The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-11 00:00:00

Lowther.' " There, in effect, in that one little she has, by the simple fact of the completion of her
incident, lies, perdu, the key to the whole mystery new work, whetted our appetite for its immediate
of the tale, the solution of the whole problem of successor, rendering us eager for the ending in
the plot, the clue through all the mazes of its wind- due course of the serial story with which her inde-
ing labyrinth. There, in effect, it may be grasped fatigable hand is now adorning one of the Messrs.
—there, in that one little incident between Man and Maxwell and Company's popular periodicals.
Master ! Parting as they do, shortly afterwards, in
Tasmania, the two men, later on, meet again in
Belgravia, no longer as master and man, but, so-
cially, ostensibly, to all intents and purposes, as
equals and companions. Turning from the plot of
the story, however, to the mere construction of it, to
the mere manner of its composition, it strikes us,
here and there, as nothing less than oddly incon-
gruous that the symbolism of the author is borrowed,
it almost seems to us with a sort of wilful perver-
sity, from the artificial instead of from the natural,
of which latter, the artificial is, of course, but the
very faintest of shadows, of echoes, of imitations, of
adumbrations. Here, however, is a casual exem-
plar of what we are now more immediately refer-
ring to, as a sort of wilful perversity on the part
of Miss Braddon in her choice of imageries. In
her seventh chapter she has found occasion
to change the scene of her narrative from the
black moorlands of Cornwall to the wooded
heights about the Star and Garter at Richmond—
and, thereupon, how in the name of fortune does she
realise to us the startling effect of the transforma-
tion ? Why, by likening it to the pushing away of
some battered front scene doing duty for the blasted
heath near Forres, in order " to reveal a glimpse of
fairyland fresh from the pencil of Mr. Beverley !"
Nay, upon the very page opposite to this astounding
eulogium of Nature as a something comparable
to the scene-painting of Mr. Beverley —we
find our authoress depicting in vivid colours the
blooming parterres of the garden surrounding Mr.
Hillary's mansion on the margin of the Thames near
Richmond—how ? By telling us that " banks of
parti-coloured blossoms blazed in the sunshine on
the lawn tier above tier, like—" what ?—" the
bonnets on the grand stand at Ascot on a cup day !"
Yet the lady who thus writes has herself a very keen
sense, indeed, of the ludicrous, of the savoir faire, of
the savoir parler, of that nameless something in the
proprieties of description that our neighbours
subtly define (by the indefinable) as the je-ne-sais-
quoi—Miss Braddon, we say, has all this as fully as
any fair writer who ever dipped pen into standish
without once hazarding the risk of her dwindling down
into a mere bas bleue ! Her sketches of character,
for example, are often delightfully humorous. In-
stance, this, even her purely incidental mention of the
complete subordination to his wife of Jona-
than Dryscroll, the farm bailiff of that dead
and gone old hunx Oliver Tredethlyn—" If she
told him to do anything, he did it. If she told
him to think anything, he thought it—or would have
done so, if the mental exercise had not been gene-
rally beyond the scope of his faculties." And yet
we are told, that " that worthy woman was most
punctilious in respect to her liege lord and husband,
whom she always spoke of as ' the master.' Jona-
than obeyed and trembled, but the sceptre which
his wife wielded was an invisible one, and
the chains that bound her slave were as impal-
pable as if they had been fashioned of cobwebs."
A capital touch, too, is that which occurs where—
speaking of Julia Desmond's father, Patrick Macna-
mara Ryan O'Brien Desmond—our authoress
remarks upon some of his lifelong dreams as
among the fond delusions surviving unchanged
and changeless to the last "in the eternal
boyhood of an Irishman's nature !" And still
further, where, in reference to the old
Colonel's demise, we find it recorded of him that=
" To Mr. Hilary the old man confided his penni-
less daughter. He had nothing to leave her but a
set of old-fashioned garnet ornaments which had
belonged to her mother, and to which he fondly
alluded as the famly jools ;' he had nothing to
leave her except this antique trumpery and his
blessing; but he confided her to his largest cre-
ditors, having a vague impression that the largeness
of the debt and the heavy interest he would have
