The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-18 00:00:00

light of her own conscience she acts rightly. Be:

submissive to her mother, she now summons up
spirit to confront her; and what that scheming
parent has disavowed and annulled by all indignant
protests, she attests and ratifies. She renews her
engagement with the outcast, who must begin life
again ; and the bonds of that second contract are
more strong, more steadfast, and more sacred than
the first, as they are made in the dark hour of peril,
and under the weight of the crushing visitation of
alliction. In the brilliant novel of " The Ber-
trams," the author has sketched a scene cf the
Solicitor-General in love, and goes on in his felici-
tous manner to descant upon the charms of court-
ship when rambling in the fair fields and gazing
on the sunny landscapes ; and apostrophising his
readers, supposed to be looking from the dreary
ways of middle life upon the gay and genial paths
of youth, he exclaims, " Never again, unless we are
destined to rejoin our houris in Heaven, and to
saunter over fields of asphodel in another and a
greener youth, never again, oh ! my compatriots,
shall such joys be ours." But there is more to im-
press in the gloom of Desmond Court when the un-
happy pair, seen to take their last farewell of love,
and light, and hope—there is more to proclaim and
attest the majesty of real attachment, than in the
brightest scene of summer days, when the prospect
without only heralds that within. The Countess
of Desmond is a most unpleasing woman, full of
vanity, which would have been unseemly in a girl,
but was perfectly intolerable in the mother of a
marriageable daughter. One feels quite indig-
nant with her throughout, and she never con-
ducted herself in a suitable manner towards
Clara. Lady Fitzgerald is very much to be pitied,
her life was indeed a sad one, and she had the
misery of seeing at last that the dark mystery
which enshrouded their lives brought her husband
to a premature grave. Sir Thomas was a very
weak man or he would not have submitted to the
tyranny of Mr. Mollett without trying to do some-
thing to establish the truth in a final manner. A
man of stronger judgment would have seen the
futility of making terms with one so unscrupulous,
and a man of higher principle would not have gone
on in the same way as if Lady Fitzgerald's husband
had not been found to be alive. Some scenes are
most graphically described. One of the most
effective is the visit to Hap House of the rival plot-
ters. 0 wen there shone out in his true colours, as
scorning anything that resembled subterfuge, and
disdaining to listen to the suggestions of a worth-
less nature like that of Mollett. Mrs. Jones, the old
attached servant of Lady Fitzgerald, is quite a
sketch of nature, in her ignorance, her terror, and
her devoted zeal to the cause of her mistress. Mr.
Prendergast is an apt type of the worldly wise, yet
he was very kind-hearted, and he was honest
enough to take himself to task when in time it was
discovered that though Mollett was the Mr. Talbot
of Tally-ho Lodge, who was Lady Fitzgerald's first
husband, yet that the marriage was illegal, as he
was already married and his wife was alive to
prove it then. I t may appear to some that this
denouement is not probable, and would have been
better omitted, but the story is a very ingeni-
ous one, and this last event goes far to prove
the folly as well as fault of remaining
quiescent under the exactions of tyranny and
the encroachment of designing knaves. Had
Sir Thomas roused himself to meet the emer-
gency he might have discovered the fact of Mol-
lett's first wife, and so have saved many serious
consequences. Castle Richmond, Desmond Court,
and Hap House were doubtless the objects of envy
to many neighbours in humbler habitations ; but
they might have spared their jealousy, for over
each hung a shadow of guilt, vice, and error. The
proud keep of Desmond Castle was ruled by a mis-
tress whose position was not adequately main-
tained, and whose friends did not come forward to
give her their countenance. Hap House, whose
owner might bave had the world to choose from,
and whom no ties confined in his course, and whom
no dark secret overhung, chose the evil part in his
early days, and seemed to glory in it instead of
being annoyed when anyone referred to his life.
There is no merit in such boldness, however much
a fearless character is to be admired. Owen's ease
amounted to what might be called recklessness, and
his spirit, as his admirers termed his manner, was
very like impudence. If, as one might suppose
from some allusions made, he is the author's
favourite, he is not a deserving one, for he is too
self-conscious and too indifferent to the feelings of
others. Over Castle Richmond there was spread
a pall, which came upon the joyous young spirits
who dwelt there, and seemed to crush all life, and
hope, and joy out of their hearts and lives for ever.
One connecting link joined to cast the dark cloud,
and exercise the fatal spell over the doom and
destinies of the denizens in the three man-
sions, and it shows the power- of one evil
mind when we remember that it was the
work of Mollett that effected all this ruin. It is
not only in the story, which is powerfully narrated
and skillfully concerted, nor in the characters,
,1,1,,b .7, in nn
d
vividly illustrated, but it is in the general style and
tenour of this work that we recognise the result of
a superior intelligence in the design, and the han-
diwork of a master-touch in the execution. The
book has, of course, some errors, and there may be
those who call it excessively improbable and greatly
exaggerated. However, it is not the matter so much
as the manner that is the test of the power of the
writer ; and, though the story has its drawbacks
and imperfections, it is undeniably of a first rate
order of merit, in many of its glowing descriptions
and in many of its thrilling passages. " Castle
Richmond" could never be a novel that was slighted
or disregarded, for it contains too much in it of a
style that enforces attention and awakens thought.
Numerous as are the fictions of the day, those are
still few and far between that seem the expression
of deep conviction which springs from profound re-
flection, which are written rather because the
author has something to say than because he must
say something in penning the manuscript. This
work must be ranked among the superior novels
of the season, whose entertaining but evanescent
productions it has every promise and prospect of
long surviving.

