28 APRIL 1849, Page 17

THE MARIGOLD WINDOW.*

Taz author of this volume is a man of cultivated tastes, with an eye for the beauties of natural scenery and a love of the picturesqueness and sentiment connected with a chivalrous aristocracy. He luxuriates in the gorgeous parts of heraldry, from the colours of the blazon on the " shield " to the more stirring banner that led or rallied the retainers of the baronial house among danger and death. He can enjoy the luxuries which modern refinement has engrafted upon ancient habits, though, as he intimates, they have passed away from him and his. He has a more hearty delight in the natural beauties which a stately taste has realized in English park and woodland scenery ; or which time has presented in the crumbling rain, or change in the deserted mansion of the decayed family, either standing mournfully in lonely desolation, or, harder still, "let out in tene- ments" to the terno Jilii it formerly awed. But perhaps his greatest enjoyment is in those monuments of pious liberality and religious taste which our ancestors scattered over the land in the form of churches and cathedrals, with their accompaniments of site and association.

In addition to these tastes rather than qualities, the author of The Marigold Window has a gentlemanly scholarship, a good deal of fancy and sentiment, with a fluent style and poetical spirit. His philosophy is rather superficial ; indeed, want of depth and of largeness is his defect, and perhaps not altogether capable of remedy. Luxuriance of imagery, description running into enumeration of particulars, and a flowery ex- uberance of diction, admit of correction, and rather require it if he wishes to produce books that may attract attention and sustain it. The Marigold Window consists of prose and poetry, divided into seven parts, under quaint titles. "Diamond Dust is a collection of miscellaneous verses and thoughts in prose ; varying from a sentence or two, in the form of an apothegm, to a brief essay, description, or criti- cism: one of the most elaborate of the last is on an author whose name and works are suppressed. "Walks in the Weald" (of Kent) describes a series of visits to parks and places in that wild yet rich and interesting district ; and forma the most popular section of the book. Mere de- scription, and reverie awakened by the contemplation of the houses or the scenes, predominate over more strictly useful information ; but the Walks, in a separate form, would form a pleasant companion to a pedestrian ex- cursionist by the South-eastern Railway, though not superseding a de- tailed guide for such places as Knole and Penshurst. "The Pleasures of Prosing " is somewhat similar to the Walks, but with a wider range ; the natural scenes and mansions or castles visited, extending from Nor- mandy to the Highlands of Scotland. "The Dethroned" is a romance, laid in the time of Richard the Second ; and is the least successful effort of the volume. The plan is rather an incongruous mixture, formed upon the combination of Scott's historical novels, where men and manners were the main object, with the older romance, in which customs and costumes, or what the writers thought such, predominated. Knowledge of history and of heraldry prevents the writer from falling into any of the mistakes made by novelists of the Minerva Press school ; but he wants the imagination to endow the clothes and ceremonials of the Plantagenets with interest. A greater failing is that he cannot recreate the men. His noble villain, his robber villain, his lady, and most of his dramatis personse, are merely characters of the romance-writers of our day, masquerading in the garb of the fifteenth century. The descriptions, though not true probably as to the period, are true to nature ; but the main ingredients of the story and the incidents are strained'and uninteresting. "Tints of the Tower and the Woodland," and "Twilight Glimpses, are both collections of poetry; the principal difference between the two being, that the Glimpses are

more religions in subject. "Hues of the Oratory " is miscellaneous prose, also of a religious cast.

The book would have been better had selection been more regarded. The author appears to hold the pen of a ready writer, and to commit his thoughts and observations to paper much as they arise. This is a good plan if accompanied by revision ; but without a sterner revision and selec- tion than has been bestowed upon the contents of 27ce Marigold Win- dow, things of the nature of commonplace or refuse will be put before the public : and if this should not be the case, there will be too much of mere effusion, and an illustration of the "no quid nimis." This is to be regretted, because the writer has merit and matter, which only want a severer self-cultivation to attain probably poetical distinction.

The following fragment has life and movement; and the style is well adapted to its subject, besides having a vein of freshness Wit cannot be Called originality.

THE ANCIENT SEA TOWN.

The hills were green and the sea was blue, And the castle a swarthy brown ; And you caught from above, at a single view, The gloomy ocean-town. An old-fashioned patchwork was the street, Dark, narrow, and winding and high, Balconies and gable-ends almost meet; Between mansion and mansion you scarce can greet A strip of the dull grey sky. * The Marigold Window ; or Pictures of Thought. By the Author of " Fragments "Italy," " A Pilgrim's Reliquary," &c. Published by Longman and Co. Intertwined among houses of timber-work tall, Here and there you may light on a buttressed wall, Overplumed with umbrageous green; For a vast old medlar flourishes there, And the opal cheeks of the apple and pear, Among dainty foliage seen:-

And the purple fig, and the mulberry too—

With its fruit of the blood-stain'd lover's hue, And the large pale quince in the gardens grew, With a thousand flowers between.

