The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, FEBRUARY 27, 1858.

210

Ido not know how you like your new subjects, Gut I
hear they are extremely content with their Prince and
Princess. I ought to wish your lordship joy of all your
prosperities, and of Mr. Fludd's baptism into the Catholic
or Universal Faith ; but I reserve public felicities for your
old Drawing-room in Leicester•felds. Private news we
have little but Lord Carmarthen's and Lord Cranborne's
marriages, and the approaching one of Lady Bridget Lane
and Mr. Tall-Match. Lord Holland has given Charles
Fox a draught, of an hundred thousand pounds, and it
pays all his debts, but a trifle of thirty thousand pounds,
and those of Lord Carlisle, Crewe, and Foley, who being
only friends, not Jews, may wait. So now any younger sou
may justify losing his father's and elder brother's estate on
precedent.
Neither Lord nor Lady Temple are well, and yet they
are both gone to Lord Clare's in Essex, for a week. Lord
Temple had a very bad fall in the Park, and lost his senses
for an hour. Yet, though the horse is a vicious one, he
has been upon it again. In short, there are no right-
headed people but the Irish !
As it is ancient good breeding not to conclude a letter
without troubling the reader with compliments, and as I
have none to send, I must beg your lordship not to forget
to present my respects to the Countesses of liarryruore
and Massarsene, my dear sieters in Loo. You may be sure
I am charged with a large parcel from Clivedon, where I
was last night. Except being extremely ill, Mrs. Clive is
extremely well ; but the tax-gatherer is gone off, and she
must pay her window lights over again ; and the road
before her door is very bad, and the parish won't mend it,
and there is some suspicion that Garrick is at the bottom
of it; so if you please to send a shipload of the Giant's
Causey by next Monday, we shall be able to go to Mr.
Bofey's rout at Kingston. The papers said she was to act
at Covent Garden, and she has printed a very proper
answer in the Evening Post. Mr. Rafter told me that
formerly when be played Luna in The Rehearsal, he never
could learn to dance the Hays, and at last he went to the
man that teaches grown gentlemen.
Miss Davis is the admiration of all London, but of me,
who do not love the perfection of what anybody can do,
and wish she had less top to her voice and more bottom.
However, she will break Millico's heart, which will not
break mine. Fierville has sprained his leg, and there is
another man who sprains his mouth with smiling on him-
self—as I have heard, for I have not seen him yet, nor a
fat old woman and her lean daughter, who dance with him.
London is very dull, so pray come back as soon as you
can. Mason is up to the ears in " Gray's I.ife ;" you will
like it exceedingly, which is more than you will do this
long letter. Well! you have but to go into Lady Nune-
ham's dressing-room, and you may read something ten
thousand times more pleasing. No, no ! you are not the
most to he pitied of any human being, though in the midst
of Dublin Castle.

In his old age he never seems to have lost
what may almost be called his methodical
uprightness. The debonair style of writing
belonged to him through life. And after a
thousand letters, the thousand and first has
as little the air of a composition as its earliest
predecessor. There is not a speck of ink on
his ruffles to the last ; and the most inveterate
writer and one of the greediest for fame of his
age, he still preserves the ease and apparent
carelessness of the amateur, as he did when
in his boyhood he travelled with Gray.

Charmione. A Tale of the Great Athenian

Revolution. By Edward A. Leatham, M.A.
Two Vols. London: Bradbury and Evans.
PROBABLY no kind of fiction is more difficult
to write than a classical novel ; for it requires
two qualities not often found in the same
person—the plod:lin:4 iindustry which can
collect and arrange innumerable small details,
and the strong and vivid imagination which
can breath life into this inert mass of archaeo-
logy, and endow its dry bones with character,
motion, and interest. We have had indus-
trious antiquarians, like Professor Becker,
who galvanize the skeleton of the past into a
variety of formal attitudes " characteristic of
the period," who do not suffer their hero to
pass his threshold or lift a fold of his toga
without adducing chapter and verse from
Atbemeus or Martial, and whose work will in
consequence seldom keep any human being
but a student cramming for an examination a
minute out of bed after his time. We have,
also, brilliant writers like Sir Bulwer Lytton,
who possess no attraction for the afore-
said student, but whose genius has thrown
around the crumbling walls and shattered
columns of an ancient city a spell like that
which attracts the traveller to the roofless
chambers of Kenilworth, or peoples with
visions not its own the lonely islet of Loch
Katrine. _ _

has attempted to combine the
ioth these classes of writers.
though not that of a Berlin
:nsive and generally accurate,
rally into the course of his
\t any undue or pedantic

obtrusion. We do not pretend to have tested
the whole of his costume by ancient authori-
ties, for in these cases the total impression
derived from a book is of more importance
than any justification which might be made
out from special scraps of scholarship. One
allusion, however, we may notice which ap-
pears erroneous. Sophocles is represented
as saying,—
Who knoweth, if this crimson dream of fate
Comes through the ivory or the ebon gate?

