THE BAR-SINISTER.
THE author of this novel tells her readers, in a postscript, that it is the first essay of a lad)', and that it depends on them if it be the last. Should her future course depend in any degree upon us, we would desire that she should go on and prosper: for,
though she has not produced a very finished and artist-like work,
it possesses more than ordinary merit. It is a tale of fashionable life, having (we are inclined to believe) the advantage of being told by one accustomed to mingle in the scenes she describes. There is a quietness and simplicity in the manners of the most dis- tin:pees of her personages very different from the artificial and exaggerated air which pervades our would-be fashionable novel:* the authors of which, endeavouring to describe a kind of society by no means familiar to them, make their characters appear as affected, constrained, and out of their element in it as they would be themselves. We remember a worthy old Scotch nobleman, who, with many excellent qualities, had no small share of vanity ; and of whom it used to be remarked as a very odd thing, that, though born to the coronet which he bad worn for half a century, he had never been able to get accustomed to it. In these "fashion- able novels," the whole aristocracy is represented as labouring
under the anomalous weakness of the -- of Our lords, and ladies, and honourables, who figure in these productions, never forget that they are of the porcelain clay of the earth, and eternally use, in their daily and familiar intercourse with each other, a sort of slang or jargon made up of words and phrases which people in high life descend to occasionally, in frolic, and sometimes probably to mystify the parvenus who mimic their manners; but, in this and every other country, the manners of the aristocracy, even in periods of the greatest immorality and dis- soluteness, have been more natural and simple—more free from constraint, pedantry, and affectation—than those of any class of society. In the volumes before us, we have the vices of high life, with their baleful train of consequences, painted in strong colours ; while the disregard of moral obligations and of domestic ties, and the fierce and unbridled passions of the sons and daughters of luxury, stand out in bolder relief in consequence of the smooth and polished ,manners which form the ground of the picture.
The Bar-Sinister is the autobiography of the illegitimate son of a noble roue and the wife of his friend, with whom, selon les regles, he had eloped ; and the interest turns on the calamities entailed on the offspring of guilt by the circumstances of his birth. He is kindly treated and well educated by bis father; who, at his death, leaves him a large fortune: but the will is spirited away by the villanous heir-at-law ; and the illegitimate son, with a little brother, is thrown upon the world. The story of his struggles to support himself and the helpless companion of his destitution is affectingly told. He raises himself by his own merits to the posi- tion in society in which he had moved during his father's life. With all his virtues, however, he cannot resist the contagious atmosphere in which he lives: he forms an attachment with a certain Lady St. Elme,—a bewitching personage certainly,—with whom he is on the point of eloping, when it is discovered (rather melodramatically) that she is his sister ! The progress of this " affair of the heart" is described in colours somewhat warmer than those which female artists are wont to employ; and the de- nouement of the adventure is not in good taste. At last the hero discovers a clue to the abstraction of his father's will ; and is rapidly bringing it home to the heir-at-law, when this person is mysteriously murdered, in circumstances pregnant with suspicion against the hero himself. He is apprehended and tried for the murder; and, when on the point of conviction, after a trial managed with considerable skill and dramatic effect, he is saved by the sudden discovery of the real criminal, who is brought into the court at the precise moment when his presence has become necessary. The incidents here, though improbable in the ex- treme, may pass in a novel ; but it will not do to make use of • !sem for the purpose of drawing the moral that circumstantial evidence ought not to be admitted in cases of murder. The author brings forward, in support of this doctrine, the case of NAILOR, who was condemned and executed at Chester, in 1834, for the murder of Mr. WILKINSON. This man died protesting his in- nocence, with "unaffected fervour," she says. But how does she know that his fervour was unaffected? Nothing ever transpired to disprove the evidence of this man's guilt; and nothing is more common than for a condemned criminal to die with a lie in his mouth, for the sake of his name in the world he leaves. The author might have quoted many instances of innocent men con- demned on circumstantial evidence; but this, however lamentable, has never led to any conclusion further than this, that circum
stantial evidence—often the only evidence of the most atrocious crimes—ought to be most scrupulously weighed and cautiously acted upon.
There is a great want of skill in the construction of the nar- ritive. The interest of the story is almost exhausted in the first volume,—which is really delightful ; and the author has beets obliged to spin out the second by a sort of tour through variotts parts of the Continent. This is the fault of inexperiedce, and, in a young author, is a venial one.
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