The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-08 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Deep Waters. A Novel. By Anna Drury.
3 vols. Chapman and Hall.
The authoress of " Friends and Fortune" is gifted
with singular dramatic power. Many of the most
stirring scenes and incidents in her romances are
depicted with so much spirit and vigolir that the
attention of the reader is enthralled, and ho quite
realises the adventures that pass before him. Such
a faculty of narration is a happy possession for a
novel writer, and in these days of sensation-romances
it is one of peculiar value. For the lovers of that
school, Miss Drury presents the felicitous combina-
tion of a series of incidents of startling and effective
interest, related:with so much adherence to proba-
bility in detail as to render them in many respects
akin to that truth which is stranger than fiction.
" Deep Waters" is the name inscribed on the title,
page of these volumes ; and deep in truth are the
waters passed over by the narrative—waters again
and again stirred to their very depths by the out-
bursts of tempestuous passions. We will not mar the
interest of the story—for it is, as we have said, a
story full of interest—by a premature disclosure of
its mysteries. We have too much sympathy with
the spell-bound novel reader, who follows with
breathless curiosity the mazes of his book, to wish for
one moment to destroy that delightful " ignorance "
of coming events, which for the time being consti-
tutes his " bliss." Miss Drury's own pen shall, as
far as we are concerned, be the only one to reveal the
histories of Anne Clavering and Eleanor Ormonde
—histories for the most part chronicles of love and
of sorrow, those two most faithful teachers of frail
humanity. Widely contrasted are the characters
of the two heroines. Anne, the las' descendant of
a proud but impoverished family, brought up
almost in isolation in the deserted home of her an-
cestors ; undisciplined by education, but with an
impassioned heart and an excitable imagination, ren-
dered more intense by lonely reveries and by roman-
tic reading, is at first the creature of impulse, over-
powered by her feelings whether for good or for
evil. Eleanor Ormonde, on the contrary, is a
type of all that is tender and loveable in
woman. She is placed in scenes of most trying
vicissitude, subjected to sorrow and difficulty in
every guise. She is throughout consistently staunch
in her obedience to duty, and undeviatingly devoted
in self-sacrifice to others. Besides these two very
charming heroines, the persons of the drama are
very numerous. The hero, Frederick Atterbury,
"Not half a villain and but half a knight," is a
type of some of the evils of this age of speculation
and commercial deception. Martock, the lawyer, is
the evil genius of the tragedy; Despard, and Pierre-
point, and Compton are in their several ways spe-
cimens of the so-called friends who hurry the un-
stable man on to his own destruction. Rupert
Clavering, the old uncle from Australia,and Captain
Sydney, the shattered hero from the Crimea, are
genial, and generous, and loveable. Many others,
even'ameng the minor characters, have sufficient in-
dividuality to be particularised, even down to Miss
Craggs, the lodging-house keeper, who would have
been dear to the heart of George Cruikehank in her
supreme detestation of the Bottle. Miss Craggs,
who, when appealed to on behalf of a dying man,
exclaims, "Brandy ! sir, did you say ? 1 keep no
spirits in my house. I am a total abstainer from
spirituous liquors in any form. If you can't keep
life in without brandy,it's my belief you had better
let it alone." While the characters are thus for-
cibly depicted, many of the scenes are described
with a vivid colouring that impresses them on the
memory. There is one of this kind at the begin-
ning of the first volume, where Anne Clavering
is parting from her lover, his love only just de-
clared. Her old uncle, half anxious and half un-
conscious, ha followed her as she quits the house.
He had not very far to go.: There was an old stile
dividing one of the fields from the plantation, and
there, by that stile, with her back to her home, his
niece Anne was standing, her hand clasped
in_ those of Frederick Atterbury, leaning on
the rails from the other side. There they
stood in the light of the April sunshine, as if
there were no world but that spot, and themselves—
" divided by the boundary raiis as fstA was dividing
them that hour." The picture, as they stand there
in eloquent silence, reminds us of that charming
representation of the " Dawn of Love," so familiar
to all. A little later on a very different picture
recurs to our memory. Who that has witnessed
Frith's admirable delineation of the "Railway
Station" does not recall the sad, startled features of
the terror-stricken wife, whose husband is just
arrested by the ministers of justice. Such an im-
pression, so sad, so terror-stricken (although the
incidents are not analogous) is over us during many
chapters of this narrative. Here is a little glimpse,
very different from the one already quoted. Eleanor
is going in search of her husband, guided by his
friend Despard. A stranger enters the carriage,
and the open-hearted, truth-loving Eleanor finds
herself the heroine of a mystery. "She found a slip
of paper gliding into her hand. With instinctive
caution she opened it unobserved and read, ' He
followed me from town. We are watched, take
care.' The feelings of one who has gone from the
warm daylight into a dark underground labyrinth,
and there with only a fast wasting candle in his
hand suddenly discovers he has lost his way, might
in some degree resemble those of Eleanor, thus
unexpectedly removed from her own clear world of
openness and security into a region where all seemed
stratagem, concealment, and dangers unknown."
We will reveal no more. Her tender love and
abiding faith sustain Eleanor through her many
trials, and the readers of her history recognises to
the end, as the closing lines remind us, the guiding
mercy, that ever makes a pathway for those tha
follow it even through the DEEP WATERS.

