The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-13 00:00:00

584

of War, then proposed to study immediately the strategic
points of Paris, in order to settle a plan of defence. A
plan of Paris was necessary for the purpose, and as there
was none on the council-table the President of the
Republic went into an adjacent room to seek for one. No
sooner had the Prince left the room than General Chan.
gamier, folding his arms, looked significantly at some
members of the Council, and said, " I hope that if there
be an emeute it will not be in the interest of that Thomas
Diaforins that we shall combat it !"•

The most critical period in the life of the
present Emperor of the French was now
approaching : we will return shortly to M.
Granier de Cassagnac's detail of events.

NEW NOVELS.

The Professor. A Tale. By Currer Bell.

London : Smith and Elder.

YOUNG authors and authoresses who are in-
clined to grumble at the apparent caprice of
publishers, and sometimes even, to question
their powers of discrimination, may learn a
lesson from the perusal of " The Professor."
Had this story been the one fated to introduce
the authoress to the world," Jane Eyre " would
probably have failed in elevating her to that
height of celebrity which she now deservedly
occupies. She would in that case have at
once been classed with an inferior order of
novelists, from which her subsequent success
could never perhaps have entirely removed
her. The rejection of " The Professor " was
in our opinion no less advantageous to the
young authoress than creditable to the discern•
went of the booksellers.

The outline of the story, of which some use
was afterwards made in " Villette," is as
follows. Edward and William Crimsworth
are the orphan sons of a manufacturer who
had married a patrician wife. The elder is
initiated when young into his father's pur-
suits, and becomes a flourishing millowner.
The younger, left to the care of his maternal
relations, is sent to Eton, and on quitting
school receives the offer of a provision in the
Church. Something in the tone of his noble
relatives determine him at once to reject their
overtures, and to set out forthwith for his
brother's house, with the intention of becoming
a tradesman. His brother makes him a clerk
at ninety pounds a year, but treats him with
so much cruelty and neglect that he throws
up the situation after a very short trial.
At this crisis he is befriended by a queer
sort of character, with whom alone he had
formed an acquaintance in the large manufac-
turing town in X—shire. Mr. Hunsden, for such
is his name, is a kindhearted man at bottom,
though with a rough, and even impertinent
demeanour, and he furnishes William Crims•
worth with introductions to some friends in
Brussels, through whose aid he becomes in-
stalled as teacher of English in the academy
of a M. Pelet, at a salary of 401. a year.
He finds this situation far from disagreeable ;
his Principal is polite and considerate, and he
is soon enabled to add 201. a year to his in-
come by accepting a similar situation in a
young LI dies' academy, kept by one Mlle. Reuter.
The directress is about twenty-six, on the
whole rather attractive in person, and of
superior intelligence. She is, however, an
arrant flirt, and does her best to enslave the
aristocratic-looking young Englishman. He
is very near succumbing to her arts, when he
accidentally discovers that she has been for
some time betrothed to M. Pelet. This dis-
covery steels him against her advances, and is
the cause, perhaps, of his regarding with more
attention some of the female forms with whom
his duties as professor bring him in contact.
Among them is Mlle. Henri, a girl of humble
means, who supports herself by lace•mending
and by teaching sewing at Mine. Reuter's
academy. She becomes a pupil of the Pro-
fessor in English, and the sequel of the story
is now, we presume, beginr.ing to loom before
our• readers. They fall in love with one an
other, both quit the establishment, and, after
rather less than the legitimate number of
difficulties, obtain lucrative appointments,
marry, and eventually realise sufficient fortune '
to enable them to settle in England.
The above incidents are too remote from
the experience and the sympathies of ordinary
life to awaken much interest in the reader,

• (But few of our readers need he reminded that Thomas
Diaforitis is a very ridiculous personage in one of the comedies
of

THE PRESS.

