The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Wortlebanic Diary, and Sonic Old Stories
from Kathie Brande's Portfolio. By Holme
Lee, author of " Sylvan Holt's Daughter." 3
vols. Smith and Elder.
These volumes contain a number of stories of
different lengths, skilfully arranged and joined to-
gether by means of an amusing narrative, which con-
tinues the old tale of "Kathie Braude in her, mar-
ried life." Some of the stories are very interesting,
and the reader will be at no loss for variety, since
among them there are some adapted to every taste
in fiction. " Ashburn Rectory" and " The Diary of
Miss Margaret Arden" are details of country life,
and call one's attention from the simple unaffected
way in which they are told. They contain morals,
too, in their quiet and unobtrusive style. Margaret
tells us how nearly she wrecked her happiness by
her hasty and ungovernable temper, while in Ash-
burn Rectory, the sad fate of John Hartwell
fully demonstrates the fatal results of such conduct
as was his. "The Poor Pensioner" and " The
Lady of the Mall" are two of those melancholy
pictures that more than any other seem to reveal
humanity's sternest and darkest lessons. In these
faded figures wandering about so disconsolately,
what dreams of vanished hopes and what relics of
once bright hours. In the fearful trials they had
undergone, a merciful Providence had allowed the
over-strained nerves to relax their agonised ten-
sion and darkness to enshroud their mental vision—
"A night everlasting had shut them from day."
"A Governess's Soliloquy" is a smart sketch, and
justly testifies to the toils of the career of those
who pass existence in teaching till those around
believe, at last, that they are mere machines, not
living spirits who once delighted in youth's
bright morning and dreamed of joy and
pleasure for years to come. She observes,
" The children think I am their natural enemy,
and averse to all amusement. Oh, you blessed
darlings, you make a grand mistake; I don't like
lessons one bit more than you do, and delight in
holidays, not in prim holidays though, when
best frocks are donned, and I am charged to take
care you don't spoil them. No, give me ease and
an unspoilable gown, then away into the depths of
woods, where nuts grow in rich clusters and the
moss is like velvet, and the air like balms of Para-
dise ; and into green lanes, hedged with wild rose
and fragrant honeysuckle ; by singing rivulets,
into quaint old villages with ivied ruins and ancient
women overflowing with legends and country su-
perstitions. Ah ! then I can get out of the echo of
rules and exceptions, and forget while the day lasts
that I am " the Governess !" "My Blind Sister"
is a melancholy chapter of life, but it ends happily,
and the unfortunate girl is again enabled to look
round and see after her long years of darkness.
" Rester's Evil Eye" is a strange sketch, but
it is satisfactory to note that one absurd supersti-
tion counteracted another till at last all the parties
were better off than they had any right to expect
after their very strange conduct. "Madame
Freschon's" is a simple record of some years
passed at a French school. It is very amusing
in its gay account, and may serve to remind some
folks of the far-off days of their youth when they
were domiciled in seminaries. How Miss Bootle
was photographed is a ludicrous account of the
events of a morning's picture meeting, in which
pride and malice predominated in la striking man-
ner, and which displays how envy is not con-
fined to the brief reign of youthful beauty, bat
follows on to middle age even when the loc,.ks are
plain and the demeanour ungraceful. The pf2n-
cipal story in the first volume is entitled " The
Haunted House." It is a mild and melancholy
tale, and, as is the ease in many of these stories, a
murder is the chief incident. The heroine, Adie,
is an orphan child who has been adopted by a poor
old artist whose genius has not sufficed to
raise him from poverty and obscurity. He
takes the tenderest care of his lovely
little charge, who grows into a beautiful
maiden and repays him with a daughter's
love. Unfortunately a young man comes from
London to study under old Nicholas, and an attach.
ment springs up between him and Adie against the
old man's will. The story proceeds until the
Haunted House, in which the simple pair live, has
another crime to add to its list of horrors. The
old man is found murdered by an unknown hand,
and, after grieving bitterly, Adie marries her lover
and they go abroad. Years after accident extorts
a confession from the criminal, and Adie learns to
her life-long sorrow that her husband has been
the murderer of her kind old guardian. The
second volume opens with a group of stories bearing
the more cheerful title of "Stories round the Yule
Log." The readers of " Household 'Words" will
recognise some old friends scattered through all
these pages, and the tale of "Poor Dick," among
these Christmas legends, appeared in the number
containing " The Wreck of the Golden Mary,"
some years since. " A Day of Reckoning" is
another of the tales which are tragic and gloomy
in their character. It shows the wretchedness
attending ill-gotten wealth. " From First to Last"
narrates the career of a young painter, from the
days when his gorgeously coloured picture of his
secretly worshipped idol provoked her ridicule, t 9
the time when a skilful allegorical portrait from
his hand stayed her in the path to ruin and despair.
" The Devil's Mark" is a tale of the old days of
witchcraft, and sadly tells how a happy home was
broken up by the malignity of an envious and dis-
appointed rival. The stories are skilfully varied
from grave to gay, from tragic record to lively
sketch, and the Diary showing us the home life at
" The Parsonage," and telling us of the love affairs
of Kathie Brande's step-daughter Emmeline, runs
pleasantly through the volumes. They are cer-
tainly- not equal to Holme Lee's earlier and larger
works, and we should commend more concentration
and thought to our author, whom rapid successes
appears to have rendered careless. Nevertheless
the volumes aro full of entertainment, and will be
pleasant companions for a leisure hour by many
winter firesides.