Remarkable Adventures and Unrevealed Mys-
steries. "The World's Mine Oyster." By
Lascelles Wraxall. 2 vols. Bentley.
A brace of mottos Mr. Wraxall has here chosen
for his title page—the earlier of them being incom-
parably the better : to wit, Mine Ancient Pistol's
" Why, then, Me World's Mine Oyster." Second
thoughts, according to the ungrammatically ex-
pressed old proverb, decidedly not being in this in-
stance the best, or, to put the statement in words a
little more correctly (with a due regard to the
manes of Lindley Murray), the better—our author's
later motto to his new work will be found to have
been rather inaptly selected from All's Well that
Ends Well. The purport of his thirty-four narra-
tives, distributed in as many chapters over the pages
of these two curious and interesting volumes, one
would rather be inclined to suggest, ought, if the
writer had only cherished any respect for the fit-
ness of things, to have been a couplet or a quatrain
from sL.me work expressing by its title exactly the
reverse some drama, let us say, answering as
nearly as possible in name to " All's 11l that Ends
Ill." What upon earth Parolles has got to do at
all with a literary compilation like this, it would
be difficult to imagine.
" Rust, sword! cool, blushes I and Parolles live,"
may be all very well as applied to some of these
adventurers. But which amongst them all could
possibly echo—say, for example, The Man with the
Iron Mask !—the second line quoted—
" There's place and means for every man alive."
It is remarked by Mr. Wraxall at starting that
the work before us is " the result of many years'
random readings and research." He refers, even in
the next sentence of his Preface, to the fact of his
t
from
his
" common-place book." If so, we have the
that,
satisfac-
tion of assuring him and his readers together,
according to our estimation of the results
of his
labours, they have led him to the fabrication of
Book. The two
anything but a Common-place
volumes under notice, indeed, while superficial, no
doubt, in several instances, and unsatisfactorily
confused in several others—for interest might
vie with many and many a clever romance. They
might be described without exaggeration, in truth,
as suggestive of a long series of romances as won-
drous in their character as any related to the Sultan
Caliph by the Vizier's daughter, Scheherazade!
And yet, all the while, the narrator is telling the
history of men and women and children who have
actually lived—of events, however wonderful, that
have literally taken place ! To afford the reader a
general notion at once of the kind of Adyentureri