and Miss Bronte had not yet attained to that
powerful delineation of character which con-
stitutes the charm of her later performances.
The present story has an attenuated air
throughout, and smacks of the soup maigre of
the Belgian boarding-school. Yet it must be
confessed that the idea is original, and that
we every here and there detect germs of that
power which took the world by storm in
"Jane Eyre " and " Shirley." The same
talent of graphic description is also at times
conspicuous. The following description of
the three upper girls on the occasion of the
Professor delivering his first lecture at the
" Pensionnat de Demoiselles," is an instance:—
The three allude to were just in front, within half a
yard of my estrade, and were among the most womanly-
looking present. Their names I knew afterwards, and
may as well mention now ; they were Eulalie, Hortense,
Caroline. Eulalie was tall and very finely shaped; she
was fair, and her features were those of a Low-country
Madonna; many a " figure de vierge " have I seen in
Dutch pictures exactly resembling hers. There were no
angles in her shape or in her face—all was curve and
roundness—neither thought, sentiment, nor passion dis-
turbed by line or flush the equality of her pale, clear skin ;
her noble bust heaved with her regular breathing, her eyes
moved a little—by these evidences of life alone could I
have distinguished her from some large handsome figure,
moulded in wax. Hortense was of middle size and stout ;
her form was ungraceful, her face striking, more alive and
brilliant than Eulalie's, her hair was dark brown, her com-
plexion richly coloured: there were frolic and mischief in
her eye; consistency and good sense she might possess,
but none of her features betokened those qualities.
Caroline was little, though evidently full grown ; raven.
black hair, very dark eyes, absolutely regular features, with
a colourless olive complexion, clear as to the face and
sallow about the neck, formed in her that assemblage of
points whose union many persons regard as the perfection
of beauty. How, with the tintless pallor of her skin and
the classic straightness of her lineaments, she managed to
look sensual I don't know. I think her lips and eyes
contrived tee affair between them, and the result left no
uncertainty on the beholder's mind. She was sensual now,
and in ten years time she would be coarse—promise plain
was written in her face of much future folly.

lf I looked at these girls with little scruple, they looked
at me with still less. Eulalie raised her unmoved eye to
mine, and seemed to expect, passively but securely, an
impromptu tribute to her majestic charms. Hortense
regarded me boldly and giggled at the same time, while
she said with an air of impudent freedom—
" Dictez•nona quelquechose de facile pour commencer,
monsieur."

Caroline shook her loose ringlets of abundant but some-
what coarse hair over her rolling black eyes ; parting her
lips, as full as those of a hotillooded Maroon, she showed
her well-set teeth sparkling between them, and treated me
at the same time to a smile "de sa fac.on." Beautiful as
Pauline Borghese, she looked at the moment scarcely
purer than Lucrece de Borgia. Caroline was of noble
family. I heard her lady•mother's character afterwards,
and then 1 ceased to wonder at the precocious accomplish.
ments of the daughter. These three, i at once saw, deemed
themselves the queens of the school, and conceived that by
their splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In
less than five minutes they had thus revealed to me their
characters, and in less than five minutes I had buckled on
a breastplate of steely indifference and let down a visor of
impassable austerity.
Of the characters in " The Professor," the
heroine, Mile. Henri, and the " Directress "
are decidedly the best. The hero is dull.
The love-making between him and the young
lace-mender is tame and cold—something
widely different from the fiery energy of Mr.
Rochester ; and we neither condole much with
his misfortunes, nor rejoice much with his
success. With Miss Henri, however, the case
is different. The little quiet, piquant, indus-
trious Anglo-Swiss girl, is very pleasingly
drawn. The description of her neat little
room, and her pretty hospitalities, is marked
by much feminine grace ; and the contrast
between herself and the intriguing " Direc-
tress" is very skilful. Hunsden, on the con-
trary, is an improbable and rather clumsy
creation—a mere dens ex machina—and a de-
cided blot in the construction of the story.
But the crowning blunder is, in our opinion,
the character of EdwardCrimsworth. His bru-
tality towards his brother is wholly un-
accounted for. In the possession of a large
fortune, a handsome wife, and all that can
make life pleasant, the most savage churl in
the universe would be quiet until provoked.
His brother comes down to him ; he no way
presumes on their relationship, asks no
favours, does a great deal of useful work for a
small salary, and is yet treated like a dog.
Such excess of wanton malignity is not in
nature. Such a mistake as this, however, is
simply the result of inexperience, which an
extended acquaintance with the world would
be certain to correct.

