21 NOVEMBER 1846, Page 16

WALTER HAMILTON

Is a clever piece of novel-manufacture, rather than a picture of anything that actually exists.' Real life has indeed suggested some of the remelts and a few of the sketches, but the bulk of the book is drawn from OA* books, and even the style is derivative, though a clever enough imitation of Mrs. Gore. The consequence is, not only staleness and incongruity, but the deeper scenes, on which the writer relies for interest, no longer excite any, because our practice and experience are adverse to attaching an interest sufficiently high to any such circumstances. Our ancestors lived under another dispensation, in which a harsher social system in- dueed third parties to view youthful irregularities with a more lenient eye, and where a bloody criminal law _occasioned men to lose sight of the culprit's guilt in the severity of his punishment ? Hence they had a sym- pathy with men we feel to be as well as call criminals. They visited high- waymen in droves ; the more curious attended the condemned to Tyburn ; the executions formed a part of conversation currency ; and they might feel an interest for a hero in the dock, whether positively guilty of for- gery, or, like Walter Hamilton, only seeming so, through his exertions to serve the husband of a woman to whom he was attached. The senti- mental interest in a criminal trial and the condemned cell, however, had always a melodramatic twang ; and it nearly passed away even from the stage with Miss Belly and The Maid and the. Magpie, though the philosophy of Sir Bulwer Lytton did try to revive it in Paul Clifford. Gambling and duelling are a shade higher in attraction, though still rather in a low style; but then they should be the gambling and duelling of this day, and be painted by a person who knows the society in which the scenes are laid. • - The social pictures of Walter Hamiltoh are equally second-hand, if not quite so obsolete. Absenteeism with its effects upon an estate, the rudeness and familiarity but genuine hospitality of a pure Irish gentle- man's house, and the contrast of good and bad agents, have been familiar to the world since Miss Edgeworth, some forty years since, first began to depict these peculiarities of Irish life. Not satisfied with Irish. imita- tion, Mrs. Burdett, in the work before us, has also drawn from Scott, in a species of Milesian Meg Merrilies, and a sort of elfin boy, apparently suggested by Finella. These are all cleverly done, but incongruous, and wanting in the life and naturalness which are always absent from mere imitation.

Walter Hamilton, the hero of the work, is a " jewel " of an Irish agent—handsome, well-connected, accomplished, with all the other qualities that novelists heap upon their favourites at will. His principal is an English Lord Henry Messinger, who has married a relation of Mr. Hamilton, to whom that agent was secretly attached. On a visit to his estates, rendered necessary by pecuniary embarrassments, Lord Henry suspects the passion of Hamilton ; and, though quite sure of the purity of his wife, he hates him, for his rather stately manners and exceeding ac- complishments. This feeling facilitates the arts of Mr. Dogherty, the squircen of the novel ; who eventually drives Hamilton from the agency. There is also an English villain in the shape of a money-lender, with other complexities both English and Irish, which we need not pursue. The workmanship of Walter Hamilton is unequal. The pictures of London high life, the attempts to depict metaphysically the rise and pro- gress of Lord Henry Masainger's dislike to Hamilton, with, still more, the story of the forgery, and the half supernatural parts of the tale—are unlike life, but have a sort of writing energy about them. That which would seem to be the easiest part—the descriptions of Irish domestic economy, with its homeliness and makesliifts—is rather heavy, wanting both hu- mour and buoyancy. Singularly enough, the writer does beat in the dia- logue of pure Irish characters. Here is an example of Mr. Dogherty when he first dines with my lord. The subject has turned upon the supposed dumb boy who has frightened the ladies. " 'Oeh! and it isn't Innocent he is entirely—didn't Mr. Rourke catch him in the field one moonlight night milking his cow that he thought had gone dry; and didn't the chap lead him a chats over ditch and dyke, and escape from him stied like a fairy, God bless us! leaving poor Mr. Rourke up to his chin in water, where he was found the next day in a bog-hole?' " Here again Jane laughed uncontrolledly, much to Mr. Dogherty's horror and astonishment; who, turning hastily round to her, continued—" Faith, Mr. Rourke is no feather-weight in a race, let me tell you, Miss- and if it wasn't for fear of offence, Mr. Hamilton, I'd tell my Lord the trick that spalpeen played on myself in the way of making me let go a prisoner.' "And Mr. Dogherty's' eyes grew rounder and rounder as he thought of his own bygone danger.

" I beg you will make no apology to me, Mr. Dogherty,' replied Hamilton, somewhat haughtily; I am as unconscious of supporting any person who does wrong as I am incapable of deserting any one who does right.'

" Why, then, saving your presence, Wat,' eagerly resumed Mr. Dogherty, I had just got a man I'd been three mouttta looking out fa—my Lady, VII take another

. . spoonful of yer creme, i' ye plate—Mr. Rourke had 'Seed him to a cabin by put- ting about that his wife was dying—and so she was, but not there, though; and so, as I was saying, I hid behind the door, and popped on my man when he never expected it—give me some drink. " The beer, with which Mr. Dogherty interrupted at once his cream and his story, produced a pause; during which Jane's flashing eye turned, full of indig- nation, on the unconscious narrator; the ill-suppressed laugh of the attendants was at an end, and a total silence prevailed—a silence which, in the exuberance of his vanity, Mr. Dogherty considered a proof of the interest he excited in his auditors: he deliberately wiped his mouth with the aforesaid pocket-handkerchief, and continued.

" So, after we had handcuffed him and properly secured him and all, I mounted horse, and we were quietly taking him to prison; when, just as we were about half way, in the middle of the bog—I was on a perch or two before, and Mr. Rourke was following behind, with the prisoner in the middle. In the clap of yer hands, this chap of a boy—for it could be no other—set up a yell in my left ear, that would have frightened a saint; and I felt—faith, I could take my davy, that I felt the urchin was sitting on the saddle behind me—I didn't care to look behind— barring the night was as dark as pitch, but I clapped spurs to my horse—the grey you know, Wat—and we never drew breath or bridle till we got into the town—and with respect be itspoken, both the filly and myself in a lather—and when got till it sa'ar a word of my man or my boy was to be seen at all, at all.'

"Mr. Dogherty looked aghast; Hamilton grave; the ladies indignant. But Lord Henry, with immoveable countenance, reiterated his signal to the servants to with- draw; and then, in a tone of indifference, inquired, "'What became of Rourke and his prisoner ?' "' Faith, when Mr. Rourke heard the yell, he was so dumbfoundered, that he fell flat on his face in the middle of the road, kilt outright; and when he got up again, the man was off!' "