The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-21 00:00:00

FROM THE LONDON GAZETTE.

Tuesday, Jan.l7.

BANKRUPTCIES A N NULLED.—THOWAS ARCHER, Bram
tree, It: woe:, woollen draper—Tuomas Bum., Bristol, shipowner—
J OliN ROREUTIMAW China, Lalleallhire, iron founder.
BANKRUPTS. FREDERICK MAYSTON, Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk, grocer—llia:Ai GazEs, Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk,
baker—HENRY HOLMAN WOOL, 11443110 r, hostirX, ietualler—
JAM S LEWIS LaRR, Norwood, Surrey, breser DENIS
G RIF VITUS, Birminghtllll, tuilor—Joatrn CAMM, Quorudou,
Leicestershire, miller-- EnwArtn Boss, Nottingham, lace cap
manufacturer— CORNELIL S BOWE PALLIER, Newport, Mom
rnoutlishire, porter merchant—Tnosiss Fut no, Manchester,
Junk eepei —IV ILL lAK BR l' lITOPI, Bradford, Yorkshire, joiner—
JANES FLAME, Liverpool, stationer bLacanisKi
Manchester, publican.
SCOTCIi SEQUESTRATIONS.—Joatt Anima, Slasgsvr.
merchant—A LENA ND ER BnowN, Edinburgh, merchant-1103W
°moon, Milacron of Braelangwell, farmer.

Friday, January '2O.
BAN KM: PIS.— B EtiJA 14111.1. ER, I.andport, Porisea, mu'
cer and draper-6EOEOs NEWNAN, Stratford-place, Camden.
town, builder-40nm MEER SWEET, Tunbridge Wells, need*
man—TIMMY WINTON. 11AltILY JtIIN I,ANoRiDoE WINTON,
and EDWIN WILLIAM WINTON, Birmingham, agricultural imple•
meat makers—Wit-Liam TAYLOR WARREN, MATTHEW WARREN,
and CHARLES DENROCIiE, Cardiff, contractors and builders—
GEORGE KILLICE KENT, Taunton, pliunber and
MANI lizsxmrit, Blitekbuni, manufacturer—Jons WORPLET,
Miu,cleatield, cabinetinaker`—kKAßLßS Joint roofs, Bride
water, Someractalliro, Utter.
SUOTe II 81.1Q1' sTBAT lON—li mums !Kitt°, BlanPatilek
lienfrewaliire, distiller. painter—Nn•

KALAFAT, of which so much has been said lately, is s
town of 2,(XX) houses, surrounded with walls, with a quaint-
tine, a townhall, a cnstoni•house, three churches, and,
cavalry barracks. It is the chief place of a sub•adnnsk
trator's district. The redoubts raised by the Tnrks are of
great extent and very strong. The/ are partly constructd
on two high hills in the plain of Kalafst, about a tulle
distant from each other, and have a numerous artillery.
All the neighbouring country is commanded by these lulls
in such a way that no approach to the Danube can be
made. In 1te214 these hills were occupied and fortified by
the Russians. Between \Viddin and Kalafat the Danube
is little less than a mile wide, and the current very rapid.
The island in which the Turks are fortified is situated nest.
I
the left bank ; it is partly covered with wood, and s
defended by strong entrenchments in earth, bearing large
artillery. Above Widdin the Turks have construct44l
new citadel, according to the modern rules of art.

JANUARY 21, 1854.

Yittraturt.

