The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Rachel Ray. A Novel. By Anthony Trollops
Two vols. Chapman and Hall.

As charming a story as any yet penned by An-
thony Trollope, " Rachel Ray" is, after all, nothing
more pretentious than a faithful delineation of life
as it actually is in an English country town and its
suburbs. Tile work as a work of art is wholly
unambitious, but it is, from first to last, we cannot
help repeating it, charming. It is like one of those
masterly little sketches by a great artist dashed
down with a few apparently careless and unstudied
touches of coloured crayons upon a rough-grained
neutral-tinted drawing-board—sketches so glowing
into life and beauty under the rapid hand of the
artist, that they even win from us a more instant
and cordial admiration for the consummate elsili
with which they have been wrought than that same
artist's more elaborate compositions, in more endur-
ing materials, in oil, or in water colours, or as in
the instance of Maclise's later masterpieces in that
wonderful medium—that mediumof perennial fresh-
ness and beauty—water-glass. As it appears to
us, Mr. Anthony Trollope, so to speak, has worked
(with how facile and untiring a pencil !) in
each end all of these materials. He has
so worked, in mediums of such diversity and with
such a ready adaptation of his powers to the re-
quirements of each, that he has already become one
of the most voluminous as well as one of the most
popular novelists of his day. There are characters,
moreover, which he has conjured up into imagi-
nary existence that may take their place, side by
side, with the happiest creations of the most rarely-
gifted among his contemporaries. The Archdeacon
Granticy of Anthony Trollope may be ranked un-
hesitatingly, as a kindly and humorous creation of
this exceptionaljkind, even with the Mrs. Poyser of
Mary Anne Evans and the Colonel Newcome of
W. M. Thackeray—with the Captain Cuttle of
Charles Dickens, and Olr Bulwer Lytton's eieeale-
shanked and red-unabrella'd Riccabocca. " Bar-
cheater Towers," " Dr. Thorne," and the earlier
volume of ' The Warden"—the last-mentioned
being the book that first riveted public attention
upon the genius of Anthony Trollope, to the instant
recognition of its delightful freshness and originality
—those three purely clerical stories may be re-
ferred to here as comprising within them the first
epoch of our writer's career as a novelist. An inter-
mediate period there has elapsed since then, in
which various highly entertaining but, as it seemed
to us while reading them, far more carelessly
written narratives, narratives, for the most part, of
a manifestly ephemeral character, were scrawled
off with wonderful rapidity—about the best of these,
to our thinking, being our author's romance of
" Castle Richmond." Afterwards have appeared
in various forms, now as a serial tale in monthly
parts, now as a periodical contribution to one of
the popular magazines, now as a separate and com-
plete publication, works of a far more highly elabo-
rated character, brilliant fictions such as " Orley
Farm," and " Framley Parsonage." In " Rachel
Ray " we have no such ingenious complication of
plot, or subtle analysis of character as are recog-
nisable in those kbri majores of Anthony Trollope.
The novel, for one thing, is of lesser dimensions,
The plot of it, for another, is the simplest well
imaginable. Incidents of a momentous character
there are none. Throughout the whole of the two
volumes, it is nothing less than refreshing, in these
days of sensational writing, to find not one solitary
mystery. The scene is laid entirely in
Devonshire. Principally in the little county
town of Baslehurst. The course of the events
related in the narrative, only once, for a very
brief interval, taking us in one brief chapter of the
second volume 40 miles by railway from the imme-
diate neighbourhood of the little town of Baslehurst
—namely to the city of Exeter, the capital of De-
vonshire. Otherwise, from the opening of the tale
to the close of it, we loiter about the streets or in
the houses of Baslehurst—sauatering now into the
village of Cawston, in quest of the simple-hearted
Rector, old Mr. Comfort—driving with Butler Corn-
bury (before the close of the story M.P. for Basle-
hurst) along the beautiful highway leading to Corn.
bury Grange, the old Squire's residence—and
becoming more and more pleasantly familiar with
every nook and corner of the pretty little cottage
at Bragg's End, in which resides the heroine of the
fiction, sweet, charming Rachel Ray : together with
her widowed mother, Mrs. Ray (far more simple-
hearted even than herfavouriteclergyman, Mr. Com-
fort)—and besides Rachel's widowed mother, her
widowed sister, Mrs. Prime, gr mly, acidly, cynically
evangelical. The homely, natural,lifelike, delicately-
pencilled portraits of the wcmen here cluster-
ing together in Baslehurst, are among the
happiest of Mr. 'l'rollope's delineations. There
is a touch of the immortal Mrs. Poyser, already
mentioned above, in the little incidental outline of
Mrs. Sturt, the farmer's dame, on the opposite side
of the green, at Bragg's End, to the Ray's Cottage.