Agnes Arnold. A Novel. By W. Bernard Mac
Cabe. 3 vols. Newby.
Mr. Barnard Mac Cabe is not unknown in the
literary world, nor is this, we believe, his first
essay in the art of novel writing, although the
work bears evidence of an unpractised pen. His
scene is laid in -Ireland at the close of the last cen-
tury, and the miseries which that unhappy country
then endured are described with all the fervour and
passion peculiar to his nation. The wrongs of
Ireland, her misgovernment, and the wretched con-
dition to which she was reduced by the desolating
influence of civil war, internecine hatreds, and,
above all, the detestable system of spies and in-
formers—these latter figure prominently in the
pages of the story brfore us, which is -wild and
eventful to a degree that would appear enxitirateh'a-e
gent, were the scene laid in any less stirring time.
dloionde;hed and violence, and
the despotism of an armed mob,
fe/. ti
opening concerning the of
the heroine of the tale. She is a
inSilcilentngeeirses wactifttehnbplot! and counterplots, eavesdropping,
Irish heiress, who has long been
and
Agnes letter tAIt
young residing
in England, but who unfortunately is persuaded
by anonymous letters to return to her own country
to Join her guardian just as the long threatened
store is breaking over the Emerald Isle, and in-
volving her kind old friend in danger and diffi-
culty. Ito has two nephews, one of whom plays
the part of unsliccessful lover to Agnes ; the other
is the villain of the piece, by whose dark machina-
tions old Mr. Kirwan is placed in imminent
danger. Open murders and secret assassinations
are among the startling incidents of the
tale, the idea of the betrayed informer blowing up
the ship in revenge is novel, and takes the reader
by surprise. We notice one curioue inconsistency
in Mr. Mac Cabe's pages. In his introduction we
read as follows :
Twenty years after the Irish Rebellion of 1795, there
was confined, as a " state prisoner," in the jail of Kil-
mainham, near Dublin, a gentleman declared to have been
one of the leaders in the insurrection.
Against tills gentleman, no process in a court of law Lad
ever been instituted, but the Irish Parliament had thought
fit to include in a bill his name, with many others—all dif-
ferently situated to himself; for all, but he, were in the