given upon all the money lent him by his friend,
had he ever lived to return the principal, laid Mr.
Hillary under a kind of obligation." Again
where Francis is in search of his cousin
Susan—what, in their way, can be droller, as
touches of the ridiculous, than those glimpses of
the Drury Lane lodgings, with (outside, on the
window sill) " some scarecrow geraniums, which
seemed as if they had been put upon a short allow-
ance of mould," and (inside, under foot) " the
scrimped morsel of worn carpet, which only made
an oasis of Kidderminster in a desert of boards?"
We still cherish a laughing reniembrance of a
certain Southampton waiter's estimate of his col-
laborateur in the manipulation of the corkscrew
and the table napkin, in one of the chapters of
" Henry Dunbar." Yet is he' as nothing in the
way of grave-featured comicality, to the sketch
here given of the Drury Lane Door-keeper when
" haggitated his wittles," as Buckstone used to
say, years ago, in an old forgotten farce! " That
gentleman [the doorkeeper]" saith Miss Braddon,
" was in the midst of a very greasy dinner and in
the bosom of his family when Mr. Tredethlyn in-
truded on him, and was at first inclined to resent
the interruption. I don't carry 249 addresses in
my blessed head,' he remarked, in an injured tone,
which our company at the beginning of this sea-
son was over 249 ; and I don't care to be hunted
upon Sundays, when I'm eating of my dinner, for a
pack of ballet-girls. I don't get paid for that when
I take my salary. If any young swell wants to find
out one of our ladies' address, to leave 'em a bokay,
or to take a ticket for their benefit or such-like, I
should think they could find it out of a
week-day, and not come chivying of a man
over his Sunday wittles.' " When at last Francis
Tredethlyn comes upon his cousin's sister-lodger in
the poor, sordid sky-parlour already mentioned,
Miss Willoughby's professional lamentations over
her domestic afflictions prove to be rather a tax
upon our gravity if only by reason of the
preposterous pathos of her ejaculatory •
" Oh, sir ! nobody that hasn't gone through
it can tell the pain of having to change your
widow's-weeds for white muslin and spangles,
and put away your baby from your breast to go
and slap cheesemonger's shops into furnished
lodgings with a harlequin's wand !" It was
surely by a sort of mesmeric foreknowledge of
the idiocyncracy of Mr. Sothern's Brother Sam
that Miss Braddon—in another part of this most
amusing delineation of modern life in London, fast
life and slow, the soi disant great world and its foil
the demi-monde—talking of Francis Tredethlyn's
progress in the ways of the world (the denti, that is,
not the great, so-called) under the insidious tuition
of Harcourt Lowther, it was by some such fore-
knowledge, we say, that our authoress came to remark
in a delightful tone of persiflage—" Mephistopheles
shrugged his shoulders in mild deprecation of his
pupil's impertinence. Faust was positively be-
ginning to acquire the tone of good society.
He was learning to be insolent." As for the
continuous and cumulative interest of the plot,
the diversity and originality of the characters, and
the linked-sequence, so to speak, of the incidents of
the tale—enchaining the reader's attention from its
commencement to its conclusion—" Only a Clod"
may take rank with the very best and brightest effu-
sions of its author's unquestionable genius as a No-
velist. As a story it is often as enthralling as "Lady
Audley's Secret," while its heroine, though more fri-
volous than "Aurora Floyd," is frequently (but more
particularly towards the close of the work) more
charming even than Aurora as an individual delinea-
tion. The central form in the grouping of this
last picture from the artistic hand of Miss Braddon
shines agreeably. in contrast to the comely but ter-
rible Murderer (first of all) and Impersonator
(afterwards) of " Henry Dunbar"— the central
figure on the canvass, here, in this masterpiece
of "Only a Clod" being that true-hearted„ manly,
handsome, wealthy, born-gefitleman, Francis Tre-
dethlyn. For thus recounting' his history, we have
reason, even in our capacity as somewhat fastidi-
ous readers of. romance, to express here our per-
sonal obligations to Miss Braddon, obligations
beyond even those am akened by her earlier nar-
ratives of "The Doctor's Wife," and "Eleanor's
Victory." More than ever she has made her
name thrice-welcome to us upon the title-page
of a three-volumed fiction. More than ever

Village Bells, Lady Gwendoline, and other Poems.
By John Brent, jun., F.S.A., author of " The

Battle Cross." Hamilton and Adams.