The Slave Son. By Mrs. William Noy Wilkins.
London: Chapman and Hall.
WITH the antecedents of the authoress of this
work we are unacquainted ; but as, in conse-
quence of its subject, and its being introduced
to public notice under the distinguished aus-
pices of Mrs. Jameson, " The Slave Son" is
very likely to find a considerable number of
readers, we think the present a fair opportu.
nity for making some preliminary remarks on
the excitement occasioned by the fiction of
Mrs. Stowe.
Unquestionably the fever about " Uncle
Tom was one of the most remarkable inci-
dents in the history of the literature of modern
fiction. The minds of novel-readers are now
cooled down, and we are at liberty to indicate
some of the main sources of its unprecedented
popularity. In doing so we may commence
by asking our readers whether they have ever
asked themselves the question, " Were the
horrors of 'Uncle Tom' a great source of its
interest?" It is certain that readers of fiction,
especially the generality, delight in strong.
stimulants. Some of the most popular fictions
owe their success to the large space occupied
in their contents by the mysterious and hor-
rible. In the treatment of such exciting topics
there must, of course, be a peculiar felicity.
The eloquence of Mrs. Radcliffe, and her sin-
gular powers of describing scenery, were
potent aids to her mysterious incidents; the
subtle analysis of Godwin, and his high intel-
lectuality, helped him in the artistic present-
ment of the case of Caleb Williams ; and the
knowledge of Parisian life in detail enabled
Eugene Sue to give an air of reality to the
horrible (and in some respects the abominable)
pages of " The Mysteries of Paris."
In " Uncle Tom's Cabin " the horrible was
served up with freshness of manner, change
of costume, novelty of local colour, and variety
of incident. There was in its pages a mixture
of appalling facts and amiable characters, of
dreadful incidents and descriptic rhetoric,
of the kind most calculated to charm the
crowd. There were extrinsic causes, also, which
aided in its British popularity. There is a
vast " humanitarian " interest in England to
whom the names of Clarkson and Wilberforce
are endeared. The cause of " negro emanci-
pation" has had its vicissitudes, its apostles,
and its triumphs. There may have been, per-
haps, something of an honest English feeling
at the bottom of this enthusiasm about " Uncle
Tom's Cabin." The Pottses and Mawkers
of Radicalism, who wished to Americanise
England, were silenced by a work which pro
fessed to describe a state of things under the
Model Republic not at all consistent with those
"rights of persons" enjoyed under the consti-
tutional Monarchy of England. The exotic
" Yankeeism " of Manchester was withered
by , the , storm of British feeling called
into action by a work every chapter of which
was rendered more pungent by the conviction
that "slaves cannot live in England." The
enthusiasm, 'whether right or wrong, eli-
cited by " Uncle Tom 7 contributed to the proud
national conviction "that England was still
" the freest country under heaven" ; and the
admirers of Mrs. Stowe were not likely to co-
incide with such sentiments as were utterred
last year by a powerful organ—" Mr. Milner
Gibson, and those who think with him, take
their opinions from America, which they
„ think, with some degree of truth perhaps, the
"future of England."—Times, April 16, 1863.
_ On the particular ethics applicable to the
case of "Abolition " we have no intention to
enter. Such a question can be adequately
discussed only in another department of the
PREaa. But in regarding the prodigious
Success of "Uncle Tom" we must look
upon
the acceptance of the work as being in
many respects characteristic of the public
mind. The o ular feeling went the whole
length with the authoress, to such an extent
as to cause American jealousy. But the book
itself, with its freshness of matter, and fiery
indignation bordering on the fanatical, had a
variety of potent rehgious elements to make
the followers of the conventicle and the fre-
quenters of the circulating library unanimous

THE PRESS.

in their admiration. Stimulants for the lan-
guid, preaching for the serious, pathos for the
sentimental, and fun for the lovers of drollery,
were all to be found in the pages of " Uncle
Tom." Add to all, that it was really " racy of
the soil"—American in its extravagances and
its excellences—that it was the writer's own
style and method of composition, and we have
a fair analysis of the ingredients of its won-
derful success.

Of all the works which appeal to public
favour upon (in canvasser's language) the
" Uncle Tom interest," this volume of " The
Slave Son" is nearly the best that we have
seen. It has been our hard lot to have read
nearly a dozen of the various " pro-and-anti-
Tom" books that have appeared. With a
couple of exceptions they were mediocre,
some of them morbidly bitter in their recrimi-_
nations, others mawkishly glozing in their
sympathy. " The Slave Son " has the ad-
vantage of not having been exclusively produced
by the example of Mrs. Stowe's work. It was
written six years ago, in the farm of a series of
sketches, laid by at the time, and since, under
Mrs. Jameson's advice, recast into one tale.
In nothing except the similarity of the subject
does the work resemble " Uncle Tom." The
scene is laid in Trinidad (circa 1832-34), and
the antecedents of " the peculiar institution "
of what the present American President has
called ." involuntary servitude " are connected
with the local incidents of the society of Trini-
dad. The style of the work is vivid, its rhe-
toric highly finished, and whoever begins the
volume will be sure to read it to the end. It
is very rarely, indeed, that an unpractised pen
can at the first attempt succeed so well in
interesting a reader. Without letting our
friends into the secrets of the plot, we will
briefly indicate its main sources of interest,
and, presenting to them some extracts, we
refer them to the volume itself.

