VELASCO; OR, MEMOIRS OF A PAGE.*

THE men of the past generation, as well as the men of the present, know Cyrus Redding as the Nestor of newspapers and the Methuselah of magazines, while those who have marked his course more nearly are aware that, independently of innumerable contributions to our popular literature, published here, there, and everywhere, he is most favourably known as the author of the History of Modern Wines, of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and last, though not least, as the inventor of that famous "Leek Pie," which bears his odorous name in one of the most recent treatises on the art of cookery.† Now, however, at the twelfth hour, the gallant and the gallant old man, comes out in a new character, and startles the town with a three-vol. novel, entitled Velasco, or Memoirs of a Page. The story is the history of a Spanish aventurero, born on the Cerillo del Rastro of Madrid, who begins life by holding horses, is noticed by a Franciscan friar, who teaches him reading and writing, Latin and arithmetic, and, ultimately, obtains him the situation of page in the household of the Duke of Uzeda, a grandee of Spain. Here, however, the clever author of this amusing work commits an error, which is noticeable, or, as the Germans say, mark-worthy, if the book be meant as an accurate historical record of the manners and customs of Spain a century ago. Though it was not necessary to prove nobility of birth to enter as page into the household of a simple Spanish don, yet such proof of nobility was indispensable in order to obtain the situation in the princely house of a grandee of the first class, as the Duke d'Uzeda is represented to be. Even in France, a court always less ceremonious than the court of Spain, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV., four generations of noblesse were required of a youth before he was allowed to enter as a page de la grande écurie, or even of the petite écurie.

And in Spain, before the period we speak of, there was a kind of college

of pages, an institution afterwards transplanted into France. It was the custom in Spain, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth, to educate these young pages apart; and his Catholic, as well as his most Christian majesty, was served at table by pages, under whom again were valets and lacqueys of an inferior order. And even so late as the beginning of the present century, Buonaparte, in taking possession of the throne of the Bourbons, revived the institution of pages. But these youths, impudent and audacious dogs as they were, instead of being the sons of the shambles, as Mr. Redding makes Velasco, were the children of ancient houses or the sons of his most illustrious servants, military or civil, whom the little Corsican emperor caused to be educated at his own expense. Even in England pages were always chosen among youths of gentle birth. The great Marlborough was, as every body knows, a page to James, duke of York; and if our memory does not deceive us, for we write without having access to books, the present Duke of Wellington was in early life a page to an Irish lordlieutenant. If, therefore, Mr. Redding wish to be in strict keeping with history, he is incorrect in giving his hero so ignoble an origin. A page, however, Velasco is appointed, and being a buen mozo, as well as quick-witted, companionable, fond of adventure, and unscrupulous, he has an opportunity of seeing the "mingled yarn of good and ill together of which Spanish life is composed. Not merely does the page write down his own adventures and misadventures, but he lays bare to us the hideous anatomical demonstration of a grandce's house. Here, in these volumes, we have a just impersonation of the meanness that soars, of the pride that licks the dust. The whole social, political, and clerical

* Velasco; or, Memoirs of a Page. In 3 vols. By Cyrus Redding. London,

1846. Newby.

†The Practical Cook. By J. Bregion and Anne Millar.

life of Madrid, is laid open before us with amazing truth and fidelity. Nor is it merely characters and personages, general or individual, that are well portrayed,-as the grandee, the minister of state, the priest, the escrivano, the banker, the bull-fighter, the alguazil, the robber, the scheming courtezan, the housekeeper of the curate, the man of many projects, but scenery and locality are painted with a correctness truly miraculous, considering that Mr. Redding has never visited the country. It may be answered that Le Sage, like Mr. Redding, never set his foot in Spain (and this we believe to be the fact, though the contrary is stoutly maintained by the Count François de Neufchâteau and Monsieur Harmois, attaché of the French embassy at Madrid); but then, though Le Sage's general acquaintance with the habits and manners of Spain cannot be denied, as is well observed by Mr. Ford in his excellent Handbook of Spain, yet he makes many mistakes in the topography of the country and in local descriptions. Mr. Redding, however, appears acquainted with the τοποι καὶ Tora of the Iberian Peninsula. In these volumes Velasco assumes many parts, and plays them all amusingly, if not all well. He is boon companion of a monk, the friend of a marquis, the favoured of a marchioness, the secretary of a council of ministers, the companion of a strolling band of gipsies, a staid, loving, married man, settled down in Valencia, a sorrowing widower, the dupe of artful sharpers, a second time a married man, and a place-holder in expectation. These varied alternations of fortune open to us new views and new characters, in which Jew and gipsy both figure. Velasco, in telling his own story, makes the most of what he has seen and observed. Sometimes his adventures are but the peg on which he hangs a sketch of the manners and characters of those with whom he comes into contact-sometimes they afford him food for contemplation to the indulgence of sweet or bitter fancy.

