The Press.
London, England, 1858-06-05 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JUNE 5, 1858.

long I had been here, and how I liked the country. pre.
gently the black nurse came in with the little child. It
was sail moaning in her arms ; and as the poor mother
hung over it, it was difficult to say which looked the fastest
fading away. My old Armenian friend took it kindly in
her arms, and, speaking Turkish, talked over its ailments,
while I walked with the other ladies to the• end of the
apartment ; then, seeing their conversation over, I returned
to say adieu. A sweeter or a sadder face I never saw—it
quite haunted me. Our merry friend did not show much
sympathy for the invalid, and insisted upon our returning
to her apartments to show me her clothes and jewels.
Robe after robe, carefully pinned up in muslin, was pro-
duced, of every colour and shade, for all the ladies ran to
fetch their wnole stock of finery. Dresses of light preen
edged with gold, and violet trimmed with silver, flowered
dresses, embroidered dresses, shawls, scarfs, and jackets,
were prod iced in endless array, and with an immense
amount of chattering. Then I must be dressed up in
them, they said, laughing with delight as the masquerade
progressed. You would certainly never have known me
in the gorgeousness of Eastern array, which, however, they
pronounced became me very well. Two large sprays of
brilliants, set as a kind of convolvolus, with turquoise
centres, were fastened in each side of my hair.

And in justice to the English writer of these
most ladylike letters, we must :quote her con-
cluding reflections :

Ths very stin isplicre of the harem seemed to stifle me;
and I could hardly help throwing the jewels and finery
away from me in disgust. What Mrs. Lotigworth told
me some time ago is quite right:—" If a Turkish woman
possesses an atom of refinement, one particle of affection
for either husband or children, one thought of the future,
she must he wretched ! Her only chance of crntentment
is in being degraded to a mere animal state, eating. drinking,
and basking in the aim."
. .

We mse to go; the ladies crowding roam', and pressing
us not to leave so soon. Pour ! they are so greedy
after a litle amusement in their utter idleness. I felt
more snip), and impatient than you can well conceive,
and kept exclaiming to Miss Barker, " Say we must m—
let us get away directly; if we meet the Effendi returning,
I shall certainly be taking off my slipper and heath g him
upon the face in a most savage manner, or breaking his
chibouque, or making him ' eat dirt' in some dreadful
way or other, to my utter disgrace in Turkey and else-
where."

Here we must finish. Our extracts faithfully
describe the character of these letters, which,
after all allowances have been deducted, are a
welcome addition to the light literature of the
current season.

Doctor Thorne. A Novel. By Anthony
Trollope. Three Vols. London : Chapman
and Hall.
WE fear that Mr. Trollope has been betrayed
into undue security by the success attending the
publication of his first three novels. In his pre-
sent one we observe a general falling off of
power, which we believe we are right in attri-
buting to negligence, rather than to any intel-
lectual exhaustion. The plot of " Doctor
Thorne" is less clever, the characters less dis-
tinct, and the moral less clearly brought home,
than in either "Barchester Towers" or " The
Three Clerks." But we feel in almost every
other page the same observant humour, the
same strong sense, and the same ability to touch
the heart, which distinguished his former works.
The scene of the present story is the village of
Greshamsbury, in the west of England. Here
reside John Newbold Gresham, Esq., a gentle-
man of the purest old blood in all the west, with
a large but embarrassed property, and Dr.
Thorne, a medical practitioner, also the scion of
a gentle stock, with whom lives his niece Mary,
one, perhaps, of Mr. Trollope's most pleasing
female characters. At Boxall-hill, recently dis-
severed from the Greshamsbury estate, is Sir
Roger Scatcherd, a great railway contractor,
worth nearly half a million, and one of Mr.
Gresham's principal creditors. Sir Roger had
originally been a common stonemason in the
town of Barchester, and while living there in
that rank of life, his sister, the prettiest girl in
the town, had been seduced by Dr. Thorne's
brother. Scatcherd kills the seducer, and is
sentenced to six months' imprisonment for man-
slaughter. During his captivity an illegitimate
daughter is born to Mary Scatcherd, who is
rescued from the want and misery that await her
by Dr. Thorne, who takes the child off her hands,
and so enables her to marry a former lover and
emigrate to America. It is universally believed
that the child is dead ; and when, ninny years
afterwards, a young lady is brought home from
school to the Doctor's house at Greshamsbury, no
one of course suspects in this "daughter of a
brother long since dead " the offspring of the
stonemason's sister. By this time. however, the
stonemason himself has become a baronet and a

