The Sun. — 1837-10-11 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  ETHEL CHURCHILL. 3 Vol.  • Colburn, London, 1837. If rare poetic thoughts, deep feeling, some wit, and uniform eloquence of expression, could constitute a good. novel, ,c Ethel Churchill " would be the but of its necessary, but there are other requisites, besides these, ueeessary, and these Miss Landon does not possess— or 6 at least, in a very imperfect degree. Her first de.:lenes is an utter want of the constructive faculty. She cannot handle a story with case, or bid it progress naturally. She sacrifices incident to a display of selltut-rent, and halts where she should be on the move. Again, her characters are not drawn from life, but are this mere creations of the fancy. The consequence of , is, that there is a want of discrimination in them, fatal to the character of the mere novelist. But While we say that Miss Landon is but an indiff'erent story-teller, and knows not how to pander to the tastes of the circulating library, we must at the same time admit that in her " Ethel Churchill " she has shown qualities of which the first writer of the day may be Proud. Her thoughts often surprise us by their subtlety, and we will even go so far as to say, their Profoundness ; her wit--where she attempts wit, which is not often—is brilliant ; her fancy ever fertile and flowing. Her best drawn character is that of Henrietta, which, however, we like best in the gayer portlOng it does not improve as the passion rises in energy ; and in the closing scene, where the fair t ettiMe, goaded to madness by the threatened exposure of her errors, murders, first her husband, and then her paramour, the character becomes simply extravagant. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with whom Lord Wharneliffe's late delightful publication has ltrade us all familiar, is a well-executed sketch, true to life, and therefore abounding in vivacity. - There is no female writer of the age, not even Lady Morgan, who tould have wrought up a difficult character like this, with so much tact and spirit as Miss Landon has displayed throughout it. The scene at Pope's villa, Iwhich is the most carefully finished in the whole work, 'rings out the peculiarities of the " gay Wortley" in a very masterly manner. We should not omit to mention,that to each chapter some short poem is attached Way of motto. Many of these are exquisitely beautLful, and all, we suspect, are from the pen of the huthoress herself. The lines concluding with this striking couplet— "No hope—no repentance—my weakness is o'er-It died with the sentence, I lore thee no more I'"— are fully equal, in tenderness and felicity of expression, to the best of Moore's lyrics. As a specimen of Miss Landon's descriptive powers, we quote a sketch which will show how thoroughly her mind is imbued with the genuine spirit of poetry : " It was an unusually mild and lovely evening that they Ivere loitering on the banks of the lake. The sun was just aetti"—a conqueror as he went down ; for every cloud that hadb flitted about during the day, now gathered on the west, mantling with crimson and gold. There was something triumphal in the rich colouring that arrayed every °".leet• The vivid green of the oaks stood out more distinct amid the scarlet of the sycamore and the yellow of the ettnle, together with the rich brown that was covering the "nuts. The grass, too, of the park was in strong conbtrast to the purple heath that clothed the distance, only olaen by the blossoming furze, which intersected it like a ell sea ; a faint perfutne came on the air, more subtle oven than the breath of flowers ; it was like the last sigh each falling leaf, that flitted by noiseless as a ghost. To The there is no season so lovely as the autumn. There is gaity about the spring with which I have no sympathy : Its perpetual revival of leaf and bloom is too great a contrast to the inner world, where so many feelings lie barren, and so mans- hopes withered. There is an activity about it, from which the wearied spirits shrink ; and a joyousness, Which but makes you turn more sadly upon yourself ; but 4bont autumn there is a tender melancholy inexpressibly soothing ; decay is around, but such is in your own heart. There is a languor in the air which encourages your own, and the poetry of memory is in every drooping flower and falling leaf. The very magnificence of its Assyrian array is touched with the light of imagination : even while you Watch it, it passes away as your brightest hopes have done before."