Why the "ebon gate"? Mr. Leatham, writing
of dreams, has perhaps nodded for a moment.
Homer, and we believe all other writers, re-
present the gate of true dreams as made of
horn.
Mr. Leatham's story commences with the
death of Pericles, after which occurs an
interval of twenty years, and closes with the
overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants by Thra-
sybulus. Its chief historical scenes are the
trial of the six generals who commanded in
the fleet at Arginusce, and the " reign of
terror" under Theramenes and Critias which
preceded the fall of the latter. Most of the
characters who figured prominently in that
eventful epoch are brought upon the canvas :
the political personages are presented in those
characters usually assigned to them ; but
Plato is described as the victim of an un-
requited attachment, and as betaking himself
to philosophy to console his disappointment.
The two principal female characters are Char-
mione (a dark beauty), married to Pericles, a
bastard son of the great statesman, and
Eucharis (a fair beauty), married to Archinus.
Both the husbands are generals at Arginusre ;
Archinus is reported drowned ; Pericles, one
of the six who are condemned, is supposed
to owe his death to the guilty passion of
Critias for Charmione. The love scenes are
the part of the book probably least in keeping
with the rest They are deemed indispensable
in a work meant for modern readers, but the
space they fill is far larger than would have
been allotted to them in the times to which
they relate ; if. indeed, they would have had
any space at all. In the life of an ancient
Athenian, friendship seems to have occupied
the place which love occupies in ours, hut
its phases would probably be found too un-
manageable for introduction into a modern
novel. The epoch selected by Mr. Leatham
is certainly a very interesting one, but we
doubt whether some sort of historical intro-
duction would not have been advisable to fit
the book for the average reader. who will pro-
bably have to turn up Grote or Thirlwall if he
wishes to comprehend the situation of affairs.
The book is written with spirit, and much
care has evidently been taken to study the
characters. The style is on the whole good,
though when the author uses such phrases as
" what guys " (supposed to be applied by
Athenian spectators to actors in the Dionysia)
—" coming the upright dodge"—" devil an
" obol shall he have,"—and makes Critias
upon ono occasion utter a hearty " d—n !" he
seems somewhat forgetful of the principles
which are usually supposed to preside over
the construction of historical novels. How-
ever, these blemishes are few and far between,
and we may congratulate Mr. Leatham on
having produced a readable and interesting
story with a very creditable amount of ad-
herence to classical proprieties.

The Three Chances. By the Authoress of ," The

Fair Carew." London : Smith and Elder.
" THE Three Chances " is the story of a gentleman
who, having been jilted by the lady to whom he is
engaged because he has become deaf, gains without
knowing it the affections of a second damsel engaged
to some one else, and is " hooked " by a third who
has laid herself out to attract him by ministering to
his afflicted state. A sudden restoration to hearing
disenchants him from the latter—causes the self-
destruction of :he second—and finally restores him
to the first, whom the other two, for different
motives, had kept from effecting her intended re-
conciliation before his recovery. The "motive " of
this story is tolerably new, and though it will no
doubt prove repul-ive to many readers, is managed
with a good deal of cleverness and truth to nature.
The faults of the book are, that there is no one of
the characters whom we can either like or respect;
all are knavish, weak, or disagreeable. Another is
that of far too great a tendency to overload the story
with a mass of trivial remarks, and to make deserip-

tion stand too often in the place of dialogue. Just
when the narrative becomes interesting, we are stopped
by a strain of mild would-be-Shandean moralising'
such as might be written by a rather egotistical country
recluse addicted to the study of " Proverbial Philoso.
phy." We wonder that the doubtless intelligent
" readet " of Messrs Smith and Elder did not strike his
pen through about one fifth of the MS.; if he had he
would considerably have improved it; at pres !at it
contains a great deal of "skip." It bas, however, the
great merit of not immediately disclosing the con-
clusion—and of thus exciting sufficient interest to
induce us to wade through the masses of adipose
matter to which we have alluded. It shows also a
good deal of observation, considerable knowledge of
a certain sort of life, and is not wanting in shrewd
and sensible remark. There is no very deep analysis
of character, but the outward forms in which cha-
racter expresses itself are grasped with much ability,
and the incidents which forward the plot are so
ingeniously selected as to show somewhat of dramatic
power. Considered as an original novel it is cer-
tainly above the average, though its rather old-
fashioned style may prove an obstacle to its success.
We have great difficulty in believing that it is
written by a woman.

Margaret Hamilton. By Mrs. C. J. Newby. Three
Vols. London : Bentley.
Tins is one of the best specimens of what is some-
times called " the circulating.library novel " that we
have met with for some time. There is no great
originality in the conception of character, nor much
" power" in its presentation; nor do the reflections on
life or manner possess that depth which would lead
any one to extract them in a commonplace-book.
But a novel may be very readable without any of
these characteristics ; and Margaret Hamilton,"

from the easy flow of its narrative, the unaffected
nature of its dialogue, and the abundance of its inci.
dent, constitutes a very pleasing whole, which will
suffer less in comparison with more ambitious works
than might be supposed from the deficiencies to
which we have alluded. It describes the career of a
family who have been suddenly reduced to poverty,
and who display their various characters in the man-
ner in which they respectively act under their mis-
fortunes. The shifts of genteel penury are related
with some humour and pathos, and the struggles of
Margaret and her sisters at home, and of her brother
in his profession, will awake sympathy in many
readers. Mrs. Newby writes like a lady, and appears
conversant with good society. Her male characters
are a trifle too perfect, as is apt to be the case with
lady novelists; but, on the whole, there is less igno-
rance of the opposite sex than is usual with them, and
the filling in of subordinate personages is lifelike and
probable. " Margaret Hamilton "is the best novel
Mrs. Newby has produced, and confirmed novel.
readers will not be wrong in sending for it.

Mr. Leatharn ha
excellencies of bot
His erudition, th
professor, is extcn
and conics natur
narrative without