The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-11 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

ETHEL CHURCHILL. 3 Vol.

• Colburn, London, 1837.
If rare poetic thoughts, deep feeling, some wit, and
uniform eloquence of expression, could constitute a
good. novel, ,c Ethel Churchill " would be the but of its
necessary,
but there are other requisites, besides these,
ueeessary, and these Miss Landon does not possess—
or 6 at least, in a very imperfect degree. Her first de-
.:lenes is an utter want of the constructive faculty.
She cannot handle a story with case, or bid it progress
naturally. She sacrifices incident to a display of sell-
tut-rent, and halts where she should be on the move.
Again, her characters are not drawn from life, but are
this
mere creations of the fancy. The consequence of
, is, that there is a want of discrimination in them,
fatal to the character of the mere novelist. But
While we say that Miss Landon is but an indiff'erent
story-teller, and knows not how to pander to the tastes
of the circulating library, we must at the same time
admit that in her " Ethel Churchill " she has shown
qualities of which the first writer of the day may be
Proud. Her thoughts often surprise us by their
subtlety, and we will even go so far as to say, their
Profoundness ; her wit--where she attempts wit, which
is not often—is brilliant ; her fancy ever fertile and
flowing. Her best drawn character is that of Henri-
etta, which, however, we like best in the gayer por-
tlOng
it does not improve as the passion rises in
energy ; and in the closing scene, where the fair
t
ettiMe, goaded to madness by the threatened expo-
sure of her errors, murders, first her husband, and
then her paramour, the character becomes simply ex-
travagant. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with whom
Lord Wharneliffe's late delightful publication has
ltrade us all familiar, is a well-executed sketch, true to
life, and therefore abounding in vivacity. - There is no
female writer of the age, not even Lady Morgan, who
tould have wrought up a difficult character like this,
with so much tact and spirit as Miss Landon has dis-
played throughout it. The scene at Pope's villa,
Iwhich is the most carefully finished in the whole work,
'rings out the peculiarities of the " gay Wortley" in
a very masterly manner. We should not omit to men-
tion,that to each chapter some short poem is attached
Way of motto. Many of these are exquisitely beau-
tLful, and all, we suspect, are from the pen of the
huthoress herself. The lines concluding with this
striking couplet—
"No hope—no repentance—my weakness is o'er--
It died with the sentence, I lore thee no more I'"—
are fully equal, in tenderness and felicity of expression,
to the best of Moore's lyrics. As a specimen of Miss
Landon's descriptive powers, we quote a sketch which
will show how thoroughly her mind is imbued with
the genuine
spirit of poetry :
" It was an unusually mild and lovely evening that they
Ivere loitering on the banks of the lake. The sun was just
aetti"—a conqueror as he went down ; for every cloud
that hadb flitted about during the day, now gathered on the
west, mantling with crimson and gold. There was some-
thing triumphal in the rich colouring that arrayed every
°".leet• The vivid green of the oaks stood out more distinct
amid the scarlet of the sycamore and the yellow of the
ettnle, together with the rich brown that was covering the
"nuts. The grass, too, of the park was in strong con-
btrast to the purple heath that clothed the distance, only
olaen by the blossoming furze, which intersected it like a
ell sea ; a faint perfutne came on the air, more subtle
oven than the breath of flowers ; it was like the last sigh
each falling leaf, that flitted by noiseless as a ghost. To
The there is no season so lovely as the autumn. There is
gaity about the spring with which I have no sympathy :
Its perpetual revival of leaf and bloom is too great a con-
trast to the inner world, where so many feelings lie barren,
and so mans- hopes withered. There is an activity about it,
from which the wearied spirits shrink ; and a joyousness,
Which but makes you turn more sadly upon yourself ; but
4bont autumn there is a tender melancholy inexpressibly
soothing ; decay is around, but such is in your own heart.
There is a languor in the air which encourages your own,
and the poetry of memory is in every drooping flower and
falling leaf. The very magnificence of its Assyrian array
is touched with the light of imagination : even while you
Watch it, it passes away as your brightest hopes have done
before."