The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-09 00:00:00

•i#traturt.

Sketches of Irish Character. By Mrs. S. C.
Hall. Fifth Edition. London : Nattali and
Bond.
IT is always a pleasing duty to notice a new
edition of a work so deservedly popular as
these " Sketches of Irish Character." They
first introduced Mrs. Hall to the public as an
original and gifted authoress, and her whole
subsequent career has been a continued and
successful endeavour to merit the favour with
which these early productions were received.
Though not one of our most prolific writers,—
for a true woman, especially if she be a wife,
cannot suffer her pen to engross her whole
time,—she has contributed many most agree-
able, and, in a high sense, most useful
volumes to our literature ; but for the truth,
grace, pathos, and animation required to set
forth the happy portraiture of natural charac-
ter, she has assuredly never surpassed these
sketches. They are the first draft of her mind,
and have all the freedom and freshness of im-
pulsive thought.
To this fifth edition of the book she has
contributed a new preface, on which we have
a few words to say. In the first place, it is
worth knowing that these sketches were all
drawn from actual nature. The characters
sat for their pictures, as truly as a model sits to
an artist, though, perhaps, in this case the
sketch is more strongly lighted by imagination
than is permissible when canvass and colours
have to be employed. Two or three weeks
back we quoted from Mrs. Jameson's volume
the observation of Lavater, that there is a
marked and distinctive character in the hand
of each individual, and we printed some
passages from Wilkie to show that in travelling
through the Netherlands he could detect how
closely the beat Flemish masters had repre-
sented the natural features of their country.
No one can look at Wilkie's own works—espe-
cially his earlier ones—without perceiving how
well his practice must have qualified him
for the perception of this truthfulness, and an
anecdote is told of him in Mrs. Thomson's
" Recollections of Literary Characters " which
proves that even his boyish years were
passed in storing his mind with sketches for
his pictures .
When I first knew Wilkie, his home had recently been
enlivened by the arrival of his venerable mother from Scot-
land. With the dutiful feeling of a true Scot, who, what-
ever he may do with re%pect to his other ties, has the filial
affections strong within him, Wilkie, as soon as competence
enabled him to offer his mother a home, wrote to her to
come and live with him.
♦ • •
Mothers are much more fond of talking of their eons'
gifts and virtues than wives are of their husbands'. Old
Mrs. Wilkie loved to be asked questions about "Davis.'
1 inquired one day whether he had early displayed much
talent in drawing.
" Aweel," said she, " I mind that he was se scrawling,
and scratching, 1 did na ken what, and he had an idle
fashion o' making likenesses and csricatoores like of all the
folk as came. And there was an auld blind mon, Willie,
the fiddler, just an idle sort of a beggar-mon, that used to
come wi' his noise, and set all the women servants a jigging
wi' his scratching and scraping; and Davie was ae Liking
o' this pair bodie into the hoose, and gieing hint a drap o'
toddy ; and 1 used to cry shame on the lad for encouraging
such lasy vagabonds about the hoose. Weel," pursued the
old lady, " but ye maun ken he was an ill-favoured, daft
sort of a creatur, that pair blind bodie, weel eno' in his
way, but not the sort o' folk to be along wi Davie; yet the
lad was always a saying tome, Mither, gie's a bawbie for
pair blind W illie.' This," she added with a sigh, " sir, was
*hen we lived at the Manse."
I listened eagerly to the simple commencement of the
anecdote. The homely manse—the shoeless women-folk—
the blind intruder welcome from charity, but not too often
—and the young student of nature, delighting, almost un-
consciously to himself, in the picturesque, were before me.
The lively countenance of the minister's widow glistened
as she proceeded. (She was unlike her son in face; the
father must have owned those large, cold eyes.)
" Aweel, sir, they told me—it was mony years after the
puir blind body was gene hame, sh—that Davie had painted
a grand pictur ; and he wrote me to go to Edinburgh to
see it; and. I went, and sure ono' there was puir old
Willie, the very like o' him, his fiddle and a'. I was wud
wi' surprise ; and there was Davie standing a laughing at
me, and saying,' Mither, mony's the time that ye ha heard
that fiddle to the toon o' " the Campbells are coming."' "
We suppose this anecdote may be relied on,
though it is certainly to be regretted that Mrs.
Thomson has not adhered more closely to
actual truth in her manner of relating her
reminiscences, and we quote it as it indicates
how exactly authors and artists resemble each