TWO NEW NOVELS. * THE historical romance of For and Against,
belongs to the class in which a formal knowledge of the times exceeds the power of dramatically displaying it. The period is that of the wars of the Roses ; the story beginning with the troubles which heralded the war and not reaching its end till the accession of Edward the .Fourth after the battle of Tow-ton. The writer, not satisfied with studying the age, exhibits a list of authorities as is done in his- torical and scientific works ; and amongst them are the Poston Papers, the various chronicles of the time, the state trials for pro- ceedings against heretics, county histories for county particulars, expounders of popular superstitions and so on. The obvious features of the age are well balanced and contrasted—a bad priest for example by a good one—loyalty, or rather fidelity to a party, by self-seeking—the delays of true love by the Papal system of consanguinity and dispensation—the workings of wardship in the case of rival lovers—the settlement of personal quarrel by open joust, and other matters of a like kind. The historical persons of the age are introduced—Queen Margaret and Warwick the King-maker prominently, and of course some of the leading events. With the history the interests and fortunes of private persons are mixed up, so that the form is managed ac- cording to rule, as the substance is said to be derived from au- thority,. But the spirit of the fifteenth century is not in the book ; the feelings, the ideas, and essentially the manners, are those of the present day. The style of conversation is that which was primarily intenaed for "Elizabethan," but which according to the conventionalism of romance-writers serves for any era previous to the Restoration, or even the Revolution of 1688 at a pinch. Story, in the sense of a closely-linked series of events, each eon- tatting to forward a catastrophe, there is not ; but there is a stecession of "moving accidents" or incidents. The mode of arranging and presenting the materials has little of independence ranch less of originality. Scott is the model of the fair writer, and is often very closely copied. Take this conventional opening as an instance.
"Towards the close of a bleak Ianuary day, in the year of grace 1455, a small party of horsemen rode slowly across the brow of a high hill, one of the range which divides Staffordshire from Cheshire. They were but three in number, and two of them, a grey-haired man-at-arms and a stripling in a tight-fitting suit with no ornament save a 'greyhound passant' embroi- dered front and back, on his dark dress, lingered some paces behind, as if afraid of breaking in upon the meditations of their master. He was a gentleman of strong and well-knit frame, of middle height and erect bear- ing, and, according to the custom of those dangerous days, he rode armed with sword and with the small dagger then in use. A helmet, swelling out angularly in front, with oblong eyeholes and a perforation for breathing, protected his head. It was fastened by rings, before and behind, to the breast and back-plates. He wore loose -boots with slips of steel over them, and hose or pantaloons terminating in richly-worked leather knee-caps. His shoulder-plates were ornamented to match, and stood out so as some- thing to resemble the wings of a bird. He rode, according to the knightly fashion of the day, with long stirrups and toes pointed downward. Thus he wended his way, following a narrow track that wound through tufts of brown heather and stunted bilberry bushes, or rather, permitting his bay charger to roam at will amongst them, while his eyes and thoughts wandered to the landscape below. "Much of the plain of Cheshire might be seen from that eminence ; not parcelled out into fields as now, nor dotted with numberless dwellings, but consisting mostly of unenclosed pasture-ground running up into the great forest of Macclesfield. This expanse of woodland wore a somewhat gloomy aspect, its sameness being only broken by a few narrow bridle-paths, and scarcely enlivened by occasional .pools and swampy tracts on which the de- clining sunbeams glimmered faintly. Here and there a thin column of smoke marked the cabin of some charcoal-burner, or the haunt of some less honest denizen of the forest."
If the present rage for tale-writing among cultivated and ob- serving ladies goes on, we shall soon have a school of fiction with- out a story. To the suspension of "action and discourse" for minute description and slow dialogue, we have got pretty well ac- customed ; but in Likes and Dislikes there is absolutely no story at all ; and scarcely even the pretence of it. .kst the end of Part ; a lover is introduced, and at the end of Part II, he gets mar- ried; but there is nothing intermediate, we do not say to excite Merest in the fortunes of the lovers but absolutely nothing at all that can be said to be connected with them. The 'book in reality consists of a series of sketches of manners and characters during the first part on a Continental trip and at a German watering- place ; in the second part at some country-houses in England ; travelling by the common modes of conveyance constituting the movement of the book.
Some of the travelling observations abroad and some of the persons and remarks at home are distinguished by a well-edu-
• For and Against ; or Queen Margaret's Badge. A Domestic Chronicle of the Fifteenth Century. By Frances kl. Wilbraham. In two volumes. Published by Parker and Son.
Likes and Dislikes. Some Passages in the Life of Emily Marsden. Published by Parker and Son.
cated judgment. The Polish family at Marienbad and their story are not without a quiet sort of interest, and the sketches at that watering-place are characteristic, as the arrival for instance.
"Klinger's Hotel, in Marienbad, is more like a town than a house. At the sound of the porter's bell, the servants, headed either by the ubiqui. tous landlord, a portly Austrian, or by ad anxious-looking Ober/011,1er, (head-waiter,) come out like a swarm of ants, to receive the new comers. The weary travellers inquire in such German as they can command, if there is a place for them. (German is the only current language here, in this part of Bohemia.) Obliging Herr Holzminer will see, if their grams will only alight. All this time, while bowing profoundly, he is scanning them, to discover, even under their dusty garb, with what honourable title they must be addressed; and the moustached porter, in his long blue coat, is scrutinizing them, to see what entry he shall make in, his stranger's book.' And a less imposing, but, perhaps, more important individual, yclept Hausmeister, half house-steward, half-spy, peculiar to Austrian hotels, is watching them too. He is clad in an indescribable rusty suit, and his deep-set eyes twinkle shrewdly from beneath the shelter of red matted locks, which mingle with a thick red beard ; le is only waiting for the guests to be fixed in a room, before he pounces on them to demand their passports, and to require them to fill up a paper which contains Tom. tions as to their religion, age, name, profession, calling, motive for tra- velling, &c., all such particulars being highly interesting to the K. K. po- lice.
"If the travellers intend to remain in Marienbad, they must cheerfully give up their passport into the hands of the police, till they go away; an moreover, they must pay a specified number of paper gulden (convention miinze) for the privilege of remaining there. "The police authorities publish a list of the visitors, (Sur-Giiste, they are called,) once or twice a week, and high and low, rich and poor, are loaded with every title to -which they can possibly lay claim. "In the first Kur list which Helen took up, she was greatly delighted at the following specimens of dignities and names: Herr Carl Gressel, first- schwamenberg'scher Brennholzrerwalter, tail Gemahlin au. Wien, which reads as follows, literally translated : Mr. Charles Gressel, manager of Prince Schwarzenberg's firewood, and his wife, from Vienna.'"
The foreign matter, however, is hardly equal to a slight book of travels, and were the whole substance of Likes and Dislikes stronger than it is, the effect wouldfail from incongruous exhibition. Strange that authors cannot be brought to see that a structure appropriate to the materials is the main element of success.
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