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

THE SUB, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JULY 11, 1865

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 11, 1865.

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Although the doings of yesterday will be totally
eclipsed by the excitement of to-day, still, compared
to ordinary occasions, much took place to attract
attention and create interest. The nomination-day
is always a very unsatisfactory affair to all con-
cerned, and very little reliance can be placed upon
the expression of opinion that then and there takes
place. The City of London was the scene of anxious
and eager excitement yesterday, but all the proceed-
ings went on in a peaceable manner considering the
circumstances of the case. A rule was made that no
one should speak for more than ten minutes, which
was a very admirable one, as lengthy orations arc.
quite out of place on such an occasion, and only
give rise to clamour and provoke irritation. Mr.
BuxToN, in proposing Baron. ROTHSCHILD, made a
speech very much to the purpose in some respects,
but in his endeavour to prop up the Ministry he
went too far. When he came to notice the foreign
policy of the Government, he was met by cries of
" Oh," and " Denmark and Prussia."

Nothing new was said by any of the candidates,
but some hits were made by both sides in the dis-
cussion, and an amusing by-play went about the
" old, old story " of Reform. After this subject has
been tabooed for so long a period by all parties of
prominence there is now a regular scramble taking
place as to who shall have the credit of inaugurating
the matter. Mr. GOSCIIEN resolved to take up the
affair with a high hand, and denounced the
policy of the Conservatives. He said "Lateral
Reform " was a quack experiment, and the
homoeopathy of politics. To this stricture Mr.
LYALL, very properly retorted that the opposed

Liberal party had not even achieved a measure of
homoeopathic reform or drawn themselves to the
homcepathic reformers." " They obtained power
under the pretence of carrying a Reform Bill. They
brought in such a bill, but they never seriously
attempted to pass it, and they never, at the same
time, proposed to resign their offices."
At Westminster great excitement prevailed, and
the Conservative candidate appeared to be in great
favour. Mr. MILL'S few remarks were much to
the purpose, and Mr. SMITH'S speech was a very
practical one, and he truly observed that
men of business could be of great ser-
vice in Parliament. Captain GROSVENOR'S ob-
servations were to the point, especially when he
retorted on those who called him a stripling, by
saying " that it was well to work whilst the spirit
was willing before the flesh was weak." If it be
true, however, what he declared at the conclusion
of his address, that the " determination of the
Liberal party to move on, had been the means of
raising this country to its present high position," then
we are in a very unsatisfactory condition at present,
because they are decidedly standing still.
Mr. ROEBUCK has been bestirring himself in
Sheffield, and made a very striking speech. The
hon. and learned member has been roused up to dis-
play his old animation by the unfair criticism and
virulent opposition which he has met with, and his
speech may, therefore, in some measure be re-
garded as a reply more than in the light of an
election address. It refers more to the past than
to the future ; but it will be found to contain some
startling truths, more profitable than pleasant for
some parties to dwell upon. He commenced by re-
ferring to the long years during which he had served
his country with zeal and devotion, and he truly
declared that it was unfitting and unseemly for him
to be treated with insults now. This reproach was
well merited, and nothing can possibly excuse or
exculpate those who take advantage of the confu-
sion prevailing at election times to annoy and
offend a tried servant of the public, and
a valued agent in the cause of Reform.
Mr. ROEBUCK told his hearers that such treatment
as he had received was enough to disgust any one,
and might well induce many men to retire altogether
from public life, and to relinquish their endeavours
to represent a constituency which tolerated such a
course. " What has been my life?" he exclaimed.
" When I began public life liberality was not so rife
as it is now." In enumerating his acts, the hon.
and learned member showed what arduous tasks
he had had to perform. - Changes in those days
were not wrought so easily and quietly as at pre-
sent. There was a stand-up fight for everything,
and strong and uncompromising opposition as-
sailed those who attempted to inaugurate

