The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-08 00:00:00

LITERA T URE.

11To ChurCli. By the author of " High Church."'
3 vols. Hurst and Blackett.
Many readers may remember the former work
by this author, which set forth in a striking man
ner some of the peculiarities that distinguish a
certain class of religionists. The present work
advances a step in the same line, and with equal
vigour exhibits the danger of those who have no
decided principle of faith at all. Inasmuch as .the
theme admits of the author taking a wider scope
and a higher range, so this work is more complete
in its characteristics, and more powerful in its ten-
dency to impress and actuate. One great advantage
in the form of the narrative is that the object is not
over-worked, or forced upon us in reiterated phrases
and multiplied forms. The first volume is occupied
with the heroine, who is an attractive maiden, and
interests greatly from her very isolation at first, and
her cruel persecutions afterwards. She is seen at
the commencement of the tale in the gloomy and
dismal precincts of a prison, called to stand by her
mother's deathbed----that mother one totally devoid
of all that could in any form rob death of its sting,
and lead captivity captive, as many a prisoned
spirit has done before in the consciousness that
earthly fetters will be for ever left behind, while
the enfranchised soul will find before it eternal
freedom. We gladly- quit the wretched scene for
the beautiful spot that was Bessy's next sojourn
for some years in the cottage in the mountains of
Wales. The within did not, however, hear affinity
to the without, for her uncle was a ethodist of
the strictest style, hence the elastic nature of the
young girl was strictly kept down, and her bound-
ing spirit forbid to fly. All things in Matthew
Davis's household were compressed, circumscribed,
and confined in the sternest and most
uncompromising rules, and all happiness was of
course banished. Nevertheless there was peace
and there was comfort in that mountain home, and
in the long lapse of after years, when the shade
that then hovered over her had turned to blackest
and deepest darkness, did Bessy mournfully sigh
over the vanished calm of those days at Aberogwin.
A sad day arrived when Bessy's father returned
from foreign lands; he was a dreadful man, one of
the most hopeless style that can exist, with no
good qualities to emerge occasionally from amid the
hosts of evil ones, and with no better feelings to
impress than the bad ones which were reigning
triumphant in their dark rule of mischief. This
tyrant dragged away the unhappy child from the
sheltering roof of his brother-in-law, and forced her
on to her dreadful fate. It was a sudden change.
Bessy woke to her old life as she thought, and
behold that life was vanished for evermore. By her
bedside stood her cousin Mary, who announced to
her that the strange man she found on the hills was
her father, and in a few hours he would come to
take her away. This threat was fulfilled in a cruel
way in a very short space, and she had hardly time
allowed her to say good by to her uncle and cousin.
" Mary whispered a blessing over her, and then let
her go, from that time never to return, the path
that seemed so straight winding ever by the purple
mountain, and the rustling stream, or under the
grassy slope from which the larches sprang so
green and straight, and pointed heavenwards,—
turned sharply, suddenly, from that quiet home,
and wound along the deeper steeper way, the end
of which was lost in the surging crowd of troubled
human life. Such sudden changes happen to more
homes than Matthew Davis's—to more lives than
Bessy Calverton's, the eunshine on the rest of many
wayfarers for a little while, and the blue sky
c shadowless above them, and then the sudden blight
across the landscape, and then the tiny figures
dotting it—units in the great mysterious sums
God works by myriads—sinking here and there,
orstruggling upwards still to the bright light and the
better times that have been swept away from
them " There is a fine passage in," The Caxton's,"
in which the hero exclaims, after commenting upon
some great change in his destiny :—" I knew that
it was my youth and its poet-land that was no
more, and that I had passed with an unconscious
step that never could retrace its way into the hard-
world of laborious man." So it was with Bessy
Calverton, for she had lost whatever her early years
were to know of spring, and the winter of her
existence began at once as she met her father. She
was an enthusiastic child, and loved the beautiful
associations of her early home; to be taken from the
majesty of nature's solitude to the horrors of her
new habitation, was indeed a transformation as
sudden and startling as those on the stage. The
"El Dorado," Dick Calverton's abode, was a public-
house of the lowest and vilest class. There passion
reigned and riot revelled; there were concocted
the dark schemes to which the love of greed and
gain will draw men to risk their liberties. There
was other work not so amenable to the laws of earth
perhaps, but which would weigh far heavier against
their accounts in the balance of another world.
