The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE.
THE DEBUTANI.E; or, the London Sayan.
A Novel 3 Vo!s B!,, Mrs Gore.
Reform is Inc (Tiler of the day. No moil-ploy, how-
ecer venerable ; eo po,ition, however elevated, can se-
cure in,- ;fail and faulty institutions from the innovating
had of refornevion hie politicians are redressing
leg si -..tive abuses ; while philanthropists are aspiring to
re. ova: the 1 eoele ; iere has devoted her prolific
pen to .ttat k e pew,r deemed in &able by its votarie-,
and hitherto regarded as inzincible by its foes. In this,
the second novel she has given us this season, she
is again earnest to expose the faults and follies
that reign in the supreme abodes of fashion ; and
to show, or rat her to eneetivour to show, hew vice
flourishes and how virtue lades in the withering at
mosphere that pervades there. The chief object of these
velumes is to portray the evils attending the career. of
a debutante, and, indeed. the whole system of "coming
Ow," so universally established in the beau monde. The
concluding words of the whole work might have been
placed on the title-page ; they fully express its memo,
end might served for its inieto. "The best pos-
sible conscience-keeper for a woman is her lord
and master ; and had I a daughter destine°
to move iti the slippery paths of the great world,
it
is only under the protection of a man authorised to
control and defend her, that, as our London seas in is at
present constituted, I should t are to see her—a _Wu •
tante !" To illustrate this opinion this hook was writ-
ten; to prove its truth is the evident object from the first
page to the last. The history of the Debutante is in-
tended to furnish a picture of the world of fashion, and
a ye y gloomy picture it certainly present s. It. per-
trays to us a sphere in which moral deformity is
reckoned lovely ;
,a garden v. here only artificial flowers
are seen ; a ceneourse of living b ings hag fly to be
called human, for in all their words and acti,ms there is
no token of a heart. Such at lea-t are the ideas with
which these volumes inspire us. For example, we mnv
cite the feelings of a young novice on first entering
the charmed circle. " She had heard tor the first tie,.
the jargon of the world ; she had seen for the first
time an exchange of glances invalidate in a dielogn
the words that tell from the lips of the speakers ; she
had seen one feature give the lie to another in the samt
countenance, and heard axioms plausibly delivered at
variance with every action of the life of him wh,
mouthed them ; the hypocrisy oc. social life was un
veiled before her." Now, although we may admit
there is some truth in all this, we must also admi•
there is more of exaggeration. It is also well known
that t here is evil to be found everywhere ; whoever data
lift the flimsy external veil and pierce beneath the sur-
face, in every place, in every class or circle, will fin,
much, very much that is bad, but also (and for the
honour of human nature, let us not doubt it !) he wil
find more, much more of geed and virtu ,us. If we agree
with Mrs. Gore that sin and shame flourish in hig
places, we call upon her to admit that virtue reigns theta
also ; that some of the best and purest iedings of ot,
nature adorn the highest and the pr-udest. more enno
()ling them than dues their rank, their wealth, or their
ancestral dignities. In the " Debutante" we hay.
only the dark side of the picture, and although we may
own the tale is sufficiently interesting, the style ant
mated, and the whole brilliant (and as tue name of the
authoresS is a sutfieient guarantee). we must protest
against many of the characters, and much of the plot.
because they are (an unpardonable fault for a novel)
most unnatwal. We can pardon any omissions en
commissions, faults or failings,. in a fiction, if it hie
fulfil the main object of its creation—if it but " hold r
mirror up to nature," and paint real virtues, or expose
real vices, and show us men and manners as they are.
i
And in this the work bef ,re us s most certainly deft
vent. Do such revolting situations as the following ever
“eztur in real life ? Or, it they do, it is only as unilate-
ral exeeptions which (as elicit) are best left alone. In Of
denouement of the tale we find a reformed rceue, recent))
married, and anxious to enjoy the happ.ness of domes-
tic life ; filled with horn); by the discovery that the
mother of his wife was once his mistress. And, again.
we read of a married woman eloping with a man jus.
returned from the funeral of his wife's father, and th,
(lay before the birth of his own son ! In any common
place author, whose works would not be read, sucl
things would matter little ; but when we find such a
writer as Mrs. Gore devoting hes powerful talents te
grace such themes, and, moreover, presenting them as
fictions of London life, we cannot refrain from express
ing our disapproval; nor from ex.iressing also a hope, a
strong hope, that she may in future select acme happier
subject, and let the theme be as attractive as the writer.

VILL.4GE TALE.s• FROM THR BLACK
FOREST. Translated by Meta Taylor.
These little fictions from the German of Bertholo
Auerbach acquire for themselves a peculiar attraction
from the circumstances of their portraying the domes
tic manners and the national customs of the inhabitants
of the Black Forest. They are simply, but ph asantly,
written, aiming rather at fluency than elegance, appeal-
ing more to the sympathies than to the heart. The
humorow vein in which some of them are composed is
to us particularly fascinating, inasmuch ;:s it is a specie,
of comic writing essentially diffrrent from that with
which English readers are familiar. It has less of the
shrewdness of Swift, the exub,:rance of Dickens, and th.
propriety of Addipon ; but possesses a playfulness
scarcely inferior to any of those famous hutnourists
" Hansjorg and his Pipe" is the most provoking piece o'
storytelling Auerbaeh has ever produced ; seeing that it
arouses the attention up to a certain point, and then, as
a friend of ours most appropriately remat•ked to us,
" ends in stns ke." " Tolpatsch" is r• adalile enough,
but scarcely so agreeable as many of the shorter tab s
towards the end of the volume, such as " The Nily
Tree," or " The Axe." The translator has acted morn
judiciously than many of that excellent fraternity.
striving more after the-original neatness of the German
than endeavouring to give it any adventitious embellish-
ment. Most translators, in consequence of-this latter
failing, should more correctly designate themselves
" ParaphraserN," tut Meta'Taylor is a truthful transla-
lawn The little book of " Village Tales" would wile
away many an hour which might otherwise hang
tediously ; and we, therefore, commend it especially to
all habitual searchers after amusement.