Reminiscences of an (.1d sportsman. By Colone

J. P. Hamilton, K.II. Longman.

This is an entertaining narrative of the experiences
of a sportsman of the old school, an officer who dis-
tinguished himself in the old war. For the charm
is broken, and wars and rumours of wars are to be
found on every side, and those of Wellington
and THE Napoleon are no longer to be spoken of as
the late war, but as matters of history. Colonel
Hamilton has suffered the antiction of loss of sight
for the last twenty years, but that his memory
has been true to him is shown by the vivid and
minute details into which he enters in describing
the plumage and habits of the various birds and
quadrupeds which have come under his notice as a
sportsman. Having spent a considerable time in
the island of Sardinia, he describes the country, its
resources both in agriculture and manufactures, as
well as game ; in fact, although these volumes
are dedicated to sports by field and flood,
the author never misses an opportunity of
communicating useful information or amusing
anecdote to the readers. The Colonel, before enter-
ing upon his experiences, gives a short sketch of
the game-laws of ancient times, and remarks upon
the severity of the Norman laws relating to venery,
which enacted that whosoever was found killing
game without the consent of the king should have
his eyes put out, but a murderer could reconcile
himself with justice by the payment of a fine That
the severity of the forest laws drove great numbers
of the English peasants into exile in early times,
to the injury of the then thinly inhabited country,
and to the benefit of foreign potentates, who were
only too glad to obtain the services of the hardy
Anglo-Saxons. We find this fact both mentioned by
historians and poets. Scott introduces it in the
" Lady of the Lake," when John of Brent, in ex-
plaining the cause of his being in Scotland, says :

"An exile I, by forest laws,
And merry Needwood knows the cause."

It is an ominous fact that in countries where a
despotic Government has been maintained con-
tinually the laws relating to game aro the most
stringent; not that some English country magistrates
neglect to enforce with the utmost rigour the penal-
ties which the law authorises them to inflict upon
poachers. Colonel Hamilton has been a practical
as well as a keen sportsman, as his remarks about
training dogs testify—" I rarely allowed my game-
keepers to break in my pointers or setters. The
error of these substitutes is a want of judgment in
the punishment of the dogs, and Stonehenge says,
"It is much easier to take the courage out of the
very boldest animal than to put it into a timid one ;"
but gamekeepers resemble some schoolmasters,
whose motto is, " spare the rod and spoil the child."
Some of the military anecdotes arc good, one in
particular of Sir D. Dundasl! when in coin.
'nand of from eight to ten thousand cavalry
on Bagshot-heath, showing that, however good
a soldier he might be, he suffered from a slight
moral drawback, which in charity to the
departed we will not call by its proper name.
The horse of a trooper of the 7th Light Dragoons
having fallen while going through some
manoeuvre, the leg of the rider was broken. The
surgeon was about to cut the boot away to relieve
the injured limb, when Sir D. Dundas coming up,
exclaimed, " Sir, they are my looeta._they a-e my
boots. They shall not be cut." Sir David wls
thehe
Gr
colonel of the 7th Light Dragoons, and supplied T
the privates with boots. author,eys, v
0 LI
ewhleios
at the time held a iieutcnancy in
for the truth of this anecdote. It needs no comment;
Ihappily colonels of regiments are no longer clothiers.
The following recipe for dressing a hare is a French