The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

LOITERIIVGS OF TRAVEL. 3 VOIS.
L 012,1011, 1.071.9111 ant 1840.
Speaking incidentally in his preface of the pre-
sent volumes, Tilr. Willis, the author, says, " I have
trusted things to Time which I hoped would not
wear out in his pocket ; but this is not one of
them." He is right. " Loiterings of Travel" are
unquestionably not destined to survive theirseason.
They may have—indeed most probably will have—
a certain degree of popularity ; but the fall of the leaf
will assuredly find them as much forgotten, as -if
they had never existed. The book, indeed, is of
the lightest and most ephemeral character possible.
Short, sketchy tales, wherein there is little or no
attempt at graphic portraiture of character; per-
sonal recollections of certain fashionable and
literary lions of the metropolis ; details of visits ,so
great men's houses in town and country, which,
by time bye, Mr. Willis notwithstanding his
republicanism—is very fond of chronicling; small
poems, which have no other recommendation
than smoothness of versification ; details of a visit
to the late Tournament at Lord Eglinton's, which
will not bear reading after the clever amid pictu-
resque account of, the same visit in " Tait's Maga-
zine ;''—such are the heterogeneous materials of
which these volumes are composed. Yet though,
as a literary production, we think indifferently of
" Loiterings of Travel," inasmuch as a very limited
portion of intellect indeed will enable any prac-
tised literateur to manufacture just such a work,
yet we cannot deny that it is entertaining. Its
perusal demands not the slightest
good-humoured
exercise
of ;
thought ; its gossip is lively and
and it handles a common-place with such adroit-
ness, as almost to give it an air of novelty. Above
all, the style is easy, flowing, and unclogged by
epithets ; and one may travel over the pages at
railway speed, and vet miss nothing that is worth
remembering. Occasionally, we perceive, -Mr.
'Willis, not content with short and sprightly de-
scription, in which his chief excellence lies, essays
a sentimental view of reflection ; and then nothing
can be more lamentable than his failure. Here
is a specimen. He is 'speaking of London at early
dawn.

" Hyde Park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through
fog and rain, is perhaps of all contrasts, to one who has
frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispiriting and
dreary. To remember that behind the baricaded and wet
windows of Apsley House sleeps the hero of Waterloo—
that under these crowded and fog-wrapped houses lie, in
their dim chambers breathing of perfume and luxury, the
high-born and nobly-moulded creatures who preserve for
the aristocracy of England the palm of the world's beauty;
to remember this, and a thousand other associations linked
with the spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to deepen
the melancholy of the picture.'"

Why so ? Why should the fact that the Duke
of Wellington is lying fast asleep, snug and com-
fortable, in Apsley House, and that all the " high-
born and nobly-moulded" inhabitants of Hamilton
Place are in the same pleasant predicament, make
Mr. Willis Melancholy ? His mind must be
strangely constituted to be able to find the materials
of pathos in such a reflection. Had he bestowed
his kindness on the poor houseless wretches who
may be frequently seen at day-break creeping and
shivering along the broad pavement of Hamilton
Place, there would have been some propriety in it;
but as it is, the passage is mere maudlin sentimen-
tality, without rhyme or reason.

DIARY OF A NUN, 2 VoLs.
album, _London, 1840.