ALGERIA AND IIINIS IN 1845. 2 Vols. By
Captain Kennedy.
In reading a volume of voltages or travels, the judi-
cious reader will never anticipate any solid disquisition
upon governments, or any psychological historiette of a
pe, pie ; the principal charm. indeed, of such a produc-
tion would be that, it should sparkle with the animation
of novelty, and that its pervading tone should be one of
naturalness. It were, in fact, outrageous to imagine
that, at the very momeut when the imagination of the
writer is in a turmoil, from the multitude of new
images and unexpected i leas which it has recently im-
b bed during his perigrieations, there should remain
sufficient precision or premeditation to facilitate the
concoction of some solid and symmetrical work. Nay,
supposing that this were possible, we would willingly
wag r that the satisfaction of the reader would be con-
siderably diminishe '. There would be wanting that
agreeable con amore character which renders a book f
this description so proverbially palatable. No matter,
indeef, what may be the country depicted, or who may
be the narrator, our minds al-toys enter upon a work ol
travels with that enst, with which we all of us revert
to the hours of childhood ; and we look upon the author
or the authorsss, as the case miy be, with some swab
a wonder, though, of course, modulated by experience,
as we gazed upon the w,ather-beaten visage of Uncle
llarnaby, when he returned from sea, after a long voy-
age somewhere, with a r kably husky voice, and a
r,markably rough pea-jacket. Just as soon, moreov r.
would we have our present travel-writers bind them
selves in all the formalities of cotupo: ition, as we would
tl--en have wished Uncle B mnaby to deliver the history
of his adventures in prim paragraphs end pragmatical
sentences. In either case, the more spontaneous, the
more rambling, the more fragmentary the narrative
the greater becomes our satisfaction—and this un-
douttedly, not from any partiality for the neglect of all
literary formulas, but solely because that very spon-
taneous, rambling and fragmentary character is as it
were an assurance to us that we are receiving the de-
scriptions from the lips of one who has actually visited
the scenes, and in wht se memory the impression they had
caused is still vivid and gratifying. We feel ourseltea
c.impelled in very fairness to preface our notice W. the two
volumes before us, relating to Mg ria and Tunis, with
these explanatory observations because we are com-
pelled to confess that they are altogether unembellished
by the charms of rhetoric, and yet that they are agreeable
iTrertbelees: Oar previous remarks will at once in-

dicate that this pleasing effect is produced by the gos
sipping tone of the writer, whosee:its s rather to tell you
write you a descriptionohf his
all about the occurrences of
roamings. We
journey than to
would consequently wiz
literary merit, it performs .to i
;,,vitiis
arnitu%inpgarift,it
isunsah-mply, that
while this work has no
notwith-
standing, "excellent well pretensions to high
sKtaenntnieadLy Aapcpceoamrspantoiedhahvye
Viscount
a most delightful
t,'lt'innli. pre rely '6 when
count Fielding, Captain
tour through the two regencies,nj
ing
.the chibouka
awtith Romenn a i
ra s
of thelon
glt ,;trnaacnt
iseed,o'n'
no-lessd epxrterteonridi in g the most
ien. ry cookery
extraordinary relish for the
of the Arab tribe'. By such means alonea
yeller expect to render himself familiar witha anythe
'nestle economy of a foreign race, and capacitate o.
him-
self for the office of estimating their merits or their de-
merits as a nation. It would be superfluous in us tt
indicate by any expression the phases of northi•rn
African society ; every one has already acquired such an
intimate acquaintance with them through literary
telescopes like the present ; and, since the invasion of
the French troops.. Algeria has been depicted perhaps
more repeatedly, ao any other tropical regin. Still,
as those individualsiptions are simply nothing more
than the i views taken of a country by the
writers, it becomes a matter of cori,sity to be- ,
hold, as it were, the same spectacle throuvh
a different coloured glass. In olier words, the
poet uso of several authors upon ,one nation is tantain-ti,.i
parent the tmonoree
tbearing arguments upon fill sides of a que,tion ; they
enableu us to arrive at more acvtir.ite cotic'Thd us th
upon the nation and the question. And the mole trans-
went), thha,ve
aref othitiini.,g
lihood (either ot the de cripti,.Tl or Ole Itra-
vveuntinged by prejudice, the oreater like-
matter. These
travels in Algeria and a clear vi, w upon the
survey taken by hint of 4th"014 by
Captain ikenne.iy. The
T Prin,ipal advinttt,-s of the
s. e. it -11::m,es
..irro:ss
;regions
and,i :iimth-
gala r 1 y ki en and seßrehin,,
ion of the
alive in the city, the tent, or
th:!iw.l;drteimo4 is equally
the assistance of an exeelle!
is
shough they
convey to the reader Almost as accurate.' he
contriv, s to
landscapes, and incidents, and individuals,aasn"
had been witnessed by himself. The work
command attention both from its own remarkable to
sad 4; urd the political romance which i, ca-t over the
princip.„iiii,„s i.i 4, ~•,• ht.:, oy ill: pr. tr.-eted earn.,:iigns.
between toe liable oti.: and the wild trouts of Abd-el.
Kaden Captain Kennedy i§ Ohing whatever as an