The Sun.
London, England, 1852-08-02 00:00:00

it immediate preference over its predecessors, if only
for that genial fluency which passes at intervals with
such delightful ease into the bumourout, as where it
is said cf the Miser's porter, "the Formidable cer-
tainly predominated over ,the Ridiculoes in Jacob's
appearance." As illustrative of an age different from
the present, alike in customs and costumes, the tale is
clever in its incidental particularity—Deacle's enume-
ration of his mercery, "satinets, anterines, burdets,
sagathees, and shalloons," and:the barber's catalogue
of his wigs, "minor-bob, sunday-buckle, bob-major„
scratch, campaign and rameilies, ' being no less sug-
gestive of former habits in the metropolis, than the
llusion made elsewhere to the fashionable coffee-
owes, to Tom's, Will's, White's, the British, the
Cocoa-tree, the Smyrna, and the St. James's. In
the levee at Beau Villiers', one of Hogarth's most en.
tertaining pictures is reproduced—presenting to our I
notice a crowd of important individuals, such as the
perfumer, the jockey, the bully, the fencer, the racket-
player, and " last but not least," the tailor, M. Des-
martins. A description, in another part, is given of the
famous Folly on the Thames--a description none the less
entertaining because the nature of that place of
amusement had long since been lost to popular re-
membrance, although flourishing when our great
grandmothers woreired-heeled shoes, and beauty-spots,
and pearl powder, and when they were carried in
sedan chairs between the blackberry hedges in Ox-
ford-street to a dram in one of the high
-squares
(meaning circles)
to be lighted home by links after
whiling away the evening over trick-track and cho-
colate. Three renowned places of amusement at the
middle of the last century are here depicted with
much adroitness, being rendered the scenes of some
of the most exciting incidents in the " Miser's
Daughter"—Beau Cripps impersonating Beau Vil-
liers' in the gardens at Marylebone, the masquerade
taking place in the gardens at Ranelagh, and the
abduction being attempted in the gardens at Vaux-
hall. Whether the locality described, however, be
Vauxhall, or Ranelagh, or Marylebone, the author
represents them as little else than regions of enchant-
ment : whereas, even according to this rose-coloured
retrospect, they each appear to have been little
better than a sort of Beatified Tea Gardens. Mr.
Cripps' method of borrowing, although highly de
licious (B. 111. ' ch. vii.), " Forty, you shake
your head, thirty, twenty, I'm obliged to
come down like an auctioneer," has been
infinitely surpassed by the consummate mendi-
cancy of Montague Tigg_e Ten shillings, five
shillings, half-a-crown—why, then, we come to
the ridiculously small amount of eighteen pence !"
Nemartheless, Cripps retains at least the merit of
being the precursor. Possibly the most obvious
blemish in the novel, as infusing, into the otherwise
natural current of the tale, an exceeding and trans-
parent improbability, is the coincidence of the mutual
tenderness for each other inspired between Hilda and
Randal
ph—although, until the moment of their be-
trothal, they had been merely once alone together,
once danced a minuet in profound silence at a masque.
rade, and upon two other occasions met by accident
in public elsewhere. Apart from this incongruity,
however, the plot of the story is as agreeably credible
as the diction is delightfully spontaneous.
Before the " Miser's Daughter" had very far ad-
vanced in the Magazine, the indefatigable author
commenc©d in the July • number for 1842 of the
same periodical, another historical romance, entitled
Windsor Castle. As embellishments to the former
work, Cruikshank contributed some of his most
exquisite illustrations, while the artistic abilities
engaged upon the latter were manifest in
.the elaborate steel engravings of Tony Johannot
s
well as in ' the graphic wood-cuts of Alfred b --e-
-lamotte. Eventually, before the conclusion of
" Windsor Castle, " Johannot was supplanted -
Cruikahank —to which circumstance we are by
in-
debted for some of its most gracefnllimnig
such, for instance, ns that portraying the final scene
in the " chronicles " where the gun from the round
tower announces to Henry. that the axe has fallen
upon the neck of Anne Boleyn, the beautiful and
unfortunate. Besides the august personages just
mentioned, others are crowded into the narrative—
each of them being very carefully and some very
admirably discriminated, the romancist reveal-
ing in their regard a subtle apprecia-
tion of their idiocyncracies. Nevertheless the
merits of the production are marred by its
pervading extravagance. Interested at times in
observing the intrigues of Wolsey and the sorrows of
Catharine, amused repeatedly by the rival absurdities
of Will Sommers; the King's Jester, and of Patch
the jester of the Cardinal, entertained at one moment
in following the footsteps of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and
at another those of' the Earl of Surrey—the attention
becomes more frequently distracted by mysteries
which, after all, are in no one particular
explained. The graces of Mabel and Geral-
dine, no less than the adventures of Fenwolf
and Tristram, are forgotten in the repugnance felt
towards the unaccountable and incomprehensible bug-
bear of the romance—Herne the Hunter. As spec-
tral as the Erl. King—he can do nothing without
blue-fire any more than could that very respectable
character the Ghost at Richardson's. " Windsor
Castle," nevertheless, becomes redeemed to a certain
importance—notwithstanding the will-o'the-wisp va-
garies of Marne—by depicting with astonishing mi-
nuteness the architectural arrangements of the most
royal among the palaces of England. In Ainsworth's
subsequent effusion, The Court of Saint James's,
which made its appearance in 1844, not merely
was the same exactitude displayed towards
the town residence of the Sovereign, but in
the course of the narrative there were happily intro-
duced the majority of the beauties, wits, and states-
men who rendered themselves notable during the
reign of Atossa. The queen herself we behold, as it
were, under the shelter at once of the bay of Pope
and of the laurel of Marlborough. Neither the vices
nor virtues of the age are concealed by the inaparti-
tiality of the writer. He paints in one chapter the
glory and in another the disgrace—here the garland
and there the worm born from its very luxuriance—
according to that expression of Voltaire (" Han."