any necessary reforms. So it was with
Mr. ROEBUCK, in the eventful years when he ap-
peared as the pioneer of progress in a community
wedded to old-fashioned customs, and pre-deter-
mined not to admit of any improvement being
made. The first struggle was the liberty of the
Colonies, and he was hooted as an enemy to Eng-
land, although everything he then proposed has since
been agreed to and become law.
In the Crimean War the exertions of the hon.
and learned member were very strenuous. " I
turned out a Ministry, I damaged a policy, I re-
lieved the Army of England," he exclaimed in in-
dignation and reproach, and certainly he did great
things in that epoch of shameful neglect and dis-
graceful indifference in high place and
at headquarters ; and now, forsdoth, he is
to be treated as a man of very bad
character, or rather without a character at all.
The last notion is that he has been bribed by the
Water Company. In answer to this extravagant
idea he said, " Gentlemen, I have been before the
public for thirty-three years, and have been subjected
to greater influences than the Water Company ; I
have withstood all temptation, and here I am plain
JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK." One consolation re-
mains, however, for those so unjustly attacked and
calumniated, and that is, that those who advocate
grand new ideas are sure to make enemies, and as
Mr. ROEBUCK truly declared he has been a forward
man all his life, one in advance of public opinion ;
and when this is the case, fools and wiseacres are
always ready to hoot.
As for his opinions about America time has more
than justified Mr. ROEBUCK in all that he said, and
in his masterly exposition of his views he pointed
this out. When it was asserted that the Federals
were against slavery, and the South in favour of it,
he had said that if there was one thing that the
Federals hated more than slavery, it was the black
slaves. At this moment there are constant fights
going on in Washington, because the poor black
man desires to ride in an omnibus. Surely this is a
sufficient reply, and a powerful vindication of the
truth of the statement made by the hon. member,
to the effect that, if things had gone on quietly,
liberation would have taken place "carefully and
wisely for the American and the negro."

Mr. ROEBUCK has come forward manfully to speak
for himself, and has confronted his slanderers with
his straightforward statement and decided demea-

nour.

His speech was worthy of himself, and his
opportunity in accordance with what should be the
words of an old and tried servant of the commu-
nity of time-honoured reputation, seeking the suf-
frages of his countrymen on the eve of a great
election. Affairs would be very different now if,
in the dark days of intolerance and bigotry, men
like Mr. ROEBUCK had not come forward as the
champions of popular rights and the advocates of
enlightenment and progress. The electors of Shef-
field should remember this when the time of trial
`comes, and show that they appreciate the merits, as
much as they admire the abilities, of their old mem-
ber, who is, in some respects, a national represen-
tative, for he displays, to a great extent, that scorn
of oppression and love of freedom which have been,
from time immemorial, some of the most glorious
characteristics of the English people, honoured and
upheld wherever their race has wandered, from the
rising of the sun to the setting of the same.

Foremost among the men who have been the
leading spirits or professions must be ranked the
name of JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, and it is no great
wonder that the county which is indebted to him
for its most flourisning business should desire to do
honour to his memory. Within the last year or
two his career has been brought into prominent
notice by the eloquent address of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and by the interesting memoir of
Miss METEYARD, and the particulars of his laborious
and honourable career have been more widely known
than they were previously. In Staffordshire, how-
ever, there was little to tell, for the services which
WEDGWOOD had rendered there were so well
appreciated that some years ago a public memorial
of him was resolved upon. In 1859 a meeting was
held under the presidency of the late Earl of
CARLISLE, at which it was resolved that some sub-
stantial erection should commemorate the name of
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, and the whole population of
Burslem and its vicinity took up the idea most
heartily. In the metropolis and in other parts of the
country the project was also received with favour,
and the Public Libraries and Museums Act gave
further encouragement to the scheme. The Wedg-
wood Institute, as it is called, is, in every respect,