Sketching the society of Trinidad, the au-
thoress introduces us to Belfond, the illegiti-
mate son of St. Hilaire Cardon, one of the
principal proprietors in the island, Belfond
is in love with Laurine, a beautiful mulatto
girl; and, escaping with a bag of gold belong-
ing to his father and owner, the slave son
flies to the mountains, and joins a desperate
party of runaways, who have formed them-
selves into a banditti. There is no part of the
work which we have read with so much plea-
sure as the account of Belfond's wanderings
amongst the romantic scenery of Trinidad.
Chased by a sailor, with bloodhounds, there
is "an escape scene" of considerable interest ;
but his visit to the hut of the Obiah sorcerer
and its accompanying incidents are the best
things in the volume. The negro sorcerer is
thus introduced :

The mountains which rose at the back of the village
were clothed, like all the Trinidad heights, with thick
forests old as the flood. There was one, however, not so
high as the rest, on which the woods were somewhat
thinner; its lower part was mainly covered with a coin-
partitively scanty brushwood, but half way up this gave
place to a dense thicket of nux-vomica, palma-christi, the
branched calaloo, poisonous shrubs of the cockroach-
apple, and many other noxious bushes, all crowded so
closely together as to be almost impenetrable. Nature, so
beautiful and enchanting elsewhere on the mountains,
here assumed a most repulsive aspect : dark, dismal
blossoms, huge, misshapen fruits, and glossy leaves almost
black with venomous sap, were mingled with thorns, long,
pointed, and protruding, like spears of ugly gnomes ;
while a rank smell of unwholesome vegetation rendered
the atmosphere around unpleasant and difficult, to breathe.
The chance traveller, hewing his way in these unfre-
quented parts, would turn aside to seek more prac-
ticable subjects for his hatchet, and the wild animals, the
free tenants of the forest, would avoid it, as by an instinct
given them by nature; yet, through the tangled bushes that
formed these melancholy shades, ever and anon there
peeped the shrivelled face of an old negro, listening.
spying, watching, as if for the approach of some one.
Sometimes, in his eagerness, he would half expose himself
to view, and then might be seen strange appendages—
snakes hanging and coiling about him, caressing him.
..-
He is then described in his retreat ; and the
passage has that fidelity to local impressions
which gives so great a charm to works of fiction
that paint actuality :
The old negro adopted various contrivances for making
himself feared ; one of these was the choice of strange
pets. The companions of his life were three snakes, the
largest of their kinds, and an American dog entirely desti-
tute of hair. Of the reptiles one was an aboma, or boa-
constrictor, fourteen feet long, which he called by the
name of Mottle. Another was a horsewhip snake, green,
and tapering finely off to the tail, not in reality a dangerous
kind, but feared by the negroes from a superstitious belief

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63

that it whips to death any stray negro it can seize ; this the
sorcerer named Cow•skin. The third was a coral snake,
the most venomous reptile of the colonies, figured through-
out its length with alternate rings of red and deepest black ;
this he called Vixen. These creatures wound themselves
about the wizard's neck and arms, caressing him and
obeying him, and guarding his gloomy domicile with their
various noises of alarm and anger. How he had tamed
them no one knew; the negroes over whose minds he had
acquired an absolute dominion considered his control over
them as part and parcel of his divining power. The native
Spaniards, however, or Spanish Indians I should rather
say, would hint at the wonderful properties of a pretty little
climbing plant, the Mikania Gude°, the juice of which,
taken internally as tea, and inoculated into various parts
of the body, acts as an effectual antidote to the bites of the
most venomous serpents. Its virtues, they will tell you,
were discovered by a Spaniard, who accidentally witnessed
the lighting of two serpents. The combat was deadly, and
ended with the apparent death of one of them ; but no
sooner had the victor gone his way than the wounded one
crawled slowly and with difficulty to the bushes near, and,
choosing from among them the leaves of a climber, he
recovered thereupon marvellously, and in a little time also
went his way. he Spaniard with curiosity remarked and
examined the plant, to which botanists have since given
the name above mentioned. With the juice and leaves of
this the sorcerer was supposed to have inoculated himself,
or he may p►obably have extracted the reptiles' fangs by
wrapping his hand in thick leather, presenting it to the
serpent's mouth, and then dextrously withdrawing it, when
the fangs, driven deep into the leather, would come away
with it. Ile that as it may, to the horror and awe of all
who visited the sorcerer, there were the snakes, perfectly
obedient to his word, and to him at least perfectly harmless.
They knew.him well, and came at his call, each according
to its name—Mottle, Cowskiu, and Vixen. As may be
supposed, he was attached to them, perhaps because he
knew they were the only creatures on earth who cared for

