NEW N o rzT, s.• TICE idea of Maurice .Elvington
is better than the execution. A young man passing carelessly through school and college, living
• luxury and fashionable idleness on the strength of expectations,
and thrown poor and helpless on the world when his sybarite uncle dies insolvent, would have furnished materials for a better novel than the one before us. There is little freshness in the in- cidents, and not much probability. A ,generally educated man, but without any special training, taking to the press as a means of subsistence, has often been presented to the readers of modern fiction with much more of reality. The same individual as tutor in a nobleman'sfamily is not cinite so hacknied ; and though the love of Maurice for Lady Venetia Bndedale seems suggested byTen- nyson's Lady Clara Vere de 'Pere, the tutorship is upon the whole the best passage in the book. When Mr. Elvington's proposals are rejected with haughty coolness by Lady Venetia, he plunges into drink and dissipation, till, after going through a series of deliriums, which at times recall the Confessions of an.English Opium-Eater, he is saved from the effects of a fever partly by the nursing of a poor girl to whom he had been of service. A marriage and emi- gration is the Upshot, with a fire and wreck, in which he loses his wife : but here, as elsewhere, there seems a want of knowledge of the actual. The pictures look like inventions by a clever man, rather than attempts, however inartiatical, to reproduce the real. A law-student, a man upon town, and a> writer practically ac- quainted with the press, must have fuller and more precise know- ledge than the author Of Maurice Elvington displays, however he might fail in. dramatically exhibiting it In his superficial and uncritical survey of modern German lite- rature in the lately published volume of his History of Europe, Sir Archibald Alison very highly praised the novels of Haklander, and among them " Slave Life in Europe." It turns out, that at the- time of writing, a lady, " eminently qualified," had under- taken. the task of translating the fiction ; and here it is, under the title of Clara, with a recommendatory preface by the historian. The book, as Sir Archibald remarked in his criticism, is de- Signed as a. sort of counterpoise to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Haklander exhibits pictures of what he terms European slavery, without any consideration as . to nature or degree : poverty, circumstances, weakness, vice, misfortune, and even temper, are all fish for his net. The slavery of ballet-girls, clerks, servants, and translators for booksellers, are his most prominent instances ; but everything in social or domestic life serves at least to turn a period. Thus, when a foolish wife thwarts her husband; neglects her children, and encourages the insolence of her servants, we have an example of a marital slave. Upon the absurdity of this logic it is needless to dilate. Parents or near relations, through bad habits or bad dispositions, may encourage or force their children to vicious courses for their own gain, anywhere. Unscrupulous wealth may always take advantage of helpless poverty ; and though in many parts of America there is not much wealth, and poverty is not so helpless as in Europe, yet such is by no means the case in great towns—travellers even report a traffic in women, carried on by means of offers of situations. The laxity of German morals, encouraged by the example and influ- ence of a petty German court, will doubtless render a German oi more generally corrupt than a large town in America. The
ce, however, between the moral power which circumstances give one person over another, and the absolute power of a master over his slave, are as great as the difference between a legal
• lfauriec Elvington ; or One out of Suits with Fortune: as Autobiography. Edited by Wilfred East. In three volumes. Published by Smith and Elder. Clara; or Slave Life in Europe. With o.Preface by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. us three volumes. Published by Bentley. The Daisy Chain; or Aspirations: a Family Chronicle. By the Author of " The Heir of _Reddy e," fe. Published by Parker and Son. Margaret and her Bridescuads. By the Author of Woman's Devotion." In three volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett. Solace- V.° ; or The Sacking of Allaroonah : an Incident of the African Stare- trade. By Thomas Oreenhalgh, Author of " Lancashire Life." Published by Longman. right and mere influence. Nor is the conclusion more logical than the premises. Clara, the ballet-girl heroine, preserves her- , self free from contamination, and marries the rich banker's son ; a termination impossible in America for slave or freed-woman. The picture of manners and life at a German city, with its poor dependents and second-rate noblesse, -gives a degree of freshness to the novel. There has, however, been something like it before ; and the life which is described. with most fulness and knowledge is that behind the scenes and similar places. The romance hooked on to the every-day life is wild to absurdity: A certain Baron Brand alternately figures as a man moving in the most fashionable circles, and as the head of a gang not merely ofban-
dits but of criminals and offsoourings of all kinds, using his mysterious power in a sort of Robin Hood fashion.
Few writers are more unequal than the author of The Heir of Redelyffe. In some cases, as in Heartsease, she exhibits a carefully-constructed story, consistent in itself and with sufficient purpose ; characters conceived and developed with great na- turalness ' • an elegant style, though with a tendency to dif- fuseness, dwelling upon particulars rather than accumulating words. Other of her works are of slender interest in their sub- ' jects ; or their matter is of little value ; or the writer's most pro- minent weakness is permitted to run to seed. The Daisy Chaim is the most faulty work that has appeared from her pen. The ' story, each as it is is overlaid by scenes of which it is nothing to say that they continually impede its march ; for if the incidents, characters, and dialogue of a scene, have interest, the want of connexion is merely a critical defect. In The Daisy Chain, the subject of the scenes is so flat or commonplace, the persons are so numerous, their sayings and doings often so confused and weak, and the whole is so overlaid by words, that the result is mere tediousness.
In essential characteristics there is not much difference between Margaret and her Bridesmaids and the previous fiction of the author, Woman's Devotion. The story, indeed, is less extreme, and the incidents are less exaggerated, than in the former work ; though the matrimonial careers of the heroine Margaret and some of her bridesmaids are scarcely lifelike. The feminine grace and attractive manner of the writer are the same as ever, together with the power of painting scenes and action, not powerfully but agreeably. The writer, however, who "cannot ascend will always appear to sink" ; and, independently of this comparative disadvantage, we suspect that the present novel hardly reaches i the " effects " of Woman's Devotion.
Mr. Greenhalgit's Kennee-Voo, or the Sacking of Allaroonah, is a novel of adventure, in which African geography, manners, politics, wars, virtues, and. villanies, meet the reader in the early part ; slave-traders and slavery are encountered in the middle ; improbable escapes and impossible characters, events that could not take place, and a 'denouement just as impossible, terminate the tale. The majestic, bearing, the comprehensive mind, and, when trained by observation of European slaveholders and nau- timsl men, the sagacious policy of Kenn.ee, the African prince, sold to slavery in the Brazils, but finally escaping—the beauty ' and grace together with the enlightened Christianity of the he- roine Myha, likewise sold but to Porto Rico—with other things of a similar kind—are so outrageous that criticism would be thrown away upon them. There is, however, a species of interest in many of the adventures, wild.. as they are and matter-of-fact as is the author's manner, which carries the reader along.
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