These " Village Bells" have much of the ring of
true poetry about them. There are lines in the
volume which have even reminded us more than
once of Longfellow and our own. Poet-Laureate.
The love tale of Esmond and Elsie is singularly
interesting, and winds up, as far as they are con-
cerned, very happily. The following tomes to us
almost as an echo from the Psalm of Life :
" Gentle, humble, all who tremble
While fierce passions round them jar,
Shall hear whispers that resemble
Angel voices from afar."
" Lady Gwendoline" is a charming little romance in
verse. With the tales and poetry which hang about
and cleave to old castles, Mr. Brent, who is a well-
known antiquarian, is curiously familiar; but his
antiquarianism is by no means of the " Dry-as-dust"
class. His associations and reminiscences are as
fresh and umbrageous as the ivy on some of our old
castle walls. We have pleasure in offering thus to
" Village Bells" our hearty commendations.

4 /fir
Onnit Uri I 1 Tr.

HER MAJESTY.

WINDSOR CASTLE, July 10.

The Queen, with their Royal Highnesses Princess
Helena, Princess Louise, Princess Beatrice, and
Prince Leopold, left the Castle to-day, at five
minutes past four oclock for Osborne.
The suite consisted of the Viscountess Jocelyn,
Lady Caroline Barrington, Hon. Emma Lascelles,
the Hon. Horatio Stopford, Col. the Hon. Sir Chas.
Phipps, Major-General the Hon. A. N. Hood, Col.
the lion. A. Hardinge, Mr. Buff, and Mr. Sahl.
Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess
of Wales, with Prince Albert Victor and Prince
George, took leave of her Majesty this morning, and
returned to London, attended by the Countess De
Grey and Major Grey.
Their Royal Highnesses attended Divine service
yesterday afternoon at St. George's Chapel.
The Bishop of Worcester had the honour of
dining with the Queen and the royal family yes-
terday.

Departure of Her Majesty for Osborne.

Yesterday afternoon, shortly after four o'clock,
her Majesty, with their Royal Highnesses Princesses
Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, attended by Major--
Gen. Hood, Col. Hardinge, Col. the Hon. Sir C. B.
Phipps, Viscountess Jocelyn, &c., left Windsor
Castle for Osborne. Col. Sir T. M. Biddulph, the
Master of the Queen's Household, proceeded to
Osborne in the morning.
Her Majesty, the royal family, and suite drove in
-several carriages by way of Castle-hill and High-
street, which were lined by the inhabitants and
visitors, to the Windsor Station of the Great
Western Railway, where a special train of seven
carriages, including three saloons, had been pro-
vided by the authorities of the London and South-
Western Railway. The platform on both sides of
th 6 Queen's waiting-room was crowded.

The royal party at once proceeded to the saloons
and very graciously returned the loyal salutes of
those present. The special left Windsor at 4.10
p.m., and proceeded along the narrow gauge rails
of the Great Western line by way of Slough and
Reading to Basingstoke, which was made about
5.25 p.m. Here the engine was changed, and the
care of the royal train transferred to the traffic
superintendent of the London and South-Western
Railway, by which line the special travelled on its
way to Winchester, which it reached at 6 o'clock,
and Gosport at 6.33 p.m. The train was run in
the Royal Clarence Victualling-yard, where her
Majesty and the royal family were met by the chief
military and naval officers of the port. The royal
party immediately embarked on board her Majesty's
yacht and steamed across to Osborne, where the
Queen arrived in the course of the evening.
Fier Maj esty will remain about a month at Osborne,
and, should the weather permit, will then not
unlikely embark for the Isle of Wight for Germany.
This, however, is as yet uncertain.
Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess
of Wales will probably visit her Majesty on Thurs-
day at Osborne.