The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-14 00:00:00

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LIONEL WAKEFIELD. 3 Vols.
Bentley, London, 1836.
There is both sober good sense, and discrimination
of character in these volumes, which are the produc-
tion of a gentleman named Massey, author of " Syden-
ham ;" and record the struggles and difficulties en-
countered by an enterprising young man in his attempts
to raise himself in life. The subject is a trite one,
but will bear repetition ; for " what subject is there"—
as Burke says, in all the pride of genius—" that is not
inexhaustible ? Lionel Wakefield, the hero of the
tale before us, is of the Gil Blas class of characters—
that is to say, he is quick-witted, adventurous, ready to
take advantage of circumstances, and by no means en-
cumbered with a Spartan rigidness of principle ;
though, as the world goes, he may safely be pronounced
a respectable young gentleman who is merely " sowing
his wild oats ;" for he neither swindles, nor commits
petty larceny ; but contents himself with intriguing
with married ladies, and speculating in the matrimo-
nial lottery, after the orthodox fashion of a spirited
young West-end Roue. At the commencement of his
career we find him studying law in the Temple ; he
afterwards, by way of filling up his leisure hours,
plants a flourishing pair of antlers on the head of a
married gentleman, named .Stoughton ; and having dili-
gently watched and fostered the growth of these tem-
poral embellishments, till they have become obvious to
the dimmest sight, gets rid of the adulterous connec-
tion, by a seasonable quarrel with Mrs. Stoughton ; en-
deavours to ingratiate himself with a wary old poli-
tician named Ludlow, in the hope of being brought
into the House of Commons ; which failing, he looks
out for some young heiress, and contrives, though
not without difficulty, to marry the daughter of a
rich old city cheesemonger, one Pritchard, who,
however, instead of settling a handsome fortune on
him, cuts him off with a pittance of one hundred
pounds per annum. A few months after his mar-
riage, his wife elopes from him ; on which he plunges
into literature; becomes connected,' with the Press ;
engages himself as an usher at a boy's school, and
finally turns politician, and manages at the close of
the third volume, to achieve the great objet of his
ambition, a respectable standing in society. These
incidents are all common-place enough, but they
are agreeably worked up, and hurry on, one after
the other, with very exciting rapidity. The best drawn
characters in the tale are, next to the hero's, those of
Major O'Malley, an Irish fire-eater ; Mrs. Stoughton ;
Miss Gorget, a young Blue ; and Mr. Ludlow, an old
hack politician. On the whole, Lionel Wakefield is
an amusing enough novel of the harmless, common-
place school, with not one atom of invention or origi-
nality ; but displaying here and there proofs of a varied
acquaintance with human nature, which are developed
with much literary tact.

WORDSWORTIPS POEMS. Vol. 2.
Mo.ron, London. 1836.
The volume before us contains the splendid poem of.'
" Laodamia," which is polished as Parian marble.
and full of lofty thoughts, and chaste and profounC.
sensibility. Here, too, we find our favourite " Line.,
on revisiting the Banks of Wye," which contain::
more than one passage worthy to be held in undying:
memory. The " still sad music of humanity"—onc
of the finest lines in the language—pervades every por-
tion of this thoughtful and eloquent production. "On
the power of Sound" is another noble poem which nonc
but Wordsworth could have written. Our readers will
doubtless thank us for extracting these impressive lines :
" The Heavens whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be ;
Innumerable voices fill
With everlasting harmony.
The towering headlands crowned with mist,
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ;
Thy pinions, universal Air,
Ever waving to and fro,
Are delegates of harmony, and bear
Strains that support the seasons in their round—
Stern winter loves a dirge-like sound."
" A Voice to light gave being ;
To time, and man his earth-born chronicler;
A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,
And sweep away life's visionary stir ;
The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)
To archangelic lips applied,
The grave shall open, quench the stars."
Close following on this majestic ode, comes " Peter
Bell," a tale, in which, after reading it for the second
time, we can find nothing intelligible. The hero of
this crude story is a half-starved jackass, who by some
mysterious means or:other, is made the instrument of
converting " Peter Bell" from a reckless profligate
into a sober and honest operative. Mr. Wordsworth
says, there are " touches of deep imagination and
passion" in this poem ; doubtless, he must know best,
but for ourselves, after a most diligent scrutiny, we
have been unable to discover either the one or the other.
The best line in the poem—if we may be permitted to
volunteer an opinion—is,
" The hard, dry see-saw of his horrible bray,"
which is admirably descriptive of the excruciating
powers of melody of that four-footed Braham, the
donkey. We cannot but consider " Peter Bell"
whatever his undiscriminating eulogists may say to
the contrary—as wholly unworthy of the author of
those magnificent lines " on the ruins of Kilchurn
Castle," and that meditative sonnet on " Westminster
Abbey." A lean jack-ass is a fitter' subject for the
contemplation of a zoologist, than a philosopher.

TINTS OF TALENT.
Thomas, London, 1836.

This little volume may be classed with the Annuals,
though it contains no pictorial embellishments. Its
contents are of a motley, miscellaneous character, be-
ing made up of a vast variety of short tales and essays
in prose and verse, the production of " many pencils,"
as the title-page specially informs us. The two best
contributions are, the " Summons," by John Clare,
and " Reflections on Life," by an anonymous author.
Both these poems display fancy and sensibility ; for the
rest, the less said about them the better, for the " tints
of talent" displayed in them are so faint, as to be all
but invisible.

Mrs. MABEREY ; or the WORLD AS IT WILL DX
In three Vols. London, Macrone, 1836.

We confess ourselves wholly incompetent to write a
criticism on the merits of these volumes. After this
candid confession, it is scarcely necessary to observe
that it would be superfluous on our part to give any
opinion about them. We know a good deal of the
past, and something of the present ; but our know-
ledge of the future is too vague and scanty to justify
us in deciding upon the work of a literary seer,
who is pleased to afford us a glimpse of fashionable
society in Australia, Ceylon, and at the North Pole,
in the year 2036. Taking the future as we find it
here represented, in the year of our Lord, above men-
tioned, Vitrea, in the neighbourhood of the North
Pole, will be the most fashionable place in the world ;
England will be a province of Russia ; the tour of the
earth will be made in a few weeks ; there will be
patent sea-smootheners, so that sea-sickness will
be unknown ; men will have made such discoveries in
science, that a concentration of all the climates in the
world will be made within the limits of a single city,
so that every citizen may either breathe the atmosphere
of Egypt, Italy, or Siberia, just as suits his fancy or
his lungs ; and as a lost remnant of oldstimes, the men
will be as foppish, and the women as clever at husband-
hunting, as they are at present. To mark the progress of
what is called " good society," we will quote a single
extract from the first of the three volumes before us.
It is a specimen of the dinner-table conversation of
a Van Diernen's Land dandy at a Table d'llote in
Ceylon, in the year 2036 :
Among the rest, Mr. Loftus Longlegs, who had eaten a