The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-16 00:00:00

trill do this kind of thing : they think it harrows
up our feelings, and generally inflict on us one
deathbed per volume, at least. The other ingre-
dient of interest in the book is a Chartist riot.
Henry's second curacy is a manufacturing town,
the magnate of which, Mr. Drummond, is of the
stony-ledger type we know so well. lie has an
invalid wife and a pretty daughter. 'The riot
takes place while the house is full of nothing but
women—Bertha, Constance, Annie Drununond,
her mother, and Janet the servant, being its only
defenders. Constance loads pistols, and makes a
warlike demonstration on the balcony, which lead
up to suppose she is going to shoot half a dozen
operatives, but, to the reader's great disappoint-
ment, she breaks down egregiously, and the mob
enter and gut the place. All the gentlemen of the
story rush up just too late to prevent this, and
Mr. Drummond is shot. As he has merely been
described, has taken no part in the story, and has
not joined in a single conversation, no particular
interest is felt in his life and no sympathy in
his death. Annie's mother worries her for some
time longer and then follows him, leaving her
free to marry a lover whom Constance and Bertha
have licked into shape for her. henry is pre-
sented with a living, and the story comes to
an end.
Plot there is none in this book, and the want of
it is not redeemed either by the vigour or
piquancy of the writing. We do not use the
stereotyped phrase which recommends an author
to " try again," because in this case there is a
fatal fluency and flippancy which is only to be
cured, if at all, by very different treatment. The
writer is hardly up to the rudimentary require-
ments of the art, or we should hardly find
" shelfs" as the plural of " shelf" and " who do
we dislike ?" "who do we injure ?" &c., a form of
expression which occurs too frequently to be
attributed to the printer. "L. 11. B." is much
too fond of using French words where English
ones would do just as well, and seems to imagine
that the practice is expected of her. Her ideas
of what is "nice" seem, on the whole, peculiar.
Take the following passage, for instance, on
which we appeal to the judgment of our mascu-
line readers :

When Constance and I entered the drawing-room, we
discovered Mr. Spencer standing near Constance's work-
table, absorbed in a poem of the Brownings, which she had
been reading before luncheon. Constance's prevailing
taste, reading, was discoverable even upon her work-table,
some favourite book always peeping beneath the apologies
of her industry. " It looks so idle," she used to say, "to be
always reading. And then one looks so much more
charming in a gentleman's eyes, when displaying a
delicate lily-white hand dexterously plying a needle." I
think sn too, fair reader, and believe a pair of ordinarily
bright eyes may win the affections of any gentleman given
to visions of domestic bliss, in a singlet morning's call, if
she will only exert their proper influence upon him, whilst
hemming a silk pocket-handkerchief.
Are ladies who are always thinking of what
" looks charming in a gentleman's eyes" likely to
prove charming in the eyes of gentlemen ?
"Fancy," says L. 11. 8., at the outset of the
story,

encountering the searching gaze of our modern satirist,
Thackeray, in what dread array would all my " Beckvisms "
rise up! for we women, however we may wish to disguise
the fact, all have a few " Beckyite " tendencies ; perhaps
we each individually turn over a leaf or two out of her
book—not more, Mr. Satirist.

—We have met with nothing in " Bertha
Dailey " to warrant the slightest suspicion of
intellectual relationship to Mr. Thackeray or to
any of his characters.

2. If marrying and giving in marriage be, as
many fair readers aver, the quintessence of a
novel, then is " Gordon of Duncairn" entitled
to take a high place among works of that class.
No fewer than five weddings take place in the
course of two volumes, and of these only one
turns out badly. A sixth affair, moreover, is
seen looming in the distance. It must not be
su. Pposed, however, that the course of true love
Is permitted to run with monotonous smoothness
to the whirlpool of matrimony. Many a time
and oft is its surface ruffled with squalls, and
,many a rock and shallow impede the channel.
Still it holds on bravely and stoutly, till, all ob-
stacles being overcome, the orange-blossoms are
triumphantly won and worn, and the first joint-
Stock dyspepsia achieved by big slices of indi-
gestible wedding-cake. But, before this come to
pass and the magic ring be attained, be sure there
is no lack of sobs and sighs, of tears and ejacula-
tions. Lovers, tender and true, continue to mis-
understand one another in the most provoking