makes no pretensions to humanity, and acts consistently as an infuriated savage. But Lady Derby, the mild, the motherly, the courteous, is not to be borne; her softness shocks, and her gentleness sickens us. Julian Peveril, the hero, is described by the author as "a gallant and accomplished youth," and he certainly does nothing to discriminate himself from the mass of such brave and amiable heroes. Alice Bridgenorth, the playmate of his infancy and the mistress of his riper years, is scarcely more distinguishable from the crowd of the fair and the faithful. There is scarcely a trait of the Puritan about her, except a taste for making long and elaborate speeches, which she freely bestows on her lover. Would it be believed, that any one of our author's heroines could, in a most critical moment, frame her lips (we can say nothing of her heart) to give such a reason as the following for not eloping with her lover?" If hereafter in your line there should arise some who may think the claims of the hierarchy too exorbitant, the powers of the crown too extensive, men shall not say these ideas were derived from Alice Bridgenorth, their Whig grand-dame." Is not this prudent foresight for a beautiful girl in the spring-time of youth and love? Jenny Deans, though she refused to equivocate to save her sister (which was a fault), would never have talked such washy trash to poor Reuben Butler! The characters of Christian and his daughter, which are very elaborately drawn, seem to us little short of monstrous. It is easy to conceive a man burning passionately to revenge the death of one who was near and dear to him; or to imagine a degraded wretch, more vile than even the Hypocrite of Molière, assuming the garb of sanctity to betray the daughter of his friend to infamy, in order to obtain the gratification of his own desires for wealth and power. But to suppose the union of these, is to conjecture a grosser impossibility than if heroic virtue were linked to groveling sensuality; for the vices are more opposite to each other than either is to virtue. Such a being must be at once the most disinterested and the most selfish of men; he must be ready to seek wild justice for himself at the risk of all worldly advantages, yet willing to inflict studied injustice on others to secure those very benefits; and while thus thirsting for luxury and for blood, must be able to mask the hero and the pander under the forms of the straitest of sects! Fenella is, in her way, no less a prodigy. A creature almost dwarfish in form, whom yet Buckingham might love; capable of acting the part of a deaf and dumb child for years, yet subject to violent irritations of mind; doating with impotent passion on a man who is attached to another, and forcing herself perpetually on his notice-is scarcely worthy to deface the noble humanities of the author of Waverley. And this being is the mysterious agent to the piece, who works its miracles, glides into an inmost cell of Newgate at midnight, is present every where moving the parties like puppets, and baffles the Duke of Buckingham by jumping from a high window! Is she, after all, a supernatural agent? No; there is an explanation of her conduct and powers on the most intelligible principles: she has acquired her versatility and skill as a rope-dancer's apprentice, and has been placed by her father in the family of Lady Derby, in order to betray its secrets! Surely it is better to deal in mighty magic, than to resort to such feeble extravagances within the dreary confines of the possible. We would believe in witchcraft, alchemy, and the Cock-lane ghost, before we would put faith in the human Fenella! Much of the heaviness of this work arises from the period of time which its author has chosen. There is no period of history more barren of exalted virtue; more replete with disgusting and heartless profligacy; more destitute of generous error, or noble obstinacy, than that which succeeded the restoration of Charles to the English throne. A worldly-minded, yet infatuated populace;-a timid and luxurious court, gratifying the rage of the people, even when it cried for blood;fraudulent, cunning, and ferocious judges ;--with the indescribable villains who invented the plots which kept the nation in feverish and fatal action-form but unpromising materials for a fresh and liberal spirit to work on. Oates, Bedlowe, and Dangerfield, execrable as they were, may rather be regarded as the virtual representatives of the general character of the time, than as individuals monstrous for their groveling ambition and climbing infamy. The great distinctions of party in politics and in religion were broken down; sturdy prejudices were clipped away, and petty interests substituted in their room; and the ostensible objects of contention were strangely reduced in magnitude, while the fury of the combatants was kept alive by baser stimulants. There was no such thing as a deep-rooted attachment or an honest quarrel. Hence the season, though prolific in crime, presents little scope for an historical novelist, who must produce his effects by seizing on the prominent features of the age, and succeed by strength of contrast and by breadth and richness of colouring. The opposition of Claverhouse and Burley is striking; it is a fair battle between two great causes, headed by appropriate champions, which forms a noble spectacle; but there is no pleasure in tracing out the internal disorganizations of a party, in seeing how gallant spirits may suffer from the neglect of those who should reward them, or in