, making such a speech !

The other refers to Mr. John Cmeroft Wilson,
one of the most intelligent and resolute officers of
the Bengal Civil Service :

The hero, Maurice Delamere, the son of a stern
father and an indulgent mother, is mentally and
personally, as a child, and afterwards as a man,
almost all that can be desired. Unfortunately,
he is deeply tainted with both moral and phy-
sical cowardice of that peculiar and uncertain
sort which betrays itself chiefly by shyness and
concealment in one class of difficulties, and in
want of presence of mind in another. Thus he
prevaricates through habitual dread of his father,
though certain to he instantly tbund out and
punished, and runs away at the threatening as-
pect of a cow, but immediately afterwards strikes
a bigger boy than himself for sneering at him.
At Eton he endures a variety of torments, and
severe bodily pain, caused by an accident, with
the fortitude of a martyr, but makes no stand
against bullying till it is too late, and never ac-
quires the gift of making the right explanation
at the right time. His chief enemy is a boy
named Grenville, whom he has struck as we have
mentioned, and who pursues hint through his
school career with a relentless hatred which,
though it may exist at that age, is not then
usually manifested in the manner the author
would lead us to believe. From this and from some
other indications we arc inclined to suspect that
his ideas of Eton are not drawn from actual ex-
perience either of that or of any other public
school. Schoolboys are certainly brutal and
mischievous enough, and, through the desire to
reach the tender fibre of some stoical fag who
will neither cry nor tell his sisters' names, or
through some absurd sentiment of outraged
upper-school dignity, they may be led into bar-
barities of the same class as those which some-
times bring merchant captains under the cogni-
zance of a Liverpool jury; but their offences are
seldom those of meanness and cunning revenge,
and it seems to us a violation of probability to
describe a sixth-form boy at Eton scheming
to get an obnoxious " sap" into disgrace,
by tbrging in his style a caricature of the
authorities and bringing it under the eye of a
master. Grenville, indeed, is almost " a Borgia
or a Catiline " ; he combines all the attractive-
ness and manly qualities of Steerforth with the
perfidy of Blifil, and is one of the impossible
monsters who, though apparently necessary for
the purposes of novelists, are luckily as excep-
tional to most people's experience as the other
phenomena mentioned in Pope's couplet.—On
leaving Eton, in consequence of an injury in-
flicted-by Grenville, and which causes the latter's
expulsion, Maurice is driven by his father into
the army as a means of eradicating his fault, and
shows his weakness by yielding. He is wounded
in the Peninsula, where he is understood to have
somewhat distinguished himself, but on his
return on sick leave, resolutely refuses to make
his services the ground of an application for an
appointment which as a younger son it is de-
sirable for him to obtain ; and dawdles away his
time at home, keeping his father in a state of
chronic irritation, and himself the prey to a
despondency which no one can account for. He
mixes a little in society, and forms the acquain-
tance of a lady, Isabella, and her cousin,
Eugenia—the former, who is generally disliked,
he cultivates for the sake of her conversation,
while with the latter, who is young, unformed,
but clever and intrinsically worthy, he gradually
becomes fascinated, and eventually finds his feel-
ings returned. The knot of the story consists in
the fact that Isabella—who soon falls in love
with Maurice, though against her judgment—is
the sister of his old foe Grenville, and that the
latter is Grenville's affianced wife, though, on
account of his absence, the engagement is not yet
made public. Isabella is divided between her
allegiance to her brother, whom she has pro-
mised to watch over his betrothed, and her feel-
ing for Maurice, to whose happiness with
Eugenia she is quite ready to sacrifice her own
attachment. She decides tbr her brother, and
succeeds in breaking off the acquaintance of the
lovers. Matters become still more complicated
by the determination of Isalxlla's mother, Lady
Amelia, who is of the "manwuvring" sort, to fix
Maurice for her son-in-law, and by Maurice's
suspicion that he has really won the lady's affec-
tions, and his consequent opinion that he ought
to marry her. At this juncture Grenville, who
has had a long and dangerous illness abroad,
returns to England to claim his bride, and Mau-
rice, invited to his house by Lady Amelia,
accepts, in order to ascertain whether his suspi-

One of the most active and energetic assistants in this
duty was J. C. W—, e: judge of Moradabad. He had
come to Meerut after the mutiny at that station, sur-
rounded by about thirty sowars of the tith Irregular Itegi•
went, over whom he exercised an extraordinary influence.
They were men of the most dangerous class, Pathan Mus-
sulmans of liohilcurl. Yet W—, refusing to join our
volunteers, rode about the country with these highly-
suspicious characters, making them escort treasure, or
bang criminals, as might be required. That they could be
treacherous as the rest of their class was proved by the
treason of Nusseer Khan before mentioned ; and after the
taking of Delhi, numerous letters filled with treasonable
conspiracies, and plans for attacking Meerut, were found
in the King's office, written by Kaim Khan, one of W—'s
principal native officers.
W— is one of those men whose labours fora quarter
of a century have, as far as his own fame and fortune is
concerned, been hearly thrown away; whereas his energy
and abilitr, if engaged in any of our colonies, would have
won for him a position and a name.

