The Express.
London, England, 1858-03-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Moore and the Fens. B F. 0. TRAFFORD.
In Three Volumes. London: Smith, Elder,
and Co.

They err who tell us that romance is dead. In
the past Sir Walter Scott sought his heroes; but he
might have found men as brave and women as beau-
tiful around him every day. Are not wonder and
mystery elements of romance, and do not wonder
and mystery ever haunt the path of life—going with
us where we go, and dwelling with us where we
dwell ? Our sorrows and joys—our human loves,
whether repelled and turned back upon our-
selves, or jubilant and victorious—are the connect-
ing links binding us to the great who have
gone before, or to them who are yet to
come. The poet may dream of fair women,
and see their tender eyes and touch their living_ hands.
The love of Sappho, and Cleopatra, and Laodamia is
neither more nor leas than the love of woman. Why,
when we read it in Greek, should we call it sublime,
and despise it when it touches the heart and brain
of the peasant girl of to-day? Indeed we think
that the freer civilisation of modern Europe must
make the elements of romance more numerous
rather than less so. If anything, the advantage is
on the side of the moderns—for which let our poets,
and painters, and novelists be thankful, and take
courage.
Mr. Trafford is a believer in this truth. Out
of the most unpromising materials, the love of a
Lincolnshire gentleman for the niece of a London
merchant, he has constructed a romance chronicled
in the soberest of prose, but real as life. Mr. Traf-
ford is no dealer in moonshine. For a novelist he
is singularly matter-of-fact. In the low flat country
intersected by the North Eastern Railway—a
country which drove Robert Hall mad—is a
wretched mansion termed Paradise, inhabited by a
wretched miser, Sir Ernest Ivraine, his miserly
sister, and two sons, one of whom runs away from
home, enlists as a common soldier, makes his fortune
in India, and marries a lovely woman; while the other,
the heir, stays at home,fearing to lose his father's
gold, which, after all, he never touches—the old
miser being so delighted with the
.spirit displayed
by the younger son that he leaves hip all, notwith-
standing that the heir has married Mina Fraser, a
woman whose youth has been blasted by poverty's
cold wind. Our author has taken much pains with
Mina Fraser. One by one her hopes fade away ; her
Highland home is abandoned, her rich uncle died
just as he was altering his will in order to leave her
independent, her weak mother dies, her worthless
brother reproaches her, Mr. Westwood (her uncle's
partner) persecutes her with his addresses, and her
cousin's charming wife tortures her as only. a very
well-bred woman can. No wonder she marries even
Ernest Ivraine, from whose wretched home she how-
ever escapes, when she finds that, having his mind
poisoned by a few words from her charming cousin,
he doubts her love. But, when the old baronet dies,
the younger eon returns, and his wife brings back
Mina to her now happy home—happy, in spite of
the debt left to the heir—since the of
Mina's uncle is proved to be no marriage, an she
and Malcolm share the property between them. One
extract will suffice to convey an idea of our author's
style. We get a glimpse of the old baronet