The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

nun to Earth. By the Author of "Lady Audley'S
Secret." Three Vo!s. Ward, Lock, and Tyler.
A thoroughly sensational story—a story in which
incident, crime, and hair-breadth-'stapes make uP
the staple of the narrative—such is Miss Braddon'S
newly-published tale in three volumes " Run to
Earth." Newly published, observe, not nerilf
conceived. A work not just written, but just re-
written. The authoress seems to have some ineg"
haustible store—we won't call it a lucky-bag, for
its contents really add but little to her reputation--
from which she can draw at pleasure the raw ma-
terials, so to speak (and really the phrase might be
used in two senses, there is so much of the raiir-
head-and-bloody-bones colouring about it
from which she can draw at pleasure we say
(that is, whenever she so pleases), the raw materials
to be worked up even by,her now thoroughly skilled
and practised hand into another fiction. Some °f
these revived productions of hers she has only
touched lightly here and there before reissuing them
and acknowledging them as her own. Such `ivse
the case, we take it, with " Lady Lisle," and, still
more recently, with " The Captain of the Vulture.,
Not thus, however, has she dealt with :this newly
republished and recently rewritten story of her's,
now called, for want of a better name, " Run to
Earth." Judging from her Preface, it cannot
but be seen at a glance that Miss Braddon claim
no high consideration for this rechauffe as a work
of cart. She avowedly offers it to our perusal situ-
ply and solely as a narrative of incident. The One
sole merit she claims for it, is that of its sensation'
alism. And it is significant of the character of
its; sensationalism, as it appears to us that so maul
of the people introduced into the story indulge is
the luxury of the alias to a degree only observable in
real life among those more notorious offenders against
the law, who are known (intimately) by the ms"
jority of the police force, from A to Z, and who are
being perpetually recognized, thus, as old offender 39
by the police when placed at the bar of justice in
one or other of our police courts. Instance this--

the evil genius of the book, that bungling schemer,
the French Surgeon—who is known to us as Victor
Carrington, alias Mr. Carton, alias Mmuieur lo
Viscointe Champfontaine. Instance this again'

that brutal cut-throat—Black Milsom, alias hlr'
Maunders, alias Tomtnaso. Instance even the
heroine of the tale—Lady Eversleigh, alias lionorof
alias Anna. Nay, the very stock detective of the
novel—distant cousin, ever so many times removed'
of Mr. Bucket—has his alias too—being known to
the reader, off and on, now as Mr. Andrews, now
Mr. Larkspur. What is more, the sensationalistn
the incidents, here, may be pronounced at once to
be as strongly flavoured as the worst gin and the
rankest tobacco, as blue ruin and munclungto'
Murders we have—how shall we express it
--with,
sufficient emphasis ? Well murders galore I
Happily (or they might run the risk of becoming
monotonous) they are very varied in their charac'
ter. Sir Oswald Eversleigh, for example, is poisoned
off hand and with inimitable dexterity—the poison
being poured into a glass of water by Victor Car'
rington, who, in the dead of the night, during the
baronet's most opportune absence from his rooin
for a few seconds, slips in through the French WO'
dow from his hiding place outside in the shrubbery:.
Captain Valentine Jernam, on the other hand, 0
decoyed by Black Milsom to his den of infao'Y'
there to be got out of the way in the rough-and"
tumble fashion, namely, with the utmost brutality,
or, iu plainer terms, by being simply butchered.
.1s for the murder of the Rev. Lionel Dale, that 10
accomplished by Carrington—through a combing'
Lion of brutality and refinement: refinement, that is
to say in the method employed for the bringing aboo
of the catastrophe, and brutality in the actual mode
of its accomplishment. A thud tells us that the la*
fortunate victim's skull is crushed against the Ironic
of a tree, when the wrong horse comes to grief is
leaping a streamlet in the hunting-field—previously
to having its brains immediately afterwards blown
out by that most insatiable of miscreants, Victor
Carrington. There is one comfort —that-Victor lina"
self fails in every one of his elaborate contrivance!
—perpetrating crime after crime, it is true, but
with no satisfactory result either to himself or 1111:
despicable accomplice, Sir Reginald. And ale
greater comfort for the reader is that the
villains of the story after failing—all of thew
—meet their deserts. Carrington encounters 111°
doom in one of the lost antic expeditious. Sir
Reginald Eversleigh sinks into a squalid drunkard'
and as such closes his ignoble life in a Parisian
garret with the fumes of charcoal. Black Milsoin
gets hideously crushed to death under the wheels
of a ponderous coal-waggon—though not until after
prolonged agonies and a full confession to a Pra'
testant clergyman, who we presume was a Ritualist.
Among the good people of the book there are ne
less than three capital fellows (each in his own NOY)
who are all of them Captains. There is CV;
tain George Jernan, brother of the murdered
Valentine, and husband eventually of Rosamond'
There is George's father-in-law—otherwise, Rosiaci
mond's "own father," as Doctor Marigold svcal,
have it—Captain Duncombe the hearty old salt
water Jack. And then there is that other excellent
old fellow Captain Coppleston, who is alternately
in the most bewildering manner, being wheeled about'
apparently a cripple for life through severe gout, 01.
a wheel-chair—and directly afterwards bounding 1,13
and out of postchaises with the agility of a school'
boy going home for his holidays, rather than the
gait of a gouty old gentleman going in search of 6
lost child, who has been spirited away by some myste-
rious midnight kidnapper. Joyce Harker, the do-
formed, faithful, warmhearted mate, reminds us ra
her too much of Mr. George's attendant Phil Squad
in " Bleak House." While Miss Lydia Graham and
her brother. Mr. Gordon Graham, are as °Eons°
couple in their way as Mr. and Mrs. Lamulle .
"Our Mutual Friend." Douglas Dale is nothing
more than a " walking gentleman"—his affianced'
who dies, however, without marrying him, whether
wilfully (that is as a suicide), we are left to conjea,
ture, by name Paulina Durski, is by nature an al,
,
carnate paradox—half angelic, half
minding one of the Horatian niscenz nzttlier f0rn3056
t? '
supern, the context to which is—who can forget 1
—risunz teneatis, anzici 7 Whatever else map bn
said of it, ' Run to Earth" is readable throughout'
and the interest of it, especially towards the
is enchaining.

How we are Governed. New Edition. Frog.

Warne and Co.
The popularity of this excellent little handbo°l4
of the Constitution and the Government of Great
Britain, instead of diminishing, appears to increase.
Since the time of its original production less than °-
n
years ago, by Mr. Albany Fonblanque the younger'
it has run through many editions. Carefully
vised some time since by Mr. llildsworth, it h`.,
now been continued to the present date, and CO'isort
derably enlarged by its present editor, Mr. Alexall".
Ewald—the plan of the work, as a whole, reitotar
ins, of course (very wisely) uu there 1. Altogether
this one little work, " How we are Governed,
the Crown, the Senate, and the Bench," is 03° °,
the most lucid expositions of a large and comProo,
hensive and complicated theme that we ever ruse
of
ber to have perused. It gives a bird's eye vino' be
the whole scheme of the Government of
mightiest empire upon the globe—an empire n°'
prising within its boundary lines one sixth of 7°o
earth's land surface, and one fifth of the wori
populatiOn.