The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-27 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Atherstone Priory. 2,y L. N. Conlyn, Author of
" Ellice.
Two volumes. Longman and
-umpany.

A Domestic Novel, this is, of the moat charming
character, Perhaps altogether it is rather too diffuse
in style, too "spun out" in acme of its incidents and
descriptions. But—in this, like that " dimpled, sur-
prised-looking capital face" of Scrooge's nephew's
wife, with all its shortcomings, whatever they
may be—"satisfactory, oh, perfectly satisfactory !"
As in one sense a mere material objection,
and yet ss in another sense a wholly ins.
material objection to the bock as a book,
we would say at once that it seems to us
rather a pity that it should have been published
precisely; in the form in which it has been published !
In other words, that it should have appeared as two
rather unwieldy co:types, instead of, in the old
orthodox novel-form, as three volumes of reasonable
dimensions. For although Miss or Mrs. Comyn's
book—(which it ought to be, we know not, but the
sex of the work, us we may say, is altogether unt.
mistakeable I)—although this newly published
fiction by the author of " Ellice, a tale," comes fcrth
merely as a domestic story in two volumes, the two
volumes within which it is comprised have been ex-
tended to the length of no less than 1,102 pages.
Yet balky though the book is, the reader of it will
hardly find it a bit too long. Homely though the
incidents it relates, it will securely hold the atten-
tion of the lovers of a purely domestic narrative—
through it's upwards of Oae Thousand and One
hundred pages of thoroughly English Entertain-
ment. It might be objected to it by the more cap-
tious, that the title is somewhat of a misnomer—
seeing that the larger of these two volumes—that is
to say the second one—refers hardly at all, except
towards the close of it, to that scene of all the varied
incident recounted in the first, to wit, "Atherstone
Priory." Still, even in regard to that at once specious
and captions objection, we conceive that the authoress
might reply, and with good show of reason enough,
that "the cottage by the Baal" where the more sor-
rowful incidents of the plot are described as having
occurred, solely acquire an interest for us during
the chief part of the second volume by reason of its
being inhabited for a while by people we, Etill, to the
last, mainly associate with Atherstone Priory.
Once, and once only, does the writer forsake
the even tenour of her way in order, we
presume, to afford her admirers some notion of her
capabilities—if she pleased—as a Sensationalist.
Whatever her motive in doing so, we would earnestly
recommend her never again to adventure into those
regions of extravagantly romantic and impassioned
sentimentality which may be said to have dictated
the chapter in which—(this is the one fi lw in the
narratiee, even, we would say, in the writing of it'
certainly in the conception of it)—the chapter in
which Percy is described as waiting, in a
sort of ambush, with murder in his heart,
by the moonlit " pool among the hills,"
for his supposed enemy, Arthur Darrell. The'
authoress may take our word for this, at least, that
she can never hope to compete with Miss Braddon
as a sensationalist, though she may, if she lists,
count very confidently upon proving a for-
midable rival to Miss Yonge, that most charming
among all our living domestic novelists. And we are
very much mistaken, indeed, in our estimate at once
of the powers and of the predilections of L. N.
Comyn, if the latter would not herself
immeasurably prefer entering the lists with
the authoress of a "Daisy Chain," instead of with
the authoress of "Aurora Floyd." There is some-
thing kindred, indeed, in the genius which wove the
" linked sweetness" of the " Daisy Chain," and that
which has hero built up the homely architecture of
" AtherstonePricry"peopling it afterwards with the
numerous Family of good Dr. Tennant of Atherstone.
A manufacturing town is that said town of Ather-
stone. A place dingy and smoky enough in itself.
But with a green oasis in the midst of it, in the
shape of that large scrambling old garden, full
of flowers, and fruit, and vegetation of all kinds,
grassy-lawn and shadowing lime trees, rose bushes
and orchard boughs, embowering three sides of that
old Priory Mansion, which presents its fourth side to
the mein street of the beforementioeed manufactur-
ing borough-town of Atherstone! It is surprising