The characters are varied and for the most part spiritedly drawn. There is love and passion, as a matter of course, in a novel where the scene is laid in Spain; but neither the love

nor the passion overlie or encumber the solid good sense and sharp satire of the book. Every page makes it plain to the reader's apprehension that he is dealing with a sharp observer of the world, and one who looks through the deeds of men with an open and keenly discerning eye. The tone of the novel is occasionally bitter and sarcastic, sometimes sad and mournful, but without any sickly sentimentality, and most frequently indicative of an ardent and unsuspicious nature, full of genuine good feeling good nature, and good sense. Nor are these volumes without a political tendency. Some of the sharpest strokes of satire are directed, through the bodies of Spanish statesmen, bishops, and leaders of parties, against men in high places at home.

One of the best drawn-characters in the book is the Conde de Guipuscoa, and who does not as he reads see that a certain ex-Chancellor has sat for the portrait ?

"The confidence and the fluency of language at the disposal of the Conde de Guipuscoa, the last being the result of study, joined with natural aptitude, were great. Presumptuously aspiring after superiority in every branch of knowledge, he failed to be profound in any-occasionally blundering upon all. His manner was ungraceful. Impetuous, egotistic, insolent, vituperative, unscrupulous, his oratory shewed no repose in its breathless denunciations. None of the hallowed inspiration that dignify, no ray of genius broke in upon the intense selfishness or illumined the lurid virulence by which it was characterised. Ever resonant with invective, yet marked by no originality of thought, he startled his auditors by the wonderful complexity and involution of his language, which it would seem he himself deemed the most effective resource of eloquence when united with spleen and ferocity of unconfronted declamation. Cold and calculating himself, his eloquence could not be wholly termed the reflexion of his own nature, for that was vehement and headstrong. The deep things of the soul, the developement of which speaks the presence of inspira tion in the orator, he never exhibited, for he could not impart that he did not feel. Nor did he ever expatiate in the regions of tranquil beauty, sounding the notes that touch the finer chords of the human heart, since they vibrate sympathies to which he was a stranger.

"Nor did he ever amend one errant spirit by an appeal to the kindly feelings of a

common humanity. The grim byena, not the lordly lion, was his emblem. Earnest, fierce, revengeful, he contemplated his prey from the lurking ambush where he considered only how he might inflict vengeance, not secure conquest. Victory to him was secondary. His triumph was to stride over the field insulting and mangling the fallen-crushing and mash ing the bone and integument with the same indiscriminating fury- -an executioner at the wheel, not the hero of honourable combat. The dismemberment of a butterfly or the perpetration of a homicide were to him an equal effort, accomplished under the blind violence of selfwilled uncontrol. Before his obliquitous temper, the favoured of one hour were the hated of the next: he thus became the doubted of all men.

"There was neither conscience nor conduct in his rancour; his aspirations, however plausibly designed to indicate disinterestedness, ended in self-gratification. His diurnal bearing baffled the conjecture of the most experienced. The harsh, inconsistent, tortuous, contradictory, protracted, rugged, and self-suffi. cient all, were adopted by turns in knotting the meshes with which he ensnared his prey. Like the black couchant spider, he pounced upon his unconscious victim that had no expectation of being assailed. Neither the joys nor sorrows of others were his. Envious of all superiority, the ambition of mere notoriety engrossed his soul, and led him to play a thousand fantastic tricks."

The character of Llenjaro, bishop of Badajos in the West, bears also an English application, for which the practised reader will not find it difficult to fix on an original in our own day and in our own land.

The character of the Privado (a word which Mr. Redding seems to think means prime minister, though it in reality means favourite, the equivalent for prime minister in Spanish being Presidente del Consejo, y Secretario de Estado y del Despacho Universal), we recommend to the especial attention of Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, as it may afford even him fresh illustrations of the character of a living premier not unworthy of his attention. In truth, these volumes have as practical and political an application as either Coningsby or Sybil, though the satire be not so unmistakeably pointed. But there is in them a multitude of better things than politics. The follies and vices, the cant, the hypocrisy, the money

seeking, money-worshipping, soul-debasing spirit of our age, are vigorously lashed, and one rises from the perusal of Velasco persuaded that the writer is honestly indignant and in earnest. We have said that there is now and then a dash of sadness in the narrative, but this never deepens into gloom or sombreness, but takes a mournful and tender hue. How many of us are there, alas! who have let the fair occasion, which would have made us something, go for ever by in life! On such minds the following remarks will strike a painful chord: :

"There are fatalities in the course of human life which carry us into far wan. dering paths, and into realms where, like Israel's children in the desert, we enter but to become bewildered and to regret, to mourn opportunity passed by without notice, and the career that brings upon the dark closing-in of life, repentance unillumined by hope, and sadness that joy never for a moment irradiates. What consolation is it that this is the broad way of the multitude, and that experience comes only when its benefits are unavailable?"

There are also here and there "wise saws and reflections which have occurred to all of us in our passage through the world, whether it may have been our fate to wear a black coat or a red. Who that has had a temporary misunderstanding or a fatal break with a former friend but has said again and again with Velasco?