SATURDAY,

The language of " The Professor " is
every
good, though at times tainted with that coarse-
ness which disfigured Miss Bronte's later
works. We allude more especially to the
character of Mlle. Trista, and her unladylike
and insubordinate habits. In the moral of
the story Miss Bronte seems to have broken
down. It was, she tells us in the preface, in-
tended to show what a man can do unaided by
any of those rare pieces of luck which are
commonly introduced in novels. Yet, surely,
the accident which gave William Crimsworth
a claim on the family of Mr. Vandenhuten,
was as great a piece of good fortune as could
possibly befall a man ; and even the way in
which the little lace mender obtains her pro-
motion is liable to the same criticism.

The Romany Rye. A Sequel to "Lavengro."
By George Borrow. Two Vols. London:
Murray.
Ma. BORROW comes before us in such a great
variety of characters that we can hardly hopo
to escape our share of the indignation which
he so freely launches at the head of all those
critics who have neglected even the minutest
point in his volumes. Philologer, theologian,
novelist, social and political philosopher, his
claims really embrace such a wide area, that
it is totally impossible we should attempt to
follow him over the whole of it. Believing,
therefore, that nobody cares very much for
the two first-mentioned subjects when pre-
sented to them through the medium of a
novel, we shall confine our very brief ob-
servations to the two last, more especially as
it is in these two characters that he presents
himself under the most contradictory aspect.
At the conclusion of "Lavengro " our
readers will, perhaps, remember that the hero
was left in his dingle with the postilion
whose chaise had been upset, and the
maiden Isopel Berners, who had done man's
service in the battle with the " Flaming
Tinman." " The Romany Rye" commences
with the morning following the postilion's
disaster; and the two volumes are occupied
with the adventures of Lavengro, first in the
character of a gipsy, and secondly in that of a
sort of upper ostler. The narrative termi-
nates as abruptly as that of " Lavengro," and
is succeeded by an appendix of eleven chap-
ters upon various national faults, written as if
the author had carefully selected for imitation
all the worst and weakest points in Carlyle
and Thackeray. To these, however, we shall
return presently.
The narrative itself is delightful. Th 3
English lower orders are described with rare
fidelity, though their language is perhaps at
times a little unnatural, and each successive
incident wears an appearance of truth and
nature. The appearance of the gipsies at a
country church is an excellent specimen of
Mr. Borrow's powers :
At last I gave over reading, took a slight refreshment,
and was about to emerge from the dingle, when I heard
the voice of Mr. Petulengro calling me. I went up again
to the encampment, where I found Mr. Petulengro, his
wife, and Tawno Chikno, ready to proceed to church.
Mr. and Mrs. Petuleugro were dressed in Roman fashion,
though not in the fullblown manner in which they had
paid their visit to Isopel and myself. Tawno had on a
clean white slop, with a nearly new black beaver, with
very broad rims, and the nap exceedingly long. As for
myself, I was dressed in much the same manner as that in
which I departed from London, having on, in honour of
the day, a shirt perfectly clean, having washed one on
purpose for the occasion, with my own hands, the day
before, in the pond of tepid water in which the newts and
efts were in the habit of taking their pleasure. We pro-
ceeded for upwards of a mile, by footpaths through
meadows and corn-fiAds; we crossed various stiles; at
last, passing over one, we found ourselves in a road, wend-
ing along which for a considerable distance, we at last
came in sight of a church, the bells of which had been
tolling distinctly in our ears for some time; before, how-
ever, we reached the churchyard the bells had ceased their
melody. It was surrounded by lofty beech trees of
brilliant green foliage. We entered the gate, Mrs.
Petulengro leading the way, and proceeded to a small door
near the east end of the church. As we advanced, the
sound of singing within the church rose upon our ears.
Arrived at the small door, Mrs. Petulengro opened it and
and entered, followed by Tawno Chikno. I myself went
last of all, following Mr. Petulengro, who, before I
entered, turned round, and, with a significant nod, ad-
vised me to take care how I behaved. That part of the
church which we bad entered was the chancel; on one
side stood a number of venerable old men—probably the
neighbouring poor—and on the other a number of poor
girls belonBing to the village school, dressed in wlute

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