The Sun.
London, England, 1850-03-06 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

THE UNCLE'S LEGACY. 3 Vols. By John
Berry Torr.
Although we presume, from the title-page of this
agreeable fiction, that its author, Mr. Torr, has yet
to render himself familiar with the labours of a
novelist, we could scarcely have suspected so much
from the general and various merits of the " Uncle's
Legacy." What the reader cannot fail to remark as
among the most conspicuous characteristics of the
story are, first, the fascination of the different inci-
dents, and secondly, the fruitfulness of the writer's
imagination. We may say literally of the work be-
fore us, that its interest commences with the opening
chapter, and continues not only with unabated but
increasing attraction as the plot becomes more and
more developed. At the outset we are startled into
attention by the occurrences upon which the whole
force of the narrative is subsequently made depen-
dent. The horse of Alick Wildman gallops up at
nightfall to his farm-house, with .its reins flying
loose, its stirrups jingling idly from the saddle, and
the saddle itself—riderless ! Search is made, and the
body of the unfortunate yeoman is found—murdered!
The assassin proves to be Isaac Ramsay, who figures
throughout the,novel as the principal ruffian ; although
the detestation felt towards him in this respect is
shared' rather largely by the son of a knavish attorney,
one Barrow. Much artistic skill is displayed by Mr.
Torr in the delineation of these personages, but others
of a more important and certainly also of a more at-
tractive character are likewise pourtrayed by him,
and that too with a remarkable degree of ability.
As we have no inclination to mar the
charm of the fiction by any untimely disclosure of
its outline, we shall preserve our customary
silence upon this head—leaving the reader to make
his own acquaintance with the structure of the whole
of the present romantic productions Without, how-
ever, tending towards any such premature revela-
tion, we may be permitted, altogether, without detri-
ment to the author's endeavour, but rather on-.the
contrary to its direct enhancement (by thus stimu-
lating curiosity), to comment cursorily upon the
more prominent among the chief dramatis personce,
and upon the more noticeable among the numerous
events in which they become involved. As the title
of the book sufficiently indicates, the whole of the
plot hangs upon the wording of' a certain will, by
which a considerable property is left to particular
individuals upon especial conditions. How much
villany may be betrayed in regard to such a docu-
ment by an unprincipled solicitor, in whom the utmost
confidence is reposed, may be readily conjectured by
those familiar with the chicaneries of law, and the op-
portunities afforded by its evil working to individuals
disposed to profit by them at the expense of the in-
nocent. To the " Uncle's Legacy," consequently, the
major part of the vices and virtues, the crime and
magnanimity, the good and evil vicissitudes of the
narrative are directly dependent. Towards the
actual fulfilment of the arrangements sketched out in
the " will," the interest and anxiety of the fiction
is concentrated. Whether the wishes of the departed
are realised or not, if realised, how, or when, or
where—we shall not attempt even to insinuate,
abandoning to the very competent hands of the no-
velist the duty of thus gratifying the inqui-
sitiveness of his perusers. Enough for us
to assert with the emphasis of a reviewer
conscious of his own unbiassed truthfulness, that the
tale is told from first to last with a charming fluency
of manner, a fluency which carries the mind on un-
interruptedly with the current of an enthralling
series of descriptions, and leaves it at length with an
agreeable sense of satisfaction, not unpleasingly
tinged with a sentiment of melancholy. Without
this blending of these two incongruous and yet re-
concilable extremes of pain and pleasure we should
and almost any prose romance become towards the
close distressingly monotonous. The alternations of
tears and laughter are as essential, in fact, to a fiction,
for the purpose of rendering it fascinating to the
fancy, as the alternations of shade and shine, of the
cloud and the sunbeam, are requisite to impart the
charm of variety and animation to a landscape. It
was a sense of this necessity which induced Walter
Scott to introduce in his tragic romance of the
