FATHER CONNELL, BY THE O'HARA FAMILY.
lrms novel would have been received with more attention had it been published some years ago, before the fictions of GRIFFIN, LOVER, CARLETON, Mrs. HALL, and other writers, had made the public familiar with the capabilities of Irish life for fiction—perhaps somewhat satiated its appetite. When Mr. BANIM first appeared before the world as a novelist, during SCOTT'S decline from the zenith, he had the credit, and a high one it was, of opening up a new vein of fiction, and showing that Irish romance could compete with Scottish or that of any other country. The attraction of an untouched theme, and a real originality of subject, (for Miss EDGEWORTH'S didactic fictions had no relation to Irish romance,) somewhat blinded the novel-reading world to the faults of the O'Hara Family,—to a heavy literalness of description, which the writer instead of eschewing rather seemed to delight in when un- necessary; to a false and vitiated taste for effects, which induced him to sacrifice the truth of nature and the usages of society, to produce a parcel of melodramatic scenes of what he thought an intense kind; and to a story not well knit together or rising with due gradations to climax, and which exhibited in its concoctor rather a morbid love of vicious or criminal scenes. The chief merit of Mr. BANIM as a novelist—the extraordinary force with which he depicted character of a coarse and strong though of a revolting nature—also contributed to cover his faults ; for power always produces a certain effect—it is a quality that can be appreciated by those who can appreciate nothing else.
Father Connell is not the best of Mr. BANIM'S fictions ; the matter being somewhat commonplace, unless where it is exchanged for improbability and exaggeration. The character who gives the title to the work is. a Roman Catholic priest, of great goodness of heart and great simplicity of mind and manners, although possessed of energy and resources when a sufficient occasion calls them out. With this personage the other characters, who contribute to the progress of the story, are more or less connected ; Father Connell acting at once as a sort of moving-power and what the machinists call a regulator. Centering in or circulating round this Irish Vicar of Wakefield, are various groups of persons, whose interests are eventually compelled by the author to run in one current, till matrimony, the gallows, or a new-found parent, dis- poses of them all according to their merits. Neddy Fennell, a poor young protégé of Father Connell, on getting a good legacy from his master, takes to the study of a profession, and is happy with a wife he has clandestinely married, after escaping a conviction for a murder never committed. Mary Cooney, a young girl stolen by a sturdy ruffian and made an instrument in his trade of beggar, is a not very probable character, but is exquisitely drawn.; and she is eventually found to be a half-sister of Mr. Fennell's wife. Robin Costigan, the Irish beggar, thief, and ruffian, the stealer of Mary, and, by a series of those forced circumstances in which Mr. BANIM deals, a deadly enemy of Master Ned Fennell—by whose means the young lover is accused and convicted of murder, and con- demned, not only to death, but to various trying scenes in the con- demned cell, that Mr. BANIM may describe them—is eventually hanged after a life of crime. His coadjutor Nelly Carty, potato- beggar, and mother of Mary Cooney, is comfortably settled, and converted to Christianity by means of her daughter. It will be seen at once that much of the interest sought to be evolved from these materials must be of a very humble, not to say of a very mean kind ; whilst that which has a more powerful cast of character must be coarse and offensive, even though it may have the morbid kind of attractive excitement which exe- cutions, murders, and other felonies possess. Only those, how- ever, wbo read the volumes, can understand how much of trivial, irrelative, or literal matter the more measured parts consist of, or the strained and exaggerated manner in which those portions of the story intended to be of the deepest interest are brought about. The early scenes descriptive of Father Connell's domestic life, school, assistant, chapel, and parish, differ nothing from those of any other zealous and charitable clergyman ; and the good old man is killed at last without any necessity in nature or the novel, but merely that the author might write a description of his funeral. Reminiscences of any gentleman's school-days, and of his boyish pranks, are proverbially a bore : but Mr. BANIM treats his readers to a long account of school, schoolboys, and schoolmaster. Ned Fennell's father is killed in a manner not less unlikely and more unnatural than Father Connell; though, as the fiction stands, it was necessary to clear him off the board before Ned and his mother could be reduced to that abject state of poverty which was to connect him and Father Connell with Robin Costigan and the beggar-crew. From a few incidental reflections, it would appear that Mr. BANIM had a sort of object in the story— to warn the young against clandestine marriages. This moral, however, has been pretty well worn out in novels, plays, sermons, and essays on morals and political economy ; the last of Which have been so successful, that early marriage is hardly a vice of the pre- sent day. But even if it were, the moral is not pointed by an accident so extraordinary that it seems unnatural in fiction : a young wife turned out of doors by her raging father, becoming accidentally a witness to crime, and carried off by the criminals to secure her silence—a young husband, while half-frantic at miss- ing her, accused of her murder, taken, committed, tried, con- demned, and sentenced, all in something less than twelve hours— is not the way to point the moral of rash and secret marriages. This is not the stuff of which even healthy dreams are made.
