The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-04 00:00:00

rate publication. Divided into Nine Books—these
again being subdivided into (altogether) forty-eight
clapters—the story begins by awakening profoun d
interest in the fortunes of the family at the old
Grange at Ovingdean—the family, that is, of th e
old Cavalier Colonel Wolston Maunsel—and, page!
by page (numbering them up to the full comple-
ment of 357), it carries this interest uninterruptedly,
unceasingly down to the very close of the fic-
titious history. The history, however, it should
be said at once, is not altogether fictitious—it is in
considerable parts of it strictly historical. And
throughout these portions, as it appears to us, the
narrative is wholly and most veraciously historical,
with one solitary exception—a single exception in
regard to a purely incidental particular that may,
indeed, for aught we know, be anything rather than
an inadvertence; it may even, in fact, be intentional
for the purposes of fiction) on the part of our
skilled romancist. We allude here simply to the
cirewustance that " my Lord Wilmot,"eaptured by
Stelfax and his Ironsides in the courtyard of the
Old. Grange at Ovingdean is described (p. 160) as
disguised in a sad-celoured attire, of Puritan plain-
ness, and having his locks cropped close to his head
like the veriest Praise-God-Barebones or Zeal-of-
the-land-Busy. Whereas it is beyond a doubt that
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, never once, from the
fatal day of Worcester to the hour of the landing
of the. royal fugitives near Havre-de-Grace, never
once assumed any disguise whatsoever. It is
thus that in Mistress Anne Wyndham's Claus-
tram Regale I?esaratum we find it recorded that,
upon the date of his arrival at Trent, " his lordship
was not in the least altered—except a hawk on hia
nil a lure by his side might pass for a
NT-9.- in King Charles the

Sec
cape I.

Mr. Pep.

quaint fObt-note 's
own hand, or diLL,...ted by Ills ow: ,ce to his Bos-
wellian amanuensis :—" I could never get my Lord
Wilmot to put on any disguise, he saying that he
should look frightful in it, and therefore did never
put on any.—KING." It must, however, be con-
ceded at once to Mr. Ainsworth, in this compara-
tively trivial particular—the enlarging upon which
for one moment longer would savour unmistakeably
of hypercriticism—that in cropping the locks of
Lord Wilmot and exchanging his laced velvet
raiment for the sombre garb of a Puritan, he exer-
cises the power of the romancist as allowably and
justifiably as in subjecting Rochester to the incon-
venience of a temporary incarceration. And who
that has read, or that shall yet read Ovingdeau
Grange,will quarrel with the literary wizard who
thus skilfully in this latter particular, and to such
good effect, wields the pen of the romancer as
though it was the wand of a necromancer ? Who,
In other words, would venture to suggest the
elimination from this absorbing narrative of one of
its most exciting and breathless adventures ? The
whole story, however, is one ingenious chain of
adventures adventures connected inextricably
link by link with each other. It is this artistic
peculiarity of Ovingdean Grange that precludes
us effectually, as it seems to us imperatively, from
indulging ourselves and our readers with any
illustrative quotation. In our attempt to select
which we have only realised the more vividly,
what, we had already conjectured, the infinite
skill with which the story has been con-
structed. Whenever we have momentarily
decided upon some narticular incident in
the tale as one admirably suited for an
extract, we have, upon searching for the close of
this extract, found page after page turning glibly
under our fingers, until it has been apparent that a
column or two would barely do justice to the quota-
tion, and that even the excerpted passage could ap-
pear then but fragmentarily. The sequence of the
incidents, the uninterrupted rush of the interest,
whether through dialogue or through description,
proving as notable here as in the best portions of
" Rookwood" or of " Jack Shepherd." And how,
for example, could any reviewer begin an extract
of the Ride to York (Rookwood, Book iv., ch. i.),
with the accidental death of Tom King by Turpin's
chance bullet at Kilburn Wells, and have the heart
to close that extract until (B. iv., ch. vi.—the whole
book, in fact !) Dick, as the red-haired countryman,
sits eating his breakfast in the bowling-green at
York ? Or, again, who could foreshorten the nar-
rative of Jack's escape from Newgate by the omis-
sion of one corridor, of a single chimney, a solitary
door, or bolt, or screw of the huge iron-and-granite
cage of the housebreaker turned prisonbreaker ?
Mere " shreds and patches" of quotations would do
but scant justice in like manner to the singularly
alluring interest of Harrison Ainsworth's last ro-
mance, even as we have said the same would have
been done to his first romance of " Rookwood."
Sufficient then let it be, if we here remark of Oving •
dean Grange, that it is a romantic history of love,
and valour, of " hair-breadth 'stapes," and peril-
ous adventure, of loyal, and for that reason not the
less patriotic devotion, and of politico-religious
fanaticism, as represented (these two last) respec-
tively in the Royalists and the Roundheads. Charles
the Second himself appears upon the scene, and, as
already intimated, his companion and intimate
Wilmot Earl of Rochester. The period of the tale
is that romantic interval associated inextricably
with the euphonious name of Boscobel, Indeed
there is in the second part of the narrative of
" Boscobel"—so called after the region of the Royal
Oak, the place of the young fugitive King's conceal-.
men t—there is in that narrative (p. ii) towards its
close a mention of one Mr. Francis Mansel, the
merchant of Chichester, who negotiated the hire for
the King of that little barque of Captain Nicholas
Tattersal, that led ultimately to the happy escape of
Charles and Wilmot—a name (Mansel) that we
cannot but conjecture to have fixed the title of the
good cavalier house of the Maunsels of the Grange of
Ovingdean. Whence the root idea of the book
however—no matter whether born of the Grange
itself and its traditional associations or of Boseobel
and its historical recollections—the narrative adds
another surety to the expansion yet further of
Harrison Ainsworth's already wide popularity,
and to the yet further elevation of his already high
and conspicuous reputation. It is precisely tbr
these reasons, and because at all times predisposed
to expect so much at the hands of the author of
Rookwood, whenever we open a new fiction from
Harrison Ainsworth, as the recognised chief among
our romancists, that we are here enabled upon the
appearance of Ovingdean Grange to offer him, as
.critics, our cordial and earnest congratulations. He
has thrown a new charm through the spells and
witcheries of romance over those beautiful South-
Downs, over Brighton, over the Devil's Dyke, over
Rottingdean and Ovingdean.