" Bride of Lammermoor " the whimsical figure of old
Caleb Balderstone by the side of the gloomy youth of
the proud and mysterious Master of Ravenswood.
In our own generation of novelists, again, we have
seen the same artistic contrast employed very fre-
quently. For example, we have witnessed the va-
garies of that most comical wight, Mr. Richard
Swiveller, in the same story which has immortalised so
beautifully the death of Little Nell. We have ob-
,erved falling almost simultaneously from the gifted pen
of Lytton the fantastic limning of Sir William de Mallet
and the grand and historic portraitures of Griffiths the
Cymrian and Harold the Saxon. Mr. Toots has jostled
Little Paul Dombey on the same imaginary high-
way ; Charles Vernon has fluttered by with his " ador-
able impertinence" cheek. by jowl with the saturnine
Dalibard, and the grotesque shape of poor Beck, the
crossing sweeper, flitted across the disc of our imagi-
nation in companionship with the sombre phantom
4' Lucretia. Mr. Torr, acting upon a kindred prin-
ciple, has blended together with delightful ability the
'ragical and the humorous, giving in one part an ac-
:ount of a shipwreck, and in another a comic sketch
of high life not exactly "below stairs," but decidedly
" below ton," or, according to the slang of the day,
somewhat " below par." Mary Wildman, the he-
roine, and her lover, Arthur Maitland, who, for that
reason, of course must be regarded as the hero, will
engross the chief partion of the reader's attention,
interest, and admiration. A large amount of admi-
ration must at the same time, however, be awarded to
a kind of second heroine named Aurelie, a niece of
Monsieur de Malleville, whose fortunes are tragically
associated with those of a young Italian sculptor,
Morosini. The last mentioned is one of the most ad-
mirable portraitures of all—the account given by our
novelist of his love and of his labours as a sculptor
upon a most exquisite statue of a female figure, which
work of art becomes involved at last in the catas-
trophe of his own mournful career, is one of infinite
beauty and gracefulness. Upon this particular we
must content ourselves with briefly directing atten-
don to the description occurring at page 287, vol.
iii. Otherwise, were we to make the quotation we
could have desired, much of the interest of the story
would be destroyed. In broad contrast to the passage
just referred to—take the droll account of Mrs. Grim-
shaw's Ball—(see p. 48 et seq. vol. ii.)—where the
parvenu hostess makes a ludicrous attempt to emulate
the " style" of the fashionable Countess Lyndon—an
effort in which she is slyly humoured by Earnest de
Lisle, the nephew of the Countess. The denouement
of the entertainment, where Major Grimshaw is
horrified by a report that his wife has eloped with
M. de Lisle, is extravagantly rich and laughable.
Squire Frankman is another of the more remarkable
characters in the romance, and a particular interest
attaches to him from the circumstance of his being in-
volved in several of the most striking incidents in the
"Uncle's Legacy. " Besides those already mentioned,
some of these same incidents will prove on perusal to
be written in a style as varied as it is unaffected and
powerful. Of these let us particularise the accident in
which Ernest de Lisle extricates Julia and Mrs.
Grimshaw from imminent peril—(p. 191, vol. ii.)—
the description of the steeple-chase, an event con-
ceived in that felicitous vein of adventure in which
Charles Lever has recounted the triumphs of Moderi-
, deroo (p. 81, ibid)—the delineation of the artist's
atelier containing the chef dceuvre of Morosini—
(p. 110, ibid)—the account of the wreck of the
" Petrel," :an account scarcely unworthy of the
master-hand of Fenimore Cooper—(p. 79 vol. iii.)
—and the terrible narrative of the assassination—
(p. 296, ibid)—which.immediately precedes the close
of the last volume. From what we have now
observed, and especially from our enumeration
of these passages of startling and absorbing attraction,
it will be manifest that the work is no
ordinary, hum-drum fiction, with just a dash of
love, and a taste of sentiment, and a smack of philo-
sophy, and a suspicion of plagiarism, diluted with a
large and predominating quantity of twaddle, but
that it is a novel penned with considerable
fruit
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ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE. Vol
XIL Illustrated Edition.

