YEAST. *

This volume is reprinted, with corrections and enlargements, from .Fraser's Magazine. In point of class it may be called a philo- sophic novel ; for it has a story and incidents, characters exhibited both in action and discourse, descriptions and reflections con- nected with the narrative ; while in purpose it bears some resem- blance to-Alton Locke, but dealing with the intellectual classes of society and the peasantry, instead of the artisans. The fiction, however, is not the strong point of Yeast ; for the story is

• Yeast: a Problem. Reprinted, with Corrections and Additions, from Fraser's Idagara- 3e. Published by J. W. Parker.

slight, both imperfectly and inartificially developed, and leading to nothing at last. The incidents sometimes and the charac- ters often are extreme—embodiments designed as illustrative types of existing classes of society, rather than men and women. Thedescriptions and reflections partake too much of the nature of an outpouring; which is more felt as they stop the progress of events. It may be said in answer, that the form of the work is subordinate to the object of the author. This is, to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich ; the religious doubts which are sbaking the strong, the religious delu- sions and cowardly submissions that are enslaving the weak; the mammon-worship tainting the whole of society above the poor, and the brutish abject spirit but angry discontent pervading the mass, at least of the agricultural labourers. And the answer would be true to this extent—that imperfection of story is little if the leading elements of the story are drawn from the events of actual life ; which they scarcely seem to be. This fault, too, goes deeper than a mere critical objection. When we have reached the end, we are as we were. The evils of existing society have been depicted, but not the way to cure them. The two heroes —one a gentleman, one a workman—do nothing and point out nothing in the way of improving society ; nor can a "Deus ex machine" in the form of a "mysterious man" suggest anything., unless it be a wild search after Prester John, the Christian monarch of the middle ages.

Yeast, however, may be looked at as a series of sketches loosely strung together, descriptive of palpable social evils in the mass, and of metaphysical brooclings among the more thoughtful youth ; a struggle which perhaps is always taking place, and which is no further distinctive of the present age than the form that is given by our intellectual and religious activity. The origin of evil, its presence in the world, what man was made for, what he struggles for, what becomes of him, have been questions that excited the speculative of all ages, taking various channels according to the circumstances of the time. Considered from this point of view, as a lifelike picture of the heavings of the mass, and the mental fer-

mentation going on among individuals—of the yeast of society—the

book displays great ability and challenges careful attention. It is powerful, earnest, feeling, and eloquent ; the production of a man acquainted with society, who has looked closely upon its various classes, and has the power of reading the signs of the times. He has a truthful vigour of description, a rhetorical rather than a dra- matic power ; or he sacrifices the latter to his habit of expressing his opinions in dialogue, where the author talks rather than the dramatis personw. There is a genial warmth of feeling in the -

book, and wide human sympathies but with a tendency- to ex- tremes in statement and opinion—a sympathies, to deepen the sha-

dows of English life; for go where the author would, pictures quite as bad or worse may be drawn of the condition of mankind, from the "noble savage, the beau ideal of Rousseau to the educated

"Prussian," " who was within a little while the model man of a cer- tain school of philosophers.

Although the framework or story of Yeast is not well conducted or concluded, it is judiciously contrived for the purpose of embody- ing some of the principal types of existing society. The first hero Lancelot Smith, is a young man of vigorous frame, strong passions, and a powerful mind. He has had his moral practice, if not his principles, corrupted at the university, although he has taken high honours ; his mind is unsettled by logical scepticism, and by the "shams " he sees everywhere. Argemone Lavington, the daughter of an old-fashioned squire, is the type of what the author thinks a

similar class in woman • intelligent, highly educated, religious after the Tra,ctarian fashion, but making self the object of all,

though unconsciously to herself. By a well-worn accident, Lancelot and Argemone are brought together under peculiar cir- cumstances, and love is the result. The attachment is put an end, to by Mrs. Lavington after Lancelot is ruined by the failure of his uncle's bank ; Argemone dies, and her lover goes abroad, without having been able to settle his opinions. Round these two charac- ters move many others, with more or less connexion. There is Mr. Lavington, he type of the country squire; the Vicar of the parish, a d i darkly-drawn Puseyite, and eventually a convert to Rome ; Luke, a cousin of Lancelot, and representative of the more youthful and silly Tractarians, who places his conscience in the keeping of his priest. The uncle of Lancelot, the religious banker —though his religion does not prevent him from embarking in speculations that stop the bank—represents the " respectable " class of traders ; Lord Minchampstead, the rich manufacturing com- moner ennobled into a peer, may be considered the type of a class of which there are but few living examples ; Lord Vieux- bois belongs to Young England. Colonel Bracebridge, the justest and most finished character in the book is a representative of the travelled all-accomplished English gentleman and soldier, with loose principles, loose practice, but of generous sympathies, and with deeper feelings, and more thought than the generality would give him credit for. The catastrophe which overtakes him is the blot of this well-conceived and carefully-executed character, for it is improbable altogether.

Besides a number of rustics and people more or less conspicu- ous, there is one Tregarva, a -Wesleyan gamekeeper of the squire, who may be considered the type of the thoughtful and faithful humble class, as his friend or patron Lancelot is of the intellectual; and for Lancelot, Tregarva cuts through many puzzling sophisms, as he is the first means of opening his eyes to the state of the poor and the realities of life.

There are various scenes chiefly in relation to country society.

