The Sun.
London, England, 1830-02-16 00:00:00

LITtRATURE.

LAWRIE TODD.-LONDON, 1880,
Mr. Galt, an author well and deservedly
known to the devourers, wholesale and in re-
tail, of Scotch novels, has in the present work
afforded us many amusing, and, we doubt not,
characteristic glimses into transatlantic scenery
and manners. The hero of his tale is a
Scotchman of homely birth, manners, and edu-
cation, who possessed, like Sir Andrew Wylie,
of the usual shrewdness of his nation, and of
more than its usual inflexible pertinacity of pur-
pose, carries these natural advantages with him to
America, where they serve him in lieu of for-
tune, and enable him in the fulness of time to
become the successful founder of a settlement in
the back woods. The incidents of his life are
few, and far from startling or dramatic, but as
faithful transcripts of reality teem with interest
and possibly with instruction. Lawrie Todd,
in fact, is a plain unvarnished history of what
the author himself saw, heard, and experienced
in the wilds of Canada. It is a tale abounding
in details of the local peculiarities of raw Ame-
rican settlements—of the manners and customs of
their inhabitants, their modes of building, plant-
ing, clearing; of every thing, in short, that is either
directly or indirectly connected with the subject.
In this respect it is not unlike Mr. Cooper's
novel of the Pioneers, though as it is more
homely and natural in the style and quality of
its incidents and personages, it is likely to become
more generally read and appreciated. The cha-
racter of the hero Lawrie Todd, Mr. Galt has
drawn with all that spirit and archness which ren-
dered his Leddy Grippy and Ayrshire Legatees
such general favourites. He appears also to have
caught the peculiarities of the Yankee character
with equal felicity and readiness, as the subjoined
extract will testify :

This old Mr. Hoskins was, in his way, something of
a Yankey oddity. He was tall, thin, and of an anato-
mical figure, with a long chin, ears like trenchers, lengthy
jaws, and a nose like a schooner's cut-water. His hair
was lank and oily, the tie of his cravat was always dislo-
cated, and he wore en old white beaver hat, turned up be-
hind. His long bottle-green surtout, among other defects,
lacked a button on the left promontory of his hinder parts,
and in the house he always tramped in slippers.
" Having from my youth upward been much addicted
to the society of remarkable persons, soon after the trans-
lation of my Rebecca, I happened to fall in with this
gentleman, and without thinking of any serious purpose,
I sometimes, of a sabbath evening, called at the house
where he boarded with his family, and there I soon disco-
vered, in the household talents of Miss Judith his niece
just the sort of woman that was wanted to heed the bring-
ing up of my little boy. This discovery, however, to tell
the truth quietly, was first made by her uncle.
" I guess, Squire Lawrie,' said he, one evening, the
Squire has considerable muddy time o'nt since his old wo-
maa went to pot.'
" Ala, Rebecca! she was but twenty-one'—
" Now, Squire, you see,' continued Mr. Zerobabel
1.. Hoskins, that ere being the circumstance, you should
be a-making your calculation for another spec;' and he
took his cigar out of his month, and, trimming it on the
edge of the snuVer-tray, added, Well, if so be as you're
agoing to do so, don't you go to stand like a pump, with
your arm up, as if you would give the sun a black-eye,
but do it right away.'
" I told hien it was a thing I could not yet think of,
that my wound was too fresh, my loss too recent.
" If that ben't particular,' replied he, Squire Law-
rie, I'm a pumpkin, and the pigs may do their damnedst
with me. But I ain't a pumpkin, the Squire he knows that.'
" I assured him, without very deeply dunkling the
truth, that I had met with few men in America who bet-
ter knew how many blue beans it takes to make five.
" I reckon, Squire Lawrie,' said he, 'is a puffing of
a parley von, but 1 sells no wooden nutmegs. Now, look
ye here, Squire, there be you spinning your thumbs with
a small child that ha'nt got no mother; so I calculate, if
you make Jerusalem fine-nails, I guess you can't a hippeu
such a small child for no man's money—which is tarna-
tion bad.'

" I could not but acknowledge the good sense of his

remark.
" He drew his chair close in front of me, and taking
the cigar out of his mouth, and beating off the ashes on
his left thumb nail, replaced it. Having then given a
puff, he raised his right hand aloft, and lad in; it em-
phatically down on his knee, said in his wonted, slow, and
phlegmatic
' Well, I guess that 'ere young womm, my niece—
she ben't five-and-twenty--she'll make a heavenly
splice !—I have known that 'ere young woman 'liver the
milk of our thirteen cows afore eight a morning, and then
fetch Crumple and her calf from the Bush—ding that 'ere
Crumple ! we never had no such heifer afore—she and her
calf cleared out every night, and wonldn't come home on
no account, no never, 'till Judy fetch'd her right away,
when done milking t'other thirteen.'
" No doubt, Mr. Hoskins,' said I, ' Ansa Judith wiL
make a capital farmer's wi'e in the country, but I have no
cows to milk—all my live stock is a sucking bairn.'
" By the Gods of Jacob's fither-in-law ! sbe's just the
cut for that. But the Squire knows I ain't agoing to
trade her. If she suits Squire Lawrie—good, says I—l
- shan't ask no nothing for her ; but I can tell the Squire
as how Benjamin S. Thuds—what is blacksmith in our
viHage—offered me two hundred and fifty dollars—gospel,
by the living jingo !—in my right hand away ; but you
see, as how, he was an almighty boozer, though for black-
smithing a ptime hammer—l sa'd no, no, and there she is
- still to he had—and I reckon Squire Lawrie may go the
whole hog with her, and make good operation.'
" Discovering by this plain speaking of Mr. Hoskins
how the cat jumped—to use one of his own terms—we
entered more into the marrow of the business, till it cam,:
to pass that I made a proposal for Miss Judith, and soon
after a paction was settled between me and her, that when
the Fair American arrived front Palermo we should he
married ; liar she had a share in the cod-fish venture by
that bark, and we counted that the profit might prove a
nest-egg ; and it did so, to the blithsorne tune of four hun-
dred and thirty-three dollars, which the old gentleman
counted out to me in the hard on the wedding-day."
The chief fault we find with this otherwise
correct production is the strange discrepancy
that exists between the hero and his language.
Lawrie Todd is a homely untaught Scotch me-
chanic, yet he talks perpetually in a poetic style.
Speaking of the yellow fever at Philadelphia, he
states that " the angel of the pestilence was on
the threshold of Heaven, shaking his black wings
for a flight to the earth." Again, " The city
of Philadelphia was forsaken, and silence, with
weeping eyes, sat in the market-place." Now
we can no more fancy a Scotch mechanic talking
in this strain—a strain, by the bye, which re-
minds us of the sublime description of the plague
in Anastasius—than we can fancying him cap-
ping verses in Hindostanee with a Pundit.
Bating this defect, we have received unalloyed gra-
tification from Mr. Galt's ingenious production.

THE COUNTRY CURATE.
By the Author of " The Subaltern."

We have often seen it remarked that Eng-
land is the only country in Europe where the
peasantry, properly so called, are totally devoid
of every thing approaching to the romantic in
their general character and habits. We have
long been persuaded that no prejudice was ever
entertained more groundless or unjust ; indeed,
the very condition of the labourini, classes in
our own favoured countiY'lSiirotigh to secure
them, from what even in these " march of in-
tellect days," must be considered a gross libel