The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-04 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Stella. By Mrs. Bennett, author of the " Cottage
Girl," &c. Three Vols. J. Maxwell and Co.
Encouraged by the success of the "sensational'
novels, some of our fiction writers are now adven-
turing upon an arduous and necessarily most futile
endeavour, namely, the union of the antagonistic
elements of truth and falsehood—the probable and
the impossible. The medley, like all snoh combina-
tions, possesses the attractions neither of the one
class nor of the other, while, by an unhappy fatality,
the faults of both are glaringly visible. It is a pan-
tomime by daylight—the trickery all apparent and
the illusion gone. When we read a fairy tale or a
melo-dramatic romance, we are content for the
time being to yield ourselves up to the empire
of the imagination, but, then, our imagi-
nation must be satisfied. We must have no
half measures. Mrs. Bennett has done herself great
injustice in the production of the novel now before
us. She possesses considerable skill in the con-
struction of a story, and some of her characters are
original and vigorous. In an unhappy attempt,
however, to achieve too much, she has involved her
plot, and rendered it improbable beyond the belief
of the most credulous ; while her characters, fet-
tered by the unnatural situations in which they
find themselves, become unreal, and consequently
uninteresting. The opening scene induced us to
form more favourable expectations of the narrative
that w s to follow.

THE CRISIS OP A DESTINY.
The storm was over, but still tne surging billows con
tinned to dash heavily on the rocky shore.
Norman Pascal—a handsome, but somewhat dissipated-
looking young man, who was articled to an attorney in the
market-town of Trevethan, on the Cornish coast—had
strayed down to the beach, to sea the wreck that lay at a
short distance from the town, the sea washing over the
decks and rigging, where for hours a few poor fellows had
been clinging for dear life, until one by one they sank into
the deep.
Norman walked on and on, under the lofty, rugged,
granite cliffs, until he came to a small strip of sand hidden
between rocks. Coming suddenly upon this, he was startled
by the sight of a human body, lying half on the sands and
half under water.
It had evidently been washed from the wreck. It ap-
peared to be the corpse of an old man, with white hair, and
large, hard, knotty hands, as if used to severe toil. The
jacket was rough and coarse—a common seaman's jacket—
and a pocket in it visibly bulged out.
Norman stood some time gazing on the sad spectacle ;
then all at once a thought struck him. He went near to
the body, and examined the bulging pocket, taking from it
a heavy pocket-book.
Hark ! was that a voice near ? No. Norman looked on
every side, but no one could he see observing his actions ;
so, after a brief and agitated pause, he thrust the book into
his own pocket, and then stood hesitating what it was best
to do with the dead man.
"He might be recognised and there might be inquiries,"
Norman reflected. "It is evening; I will come back here
when it is quite dark, and make a grave in the sand. What
matter is it ? The man is dead, and I can do him no injury."
SO, on the impulse of the moment, Norman acted.
It was with him in all the transactions of his life; he fol-
lowed the blind leading of his hasty passions, whichever
way they tended, whether to good or to evil.
Norman Pascal thus, according to the adage of
'falleyrand, commits worse " than a crime—a mis-
take." The credulity of the reader is somewhat taxed
by the subsequent revelation that the drowned
man is Norman's own uncle Mark Leyton returning
from Australia to enrich his relatives. When we
have become reconciled to this idea, Mark Leyton
in propria persona is rescued from the waves, and
the dead man appears to be John Trellick, the friend
and companion of Mark, who is returning also w;
another fortune in his pocket. After Mark Leyton
has, for some secret reason, assumed the name of
his lost companion, and after the dead body has
been twice buried and disinterred and then cast by
Norman into the deep waters, lo and behold the old
farmer, John Trellick, makes his appearance as
a deaf spectacled Professor who has been all
the time secretly keeping watch upon every-
body, and the dead body for the third
transformatio❑ turns out to be en unknown "skip-
per" opportunely cast ashore at the right moment.
The body discovered by Norman, and supposed to
be that of Mark Layton, having nevertheless been
the half-drowned John Treltick, with Mark Ley ton's
pocket-book containing many thousands in one
pocket, and hie own fortune of many other thousands
concealed in a tobacco-box in another ! After Nor
elan had purloined the pocket-book, another robber
ook po3sesaion of the tobacco-box, and then the
good genius of the story, Athert Crewe, arrived with
ais yachtsmen and carried off poor John,and restored
him to life. Meanwhile Norman returns with a
spade to dig a grave for his uncle Mark, alias Join
l'rellick, and wonderful to relate, finds in lieu of the
resuscitated John, the newly arrived body of the
skipper, cast ashore at the right moment,
in the identical spot where he had loft
the other body ! Norman consequently inters
this corpse, believing it to be the one
he had plundered. May we not safely aver that
Mrs. Bennett taxes our credulity overmuch ?
Again, in her endeavour to blend the amazing with
the possible, our authoress introduces us to a
group of spiritual mediums. When Norman is