Of Mr. Winter's pleasant little volume on
Burmah it is unnecessary to say more than that
it is an agreeable digest of the more voluminous
works of preceding writers, such as Mason,
Bigandet, and Snodgrass. To those who are un-
acquainted with the labours of these well-known
authors, we can very honestly recommend Mr.
Winter's " Six Months in Burmah."

dons with regard to Isabella are correct The
latter conceals her kelings, and the result is that
a full explanation between Maurice and Eurrenia
takes place. Grenville, though unaware oethis,
has discovered the cause of Maurice's secret
despondency, and establishes it as a permanent
"raw." (It is, after all, nothing more than the
fact that in his first action, the storm of liatlajos,
he had started aside at the explosion of a m►ne,
and entered last, instead of at the head of h►.s
storming party.) Ile is grossly and repeatedly
insulted by Grenville, but, owing to a prom►se
exacted by Eugenia, returns home without
attempting to obtain the satisfaction he now
burns to exact. Meantime, Eugenia, unable,
after Maurice's declaration of love, to endure the
thought of marriage with Grenville, flies at the
eleventh hour from the house, and takes ref►►ge
with a friend near London. Here she is found
by her lover, and, Grenville having had a relapse
of his illness on hearing of her flight, she is
received at Framleigh by Maurice's family as his
future wife. On the eve of their marriage, how-
ever, Grenville, whose revenge has only been in
abeyance, rises from a sick-bed to make a last
attempt to force his now successful rival to a
duel, but on his arrival at Framleigh bursts a
bloodvessel from rage, and is obliged to be nursed
in the house. While he lies there, it takes fire,
and Maurice saves Grenville from the flames at
the risk of his own life and at the cost of severe
physical suffering. But the latter is past re-
covery, and leis last act is that of reconciliation
with :Maurice, whose marriage with Eugenia of
course follows.

An abridged analysis like the above, though it
necessarily does injustice to the characters, is no
bad test of the mechanism of a story. Transac-
tions over which we glide easily in the fascinating
style of a good novelist, are more rigidly weighed
when presented in their crude form. There is
much the same difference between the two aspects
of them as there is beween the accounts ofa bank
in the report of its directors, and the same
accounts in the unvarnished exposure ofa judicial
inquiry. Viewed in such a light, "Framleigh
Hall " presents not a few improbabilities. As is
the case with so many other novels, the story
turns, in many parts, on misunderstandings
which a few words of explanation would have set
right, and, however great the moral cowardice
of Maurice may have been, it is difficult to
believe that they could in all cases have re-
mained unaltered. The complete misapprehen-
sion of his son's character by the elder Dclamere.
who is represented as a man of ability, is also
somewhat remarkable, as is also the vicar's non-
interference in the young man's destination. To
the want of likelihood in some of the Eton scenes
we have already alluded. But a more flagrant
instance of the same fault is 31am-ice's acceptance.
under any circumstances, of an invitation to the
house of a man whom he knew to be his bitterest
enemy, and whom he knew himself to be anxious
to supplant,—and not less so is the violation 01
the law of hospitality in Grenville's own
behaviour. Such matters as these prevent our
being carried along with the author as cordially
as we should like. The hero's character is, as we
have intimated, one for which many persons
Rdl
find it difficult to entertain any sympathy, and it
must be considered wonderful that the bold
attempt of engaging even interest in his pro-
ceedings should meet with any success. Though
far from being a mean or abject coward, there is
something in his moral even more than
his
physical weakness, and in his habit of coveringhis face with his hands under strong emotion,
which to many readers will be provocative of
nothing but irritation and disgust. The author s
ingenuity has been severely taxed to show how
his hero could possibly be attractive to the
two ladies who were in love with him, and
the cleverness with which this is managed dam'
not prevent our feeling a certain degree of com:
paasion for the fair Eugenia not usually bestowed
on young ladies when they are united. to
man of their choice ; for, though Alaunce s c?u-
duct at the fire, like his endurance of pain during
his early Mums, is in every way admirable, Yet
.
we cannot feel that his character is really
changed, and could hardly trust him in a case of
midden peril or emergency. The author succeed,
best in the delineation of female character.
the
Those of Lady Delaniere and her sister arc not
far removed from common types, but they are
clearly and freshly worked out. Eugenia is

I. Framleigh Hall. Three Vols. London :
Hurst and Illackett.
2. Rita. An Autobiography. Two Vols. Lon-
don : Bentley.

1. A REALLY interesting novel is so rare an event
in our experience, and forms so pleasant a relief
to the monotony of books which can only be got
through by a severe moral and mental effort, that
when we meet with one we are inclined to forgive,
in consideration of the amusement afforded, many
faults which a purely critical eye would be bound
not to pass over. Thus, "Framleigh Hall" is
by no means a perfect book, but we have read
it through from beginning to end without stop-
ping, which is more than we can say of any novel
of this year; in fact, it is so long since such a
thing happened that we have almost forgotten
thn. circumstance. The merits of the book seem
to consist, first, in the style, which is in the nar-
rative part concise, easy, and fluent, while in
many scenes and reflective passages it rises into
eloquence ; next, in the characters, the more
conventional of which arc freshly and poetically
presented, while the newer ones arc conceived
with an unusual degree of originality, and exe-
cuted with much grace and care; and thirdly, in
the ilia that, up to a late period in the story, the
fate of the personages in whom we are most in-
terested is still doubtful enough to insure the
continued curiosity of the reader. We have,
however, a duty to perform to the latter which
obliges us to warn him that the principal cha-
racter of the tale—an important point—is one
by no means certain to engage universal sym-
pathy and interest ; indeed, it is possible that
many persons whom our recommendation might
induce to send lbr it would find iu this respect an
insuperable objection.