The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-10 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Respectable Sinners. By Mrs. Brotherton. 3 vols.

Hurst arid Blackett.

Notwithstanding its not 'very attracti e title,
Mrs. Brotherton has here given us a very attrac-
tive novel, in which some of the Tartuffes and
Pharisees of modern days are both skilfully and se-
verely depleted. The discrimination of character
is singularly happy, and the story is very naturally
and pleasantly told. The two heroines, Louisa
Danhaye and her daughter, Helen Ashton, are
beautiful portraits, beautifully portrayed. Both of
them full of faults of very different kinds, and both
of them so richly endowed with natural goodness,
that the discipline of life, which comes to all,
leaves them chastened by sorrow and ennobled by
suffering. At the opening of the tale Louisa is a
widow of one-and-twenty, and Helen an orphan of
three years old. The widow, it appears, had married
without her father's consent, and she is now left
almost penniless. But, fortunately for her youth
and inexperience, her husband's brother arrives from
abroad, and for the time provides for her. An
amusing chapter "On Daily Bread and Daily
Cake," deserves to be studied by the sentimental
young ladies who sigh for love in a cottage. Louisa
Danhaye, the only child of a wealthy father, had,
it should be remembered, up to the time of her
marriage, existed in blissful ignorance of worldly
affairs.

Louisa held the precious metals in sublime contempt,
and always called them " dross." So do a vast number of
romantic young women, whose parents happen to be well off.
And oh I ye younger brothers, it is always some
dainty creature brought up on cake, that is so innocently
eager to share your crust I Louisa, for instance, had an
excellent appetite for her gaily cake, liked it as •rich as it
could be made, and munched it gracefully— sighing senti
mentally the while for dry bread.

This brief passage gives a glimpse of Mrs. Brother-
ton's lively, pleasant style. Her manner of narrat-
ing her story is very charming ; and the story itself
is sufficiently interesting to make us reluctant to
spoil its interest by any premature disclosure of its
plot. Widow Louisa selects a second husband—
" a respectable sinner"—and little Helen, an affec-
tionate, impulsive child, skrinks from him instinc-
tively, as little David Copperfield shrank from Mr:
Murdstone. But widow Louisa is not meek and
malleable like poor Clara, and Mr. Hartley, of
Hartley Hall, finds his match. Another " respect-
able sinner" is Mrs. Nettlefold, Louisa's aunt, who,
from avaricious motives, keeps up and augments the
estrangement between Louisa and her father. The
character of this irreproachable lady, with her
rustling silks and her benignant smile, is very
effectively described. Edward Hartley, the hypocri-
tical son of a tyrannical father, is another character
drawn with skilful discrimination. The fatal effects
upon a weak nature of such early training as fell to
his lot at the hands of those " respectable sinners,"
his worldly father and his austere grandmother, are
most effectively shown. The happy influence ulti-
mately obtained by the loving but too impetuous
Helen will be a matter of satisfaction to all who take
an interest in her story. The character of the mother
is, however, the happiest in the book. The one
strong feeling of her life, her devotion to her
daughter, while it subjects her for a time to much
anxiety and distress, ultimately proves, like every
unselfish emotion, the source of Lenefit and blessing,
at once to giver and recipient. Other "sinners" ap-
pear in these volumes, less "respectable," but more to
be respected. Mrs. Brotherton will find favour with
many readers, who, it is to be hoped, may derive
from her teaching as much profit as pleasure.

