A NOVEL OF " INTEREST."*
'This is a sensation novel in the approved form of a prologue, four books, and an epilogue, respectively entitled "A Legacy of Vengeance," "The Marble Heart," "The Old Love and the New," 4‘ Frailty, thy Name is Woman !" "Nemesis 1," and "A Legacy of Love !" Encouraged by these promising titles, we turn to the headings of the chapters, and are fairly rewarded for our trouble. We will not spoil the interest of the work for the reader by giving them all, but here are a few specimens from which a tolerably fair judgment may be formed. "The Stranger Plays with Fire !" "Found in the Moonlight," "Haunted by the Dead," "The Legacy of the Living Dead," "The Old Hall Clock turns Traitor," " Vengeance be Thine, 0 Lord !" "Death and Cupid," "Six Ralph Travels by Night !" &c., &c. From chance mid-chapter dashes into the work we gather that Mr. it Beckett's chief personal characteristics are that greatest of all shams, an affected hatred of shams, and a morbidly vindictive dislike for womankind and a Government'Department known as the" Paupers' Property Office" —query, Post-Office Savings' Bank?—against both of which institu- tions he evidently considers himself to have a deep grievance. His pages are full of silly rant about—scilicet, England—" that holy country" "where the bad is ignored and not amended; where igno- • Fallen amongst Thieres: a Yore: of "Interest." By Arthur It Beckett. 3 vols. London: Chapman and HAIL
ranee is denied and not overcome ; where crime is so refined that it in difficult to distinguish it from virtue, where vice is so genteel that it seems the very counterpart of virtue land of blunders and follies, nonsense and humbug,"—we all know the style, and are all getting just a trifle sick of the sort of thing. Of his misogynistic craze we cannot give a clearer idea than that con- veyed in the two following quotations. He is describing the feelings of his heroine, when she has just jilted a true lover for the second time, in favour of a heartless scamp :—
" She was not only grieved, but angry. With whom do you think, dear reader? Why, with poor unoffending Leopold; with the man sho had wronged, with the lover she had deceived ! So angry was she with him, that her rage half-excused (in her mind) her perfidy. ' Oh ! ' she said at last, when her tears had dried, 'he will make me hate him ! ' And then, with woman's beautiful, logical nature, her thoughts flew to the other end of the pole, and she grew maudlin over 'poor dear Leopold.' And we marry this sort of people !"
But beware his views about women stated in the abstract,—he is addressing the reader :—
"Entre none, womanly excellence resembles the tales we used to learn at school about Jupiter and Juno, Cupid and Psyche,—very pretty, but not altogether unmythical. It may be that women are angels in heaven (who thinks of a male angel?) because they are devils upon earth."
We are sorry for you, Mr. Is Beckett, and trust that ere long the spirit of Christian resignation may bring healing to your troubled soul, cause you to forgive your enemies, and bestow upon you the inestimable blessing of a mind at peace with itself and womankind. As for the "P. P. O.," where the rooms are so crowded and the
atmosphere so close that there is not space left even for the les dropped by the "heads of rooms," and where the old pens are
returned to the authorities under P. P. 0. Circular No. 27,149, we leave the officials of any Government department east of Temple Bar which may consider itself aggrieved to settle with Mr. it Beckett. If, after what we have quoted and said, any of our readers are hesitating whether to read the book or not, we will give them the clearest of hints. If they care about the answers to questions like this,—
" What is the sight that has made her shiver with fright, frozen the blood in her veins ? What is the sight that would made her shriek her heart out with terror, if she had but the courage in the extremity of her fear to utter even a cry?"
(don't be afraid, Mr. Is Beckett, we are not going to discount your pet sensation,) let them send to Mudie's at once. If not, they can save themselves the trouble. By the way, how comes it that in books of this sort the wicked man who never turneth away from his wickedness is always a baronet? Here we have "Sir Ralph Ruthven, Seventh Baronet, of Stelstead Hall, Brain- tree." The order has been most unfairly run upon of late by novelists after Mr. it Beckett's kind,—could not Mr. Disraeli furnish us with a vindication by Sir Vavasour Firebrace ? We half suspect that it is the unhappy facilities for a rhetorical use of the Christian name afforded by the baronet's title that in- duces them thus to incite the public to hatred and contempt for the order. "Lord Stelstead " would have sounded too impersonal and not stagey enough, and "Lord Ralph Ruthven" would not have owned the necessary ancestral mansion. The latter objection would also apply to "Mr. Ralph Ruthven," and plain common- place "Mr. Ruthven "would lack the requisite aristocratic glamour. But "Sir Ralph Ruthven, Baronet "—and murderer—why, the name itself is a mine of wealth to such an adept in his craft as Mr. it Beckett. But what on earth induced him to lay the scene of his wretched " murderin' and that "—as the boy described the acting at the penny gaff the other day— in the placid and virtuous village of Felsted, in Essex? Nobody in the county can be deceived by the futile pseudonym of " Stelstead," described as a village near Braintree, twelve miles from Chelmsford, situated on a "lawyers' line" of railway leading to Dunmow, and the seat of a grammar-school. It isn't nice in him. In thus insidiously polluting the moral atmosphere of the place, he may seriously affect the excellent grammar-school. There are possibly, in realistic Essex, people likely to be misled by Mr. a Beckett's literary affectation of telling a "true story ;" and what prudent parent would send a timid, imaginative boy to school at a place haunted with such terrible traditions as those of "Sir Ralph Ruthven, Baronet," and his doings? We call the attention of the school authorities to the matter. But we think we can convince the most matter-of-fact F,ssexian, by a very simple proof, specially adapted to penetrate the East-Anglian intellect, that even if the tale be true, the locale has been changed. Sir Ralph Ruthven's villagers drink cider. Sir Ralph Rathven never lived in Essex.
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