whose careers are here related by Mr. Larcelles
Wraxail, e w ill particularise some at least of the
heroes and herd-us he has selected. Here, for
example, to begin with, is a chapter about those
French Pretenders—" The False Dauphins." The
latest of them all, however, be'ng omitted by an
oversight—namely, the aged French teacher, who
died a year or two since, leaving behind him the
most plausible tale in regard to his royal ante-
cedents : this latest of the False Dauphins having
breathed his last, it may be remembered, in some
obscure street turning out of Tottenham-court-
road. There are recounted here at in-
tervals, moreover, the lives and exploits of
suppositions Barons and Counts, such as de I
Ripperda, de Kalb, de Ruggiero, St. Germain,
Axel Fersen, and de Bonneval. Here, those who
list may be enthralled over the astounding narra-
tive of the discovery of the 11V ild Boy, Kaspar
Hauser. The annals :of the King of Madagascar
are told by Mr. Wraxall in another chapter ; and,
in strange contrast to this, also, in another, the
daring Life and deplorable Death of Wm. Walker,
the last and the most enterprising of all modern
Filibusters. Having alluded now, however, to
the character of this very singular production, as
a whole, we will restrict all our further remarks in
its regard to two of the most attractive chapters
contained in these volumes—one in the first, re-
lating to that still inscrutable problem " The Iron
Mask"—one in the second, to that most splendidly
audacious of all mere adventurers, Cagliostro. It
is related of the Great Napoleon, by the way,
though Mr. Wraxall makes no mention of the feet,
apparently being altogether unaware of it, that that
Emperor and Log, besides being for many years
the Master of Europe, was Master also of this
Secret! The wonder always being to us, in
respect to this same mystery of the Iron Mask,
that while so many are known to have been
cognisant of the real identity of the singular and
unfortunate mortal behind it, every individual
depository of the secret (puissant though more than
one amongst them was) appears to have shrunk
in terror from the dread responsibility of
divulging it! The Regent Orleans, for example,
Kir g Louis XV., and, again, the Emperor and
King Napoleon the Great. No marvel, if princes
and powers like those remained dumb upon the sub.
ject, no marvel, indeed, that the subordinates
entrusted with the custody of the Mysterious Cap-
tive had their lips sealed from first to last. Accord-
ing to our author, however, the Regent Orleans
wrote, once upon a time, as follows—wrote thus for
the edification of the Princess de Valois, who
divulged the document to Cardinal Richelieu—
The unfortunate prince whom I educated, and had under
my supervision until toward the end of my life, came into
the world on September 5, 1638, at half-past eight o'clock
in the evening, during the supper of the king his father,
Louis XIII. His now reigning brother (Louis XIV.) was
born on the same day at twelve o'clock, during his father's
dinner. But while the birth of the future king was cele-
brated so splendidly and brilliantly, the birth of his brother
was most sal, and kept very secret ; for the king, who was
informed by the midwife that the queen would be delivered
of a second child, allowed no soul in her room beyond the
chancellor of France, the midwife, the first chaplain, the
queen's confessor, and myself, in order to be witnesses of
what was going on, and of what he would do in case of the
birth of a second child. It had been prophesied to him
that his consort would be delivered of two children.

The younger of these twins—marked, we are told,
with a mole above his left elbow, a yellow spot on
his neck, and a small mole on his right hip—being
(it is needless almost to add that this is intended as
the inference), " The Man in the Iron Mask." We
are somewhat provoked, by the way, to find it here
stated quite coolly that the mask, after all,vvas not of
iron, but of velvet ! "We shall be told at last"—
we well remember the late Sir William Napier ejacu-
lating these words, with a serio-comic air of indig-
nation—`` We shall be told at last that Whittington
never had a cat !" In spite of the dis-
tinctness with which the correction we have
here specified in regard to the mask not being of
iron but of velvet (vide p. 130 of vol. I.), we " don't
believe that story" any more than little Paul
Dombey did Mrs. Pipchin's apologue about
the Mad Bull. As to the attraction in Mr.
Wraxall's second volume—the chapter already re-
ferred to as relating to " IL it, sin-
gularly interesting throughout, as almost anything
having reference to Cagliostro could hardly fail to
be, is also in some particulars to our mind singularly
unsatisfactory. The birth of Joseph Balsam° at
Palermo is stated, as it seems to us (without any
sufficient authority), too positively as having oc-
curred on the Bth of June, 1743. His being the
son of a bankrupt bookseller of that same
place—as here distinctly intimated by Mr.
Wraxall again, without any st.fficient autho-
rity appears to us to be as little based
upon fact as Cagliostro's own preposterous state-
ment that he owed Lis existence to the loves
of an angel and the Princess of Trebizonde.
Born, according to Mr. Wraxall, in 1743, and
dying, as Cagliostro is believed to have done, in
the year 1797 in one of the dungeons of the In-
quisition in the Castle of St. Angelo—the Grand
Caphta as he called himself, Divo Cagliostro as his
worshippers named him, Prophet, Magician, Alche;
mist, Rosicrucian, discoverer of the aurunzpotabile,
quaffer of the elixir vitce as he affected to be, would ap-
pear to have livel during little more than half a cen-
tury,though assuming to have survived, in perpetual
youth and in the flush of health and strength unin-
terruptedly during upwards of one thousand years.
Mr. Wraxali's grotesque description of the great
impostor's appearance—stout, squinting, brown,
short, but " with a splendid head, that might have
served an artist as a model to represent the poe t
under the power of inspiration"—is (save in that
last particular), about as unlike the original,
we believe, from all our own researches,
in his regard (and they have been not a few) as that
coarsely-painted portrait of Cagliostro, which hangs
(we wonder if the author has any knowledge of
its existence) upon one of the staircases in the grand
old palace of Versailles. With all its shortcomings,
however, these volumes form a wondrously interest

ing repertory of extraordinary adventures : a book
of authenticated mysteries, far and away, in its
living interest, beyond any of those ghostly pre-
tences of mystery (in themselves, literally, not worth
a rap !) fabricated by the wiles of a Home or by the
credulity of a Howitt.