a worthy memorial of the gifted man whose name
it bears. It is intended to combine the several
features of a museum, a school of art, and a public
li'orary, and the good citizens of Burslem have
taken advantage of the Act of Parliament to esta-
loliah the library out of the rates. Very large sub-
sciiptions have been raised for the erection of the
Inntitute, and the able and eloquent address de-
livered by Mr. GLADSTONE on the occasion of
laying the first stone of the building
must be fresh in the recollection of many
of his hearers. The promoters of the scheme are
now anxious to carry their work to completion, and
it is with this view that the interesting Art Exhi-
bition now being held at Alton Towers was or-
ganised. The idea was first suggested during
Mr. GLADSTONE'S visit to Burslem, and on the
authorities at South Kensington being communi-
cated with, they expressed their approval of the
scheme, and agreed to furnish specimens from their
own museum. The Earl of SHREWSBURY kindly
consented to permit the exhibition to take place in
his beautiful domain of Alton Towers, and all the
preliminaries being thus satisfactorily arranged, it did
not takelong to collect an art exhibition of very great
and varied attractions. Specimens of the said
WEDGWOOD ware, and modern examples of the
art manufactures of our Midland Counties, occupy
of course a prominent place. Many noblemen and
gentlemen have willingly assisted to furnish
the Exhibition, and one of the most interesting of
the contributions is that of Mr. GLADSTONE, who
has sent the dejeuner service in jasper ware, to
which he alluded in his speech at Burslem. The
right hon. gentleman naturally feels much interest
in the success of the Exhibition, and in the successful
completion of the linstitute to which he lent
such valuable aid. The application of WEDGWOOD
ware to (ornamental purposes is shown in almost
endless variety, and the beauty of some of the speci-
mens is the best testimony to the genius of the origi-
nator. The ceremony of the inauguration was
presided over by Earl GRANVILLE, who, in a
brief but appropriate address, commented on the
general features of the day, and the fortunate cir-
cumstance that whatever the heat of political dis-
cussion Englishmen of all parties could meet on
neutral ground with cordiality and good feeling.
In a few hours, he remarked, they would many of
them be abusing one another's politics with right
good will, and he laughingly alluded to his horror
on finding his noble host's private room full
of Conservative electioneering papers, with
a pamphlet, " Shall GLADSTONE Represent
Oxford ? " lying on his table. But in all
matters tending to improve the social state of the
people, as well as on all grave occasions of
national emergency, it was the happy privilege of ,
Englishmen to lay aside all party-feeling and
unite in action and in sympathy. Lord
GRANVILLE was a very suitable president for such 1
an occasion, not only on account of his association
with all matters of art and education, but from his
connection with Staffordshire, and the friendship
which the earlier members of his family enjoyed
with the great founder of the Staffordshire potteries.
Of him Lord GRANVILLE justly said that " WEDG-
WOOD was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable
men of his day, one of those constructive geniuses
of men of science, possessing a true sense of art,
who could show to future manufacturers how
to unite the grand and beautiful with the
useful." The great importance of extend-
ing art education among the manufacturing
classes is now becoming widely recognised. Our
schools of art testify to its appreciation, and the
opening of establishments like the South Kensington
Museum has clearly shown how eager the better
class of workmen are to avail themselves of the
opportunity of refining their taste and enlarging
their knowledge. The new feature of Industrial
Exhibitions, too, has given unmistakeable evi-
dence of the taste and talent already possessed
by many whose days are passed in the most
laborious and mechanical occupations. Such
powers turned into the right channel and
trained by the experience of those who have
gone before would soon raise the whole style of our
art manufacture and art workmanship. When
first the schools of design were projected the scheme
was ridiculed in many quarters and pronounced to
be visionary and extravagant, but the extraordinary
progress made by our manufacturers in the last
twenty or thirty years gives ample evidence that for
once a theory has produced a practical result. No
more fitting memorial to WEDGWOOD could be
chosen than a school of art, to smooth the way of
the young genius over the obstacles that he
himself had to encounter, and we are glad
to find that such a school forms part
of the plan of the Institute. The very building
will give encouragement to youthful enterprise, and
stimulate that honourable ambition which impels
men to succeed and to excel in whatever they un-
dertake. In this stir and tumult of contending
parties, it is well to pause for a moment and con-
template the solid and lasting good effected by the
life and labours of one man—a working man in the
true sense of the word ; and while many a loud de-
claimer about the rights of the people has passed
away, deservedly forgotten, the thriving trade of
the Midland Counties and the beautiful combina-
tion of art and industy bear witness to the lasting
achievements of honest JOSIAII WEDGWOOD.