The incantation scene in which the Obiah
priest displays his powers is very striking ;
but we must proceed to extract a portion of
the chapter called " Chasing Game,' in which
Higgins, with the bloodhounds, is on the trail
of Belfond :
Soon they came, clamouring furiously, while Higgins
from afar was shouting with all his might to encourage
them. lielfond, looking round from the high bough to
which he had climbed, espied • considerable patch of the
Mauritia aruleata growing thickly clustered, and mingled
with smaller thorny bushes, which served to fill up the
gaps. This plant is near akin, if I remember well, to the
yucca, or Adam's needle, but much taller, and the spines
at the end of the leaves are much stronger and longer; it
coven miles in the centre of the island, where there is
little rising ground, but is rarely seen on mountains ; here,
however, by good fortune, it grew luxuriantly. Just in the
centre of this thicket were rotten stumps of a group of
palms, which had sprung originally, as they sometimes do,
from an undivided bunch of nuts. These palms, growing
all so close together, had been blasted by the lightning,
and had gradually rotted to the ground. Upon this space
Belfond fixed his eye ; but the leap was hazardous, not,
only from the height at which he stood, but also from the
difficulty of taking a spring, both on account of his narrow
footing and of the crooked position he was obliged to
maintain under so many overhanging boughs; but it was
his only safety now.
Meantime Higgins was approaching, and the dogs, still
barking with fury, made violent efforts to get at him.
Moments grew precious ; Belfond tried another bough,
which, though more slender, yet promised better, from
standing more apart. He had no sooner rested his weight
upon it than it broke beneath him, and he slipped within
five yards of the dogs : dextrously, however, lie grasped •
bough, climbed up like a monkey to his former perch, and
recommenced searching for a cowvenient place to leap
from. Unfortunately, in his rapid march, Belfond had
made a sort of path for Higgins, who, having once dis-
covered it, followed it up rapidly. He was now within a
few yards of the tree, unable as yet to see the runaway by
reason of the thickness of the foliage, but by the motion of
a particular point he could guess very well where his
game was hiding. Presently, as lie drew near, he dis-
covered, thirty feet up a tree, the figure of a man making
his way to the end of a bough. As he approached the end,
the leaves became less and less dense, and the figw't stood
out: Higgins recognised him, and the woods re-echoed
with his shouts of triumph.
" Hem ! " thought Belfond, " curse not the cayman's
mother till you have crossed the river ; and coolly and
collectedly, amidst the looping lianas which threatened to
entangle him in mid air, he took his aim, and leaped
fairly into the middle of the thicket. Higgins, as he saw
the feat, for a moment remained thunderstruck, but he
took courage again.
. " On, Fangs! at him, Bull ! catch him, my boys ! " and
the dogs began to leap and bark furiously, but in vain ;
the bushes were eight feet high, and four to ten thick all
round : at every point, in every direction, long wicked
spears crossed and recrossed one another, or the spaces
were filled up with smaller bushes equally stinging. The
dogs leaped up again and again, and each time they
recoiled with shriller cries of pain ; then they snivelled at
the ground, and at length one of them insituated his body
in beneath, dragging himself along on his stomach. At last
he disappeared, and, to the oaths and shouts of Higgins,
the other followed. Both were now out of sight.
Belfond, from within, was not unaware of his danger:
his fine quick ear had detected the new movement, and
with his eye fixed upon the place he perched himself upon
the rotten trunk, which sank beneath his weight, all alive
with woottants : this, however, he did not mind. He held
his knife ready, and just as the dog's head appeared
from under the lowest leaves he struck it on the back,—

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