Half-Hours with our Sacred Poets. Edited by
Alexander Grant. Illustrated by H. S. Marks,
pp. 374. Hogg and Sons.
Among our Sacred Poets, Mr. Grant, the com-
piler of this collection, has wisely included some of
the greatest of our great writers, whom a narrow-
minded sectarian editor might have set aside
obtusely as profane. Here, in goodly company
_
with Southwell, and Donne, and Quarles, eos,thand
Herbert are the far prouder names (some
orf
in
the greatest names in our literaturefspeiner,of
our history) of Chaucer, Young,
Addison,
Raleigh, of Milton, Pope,
and Tennyson.
matter of course;
Ths gentle Cowper is here
de Thompson, Cowley, Wordsowsoartn
Isaac Watts, with
and. theg
ogoodf and gifted Reginald
here, too, is the simple-minded
names in the
(some of. whose
yHoeubne
say nothing Ptoollok,
those
hisot Wither
rbe like name), of Shirley, of
leaves will never noble catalogue. like
Uric, 8-eble, and Milman. To each
Toplady, Mou
selection, or cluster of
selections, Mr. Grant has pre-
fixed a brief biographical notice. How charmingly
these are written for the most part the little memoir
of the martyred priest, Robert Southwell, will,
if turned to by the reader, sufficiently well testify.
Of the illustrations by Mr. Marks we can say but
little in praise. But, apart from these mere acces-
sories to them, these " Half-hours with our Sacred
Poets" demand one closing sentence of praise es a
valuable, no less than a very graceful gift-book.

1 lie Flower of Christum Chivalry. By Mrs. W.
R. Lloyd. pp. 314. Illustrated by J. D. \Vat-
__

son. Hogg and Sons.

Unlike thebook last noticed in this one particular,
the volume whose title we have just given, reveals
its value to us much more rapidly than by a
perusal of the letterpress•—viz,, by a mere
glance through its very clever woodcut illustrations.
As to the letterpress itself—to revert for one passing
moment to that really subordinate part of the work,
though one substantially, of course, constituting the
bulk of it—its extrinsic worth may be guessed from
the very manner of the autlaorm'sprefatory remarks.

" In selecting her bouquet," quoth Madame, speak-
ing of herself in the third person thus nffectedly—
she " has strolled about in the wide historic garden,
choosing now, perhaps [she goes on to tell us] for the
sake of a rare scent, now of a fair bloom, but more
commonly because of some one excellent virtue,"
and so forth! Furthermore, we read that, "Be-
lieving there are plots of ground in the world which
are worthy of research, other than the field of battle
or the champ clog, the author has attempted to show
that something worth gathering may be found in
many a neglected spot." When it is added that,
precisely in this gilliflovver• water fashion, we have
related to us the really noble and impressive his-
tories of Saint Bernard, of the Abbe de l'Epee, and
others among the world's great practical philanthro-
pists, the reader will know precisely what it is in this
volume he has to expect. Of the embellishments,
however, we can speak really in admiration. They
will raise still higher, in the estimation of all who
see them, the fast-rising reputation of Mr. Watson
among the cleverest of our book illustrators.

Lectures on the Physical Geology and Geography of
Great Britain. A Course of Six Lectures by
Professor A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S. Pp. 145.

Stanford.

It is remarkable how much knowledge there is
we might say, compressed,
comprised, almost,
within the flan. ow compass of these six lec-
tures. They afford their readers now, as they
afforded their bearers originally, neither a
restricted nor a superficial survey of the
geology and geography of the United Kingdom.
They are penned—it is impossible not to have a con-
sciousness of this at almost every page as we read
on—by one who brings to his task as lecturer
a long familiarity with the theme on which he
discourses. The mere arrangement of that theme
as here considered, in other words, the mere distriba-
tion of it, in portions or sections, through these half-
dozen lectures,is admirably perspicuous. After a most
lucid classification of the Rocks in his introductory
Lecture, Professor Ramsay takes into consideration
--first, the Physical Structure of Scotland, and after
that, as a wider subject, the Physical Structure of
England. He then describes very beautifully the
distribution of the Miocene and Pliocene Tertiary
Strata. Brief though the series is in itself, few
though the leaves making up this little volume in
which they have been printed in a collected form,
none will rise from an attentive perusal of
its contents without having had the boundaries
of their knowledge extended, or if not extended (we
allude here to those already familiar by study with
the subject matter of these Lectures), with their
previously acquired information, in a manner vivi-
fied, certainly better systematised.