An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862.
By the Rev. W. Wyndham Malet. One vo 1. pp.
312. Bentley.
A pleasant, gossipping book enough—but one
that unhappily comes before us according to the over-
frank first page of a most ingenuous Preface as
literally published at the " request of friends." The
acknowledgment is evidently made, of course, by the
author, with a view to propitiate the reader's
leniency, and to attract attention to the narrative
which follows thereupon. Mr. Malet not having the
faintest notion in the world, apparently, that if the
Let is as he states (and we cannot in courtesy but
credit his statement) that same fact is dead against
him, to begin with. Nay, in addition to the gaucherie
of this announcement of his, that his lucubrations do
now actually make their appearance before us in
deference to that melancholy circumstance '` °8
request of friends" betore mentioned—the writer
positively goes on at once to make
matters still worse by " humbly apologising
for " preeunung to offer such desultory" jottings bY:,
the way—by " throwing himself upon the generosity"
of those who may "honour his reminiscences with
perusal"—and by trusting that the many imperfec-
tions, repetitions, and so forth, that will be found
in his pages " will meet with leniency, leading to
forgiveness." Nobody, we undertake to say, cares
one snap of thefingers for any book that comes under
consideration prefaced by such meekly propitiatory
sentences as these. Bad as impertinently self-suffi-
cleat prefaces are, beyond a doubt, they are far more
likely to be tolerated than a pensive, little, stam-
mering, blushing, introductory page or two like the
couple here only too modestly penned by the bearer
(and writer) of the "Errand to the South." And
the volume, when it comes to be looked into, turns
out to be precisely what might have been pretty
confidently predicated it would prove to be, from the
tone and manner of this most mistaken avant courier.
As a specimen of the author's style of writing
throughout, we subjoin his sketch (if it really can be
so called) of the Southern President :

JEFFERSON DAVIS.
President Davis's house is situated on the brink of one
of the Richmond hills, looking to the north, a small stream
running at its foot, and the rail to Gordonsville winding
through the valley. There are two porticoes; the en-
trance one to the north, and the lawn and garden one to
the south. The house is granted by the State. The negro
servant ushered me into a lofty and cool dining-room, and
in a few minutes in walked his Excellency; his height
about 6 ft. 10 in., and shoulders board, as they need to be
to bear his awful responsibilities ; calm his eye, smooth his
voice, measured his words; his whole demeanour making
you feel at once at home : his dress of the plainest, being
a suit of blue Virginia manufacture, a sort of light flannel-
cloth. We sat down tete-a-tete, and I enjoyed a cup of
excellent tea. Mrs. Davis and the children were at Raleigh.
in North Carolina.
Could anything be more vapid or colourless than
this pencilling of President Davis ? It affords one
not the faintest notion of what the man is really
like. And precisely in that way is the book
before us written throughout. It is as if
we were scanning a succession of outlines
drawn very lightly with an ill-pointed slate-pencil
upon a rather dull slate—the whole being (as we
have alrea:y described the above as being) utterly
and completely colourless. As a narrative of an
Excursion into the South, it is perfectly conscien-
tious, but—it is colourless. And these pencillings
are in another way precisely like pencillings upon a
slate, they are so easy of obliteration. Closing
the blok, we remember little or nothing of its
contents.

The War in Poland, 1830-1831. By Sir Archi-
bald Alison, Bart., D.C.L. Bvo., pp. 79.

Blackwood and Sons.

A chapter from Sir Archibald Alison's world-
famous History of Europe has here been most
opportunely republished in a separate form. So
republished, it constitutes the most ix.popos little
pamphlet well imaginable. For, anyone who
witches (and who does not P) with profound interest
the course of events in this new insurrectionary
movement in Poland, can hardly appreciate the
import of it, as a national rising, with the smallest
approach to accuracy, without having first of all
recalled to mind the character of the last war in
Poland, the war of 1830-31, the war here succinctly
but also, it may be said without any real contradic-
tion of terms, most comprehensively, described by
the Historian of Europe. As one of the most re-
markable episodes of his great work, the incident
recorded in this memorable chapter upon Poland is
one of the most mournfully enthralling.

Beeton' 8 Dichonary of Universal Biography. One

vol. Pp. 1,117. S. 0 Becton.
compiler of this really marvellous volume of
curiously condensed and well compacted knowledge
has, in the very best meaning that can possibly bo
attached to the words, fairly out-Maundered