COLOGNE EXHIBITION.—STEAM FIRE ENGINE
TRIALS.—At the recent competitive trials of steam
fire-engines, at the Cologne International Exhibition, there
were exhibited four steam fire-engines, two being of Eng-
lish, one of American, and one of German manufacture.
Messrs. Merryweather and Sons, of London, have carried
off the first prize of 500 thalers, placed in the hands of the
exhibition committee by the Colonia Fire Insurance Com-
pany to be awarded to the makers of the best steam fire-
engine, as well as a diploma certifying that they have re-
ceived the first prize for the best steam fire-engine. Messrs.
Merryweather's engine raised steam from cold water, and
commenced working with 1001bs. pressure in 7 minutes
28 seconds from the time of lighting the fire, weighed one
ton less, and was of considerable less cost than either of
the other two competing engines. The Gorman engine
was considered out of the contest, as its jet failed to reach
the water target efficiently.
THE VIOLENT DEATH AT WOLVERHAMPTON.—An
inquest was held yesterday at Wolverhampton on the body
of the man who died in the streets of that town on Sunday
morning under such suspicious circumstances, and after
some evidence had been taken the proceedings were ad-
journed, to await the result of a post-mortem examination.
The man suspected of having caused the death of the de-
ceased is still in custody.

EXTRAORDINARY BALLOON VOYAGE.—Mr. Joseph
Simmons, aeronaut, of Hull, has furnished us with
particulars of his late night balloon voyage from the West
of England to the Midlands. Starting from Bath just
before 7 p.m. in the Raven, with a strong wind blowing
from the south-west, at 7 5 he was near enough to the earth
to ascertain the name of the place below him to be Malmes-
bury. At 710 he passed over Tetbury, and at 735 was
heartily cheered by the inhabitants of Cheltenham. The
wind increased in violence, and at 8 10 he heard the words
"Come down here," exclaimed from Stratford-on-Avon.
Soon afterwards ho threw the grappling irons into a tree,
from which they speedily broke loose. Presently he again
threw out the grapnels, which clung to some hurdles, but
the Raven, riding gaily with the wind, was not to be
brought to earth in this manner, so getting rid of her bur-
den and shaking herself off she careered away into cloud-
land. When Mr. Simmons looked around ho found him-
self lying in a barley field, close to the river Avon, just
below Warwick, at a distance of more than 100 miles from
the place where he had ascended and it was now 8 15 p.m.
The aeronaut made the best of his way into the town by a
slower but safer conveyance than his mile-a-minute ma-
chine, wondering whether he should ever recover it. As
soon as possible he followed by railway in the direction
taken by his balloon. On reaching Leicester he was in-
formed that it had been secured. The grappling-irons had
luckily taken firm hold of a large elm tree on the farm of
Mr. Jeffrey, at Stony Stanton, in that county, and his
labourers thus sapid Airs Simmons the loss of X7OO.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

AMERICA.

NEW YORK, JULY 1 (Noon).

The Military Commission on the conspiracy trial
have agreed upon their verdict, but the decision is
not yet published. The Judge Advocate previously
submitted an argument asserting that four of the
prisoners were fellow-conspirators with Booth, and
contended that the evidence showed that Davis,
Sanders, Tucker, and others planned and assisted
the assassination.

A serious affray has taken place at Ports-
mouth, Virginia, between the white and coloured
people. Many persons were wounded.
General Herron, commanding in Northern
Louisiana, has forbidden the slaves to leave the
plantations. The Governor of Kentucky has ad-
dressed the people, declaring slavery to be dead,
and urging the adoption of the constitutional amend-
ment.

General Hooker has superseded General Dix.
The City of Dublin has arrived out.

NEW YORK, JULY 1.

Money easy. Gold, 140. Exchange on London,
1521 ; ditto Paris, 3.684. Stocks very firm. New
York Central, 94k ; Illinois, 1281 ; Erie, 79k.
Cotton quiet. Middling Upland, 45c. Flour,
wheat, and corn, declining. Provisions dull.
Coffee, good inquiry. Sugar, very firm. Molasses,
steady. Petroleum, quiet ; crude, 351. Refined,
53 to 541.

MEXICO.

NEW YORK, JULY Ist (Morning.)

Advices received here from Matamoras to the
25th ult. confirm the defeat of Negrete and the
Imperial occupation of Chihuahua. Juarez had
fled.

A Federal sentinel fired across the Rio Grande on
two French officers. Baron Brian addressed a pri-
vate letter to General Brown, expressing contempt
for the act. The latter, however, made no reply.

LITERATURE,

Miss Braddon's New Story.

Only a Clod. Three Vols. By the Author of " Lady
Audley's Secret." John Maxwell and Co.