When a young married gentleman of a romantic
and susceptible temperament addresses his wife's
favourite female friend as " dearest," we may be
pretty sure that mischief will follow ; and so ac-
cordingly it proves in this tale. Arthur de Vere,
a young Englishman, handsome, enthusiastic, ac-
complished, and all that, falls in love, at the earliest
possible age, with Miss Edith Fitzgerald, a gentle,
artless girl, who returns his affection, and, as a
necessary consequence, is converted, by the in-
terposition of the parson, into " one flesh" with
him. Unfortunately, just after their marriage, the
amiable couple go to Italy, when they meet with
Miss Gertrude Aylmer, a school friend of Edith,
who is travelling with a Mr. and Mrs. Temple on
the Continent. Delighted with this unexpected
rencontre, Edith persuades her friend to quit
the Temples, who are about to return t 3 En-
gland, and come and reside with her ; which
she does, and, being remarkably beautiful,
and of the most seductive manners, with, in addi-
tion, a fine eye for the witcheries of Italian art
and landscape scenery, she forms an ardent attach-
ment for Edith's husband, which he—nOt having
the fear of Doctors' Commons before his eyes—
returns with compound interest. Thus they go on,
billing and cooing in the most romantic man-
ner imaginable, among the ruins of the Coliseum
and Pompeii, and even on the steep sides of Vesu-
vius ; when suddenly their pleasant pastime is put
a stop to, by the alarming indisposition of Edith,
who having discovered her friend's treachery, show',
unequivocal symptoms of a determination to (lie
hastily of a broken heart. This, in some degree,
recalls her husband's estranged affections; and
has such an effect on the ardent, but well-
meaning Gertrude, that she resolves' to go
into a convent, by way of punishing her-
self for her indiscreet flirtation with a married
man. No sooner, however, has she come to this
virtuous determination, than Edith dies of
grief , and her mother, an elderly gentlewoman,
—say sixty years old or thereabouts—rushes over
from England, and reaches Italy just in time to die
upon her daughter's grave. Thus two of the
dramatis persona are disposed of : with respect to
the third, De Vere, all we learn of him at the close
of the second volume is, that he bolts abruptly from
Rome in a state of inconceivable distraction, with a
letter from Gertrude in his pocket, enclosing " a
long shining braid of raven hair," which she had
sent him from the convent, as a sort of fare-
well love-token ! Such are the chief incidents
of this tale, which in the namby-pamby style
of its sentiment, reminds us of some of the
sickly, barley-sugat productions, of the Minerva-
library school. 'Yet it has its redeeming points.
The descriptions of Italy, as they are given in
" Gertrude's Diary"—whence the story derives its
name—are vivid and circumstantial ; and the sketch
of Naples and its environs, in particular, hacknied
as is the theme, display something of the fancy
of the poet combined with the graceful knowledge
of the scholar.

MA RIAN. Three Vol.v,
Colburn—London, 1840.
Marian is the story of a foundling, who is Icft,
when an infant not more than five weeks old, on
the area steps of a Mrs. Cavendish Jones, a resi-
dent in Hans-place, Chelsea ; and is there found
by the took, an Irishwoman, rejoicing in the Cu-
phonious cognomen of Mackane. This cook—
, whose character, by the way, is well sustained
throughout, indeed, the best in the novel—takes
andconttorivgese,t
a violent extempore fancy to the, foundling,
adoptedextraordinary
by
i\sitrrse.t c inge-
nuity,byhearn
. anyfetyl .
Jones, • with whom she continues to reside. for .
some years, alternately petted and scolded,
until, at length, she is d compe e to quit
in consequence of ill-usage, and takes up her abode
with her kind-hearted, humble friend, Mackane,
whence—by one of those singular vicissitudes of ,
fortune, which ate seldom heard of out of
novels in three volumes—she is transfer-
red to the domicile of an aristocratic lady,
Isabella Gascoigne, who takes an early op-
portunity of introducing her to her brother, Lord ,
Bingham, an amiable and unsophisticated Dean
of the Established Church. By this excm-
plan, couple she is most affectionately treated ;
and in the fullness of time finds out the mother
who had deserted her, marries: a remarkably
handsome young man whom :e meets with
about the middle of the second vciume ; and, as
the old nursery tale says, " lives very happy
ever afterwards." The main incitlin is of this
tale, as will be seen by the a*.ove hasty
sketch, possess no great novelty ; bia they arc
wrought up with much tact ; and some of the
characters—those, for instance, of Mrs. Cavendish
Jones, and Lady Bab Hesketch—display genuine
comic humour, and a quickness of observation
which we do not often find in the. •.)7.gc`' Of
our modern novelists. In passages of sedans re-
flection, founded on an,attentive observation of the
sayings and doings of
this
,bustling world about u.,
the author exhibits to great advantage ; and 011 •
such occasions her style is worthy of the subject.