537

millionaire, and had Mary's birth been legitimate
there could have been no longer any reason for
concealing it. Concealed, however, it is; and
between the age of eighteen and twenty-one
Miss Mary contrives, of course, to win the heart
of young Frank Gresham, the only son and heir
of the squire. As his mother, Lady Arabella,
and his maternal relations, the Countess de
Courcy and family, have all made up their minds
that Frank must " marry money," of course we
have the usual series of family quarrels on the
subject. But Frank remains constant to his first
love. And when, by a series of events too long
to be narrated here, Mary becomes Sir Roger's
heiress, and at the death of that worthy from
liquor, owner of three-fourths of the Greshamsbury
estates, her lover's virtue is rewarded, and the
heroine herself treated to sonic very sweet
revenge over the great folks that had so unmer-
cifully snubbed her.
Now, it seems to us that an element of interest
is wantonly sacrificed by allowing the reader to
be in the secret of Mary Thorne's parentage. It
has the effect also of dividing our sympathies.
For it cannot be denied that Mary's birth would
be, from Mr. Trollope's own point of view, a
lawful objection to her union with Frank
Gresham. We cannot, therefore, help feeling
throughout that his family are not treated quite
fairly; and certainly the splendid fortune which
Mary ultimately brings them is all required to
atone for the impropriety of the concealment.
A third objection to this feature of the story is
that it materially weakens, or else obscures, the
moral meant to be conveyed. If Frank and
Mary had not been a hero and heroine, but ordi-
nary people, they would probably have suc-
cumbed to the resistance offered to their union,
and the Greshams have lost the only chance of
recovering their ancestral lands. Ergo, don't
oppose love matches ; don't make young men
marry for money; and, though Norman blood is
an excellent thing, don't forget that

• A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred costs of arms.
But then, as Mr. Trollope of course admits, the
reproach of illegitimacy is something totally dis-
tinct from that of humble origin ; and those who
are above feeling any contempt for the latter
might very well shrink from connecting them-
selves with the former. The feeling may be
wrong or it may not, but it ought to have been
dealt with. Either Mary should have been born
in lawful wedlock, or the Greshams should have
known that she was not. As it is, whenever we
are tempted to adopt Mr. Trollope's lesson, we
are held back by the consciousness that the ex-
periment is not having a fair trial. Our indigna-
tion at Lady Arabella's conduct towards Mary is
always liable to a secret deduction on account of
what is kept back from her. If it is not justifiable
because of Mary's poverty or inferiority of birth,
it is justifiable for another reason. If Lady
Arabella has no excuse for herself, the reader
has one for her. The objection to the marriage
is a sound one, though the reason for it is not.
Lady Arabella's case is not weakened because she
herself did not know its strength. Like the
Chinese with the Arrow, she does what in reality
it was right to do, though she is ignorant of the
one circumstance which makes it right. How
far a person is blameable in such a case will of
course vary with the facts relating to it. But
the introduction of this doubt is, we repeat, fatal
to the force of Mr. Trollope's moral. •
Mr. Trollope's minor characters are drawn
with his usual felicity, but are placed in less in-
teresting situations than they occupy in his pre-
vious stories. Mr. Oriel and Beatrice, Lady
Augusta and Mr. Moffatt, Miss Dunstable and
the Duke of Omnium, arc all fresh, lifelike
sketches. But perhaps the best bit in the book
short enough to bear quotation is the description
of Miss Gushing, the young lady who tried to
captivate the Pusevite clergyman, who had de-
clared himself an advocate of celibacy :

And then there was Miss Gushing, a young thing. Miss
Gushing had a great advantage over the other competitors
for the civilization of Mr. Oriel, namely, in this—that she
was able to attend his morning services. If Mr. Oriel
was t) be reached in any way, It was probal.le that he
might be reached in this will-. If anything could civilize
him, this wculd do it. Therefore, the young thing,
through all one long, tedious winter, tore herself from her
warm bed, and was t 3 he reen—tio, not seen, but heard—
entering Mr. Oriel'a church at six o'clock. With hide-
fati.fable aysiduity the rrotonses were made, uttered from
under a close bonnet, and out of a dark corner, in an en.
thusia:tically feminine voice, through the whole winter.

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