The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-09 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

The Heiress and her Lovers. A Novel. By Geor-
giana, Lady Chatterton, author of " Memorials of
Lord Gambier," " Translations from the German

of J. P. Richter," &c. Three Vols. Bentley.
Lady Chattertou is a brilliant writer and a deep
thinker. Her facile pen not only enthrals the in
terest but arouses the attentive consideration of her
readers. The theme of her present story is, how-
ever, not a happy one. It is true that, in the course
of it, we sake acquaintance with some very charm-
ing characters. Nesta " the Heiress," Eva Dra-
more, Aunt Mary, and Lord Mowbray, and some
others. Poetical justice is, to a certain extent,
dealt out to good and bad at the falling of
curtain. Still, as we have said, the theme is not a
pleasant one. Notwithstanding the loveable cha-
racter of the heroine and her daughter, for
the story continues to the second genera-
tion, we have continually before our minds
most depraved characters and most revolt-
ing crimes, in the persons and deeds, of Morgan
O'Neil and Honoria, Lady Glenmaurice. Their
characters, for the credit of human nature, we must
regard as singularly overdrawn. When we first
meet with them, they are young, proud, and ambi-
tious, loving each other, and yet unwilling to sacri-
fice personal pride or ambition for affection. Mor-
gan O'Neil having convicted Honoria in an act
of deliberate falsehood, renounces her at
once, and turns to the fair heiress who,
unhappily for herself, is devoted to him. Yet this
same Morgan, so indignant at an act of duplicity in
another, does not scruple afterwards to commit acts
of the meanest perfidy and the basest treachery
imaginable. His after intimacy with Honoria is
hardly probable. He is descrilied as an ambitions
man, a rising member of Parliament. The ambi-
tion and self-esteem of his proud and arrogant nature
would barely, have preserved him from the debas-
ing effects of a passion so recklessly and remorse-
' lessly indulged in, for Morgan is not represented as
being of an ardent or impassioned temperament.
Whether trae to nature or not, the story of Morgan
O'Neil and Honoria is very revolting: and the sins
of the parents are visited upon the children, for
Roland O'Neil falls in love with his own sister, the
supposed daughter of Lady Glenmaurice, the childrec
having been changed in infancy, bat both being
in reality the offspring of Morgan O'Neil, born at
the same hour, the one the daughter of his injured
wife—the fine-minded Nesta—and the other the
son of Honoria, the faithless wife of Lord Glen-
maurice. However well intended, to point a moral
and to illustrate the fatal consequences of a first
false step, the frequent introduction of incidents
like the above, into our domestic novels, is
greatly to be deprecated. There are crimes
about which " ignorance is bliss," and it
is worse than folly in our novel writers to drag
them to the light and depict them in their full
enormity. We the more regret such an error of
judgment in the present instance, because Lady
Chatterton's novel is evidently dictated by the
highest principles, and it is filled throughout with
noble and elevated sentiments. As evidence of
which we may quote the following judicious re-
marks on—