custody of the Crown, and were either convicted, or had
admitted themselves to be " rebels." Yet upon him—
then at large, and unconvicted I—the same penalty was
imposed as upon them—that is the liability to be punished
as a traitor, if discovered after the passing of the Act, in
any part of his Majesty's dominions.
The Irish Parliament passed this Act upon the suppres-
sion of the rebellion of 1798 ; and the gentleman, referred
to, was for the first time arrested, in accordance with its
provisions in the year 1818 I—he having then come from
France to Ireland, for the arrangement of some matters in
which he had a pecuniary interest.
For two years ho was detained a prisoner—and never—
until incarceration, combined with anxiety of mind, had
made him a bed-ridden cripple—was he permitted to leave
Ireland, and return to France.
The uninitiated reader would naturally consider
the treatment of the gentleman referred to as most
unjust and cruel. However, we find from the
author's own account that his treatment was not so
unreasonably severe as might at first sight appear.
The Mr. Mac Cabe referred to is introduced at the
end of the story, and, in discussing the events of
the day, speaks as follows :
" Unless, then, I am struck down by a bullet in battle, I
shall outlive these times ; and, if 1 do, be assured that I
shall, though I stood alone, contrive unceasingly, to the
last moment of my life, to injure England ; now, by foment-
ing insurrections in her manufacturing towns; and then,
by promoting disturbances amongst her agricultural popu-
lation—and the English Government shall know I do this,
and, though they may, through spies, trace nay hand in all
such doings, they shall never be able to arrest me. Yes,
as Hannibal swore on the altar of his .country, never to
make peace with the Romans, so did I swear upon the dead
body of the truly noble Edward Fitzgerald never to be, for
a day, at peace with England. My hatred against it is a
personal hatred, and its intensity can only be equalled by
the perfidy that excited it."„
M'Cabe, generally a cold, calm, bantering, unimpassioned
man, clenched his teeth, and struck the table at which he
was sitting violently with his hand, as he uttered these
words. And yet they were not words spoken in a passion.
They announced a fixed resolution which was unceasingly,
adhered to ; and, for nearly twenty years after the suppres-
sion of the Irish rebellion, and so long as William Putnam
M'Cabe enjoyed health, and possessed the activity that dis-
tinguished him in his early years, there never was a move-
ment of an insurrectionary character in England or Scot-
land, of which it was not discovered by the Government
(but always too late to arrest him) that it had been fomented
by the presence of M'Cabe amongst the discontented work-
ing classes.

This is an historical fact, and the records of the Home
Office testify to its accuracy.

It thus appears, from an Irishman's own showing,
that Mr. Mac Cabe of those days had little claim
on the consideration of an English Government,
however much the gratitude of his own country..
men may have been due for his warmth, of
patriotism. During the year of his imprisonment
the author of these volumes, then in very early life,
was frequently taken to visit him. From him he
learned many of the secret workings of those
stormy days, and gained that vivid idea of the
state of society then existing in Ireland—a state
hardly credible to many in these peaceful and better
ruled times—which have enabled him to write with
so much force and fluency. Not that we can always
commend the style of the work. The author is hap-
pier in the more active and stirring portions of his
narrative than in the ordinary novelist's delinea-
tions. The conversations in the early part of the
book are especially unequal and unnatural. Thus
we have a confidentialmaid in one page exclaiming
What a precious evil country this here Ireland
is !" And a little further on remarking, " What
a princely residence is that spacious building ;"
and more in the same strain. Still the vivid de-
scriptions and stirring incidents of the book will
commend it to the lovers of adventure, while its
real merit lies in its being a picture of a time of na-
tional distress and peril rather than in the correct-
ness of its judgments or in its merits as a work of
fiction.

COST OF THE ARMSTRONG GUN.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR,—A paragraph from the Mechanics' Magazine
bearing the above title has been sufficiently digni-
fied by insertion in the Stan to warrant a passing
remark on my part.

The writer arrives at the conclusion that my
guns arecosting the public the " amazing sum" of
£2,000 each, although, as he states nearly the whole
are small field-pieces weighing only 8 cwt.
He might just as well have said £lO,OOO each
while he was about it, for to one who takes such
liberties with facts and figures it would have been
as easy to arrive at the one result as at the other.

I thank him, however, for raising the question,
which enables me to inform your readers that the
Government can be supplied with any number of
the new 12-pounder rifled guns at two-thirds of the
price of the old 12 pounder brass guns, the cost of
which is £l7O.

I also take this opportunity of stating that tire
difficulties which in the first instance beset tb Le
construction of the larger description of my gun s,
and which have caused some delay in their mama-
facture, have now been entirely surmounted, and
that no further impediment exists to their rapid.
production.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
London, Nov. 9. W. G. ARMSTRONG.