now that we have come to the end of the story, as
it is told to us in these two bulky volumes, it is
surprising to us—he.ekneyed, and, as we had
fancied, somewhat needsup novel-readers—how
profound an interest the writer has here
contrived to awaken within us in regard
to the various members of thin home groupe !
Doctor Tennant himself, although the very embodi-
ment of good-nattre, appears too slightly and
casually iso the course of the narrative, to secure
from us, we must confess, very much of our
sympathy. Ills second wife again is such a cross-
grained cantankerous old harridan that even when
she relents at the very end of the book we don't
care for her the snap of a finger and thumb !
Doctor Tennant, it should be here mentioned at
once, has two children by his first wife—dead, this
latter, long before the story opera, dead so long
indeed by that time that the Doctor has been
married again for a good many years, having by
Mrs. 'Pennant No. 2 as many as seven children.
Captain, afterwards Mjer, eventually Col. Percy
Tennant, is the good doctor's first-born by his first
wife—and this Percy it is who is the hero of the
book. His sister Mary might be described as the
good angel of it. Not the heroine of course, however,
—as will have been manifest in the mere fact of its
being her brother who is the hero. The heroine's
part is allotted, almost avowedly, as one
may say, at the outset to the adopted child
of the house, an orphan cousin, wilful, charming,
lovely, loveable, lithe Lisa! The child wife.
as she becomes (just midway in the story) of Percy
Tennant. As to the seven children brought to Dr.
Tennant by his second wife, the cold-eyed, cold-
hearted matron already mentioned by us in
terms strongly expressive of our repugnance,
they partake, most of them, we suspect, rather
too much of her nature, and too little of
the kindlier nature of her husband, to win
our regard very cordially. Isabel, until towards
the end of the book, is simply odious, with her
jealousy and her slanders—her jealousy the meanest
her slanders at once the most detestable in their
nature and the most disastrous in their consequences.
Her slater Elinor, again, is barely tolerable all
through the work—a sly, silent, secretive valetudi-
narian lover, not in the least worthy of Arthur
Darrell, who, while in the earlier chapters one of
the most delightful of all the characters introduced
to our notice, lighting up, as he does, the old-
fashioned sitting rooms and the green orchard-
garden at Atherstone Priory, with his wild fun
and frolic, Incomes really and truly quite spoilt for
us directly he falls into that fatal attachment of his
for Elinor. Fatal, that is, not to him, out to one
upon whom the mystery of it throws for a while
such very lamentable suspicions. Charming little
Lisa, that is—the child wife of poor, deceived,
purblind Percy Tennant. The tangled skein of the
plot of the novel, however, we will not precisely
attempt here to unravel. The gordian knot of it
may be found by those who liot, unwound most
deftly and skilfully by the authoress—unwound by
her in all its intricate involutions save one—the
which central core of the knot of the plot, as one
may say, is severed only by the grimly sheers of
Atropoe ! Compensation, however, of some kind is
given to us at the very last, where compensation
has seemed at first a thing impossible—namely, after
the grief caused by cur loss of poor Lisa! The
young at ife and mother leaving in solace
to her husband and to the reader Little Lisa's own
alter ego Tiny May Au enthralling home story—
very real of its kind—is this new domestic tale by
L. N. Comyn : a fiction in which the fair promise
given by the writer through the gracious outlines
and delicate colouring of her "Ellice" (so far as we
know, her maiden work), are not simply fulfilled,
but are, we would rather say, realised so very
happily, that we have every confidence in the still
further rise, advance, and development of her
reputation.

EATING LIVE RATS.—
_
Goorge Whittington has
been fined 1:5, with the alternative of 30 days' imprisontnent,
by the Glabgow magistratearfor having an exhibition of a
nun and a woman eating live rats in his show booth in
Wol-bqiisra.

tinnot SAITO,
u,E .
,
14

HER MAJESTY,

OsBoRNE, July 26.
Her Majesty, accompanied by her Royal Highness
Princess Louis of Hasse, hnd her Royal Righoo3
Princess Louise, waled and drove about tb°
grounds yesterday.
• The Countess of CalGdon has been succeeded b 7
Dowager Countess of :Mount-Edgcurabe as I/14 is
Waiting.
•