watching the petty game of intrigue played off at a court by mistresses and sharpers. In Peveril we have not only Oates and Dangerfield, but the pander Chiffinch, and his odious associates, from whose unalloyed villainy we seek relief in the goodnature of the King, who seems to throw a redeeming grace into the scene when he instructs his lord chief justice to procure the acquittal of his friends. The introduction of Buckingham is well contrived, and his voluptuous irresolution is fairly portrayed; but nothing can surpass in absurdity the idea of his plot, the machinery by which it is detected, and the facility with which it is forgiven. Our author's Kenilworth discloses a group of unamiable characters; but they belong to a statelier age, are associated with more intellectual power, and are set off by a finer varnish than the courtiers of Charles, who have their exits and their entrances in "Peveril." The plot of this novel may be divided into three portions ;-the first comprising the infancy of Julian, and the first intercourse and quarrel of Bridgenorth and Sir Geoffrey; the second embracing the scenes in the Isle of Man; and the last pursuing Julian's journey to London, and the occurrences in court and prison, to the winding up of the tale. Of these, the first is the best written; the second the most interesting; and the last, in all respects, the worst. There is a great deal of promise in the opening chapter: a strong interest is excited for the house of Peveril, and the ground seems laid for a series of affecting incidents, arising from the matured love of the children and the opposite sentiments of the fathers. There is something very real in the account of Sir Geoffrey's visits to his desolate neighbour, and of the manner in which they rouse him from his grief; and Bridgenorth's recurrence to them long after, when his fanaticism has taken a gloomier colouring, is one of the most affecting of our author's touches. In excuse for his regard to Julian he says, "The spirit of his mother looks from his eye, and his stately step is as that of his father, when he daily spoke comfort to me in my distress and said 'The child liveth."" This recognition of the same step which he had waited for day by day in the beginning of his loneliness, and the sound of which had never died away from his heart, is, in the best sense of the term, pathetic. Again, Bridgenorth refusing the challenge is a fine sketch, and might supply a good subject for a painter. Of the elaborate description of the procession of cavaliers and puritans to the Feast, we do not think highly: the antithesis is absolutely painful; and the violent attempt at effect defeats its own object, by placing all the characters in violent and unnatural attitudes. There is no romantic air cast over any part of these volumes, except that which we have called the second division. The description of Holm Peel Castle is given with great appearance of truth; Julian's fishing excursion is well imagined, and the sudden introduction and unexpected courtesy of Bridgenorth excite no small curiosity in the reader. All the situations in which the lovers are placed are excellent, but the conversations are woefully didactic. We are now come to that part of the novel where "light thickens." The clinging of Fenella to Julian is very strange and tiresome, but it awakens no desire to arrive at the truth of the minikin mystery. In the scenes where Julian meets with Chiffinch and Christian, there is much lightness of touch and grace of manner, but the villainy of the parties is absolutely oppressive, and makes their joviality sickening. There is some power in the description of the Puritanic supper at Bridgenorth's house, whither Julian is carried; but the subsequent attack of the minors is very inefficiently given for so masterly a portrayer of sieges and skirmishes. Nor is the meeting of the son and his parents, under the terrible circumstances in which they are placed, at all wrought up to the pitch of expectation; it does not suspend the breath of the reader, or dwell on the memory. Almost all which takes place after the parties arrive in London is utterly unworthy of the author. There are one or two redeeming traits as the intense recollection of Bridgenorth, to which we alluded, and the recognition of Julian by his mother from a window in a tower, whence she drops a handkerchief wet with her tears and there is a degree of life and pleasantry about the scenes where Buckingham gives scope to his humour; but the rest is only written to sell. We have Fenella dancing Julian into an interview with the king-Alice rushing out from a room in the apartments of Chiffinch, followed by Buckingham into the presence of Charles, and there meeting her lover, who walks off with her in sullen dignity—an affray in the street, in which the lady vanishes by one of those provoking chances from which the sufferings of Miss Burney's heroines arise and the commitment of the hero to Newgate. Here an incident occurs which is absolutely farcical; Julian entreats that he may be lodged with his father, and he is gravely introduced to the dwarf, Sir Geoffrey Hudson, instead of Sir Geoffrey Peveril. This little valiant. creature is always in the way: he interposes at the trial of the father and son, and turns the most serious passages into foolish jests. How the author could expect to redeem a person who boasts of having been served up in a pie and finally creeps out of a fiddle-case, by any intellectual traits of gallantry and honour, is surprising. The trial scene would