ch. vit.)—
« la sombre envie, a l' mil timtde et loathe,
Versant sur des lauriere its poimn3 de 83 bouche."
little later, and our author produced
e
in Auriol the " fragment a romance'—
the materials of which resembled the " Sr. Leon" of '
Godwin and t'4e " moni" of B
ai
had reference to the wer-Lytton, inas-
much as they
sY-hilted and con-
mystic lore of the
u
Resierasians. As far as the dimly-hipped
fusedly-arranged plot is. comprehensible at the con-
clusion, it resolves itself into a student's dream three
hundred and fifty yetis az ,nib
o; ina!:l
alchemist.
on London-
bridge, occupied by Dr.
in 1599 imbibed VAhriol,
Darcy having
brings to destruction three successivellbrAroZs',
Edith Talbot, Clara Pesten, mid Ebbs Teorney-
croft, somewhat as in. the Phantasm of the
+ Vampire," lately
,dramatised by Dion Bourcicaulte
pieces . have
Betides " Auriol,' other fragmentary
as the " Sketch"
ano-ther,
fallen from the same band, such
called The Old
.London
.Merchant, acid
-led A Ariel/Cs dve2a in '
rather longer, entt• ” - urc Rome.
In 1848, the 66 Sundry again became the
vehicle for the nonce iniweekly instalments of a fiction
by Harrison Ainsworth—the disbursement of the
t,
proprietors being, as in the former instance, 1,000
and the work being this time a " Romance et
Pendle Forest," under the title of The Lancashire
Witches. Through the medium of this weird
narrative the author
cele'orated not_
the
the
.
lovely, but the unholy
" charms
women of the county falatine • Duringof
the
•
year of its original publication be Edited an Llisto
_ _
rival Romance descriptive of the Revolution or 1588,
and thence bight " James the Second." Since that
oesasien he has only once re-eppeared in his cha-
racter as a novelist. Mervyn Clitheroe, towards the
close of 1851, was announced as to be issued in
monthly numbers, illustrated by Poiz, the fret of
these numbers being accordingly published in De-
cember. Scarcely, however, had the author given evi-
ence in the successive chapters;that his capacities as
a 'writer of fiction had been improved by lapse of
the.
time rather than deteriorated , when at the fourth
"n-
-stalment •
•
pnblication of the work was suddenly in-
terrupted
because incircumstance the more to be regretted,
have adventured "Mervyn Clitheroe" the author seemed to
pkting
thesociety
familiar ground, evidently de-
under the suggestive Manchester forty years since
it may be
our
r-e name of Ctttonborough. Pos-
siblystory through the ,author's intention to complete the
that periodical, after the "Ainsworth's Magazine,"
lapse of a brief interval,
having long since passed
posses-
sion. By purchasing from(3agoelin into his
of 1845 the copyright of the ~
~.,Tburn, in the spring
Maga-
zine,,, be has become, moreoe'r, r
Monthly Maga-
, the excl.usive
proprietor of that eminent publication. Occupied in
the editorebip of these two magazine,; Harrison
ins-
worth still lingers in the vicinity of' the
metropolis—
deferring, until the autumn of life hes advanced, his
then projected
.removal from Kensal Manor-house,
his London residence, to Beech-hill, his residence in
Lancashire. With the features of Ainsworth his
readers have become familiar, through the assistance
of Alaclise, Lane, and Pickersgill. With the
Peculiarities of his temperament
he has him..
self rendered them intimately acquainted. That
temperament he has shown to be exquisitely
Sensitive not less of the horrible then of the beautiful.
Rl* romances yield evidence of this is a thousand
particulars—in those landscapes coloured variously
with the glow of Claude and the gloom of Salvator—
in those lyrics ga as the son.; of the Tyrol or
ghastly as t, Y . of the Btocken—but still
tut incantations
more, in those creations pe en.) • the one and chaunt-
ing the other, homely some of them as the models of
Oetade, and others wild as the wildest dreams
Of Fuseli. Every where in these romances,
however, a preference
for the grislier moods
of imagination renders The
itself apparent.
author's purpose, so
to speak, gravitates
to the preternatural. Had be been a painter by.tetici