Already—even before we have been able to
snatch an opportunity for commenting upon the fact
of its collective appearance—already Miss Braddon's
new story, in three volumes, has run into its Fourth
Edition ! If we have any surprise at all, however,
in regard to this circumstance, it is certainly not
that the number of the edition thus rapidly attained
should be the Fourth, our only marvel being that it
is not rather the Fourteenth. For, in proportion as
the Authoress of " Lady Audley's Secret" feels her
mastery over her own great natural powers and—
by her facile exercise of them—extends more and
more widely her already ample reputation, she
evidences, as it appears to us, through each addi,
tional fiction coming from her hand, a keener and a
subtler appreciation of the responsibilities devolv-
ing upon her as an Artist, as one of those rarer
artists (potent beyond all others now-a-days) the
prose-poets of our time, who are perpetually
peopling anew with their creations the ever-halcyon
fields of imaginative literature. Never yet has she
written, what even the most blaA of readers would
venture to call, a dull book. We could hardly fancy
her, under any circumstances, writing ineffectively,
much less could we imagine her, at any time, de-
generating into a bore. She began well, nay,
for that matter, indeed, she must be said to have
begun brilliantly—captivating her readers upon her
first appearance into a keen and instant attention—
holding them spell-bound to the very end of the last
chapter of her earliest work, a work which it may
be remembered was issued as an anonymous publi-
cation. Beginning thus well, beginning thus bril-
liantly, qhe has ever since then been advancing from
better to better. Unconsciously to herself perchance,
her motto has been more than simply Onward.
It has been Excelsior. For, while advancing in her
career as a novelist she has risen—risen into a higher
and a purer atmosphere. Whatever there was of
the morbid or of the terrible, of the unwholesome,
we will even say, or of the deleterious (morally) in
her writings, she has been ridding herself of, rapidly,
appreciably, thoroughly. A delicate-complexioned,
blonde-haired bigamist, an insidious and daring ad-
venturess, partaking somewhat in character of the
combined natures of the Lamia, of Becky Sharp,
and of Clytemnestra—a lovely, ghastly, odious, in-
sinuating creature like Lady Audley of Audley
Court, with her grimly ghostly Secret hidden away
for ever, as she supposes, down at the bottom of the
old dry well, at the end of the lime-tree avenue—
,
such an one, Miss Braddon no longer chooses as her
archetype of a Heroine of Romance. Upon the
character of Lady Audley, in truth, even her very
next creation, meaning the character of Aurora
Floyd, was recognisably au immense improvement.
Aurora--in this wholly unlike her predecessor—
was, for one thing, notoriously, more sinned
against than sinning. Proverbially a second work
is the crucial test of a new writer's capabilities.
And it was a test that upon being applied to Miss
Braddon, demonstrated, beyond all further chance
of denial, her capacity and her originality ! Aurora
Floyd, taking rank, still, to our thinking, as, among
all her works, everything considered, her master-
piece. Not but what Miss Braddon's subsequent
fictions have, in the construction of them, in the con-
ception of them, even for that matter in the detailed
execution of them (reference being here made to the
mere style or manner of the composition), evi-
denced a steady rise, advance, progression, or
general development of the author's powers as a
mistress of her art, in other words as an artistic
novelist of genius, power, and originality. What-
ever may be her other gifts, she; has unquestionably
and very signally, indeed, the most essential of all
gifts for a Novelist. She is, above all things, essen-
tially and intensely, a Story-Teller. She has the gift
of so relating a story, of so recounting the incidents
of a fictitious narrative, of so tangling up the thread
of it into the intricate web-work of a plot, of so un-
ravelling that thread afterwards without snapping
even one of its gossamer filaments, that the
reader's attention is held by her, from first to last,
under a sort of glamour—breathless, eager, spell-
bound ! Following up her first radiant adventure
into fable-land, as the author of " Lady
Audley's Secret," and afterwards, and yet
more effectually, as we have said, as the
author of " Aurora Floyd," she since then has con-
firmed her popularity while very considerably rais-
ing her reputation by works of art as honourably
conspicuous among the prose fictions of our times as
" Eleanor's Victory," as " Henry Dunbar," as
" The Doctor's Wife," and now, very recently in-
deed, by the completion of this wonderfully clever
and admirably constructed narrative of ONLY A
CLOD ! Singularly rapid though sheis as a writer, she
betrays very. few evidences of haste, hardly one of
mere carelessness. Pouring out her bright imagin-
ings as a Novelist, in one three-volumed work after
another, as swiftly, one might think, as pen could
well write, to say nothing of the incidental task of