Our European annalist has here brought his nar-
rative of the great wars of Napoleon down to the
capture of the last town ever taken by that wonder-
ful conqueror—Rheims ! Here it is, especially, that
the eloquence of Alison has been more particularly
manifested, his genius, like that of Gibbon, possibly
finding something inspiring, and his sympathies
something congenial, in the days of disaster, decay,
and desolation. The twelfth volume of the present
splendid re-issue is embellished with portraits of
Prince Blucher and Prince Metternich—the former a
perfect masterpiece of engraving. No likeness could
possibly be more felicitous than the one in which the
hero of Waterloo is here represented by the pencil of
Griiger and the graver of Harland. It depicts the
old captain—as fatuous as gamester as a general—

with shaggy moustache, observant eyes, and finely
chiselled forehead. In that portion of the " History
of Europe," however, in association with which the
portrait of Blucher is introduced, in the form of a
frontispiece, it so happens, unfortunately, that he ap-
pears the most frequently in the character of a de-
feated soldier, the latter chapters in the volume
under consideration being descriptive of the
brilliant campaign of 1814, where the Emperor
Napoleon, surpassing himself, out.manceuvred his
opponents, and, multiplying his small and worn-out
army, kept the united invaders of France at hay
during a wonderfully protracted interval, contesting
the soil of his empire almost inch by inch against the
advance of his assailants. No man capable of appre-
ciating valour and heroism in their loftiest manifesta-
tions can fail to linger over the pages of Alison with
a heart engrossed, and a mind absorbed by the magni-
tude of so many tremendous calamities accumulated
on the head of the great hero whose fame, during
nearly twenty years, had overshadowed the world,
and to destroy whom, a twelvemonth afterwards, the
whole of Europe was to rise "from the Tanais to the
Thames." A more admirable edition of these remark-
able annals could scarcely be published than the one
which is now drawing towards its completion. Em-
bellished with authentic portraits of the extraordi-
nary personages involved in the narrative, portraits
carefully selected and beautifully engraved, the
present re-issue of Alison's celebrated " History"
wanted only one additional attraction, and that at-
trrcdon has been carefully supplied throughout by a
simultaneous republication of the copious illustrative
atlas produced under the immediate superintendence
of Mr. Alexander Keith Johnston.

LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. No. H.—Model

Prisons. Edited by Thomas Carlyle.
Another portion of this powerful and eccentric
series of pamphlets unfolds to us some of the more
practical notions of Mr. Carlyle in regard to the
wants of general amelioration. His estimate of the
Convict Question is sufficiently serious, and well
would it be if the Administration would regard the
matter with the same earnest solicitude. Mr. Carlyle
seems to regard it as altogether impossible that we
can still go on with impunity patching up our de-
cayed and decaying system, building penitentiaries
here and there, constructing prisons at Pentonville
and convict depots at Portland Island. Botching
will no longer suffice. The day of reform has gone
by. Change, radical change is what is required.
'Thus speaks Thomas Carlyle to the existing school
of improvers :
" What sort of reformers and workers are you, that
work only on the rotten material? That never think of
meddling with the material while it continues sound;
that stress it and strain it with new rates and assess-
ments, till once it has given way and deelarei itself rot-
ten; whereupon you snatch greedily at it, and say, Now
let us try to do some good upon it! You mistake in
every way, my friends: the fact is, you fancy yourselves
men of virtue, benevolence, what not; and you are not
even men of sincerity, and honest sense. I grieve to
say it; but it is true. Good from you, and your opera-
tions, is not to be expected. You may go down !"
Thus saith he, in conclusion :
" 0 my friends, in sad earnest, sad and deadly earnest,
there much needs that God would mend all this, and that
we should help him to mend it !—And don't you think,
for one thing, ' Farmer Hodge's horses' in the Sugar
Islands are pretty well emancipated' now? My clear
opinion farther is, we had better quit the Scoundrel-
province of Reform; better close that under hatches, in
some rapid summary manner, and go elsewhither with
our Reform efforts. A whole world, for want of Re-
form, is drowning and sinking; threatening to swamp
itself into a Stygian quagmire, uninhabitable by any
noble-minded man. Let us to the wellheads, I say; to
the chief fountains of these waters of bitterness; and
there strike home and dig! To puddle in the embou-
chures and drowned outskirts, and ulterior and ultimate
issues and cloacas of the affair: what profit can there be
in that? Nothing to be saved there; nothing to be
fished-up there, except, with endless peril and spread of
pestilence, a miscellany cf broken waifs and dead dogs!
In the name of Heaven, quit that!"
May this stern remonstrance and earnest appeal be-
come, to some effect, audible.