The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-24 00:00:00

LITERATURE.
EVELYN STUART; or RIGHT versus MIGHT.
3 Vols. By Adrian.
More frequently than we could wish, as aspirants for
the moral and intellectual advancement of the people,
are fictions written with the sole intention of affording
an evanescent and unprofitable amusement.. Ole.
master master novelists have not acted upon this princip
The beauties evoked by their imaginations have con-
stituted a means, and not an end. Whether they
soared into fairyland, or strayed into the wild
and
est
romance, or simply delineated the appearances
characteristics of their contemporanes, they never
forgot that they were thus endowed with powers of
fancy and facilities of composition to effect something
more noble and durable than the frivolous entertain-
ment of their fellow-creatures. This fact does not
elaborate exemplification ? There
surely require any
is no necessity to remind any one at all acquainted
with literature that Defoe, by his writings, divulged
the real blessings of civilisation and good-fellowship ;
that Cervantes restored society to reason, when its
wits were very nearly lost ; that Goldsmith showed
how even simplicity should be reverenced when it was
accompanied by virtue ; that Johnson illustrated the
truth of earthly enjoyments being insufficient
to insure happiness ; that Godwin displayed in a
remarkable manner the remorse consequent upon
crime, and the miseries produced by inordinate
wealth; that Voltaire held hypocrisy up to ridicule,
and that Marmontel warned the inexperienced against
blindly following the first impulses of their passions.
It is useless to enlarge upon these instances to those
who have read Rasselas and Robinson Crusoe, the
Vicar of Wakefield and Don Quixote, Caleb Williams
and Candide, Telemachus and St. Leon. In these
and a countless multitude of other examples, we can-
not but discern that the paramount object of the ro-
mancist is not so much to ensure the recreation as the
instruction and the improvement of his reader. The
various classic fictions which are preserved in the dif-
ferent languages of Europe, corroborate this assertion.
Latterly, however, the publishing offices have teemed
with fictions which have been only recommended by
the agreeable style of the writing, and the amusing
nature of the narrative. The novelists of the day—
saving always Charles Dickens and a few other bril-
liant exceptions—have seemed to regard their office
as similar to that of the jesters and bards of
the middle ages. They have vied with their great
predecessors as mere painters of scenery and
sketches of character; they have emulated them in
all the externals of their art; but they have
lamentably forgotten the purpose. It would have
been well if they had remembered that observation of
Cicero, that nothing is easier than to imitate the
garb, or the posture, or the movements of another,
"nihil est facilius, quam amictum imitari alicujus, cut
staturn, aut motum.' They would then have pro-
duced works capable of acting beneficially upon the
heart and the intellect, as well as of merely feeding
curiosity, or inflaming the imagination. Such a work
is "Evelyn Stuart." It is refreshing now-a-days to
encounter a novel which contains such a fund of
stirring incident, and which conveys, moreover, such
elevating sentiments and laudable aspirations. While
this story lacks the murders, and suicides, and other
criminalities, which have imparted so much that is
morbid and reprehensible to the popular taste, it is
nevertheless fraught with the ebbing and the flowing
of human passion. In its general texture (as it May
be called) there is occasionally, without doubt, a
certain deficiency of art, but this deficiency is re-
deemed by the nature with which it is suffused
throughout. " Evelyn Stuart" has one great and
unquestionable advantage, its interest is im-
mediate--contemporary—national. From the pages
of "Evelyn Stuart " we discern the social,
moral, intellectual, physical, and political condition
of the English people at this moment. The fictitious
vicissitudes introduced in these three volumes are as-
sociated with the real vicissitudes of the population,
and by this means an actuality is thrown over the
narrative which considerably enhances its valve. We
are always loath to abate the curiosity excited by the
plot of such a production as the one now lying under
consideration, by unravelling its mysteries, and we
shall not allow ourselves to be seduced from our ordi-
nary custom in the present instance. The plot is as
it were the skeleton of the book, and the extracting
of that skeleton merely for the purpose of hanging its
component bones upon the wires of criticism, neces-
sarily destroys the vitality of the original, as far as
the readers of the criticism are concerned. We may
observe,_ however, that this tale of " Right versus
Might" is entirely and essentially English. Some
of the principle incidents are situated in London, but
the reader is at other times carried into the manufac-
turing and rural districts. Most of the different
phases of English society are portrayed in this work ;
we are introduced now to the salons of the nobility,
now to the cottages of the yeomanry, now
to the dwelling-houses of our merchants and trades-
men, now again to the hovels and cellars of our
peasantry and artisans. A generous and comprehen-
sive view is taken of this great empire in all its mag-
nificence and all its destitution—in all its power and
its weakness—in its glory and in its shame. We
would especially mark one peculiarity in the concep-
tion of "Evelyn Stuart ;" the various characters in-
troduced in the storyare the types of some of the most
conspicuous classes in Great Britain. Mr. Arden is
the type of those among the mercantile men of the
metropolis who are carrying on a gigantic trade with
every semblance of success, but who are infinitely
worse than beggars in reality. Sir Stephen Alsinger
is a capital portrait, sketched at full length, and drawn
to a hair. He is one of those apparent sticklers for
party who are prepared, on emergencies, to desert to
the opposition when the opposition promises to be the
winning side. Lord Hewiston is emblematic of those
younger members of the aristocracy who are elected
by snug boroughs from family interest, and enter St.