Mrs. Sturt relieving her sympathetic heart while
mourning over Rich el's temporary estrangement
from her lover, Luke Rowan, vith such old Devon-
shire rhymes as—" It's passing sweet when two
hearts meet. Bat it breaks the heart when true hearts
part." The Tappitt's, too, are capitally drawn—
not only the coarse, bluff, hard-headed, not to
say pig-headed, old bully of a father, Mr. Tappitt,
brewer, of Baslehurst, as actirg partner or repre-
sentative of the firm of Bungall and Tappitt, but
his " womankind" as well. Mrs. Tappitt, that
most bungling of match-making, or any rate to
that end manoeuvring mammas—who, in her florid
and roundabout person is a sort of casual justifica-
tion of Nathaniel Hawthorne's horrid portrait of
the English dowager. And, with Mrs. Tappitt,
the mamma, the three Miss Tappitts her daughters
—Martha, the staidest, and eldest, who is all for
justice and common sense, Augusta, who having
vainly set her cap at Luke, becomes scornful,
not to say spiteful in temperament for ever
afterwards, as the consequence cf her failure in that
same laudable effort, and the best of the bunch, the
flower of the flock, cheery Cherie- Tappitt, the truest
friend amongst them all, that is amongst the Tape
Pitt family, to Rachel Ray. Tor charming, little,
innocent, tender love scenes, we know nothing
prettier, in that way, than can le found in this same
homely tale of the loves of Rachel Ray and Luke
Rowan. Instance the sunset scene under the elms
near the stile of the old churchyard at Baslehurst !
Or that other scene upon the landing of the brewery
house in the midst of the Bail, whither dur unso-
phisticated heroine Rachel has been chaperoned by
charming Mrs. Butler Cornbury of the Grange,
nie Patty Comfort. Or the parlour scene in the
cottage at Bragg's End when Rich el nods (with a
very little nod indeed) her accenauce of Luke as
her betrothed. Or after the lenethened and heart-
wearying estrangement of the lovers, their final
meeting in Mrs. Sturt's back Pulour at the farm
house on the opposite side of the green : that dear
little delightful back parlour, looking out upon the
farm kitchen-garden with its rows and cabbages.
The ball at the brewery-house, ,he contention be-
tween Tappitt and Rowan abut the brewery
business, and the stormy Election for the
borough, when the Jew tailor, Mr. Hart,
from ever so many houses in Shoreditch,
and ever so many other houses in Regent-street, is
defeated by a majority of one by the young squire
Butler Cornbury, who has taken Betty Comfort to
wife, and is now my_ for Baslehurst ! There are
among the most important incidents or occurrences
of any note, here recorded in this Elibiy written and
alluring little narrative. As among the few more
passages in the two volumes,
serious and thoughtful
we are tempted here to ssanscribefrom the pages of
electioneeing part of the
Rachel Ray, from the
story of course, the following

NOBLE DEFINITION OP A IADICAL.
A radical is not necessarily a revolutonist or even a re-
publican. lle does not, by reason of hs social or political
radicalism, desire the ruin of thrones, the degradation of
nobles, the spoliation of the rich, or e•en the downfall of
the bench of bishops. Many a young man is frightened
away from the just conclusions of his nind and the strong
convictions of his heart by dread of )oing classed with
those who are jealous of the favoured ones of fortune.
A radical may be as ready as any aristocrat to
support the crown with his blooc., and the church
with his faith. It is in this that he, is a radical ;
th.At he desires, expects, works for, ant believes in, the
gradual progress of the people. No doc;rine of equality is
his. Liberty he must have, and such pceition, high or low,
for himself and others, tio each man's ilicividual merits will