elaborate correction and revision for the press—Miss
Braddon, as a writer of fiction, shows exactly the
reverse of any falling off. Step by step, she takes,
to our thinking, higher and yet higher ground
upon each new adventure of hers as a Popular
Novelist. Of this we conceive " The Doctor's
Wife" yielded a very striking attestation. And
it is a fact yet more apparent, we believe, in the
still later work now before us, this latest story
completed by her pen of fascination, under the
quaint but significant title of " Only a Clod."
Crime is here in no way the main-spring, so to
speak, setting in motion the elaborate machinery of
the plot. The motive power is discoverable, here,
rather, it should be said, in one of those great coups of
Fortune, of which we have before now occasionally
heard in real life, but which, strange to tell,
seem never, until now, to have been once thought
of as suggestive of the ground-work of a
fictitious narrative by any Novelist. The Hero of
the Book—Only a Clod, in
_fact—is a Private
Soldier, born of the soil, so to speak, in the Ranks
of the Army, sprung from the Ranks of the
People, one Francis Tredethlyn, who suddenly finds
himself by a bequest in a will transformed into
something like a millionaire ! In that fact lies the
whole charm—out of it grows the whole interest—
of this enthralling narrative. Tredethlyn, who is at
heart a fine fellow enough, one in whose fortunes
the reader never once throughout the book ceases
to feel an affectionate interest, is first introduced
to us as a body-servant to Ensign Harcourt
Lowther of ll.M.'s 51st Light Infantry, a regi-
ment then quartered in the neighbourhood of Port
Arthur at our antipodes. Here, whilst Harcourt
Lowther is eating his heart out with vexation be-
cause of his own professional expatriation far away
from the regions of civilised life—there comes to
his man Tredethlyn the startling announcement
that he, Francis, has suddenly inherited from an
old Uncle of his in Cornwall a magnificent income
of upwards of thirty thousand pounds a year. And
thereupon it is that we have abruptly brought
before us the first passion of the book ! Harcourt
Lowther, with his serving man's letter still lying open
before him, sits staring at the lines. " Then
suddenly the blank stupor upon his face gave way
to a look of despair. The ensign flung his head
and arms upon the table, and burst into tears.
' I have been eating my own heart in this place
for nearly two years,' he sobbed, ' and not one ray
of light—no, by the heaven above me ! not one—
has dawned upon my life ; and a valet, a private
soldier, the fellow who scours my rooms and blacks
my boots, has thirty thousand a year left him !'"
In the which outburst, there is recognisable, surely,
by any one, even through this fragmentary extract,
one of those strangely poignant minglings together
of tears and laughter. " There was something,"
adds the writer, "so terrible in this hysterical out-
burst of rage and envy, something so utterly piteous
in this unmanly revolt against another man's good
fortune, that Francis Tredethlyn forgot his own
trouble before the aspect of his master's degradation.
Don't, sir,' he cried, 'for God's sake, don't do that!
All the riches in the world wouldn't pay a man for
taking on like that. If you want money, you're
welcome to borrow some of mine as soon
as ever I get the power to lend it. There's
more than I care to have, or could ever spend.
You'll be welcome to what you want, Mr

Lowther.'" There, in effect, in that one little
incident, lies, perdu, the key to the whole mystery
of the tale, the solution of the whole problem of
the plot, the clue through all the mazes of its wind-
ing labyrinth. There, in effect, it may be grasped
—there, in that one little incident between Man and
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. Rere, 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 1"
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. Hillary 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 ' fam'ly jools ;' ho 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 remembrance 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 demi, 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
its
commencement tale—enchaining the reader's attention from
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, horn-gentleman, 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 awakened 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

she has, by the simple fact of the completion of her
new work, whetted our appetite for its immediate
successor, rendering us eager for the ending in
duo course of the serial story with which her inde-
fatigable hand is now adorning one of the Messrs.
Maxwell and Company's popular periodicals.

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

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 comes 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.

gintt - ,c.D, „ inulat

HER MAJES TY.

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 Hon. 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 Do
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.