Stephens with about as much knowledge of legislation
as a fingerpost, and about as much relish
for it as a volatile young nobleman may be
supposed to have. Lord Relton again is one of
those dogged and arbitrary politicians who consider
everything should go on upon the old system, no mat-
ter how circumstances may have changed, and who
would prefer walking clean over a precipice rather
than budge one inch to the right or the left. Recent
occurrences have divulged the existence of many,
Lord Reltons, and many, moreover, without his re-
deeming qualities. The Wilmot's are the type of
those impoverished children of toil, who are, alas ! so
plentifully distributed in our rural districts, and par-
ticularly in the shire of Dorset. Louisa is an emblem
of that silent and agonized want which pines, and
labours, and starves in so many garrets of this me-
tropolis, those youthful and unprotecting beings who
have to battle not merely with cold and hunger, but
against a thousand allurements to sin and ignominy,
those wretched creatures whose woe was so eloquently
uttered by Thomas Hood, in his " Song of the Shirt,"
and whose dangers were so forcibly described by
"Boz," in his Christmas story of " The Chimes."
Arbridge, who may be called the hero of
this novel, and who appears to be an especial
favourite of its author, is a character deli-
cately and completely pencilled,—he is the very
beau ideal of a representative in the House of Par-
liament. All his aspirations are enkindled by phi-
lanthropy; and, according to Adrian, his nature is
modelled to a similar form with that of the glorious
Armand Carrel—Carrel, of whom Mr. Smythe has
written :

" For the people and truth were to him as dear
As the love of fair lady to true chevalier."
The moral which appears to be drawn from the cha-
racter of Arbridge is that no glory at all worthy of
the title can be achieved except by aiding the advance-
ment of our fellow-beings; that warlike fame is
_ miserable trash in comparison with the fame of those
whose memories survive in the grateful hearts of the
. hitherto poor and suffering ; and that the ambition of
every Englishman, and particularly of every legislator,
•should be the improvement of the condition of the
indigent and contemned. When Arbridge is de•
-picted as wandering in solitude and despair among
the Alpine crags, looking with scorn upon the strug-
gles of his fellow-mortals to arrive at distinction by
the ordinary means, we are irresistibly reminded of
that noble passage in " Childe Harold :
" He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow ;
' He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high chose the sun of glory glow,
And tar beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits lead.'
Every portion of this fiction tends to the enforce-'
went of the benevolent principle that to confer bene
factions upon the industrious poor, to place them in
such a position that they can honestly gain- their
livelihood, to enable them (as Napoleon insisted in
his prize essay) to obtain wholesome food, warm
clothing, and sufficient shelter should be the primary
aim of the more affluent members of the community.
Of the heroine we have not spoken, because she her-
self is the embodiment of all these aspira-
• tions. When we have named the book we have
named heroine, the and when we have de-
scribed the philanthropic spirit of the book, we have
described the character of Evelyn Stuart. A plea-
sant tone of raillery insinuates itself occasionally,
even into the descriptions of mere accessories,
such as that of the trees before Norford Castle,
which, either ~ as
or from very shame,”
w
hid the abodes of misery
park,
must,have how-
ever, ,
_otherwise visible beyond the
eo
ever, allow the author to speak
in
thusiasm for English scenery_ After msealf,"egin rug how
w
his en-
be
any person could " form plans of crime an
amid verdant plains, glorious with the setting un
thus beautifully eulogises the sunshine:— s ' y
" Does he not merit pity, whose heart never rejoiced
at a delight so pure, who feels not the magic beauty of
the sunshine? Yet, are there such? Can there be one
who does not bless those golden beams, which cheer the
barren wilderness, which make lovely verdure lovelier