But, though faulty as a whole, there are several scenes with the beggars of considerable power and truth. The ruffian Costigan, except during his melodramatic masquerading at the trial, is drawn with very remarkable force and skill. Mr. Gaby M‘Neary, an Orangeman of strong prejudices but good feelings—a John Bull transplanted—is also a striking character ; and so are several of the beggars and robber confederates of Costigan, his hardened reckless imp of a boy especially.
The scenes will not bear transplanting without losing their effect. A couple of sketches, glancing at Irish habits in the au- thor's youth, will form our extracts from Father Connell.
IRISH GENTLEMEN.
Gaby M'Neary was one of them. He had begun life with, as he himself would beautifully express it, "a blue look-out "; that is, with little to recom- mend him, except a handsome person, and a good flow of red Protestant blood in his veins. These two qualities, however slender they might prove in other countries, gained him a rich enough wife in Ireland : legacies from her relatives afterwards dropped in, so that he was now, at an advanced age, able to live " genteelly,"—that is, without doing any one earthly thing, except to eat, drink, and sleep, and have his own way, right or wrong; and Dicky Wresham accord- ingly wrote him down " gentleman. '
Gaby was tall and bulky, but stooped in his shoulders. He could not be said to have an ill-tempered face; but it had a domineering look, befitting a person of much importance in the world both as to rank and religious creed : and this was one of the characteristics of what the Papists of the time used to term a " Protestant face."
Jack M'Carthy was another of the school ; whilome a gauger, but now re- tired on a pension and some money to boot. He was a sturdy-built, low-sized " gentleman " of about sixty, with tremendous gray eyebrows, always knit to- gether, and a huge projecting under-lip. He seemed as if ever revolving some unpleasant subject : and Jack was said to have a "Protestant face" too ; that is, he looked as if he did not like a Papist, and was therefore conscious that a Papist could not like him.
THE MA-A.
A very peculiar pair of breeches, or smallelothes, locally termed a "ma-a." And of course this word " ma-a " requires some passing explanation from us. It was then, in the first place, bestowed on the portion of dress alluded to, as seeming to explain its pristine nature and quality, by imitating the bleat or sound uttered by the animal from which the substance of the article bad been abstracted. In good truth, the "ma-a" was fabricated from a sheep-skin, thrown into a pool of lime-water, and there left until its fleshy parts became corroded and its wool of course separated from it ; and, with very little other preparation, it was then taken out, dried in the sun, and stitched, with scanty skill in fashioning it, into something rudely resembling a pair of knee-breeches. Such as it might have been, however, a " ma-a " was the general wear of the humbler classes in the district of which we now treat, and at a period consi- derably later than that with which we are concerned. Its manufacture en- gaged many hands, as the term is : but there is no such trade now ; a "ma-a" alas, is not to be had for love or money. Let us, notwithstanding, before pos- terity loses sight of it for ever, be allowed a little longer on our gossiping page to bold up unto general admiration this once celebrated piece of costume. We are beside a standing near the market-house in High Street, on a market-day • and upon it are exhibited "ma-as" of all sizes, from among which can be equally accommodated the peasant of six feet and the urchin who dons his first masculine suit of clothes. Purchasers come up to the standing in turn. One experienced young peasant selects a "ma-a," which, when drawn over his limbs, reaches nearly to his ankles, although eventually destined to button just beneath his knees,—thereby making sage provision against the dry- ing of the article after the next shower of rain, which would be sure to shrivel it up to half its primary dimensions ; so that if he chose one extending in the first instance only under his knees, lie must shortly find it shrunk up to the middle of his thigh. Another gigantic "country-boy," unacquainted with this collapsing propensity in the "11111■8," which it is the interest of the vender very often to conceal, chooses, on the contrary, the tightest fitting "ma-a" suited to his thew and sinew, to make himself look smart at mass next Sunday, as is mentioned by the seller : it does indeed seem even rather too small—that which is so earnestly recommended to him ; and to end all doubts on the matter, he and the trader adjourn from the standing, the debated article in the hands of the latter. We follow them across the street into a little, unfre- quented, narrow lane, curious to observe their proceedings; and there we notice that, having persuaded the rustic would-be dandy to squeeze himself half way into the garment, the adroit " ma-a " vender gripes the article at both hips— himself being a very strong man, be tugs and tugs, with professional dexterity, lifting the half-ashamed peasant off his feet at every tug, until at last, forcing the overstrained small-clothes over the fellow's huge limbs, and half button- ing it at the knees, he sends him blushing and smiling away, with a slap on the thigh that sounds like one bestowed on a well-braced drum. But woe and treble woe to that skin-fitted and already straddling dope! On his way home the rain falls in torrents ; the sun then shines out fiercely ; and by the time he arrives at his mother's door, lie is a laughingstock to her and his whole finnlly. The dandy "ma-a" has coiled up more than midway along his thig1Ow11- like damp towels tightly bound round them.
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