"Among the most painful things in human experience are those self-accusations that arise when, having lost a friend, we recall the circumstances in which we were wanting towards his friendship, we feel that now his constancy of regard is beyond a doubt, and the seal put upon his virtue, we bear a load of unanticipated debt which we cannot discharge to his heirs."

The episode of Doñía Juana, and the sojourn in the vale of Almanara, in the sweet kingdom of Valencia, prove that Mr. Redding possesses not only powers of vigorous thought, but of eloquent expression. In this part of the work there is disclosed a sympathy for all that is noble and beautiful in nature, and a relish for the calm tranquillity of country life, which one reads with pleasure, after

so much pungent satire has been exhausted on the vices and follies of cities and towns. The following description of Valencia of that happy province, yielding in fertility and delight to none, and in the huerta of which the Moors placed their paradise, is wonderfully accurate. Over this happy land it was that the children " of Afric's burning sands" imagined heaven to be suspended, and that a portion of it had fallen down on earth. Cælum hic cecidisse putes.

"We glanced awhile at the country beneath and around over the whole ho rizon, before we descended the hill to our peaceful dwelling, which looked from thence like the snug nest of some gentle bird. What a garden of beauty was unveiled towards Valencia! one immense grove of rich foliage in marquetry; among which, thickly sown, peered villages, monasteries, hamlets, fields in rich cultivation, and a well-populated district,— cypresses, mulberry-trees, algarrobas, oaks, palms, and every variety of tree, intermingled with, or divided by mea dows kept green by channels of water, that looked like delicate veins of silver circulating fertility over the smiling land; while on the east the ocean spread beneath a plain of sapphire in magnitude of beauty."

The following extract must be our last. It contains pithy advice for a painter, whether that painter be English, Spanish, Flemish, or Italian:

"You have improved rapidly, señor,' said my master; you will soon be an excellent artist. I would fain give you a few infallible rules for success in art. Remember that the first object of a painter, like that of a player, is to please that he may live. Never suffer the desire of excellence to stifle the chance of profit; never paint nature as you see it in pure truth; truth is prejudicial in the sight of the world of fashion; embellish nature; make ugliness comely; think only of effect; mend the features of your sitters; diminish splay feet, whiten red hands, correct a sinister squint; in all things follow the world, never attempt to lead; paint in the style of fashion's favourites; draw females from tire-women's shapes rather than those of antiquity; let your beauties be meretricious; make a boorish grandee look lordly, and stamp the face of folly with the expression of high intellect,-the fashionable style of portrait-painting being but the art of lying made visible.

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVI.

:

In fancy or landscape you may be less particular; but beware of too great a fidelity in imitation; taking care that your work shall be understood as something to which the vulgarity of nature has not yet attained,-something that soars high, the poetry rather than the prose of the pencil. Let every scene blaze with colour. Your gipsies must be ladies and your ladies queens; and be sure to mince up their feet à la Chinoise; make kennel girls Hebes; and if the beggar's garments be ragged, take care they exhibit no trace of a stain: represent them fresh from the washer-women; no intrusive dirt; the world must not be shocked by objects of poverty, as they really exist; touch low subjects up a little, therefore, after the imagination, accommodating them to what every-day minds best tolerate elevate even monarchs; have no fixed principle in choosing fancy subjects, but observe what is the passion for the hour, the times and rapt feelings of Raphael and Murillo have passed away. Is our holy church in danger,take for your subject some martyr undergoing torture; or is the political horizon clouded, select from the Old Testament some touching subject analogous to the crisis; it is wonderful what may be done in this way by metaphorical subjects: Spain made Israel, and our sacred king represented as David or Solomon. Is there a fire in the village or town,-touch it off directly; an epidemic raging naturally points out the plague, with its terrible details, as a good speculation. Paint kings and princes, courtiers and parasites, the sale of such subjects is more certain still: a suicide, especially that of a couple of lovers, is an excellent subject, when it becomes a matter of general conversation; but your own observation will be the best guide, as circumstances turn up, in operating in this essential matter, as it affects art. Never be ashamed to praise your own work, if others will not; by this means your pictures will be secure of some commendation, but while you do this, be careful never to praise the works of a contemporary.'”

There are errors in this work, some of which must be laid to the printer, but others of which are Mr. Redding's own. The word majo, for instance (which Mr. Redding invariably spells mayo), is rendered as bully, whereas it means spruce, welldressed dandy. Garrócha, a javelin, is also invariably written garroca, by Mr. Redding. It would be difficult to find in the spot in which Mr. Redding gives Velasco a patty of besugos any thing of the sort.

HH

FEMALE AUTHORSHIP.

"But there is another subject very interesting to me, which you have not yet mentioned, my dear Mrs. Verner," said the elder lady, (whom we will call Miss Merton), when at length there was a pause in the conversation. "When we parted you were only becoming aware of the powers with which you were gifted, an authoress. and now you are Well I remember the strange new