One of these is when Lancelot accompanies Tregarva to a country fair, a sad and terrible picture of the "bold peasantry." After wan- dering about disappointed with the absence of sports, merriment, or humour however poor or coarse' Lancelot enters a booth, and, under the guidance of Tregarva, looks and listens to what is going on. "'You'll see something, if you look round, sir, a great deal easier to ex- plain—and I should have thought, a great deal easier to cure—than want of wits.'

"'And what is that ?'

"'How different looking the young ones are from their fathers, and still more from their grandfathers ! Look at those three or four old grammers talking together there. For all their being shrunk with age and weather, you won't see such fine grown men anywhere else in this booth.' "It was too true. Lancelot recollected now having remarked it before when at church ; and having wondered why almost all the youths were so much smaller, clumsier, lower-brained, and weaker-jawed than their elders. "'Why is it, Tregarva ?'

" 'Worse food, worse lodgin,,,a, worse nursing—and, Fm sore afraid, worse blood. There was too much filthiness and drunkenness went on in the old war-times, not to leave a taint behind it, for many a generaticar. The pros- perity of fools shall destroy them!'

" Oh !' thought Lancelot, for some young sturdy Lancashire or Lothian blood, to put new life into the old frozen South-Saxon veins ! Even a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic would be better than none. Perhaps this Irish immigration may do some good after all.'

"Perhaps it may, -Lancelot. Let us hope so, since it is pretty nearly inevitable.

"Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of the men round him. To his astonishment, he hardly understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly-defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street boy, when compared

)1v. 0. lvthe coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he eard round him. That single fact struck him perhaps more deeply than - any; it connected itself with many of his physiological fancies; it was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after life. Here and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there were hands.' 'Poor human nafaire !' thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarrelling, and more beer to make it up : 'poor human nature ! always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real one which is coming.'

"'But I say, vather,' drawled out some one, they says there's a sight more money in England now than there was afore the war-time.'

" 'Ees, booy,' said the old man; 'but it's got into too few hands.' "'Well,' thought Lancelot, there's a glimpse of practical sense, at least.'" A transient accident induces the company to call upon their warbler for some singing ; of which this is a sample. "Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing,' and burst out as melo- dious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side in delighted atten- tion.

I teed a vire o' Monday night, A vire both great and high; But I wool not tell you where, my boys, Nor wool not tell you why. The varmer he come screeching out, To rave 'uns new brood-mare; Zays I, You and your stock may roast, For aught us poor chaps care.'

"Comma' boys, coorus !'

"And the chorus burst out,

Then here's a curse on varmers all,

As rob and grind the poor; To rep the fruit of all their works In •••• for evermoor-r-r-r.

'A blind owld dame come to the vire, Zo near as she could get ; 2ays, Here 's a luck I wanft asleep, To lose this blessed hat.

They robs us of our turfing rights, Our bits of chips and sticks, Till poor folks now can't warm their hands, Except by varmer's ricks.' Then, So.'

"And again the boy's delicate voice rang out the ferocious chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation ; and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated no malice—but also no mercy."

The following handles the same subject in poetry ; it is the verse that causes Tregarva's dismissal from the squire's service.

"A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATII3R.

"The merry brown hares came leaping Over the crest of the hill, Where the clover and corn lay sleeping

Under the moonlight still.

"Leaping late and early, Till under their bite and their tread The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley, Lay muakered and trampled and dead.

"A poacher's widow sat sighing On the side of the white chalk bank, Where, under the gloomy fir-woods, One spot in the ley throve rank.

"She watched a long tuft of clover, Where rabbit or hare never ran ;

For its black sour haulm covered over The blood of a murdered man.

"She thought of the dark plantation, And the hares, and her husband's blood, And the voice of her indignation Rose up to the throne of God.

"'I am long past wailing and whining—

I have wept too much in my life; Fve had twenty years of pining As an English labourer% wife.

"A labourer in Christian England, Where they cant of a Saviour's name, And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's

For a-few more brace of game. "'There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire ; There's blood on your pointers' feet ; There's blood on the game you sell, squire, And there's blood on the game you eat !

"'You have sold the labouring man, squire, Body and soul, to shame, To pay for your seat in the House, squire, And to pay for the feed of your game.

"You made him a poacher yourself, squire, When you'd give neither work nor meat ; And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden At our starving children's feet; " 'When packed in one reeking chamber, Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay ; While the rain pattered in on the rotting Inide-bed, And the walls let in the day ; "When we lay in the burning fever On the mud of the cold clay floor, Till you parted us all for three months, squire, At the cursed workhouse-door.

"'We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders ? What self-respect could we keep, Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep ?

"'Our daughters with base-born babies Have wandered away in their shame ;

If your misses had slept, squire, where they did, Your misses might do the same.

" Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking With handfuls of coals and rice,

Or by dealing out flannel find sheeting

A little below cost-price ?

"You may tire of the gaol and the workhouse, And take to allotments and schools, But you've run up a debt that will never Be repaid us by penny-club rules.

" 'In the season of shame and sadness, In the dark and dreary day, When scrofula, gout, and madness, Are eating your race away ; "'When to kennels and liveried varlets You have cast your daughters' bread, And, worn out with liquor and harlots, Your heir at your feet lies dead ; "'When your youngest, the meally-mouthed rector, Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave, You will find in your God the protector Of the freeman you fancied your slave.'

"She looked at the tuft of clover, And wept till her heart grew light ; And at last, when her passion was over, Went wandering into the night.

"But the merry brown hares came leaping Over the uplands still, Where the clover and corn lay sleeping On the side of the white chalk hill."