And each old house—how it grimly glares! So many chambers, and so many stairs; And not of a vulgar now-a-days style, But full of old stories and jests the while. Hero was a wainscot of foliaged oak, Haunted, of course, as its gloom bespoke;

And there an arras of mouldering glow—

Romance its broider-work well did know;

And the pargetfing creak'd, and the tapestry waved, When the billows roared, and the night-wind raved, And the weathercocks whined on the gables tall,

And a tramp on the staircase up from the hall!

The following lines are sounding and picturesque : they also illustrate a fault of many papers in the book, if not an inherent one in the writer.

They want a conclusion, in the logical, sense: they are a description sig-

nifying nothing—lines to be let.

AN AuTIMLNAL EVE IN NORMANDY.

'Twos a pale and moaning moonlight,

And the swiftly sailing clouds Might have charioted battalions To their triumphs or their shrouds; And the leaves were sadly falling From a thousand noble woods, And winter's war-note thundered Far from a thousand floods; And the trees their arms were baring, And their mantles flung behind,

To battle for their naked life,

With their mortal foe the wind;

And the going of the gust among The tallest forest height

Looked like a solemn armament

Forth tramping to the fight.

As a specimen of prose, "Foxes at Play" may be taken. A keeper having been ordered to destroy the young foxes, to prevent the destruc- tion of winged game, has taken his seat at night in the shadow of an oak, accompanied by his dog.

"George had been seated thus about an hour,

'Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' when he beheld a great old dog fox marching deliberately out of the wood behind, about sixty yards above the spot where he sat. He emerged from the shade at

a slow careless pace, his fine long tail lazily brushing the dewy grass, his head about breast high, which once or twice in walking he turned to either side, as

much as to say, How does my domain look tonight?' "When he had proceeded as far as the middle of the meadow, he squatted him-

self on his haunches, and, just cocking up his muzzle, gave three short barks at

intervals, just as you may have seen some lazy well-fed old dog do when basking in the sunny porch he sees something that amuses rather than disturbs him.

"At this time about a hundred and fifty rabbits were at feed in the meadow:

at the first bark they all paused, drummed violently with their fore-paws upon

the turf, simultaneously reared themselves on their hind-legs, as though to ascer- tain the whereabouts of this uninvited guest, and that done, proceeded to give un- equivocal proofs of the opinion they entertained of him by forthwith declining the honour of his company. They did not, however, decamp generally at first; nor

was Dan Reynard's signal intended for them.

"Forth at the summons of her lord, and at the very same quarter of the wood, issued my Lady Vixen, and, gambolling along close at her side, seven as beautiful

cubs as ever gave promise of devastation to Dame Tartlet's progeny. "At this spectacle, not Harlequin sinking through the trap-door of Covent Garden or Drury Lane disappears so suddenly, as the entire bevy of rabbits van- ished into the wood.

"Meantime, the vixen as if she was weary of the cares of a family, uncon- sciously led her hapless brood in the direction of the old oak, within whose treache-

rous abyss of shadow sat George on sanguinary thoughts intent.

"At about the space of forty yards from his ambush they paused: the dam leisurely lay down and began lacking her red and gray minever, and cleaning her tail and feet. She would not condescend, apparently, to mingle in the gambols of her offspring; save only when, in the course of their sports, they came so near as to molest her with their romping antics and tiny barks; and then my lady would stint in her toilette to snap with a gentle snarl of playful anger. Jumping on each other's backs, tumbling over and over,—biting, growling, pursuing, and pur- sued,—infinite was the variety of their antics; the performance of which George had the relentless cruelty to witness for upwards of ten minutes without once relaxing his stern purpose. At last they gambolled up to within thirty yards of

"He was seated within the deep black shadow of the wood, perfectly hidden from their view; while his devoted victims were sporting in the clear twilight of the open meadow, offering a fair aim to his murderous tube. He levelled his gun, loaded with number one; and at the first shot, killed three of the young ones. The vixen caught some of the shot; and this, together with the screams of her cubs and the report of the gun, so confounded her that it gave time for the Mos dog to finish the business: he was up with her in half-a-dozen bounds, and soon put her out of her misery. Reynard and four of the cubs escaped."