There was a place for a pure young girl, fresh from
a mountain home, and reared under the scrutiny of
a primitive Methodist. Her days and nights were
passed among sights and sounds of horror, amidst
dreadful men and women still worse—" children
of night, and heirs to the devil's black legacy; a
deadly crew, whose sense of right was drowned in
Lethe years ago, but whose capacity for wrong
remained awfully immense ; and Bessy watched
and wondered, and prayed against the dangers
that even she could see around her. Poor prison
flower, thrown back amidst the reckless erowd from
which she had risen. Will use become second
nature with this child, too; or will the guardian
angels of such children keep her still within the
shadow of their wings ? angels who might be both
of the earnest prayers whispered by the Methodist
girl amongst the Aberogwin mountains. " The
passages which relate Bessy's adventures in this
house of night are most exciting in their interest
and most characteristic in their construction. They
are not long in detail although long in duration,
for five years elapsed before she escaped. The
attention becomes painfully aroused at the last, and
the reader experiences a feeling of relief when the
fearful precincts of the El Dorado are left behind.
Lotty, the sister of Bessy, is a strange girl, who,
under happier auspices, might have done better.
One redeeming point in her disposition was h©r
attachment to her young sister, and the energy
and enthusiasm with which she devoted
herself to her preservation proved that there was
much good naturally in her character. Mr. Par-
stol is one of the best described persons met with,
he was entirely wrapt up in his scheme for the
benefit of those entrusted to his care. It was
through his agency that the unfortunate prisoner
escaped from the snares that surrounded her. After
her departure from the abode of her father Bessy
met strange adventures, and one curious circum-
stance was meeting again with Stephen Speckland.
Just before the fatal day when Dick Calverton
came to disturb the quiet of Aberogwin, there had
been for a wonder a visitor at the quiet cottage.
A young man who was travelling by had stayed
some little time, and had delighted Bessy by his
wonderful fairy tales. To her amaze she
found that his family, of whom he had told
her so much, lived close by the place that
Mr. Parstol had fixed upon as Bessy's temporary
sojourn. The various members of the Speckland
family are well described, and it is with these that
the argument of the story lies in the designation
of the No Church class. Bessy Calverton had been
taught her lesson of faith in a cold and rugged
school, but she had imbibed the true principle, and
when through new arrangements she went to dwell
in the house of the unbelievers she was of esssen-
tial service to them. Hugh and Stephen were very
different in their dispositions, and were often in
capable of understanding each other. The unfor-
tunate complication of events that arose in conse-
quence of Bessy's engagement with Hugh are very
ably narrated, and the conclusion was the natural
sequence of such mistaken and misguided actions.
They were all well disposed, but, as is here stated,
"it was one step from perfect truth, and
from such a step evil must follow in due course."
Stephen soon had cause to be thankful for the
instruction Bessy Calverton had induced him to
receive, for he faded away in a lingering disease,
and his last hours which were' troubled by the
vision of his projects on earth all melted away,
and those he was so attached to plunged in disap-
pointment, were cheered by the brightness of the
new day opening before him whose promise could
never deceive him, and whose glory could never
grow dim. After much difficulty and many disap-
pointments Hugh and Bessy were again engaged,
and the second time they were both grown wiser,
and thus had a better prospect before them of
braving the world's rough way in confidence and
trust—confidence in each other, since they had
tested their sincerity by time and distance,
and trust in that Power which had
guarded and guided them so wonderfully.
Few could have passed through greater perils
than the young heroine had to encounter in the
course of her life, and Hugh Speckland, the
strongman with his upright mind, and his fear-
less spirit, had been in still greater peril, for he
had been in spiritual darkness instead of tem-
poral,
oral and the light which shone for Bessy
through the sh sdovvs of her blackest days of
most imminent doom was not in the dwelling of
Hugh—and outward prosperty did not bring
inward peace. This work is the result of
thought and care, and the author may be well
satisfied with the effect, inasmuch as he has sent
it forth a masterly sketch of human character,
and a striking exposition of some momentous
phases of social life. It also demonstrates, in A
forcible manner, the dangerous state into whica
some of the wisest and most learned have fal en.
and the errors with which they have deluded them-
selves. It stands out from among every-day