be a poor one, even if the little prisoner did not make it ridiculous; for no justice is done to the witnesses, or to Scroggs, in whom there was matter worth handling. Then we have the " acquitted felons" of the day, entrapped in a cutler's shop by Bridgenorth, which is connected with a secret assembly of two hundred armed fanatics;—the Countess of Derby coming up to London to demand a trial, but kindly sent home without one ;-and a plot formed over a glass of Champagne, detected at an evening party, by the substitution of the male for the female prodigy in a fiddle-case, and passed over as a mere frolic by the King, whom it was intended to depose. Buckingham is restored to favour, the lovers to happiness, Sir Geoffrey to his country-seat, and the fiddle to its right use! This is the catastrophe of a most intricate series of events, which have neither probability to realize, nor dignity to redeem them. We have written thus freely of the defects of Peveril, because the author can afford to fail. His haste has hitherto been deplored as preventing him from doing full justice to his own conceptions; but here it is more lamentable, as it has hurried him on to the conception of a work comparatively barren of resources. Let him dash off as many fine sketches as he can, if he will not wait to finish them; but let him not try to work out a story from an exhausted brain, if he would not be beaten by a hundred mechanists in the art. If his works be replete with characteristic, with descriptive, and with poetic excellences, their best scenes will live when the poor scaffolding of his plots shall long have rotted away; but if he depends on mere story, they will pass from the public ear "like a tale that is told." * SONNET FROM ZAPPI. Cento vezzozi pargoletti amori. way A HUNDRED Smiling infant loves one day Nor knew they well whose place to deem the best, E. *We have given no formal analysis of the plot of this novel, nor any extract; because we think that either would be unjust to all who have read it, and more unjust to all who mean to read it;-which two classes will nearly comprise all the reading public" of the three kingdoms, whatever may be said by the Critics. LAS CASES' JOURNAL.* In a former number we noticed Las Cases' Journal, conjointly with the Historical Memoirs which Napoleon dictated to his Generals at St. Ilelena. Having received a fresh volume of the former work, but no continuation of the latter, we must necessarily confine our attention, for the present, to Las Cases. The matter of his publication still continues to be multifarious, and to be given in the shape of a diary without any systematic arrangement or digestion of its contents. In reading the book for mere pastime, we were too much amused with it to quarrel with its desultory nature; but, on being called upon at very short notice, and within scanty limits, to give some account of its character, we felt this circumstance unpropitious to the facility of rendering such an account. Its points of interest are distractingly numerous. It exhibits the conversation of Napoleon, glancing over an infinity of topics, through which it is captivating to follow him as a mere spectator, but arduous to discriminate his truth from his dogmatism, as an impartial judge. If any man could have benefited the world by political confessions, it was Napoleon. Here we have certainly many of his confessions, apparently from the heart; but Las Cases is, on the whole, much more the giver of his last unction of praise, than his confessor; and, in fact, Napoleon appears, on the rock of St. Helena, as complete a despot of conversation, as he ever was in his palaces. In order to have reaped the full benefit of his mighty mind, breathing its last reflections in solitude, it would have been necessary to have had some highly intellectual friend, equally confidential with Las Cases, but more independent and less disposed to flatter him-some Englishman or American, of great endowments, knowledge, and liberality, who might have sounded his thoughts, contradicted him in the spirit of kindness, brought him to closer explanations, and thus helped us nearer to solving the mysterious problem of the proportions, which his colossal virtues and faults bear to one another. Las Cases was manifestly unfit to accomplish any thing of this sort. He could not speak with free impartiality of the substance, of which he was proud to be the shadow. Nevertheless, he has given us a very interesting book. His work will undoubtedly contribute some materials, whereby the future historian may be enabled to discriminate the true from the false glory of Napoleon, though the author himself is unfit to perform this task. He is a Frenchman of the old school as to loyalty; and though, in transferring that loyalty to the Emperor, he has mixed it up with some of the liberal principles of modern times, yet he has not done so in a sufficient degree to prevent him from being an implicit idolater of his master. Perhaps it is easier for any one to deride the feelings of our author towards his hero, than to have kept free from it in the circumstances in which Las Cases stood as a self-devoted attendant, whose whole heart and fortune were involved in the fate and glory of so extraordinary a man. It would require, nevertheless, very sublime recollections of Napoleon's greatness, to prevent one from smiling at the importance which the Count attaches to the most insignificant actions * Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena, by the Count de Las Cases. Parts III and IV. |