THE REVIEWER'S TABLE.
I. Review of Captain B. Hall's Travels in Series, No. 1. Fraser's, No. 1. Bib.
North America. By an American. llographical Miscellany, No.2.
2. East India Affairs—The Oriental Quer4. The Lost Heir. The Prediction. terly Review, No. I. The Asiatic 5 Ringstead Abbey ; with other Tales. By Journal for February. J. A. Sargent. 3. Magazines for February—New Monthly.. 6. Life of a Lawyer. Monthly. Christian Examiner. Lon7. Anniversary Calendar, Part I.
don University. Ladies; Improved S. Literary and Scientific Class Book. By
the Rev. John Platts, second edition.
I. This is a clever, well-written pamphlet. The conclusion, however, which we should be inclined to draw from it, is different from that which the author labours to make. His object is to show that Captain HALL, in his estimate of the American intellect, learning, morality, institutions, civil and religious,.general and particular—in short, of every thing on which he has ventured to pronounce a judgment--has gone widely and wilfully and laughably astray. He charges him, moreover, with being a Scotchman, with knowing nothing of his dictionary, with being bamboozled by Loo Chooans and Irishmen, and Heaven knows what besides. From this angry and zealous endeavour to make out Captain HALL to be the worst and most prejudiced traveller that ever reported on the glories of the Transatlantic democracy, we conclude that he has upon the whole given a pretty fair and veritable account of it. By proving so much, his American critic proves nothing at all : if Captain HALL'S book were so false and so foolish as he would make it out, it would neither have deserved nor obtained such a laboured review as he has written upon it.
2. Were we to judge of the success of the approaching contest between the advocates for the Company's monopoly and the friends of free trade by the labours of the two writers who are here arrayed on the one side and the other, the odds against the Charter would be the China trade to a China orange. Mr, BUCKINGHAM'S quarterly (why a quarterly,by the by ?) is a solid, instructive book, well got up in every sense ; the questions important, and discussed with ability and reasonable impartiality. We may refer to the first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth papers, all on Indian affairs, as deserving of special notice. The eleventh, whichgives an account of some interesting MSS. on i Russian antiquities, s also valuable. The Asiatic Journal, the specialpleader of the Company, is feeble and inconclusive. It has two papers of some interest,—one consisting of two curious letters from the Prince Royal of Persia to the Asiatic Society, on his being appointed one of the Honorary Fellows ; and one on Russia, translated from the Bibliotheque Unzverselle of Geneva. The Company, it seems, have received a notable accession of late in the person of Mr. ENEAS MACDONNELL, who has been writing in their behalf in one of the Dublin newspapers. In hailing so warmly the advocacy of the Pius Eneas, as his countrymen call him, the Company, we suppose, act on the old proverb,—" every little helps."
3. The New Monthly, which, next to Blackwood, is still the best of the Magazines. contains a judicious paper on the cry at present raised by certain patriots against the fundholders. It was COBBETT, we believe, who first projected the plan of plundering that class of individuals ; but Connarr's object, although• prodigiously absurd, was at least disinterested; he wished to take from the monied part of the community to give to the labourer and the poor. The aim of those who now join him is equally unjust, but more selfish—they would plunder the one class only that they may be enabled more effectually to trample on the other. The Monthly Magazine has been named, by some of its admirers, "the Blackwood of the South :" its politics are the same, and its slang is similar—if it possessed Blackwood's genius and wit and tact, the analogy would be more complete. The present number contains a lively article, entitled" Walks in Ireland." The first tale, from which MONK LEWIS is supposed to have taken his inn story, we have seen told, with some additional horrors of an alehouse in Cumberland; but it was too bad, even in a modified form, not to be claimed for old Ireland. There are also "some vigorous lines entitled " Mother Shipton's Prophecy ;" from which it appears, that the Duke of CUMBERLAND is to send our terrible Ministry to the right-about before the year ends—we suppose there must be something in it. The present" number of the Christian Examiner fully supports the character we gave the work when not dug the last. The papers entitled "Stray Leaves from a Chaplainzs Journal," and" the Priest's Funeral," are interesting and enrolls. Th3 London University tells us, that ?n Irishman, "sworn foe to luLs of law and syntax, seizes pen and paper, Primes himself Nvith a glasslof the native, and whips you off an article in no time." From a perusal of the present number, we should conclude that its contributors are mainly of this potheen-imbibing, law-and syntax-despising class. We would whisper to those who so much admire speed of hand, that they may find five hundred to " whip off. articles in no time," more easily than five to read them. The Ladies' Magazine is adorned with three plates of fashions, gay and glittering as such things usually are, an engraving to illustrate one of Miss STRICKLAND'S poetical pieces, and a clever lithographic sketch of the late Sir THOMAS LAWRENCE. Of the taste for selection displayed by the editor, we must needs speak highly, seeing that he has trans-. ferred to his fashionable pages our own excellent and much-admired critique on the Grecian Daughter. That the conductor of Fraser's Magazine is one of those gentlemen, who " whip off an article in no time,y may be inferred, perhaps, from the following extract :— "We premise, or we stipulate, that we are not judged by this Number. If every body knew how hard it is to produce a first Number as good as a fifty first or a hundred-and-first, every body would not be so critical on our cont. mencing efforts. Perhaps this may be no very good Number, although it is written by the first writers in England, Scotland, and Ireland."
After this modest intimation, we feel that it would 'be discourteous to pass a judgment On the First Number of Fraser'sMagazine; we reserve our opinion of the "first writers in England, Scotland, and Ireland," till we have seen the second at least. The Bibliographical Miscellany is a respectable follower of the pleasantest periodical, in its earlier numbers especially, that ever died a premature death—we mean the Retro,spective Review. The present numbercontains the continuation of an interesting notice of writers on Chess.
4. We have two notable objections to the first of these tales. The characters are Irish ; and the incidents are concocted from the decies manes repetita trash of the French Revolution. Either of these might suffice to fit the strongest-headed of our fraternity for the retreat at Clapham ; but to be bored, or, as Lord GODERICH has it, badgered with both at a time ! it is enough to elevate a reasonable' man's spirit fifty degrees above strait-jacket proof, and send him at once to Waterloo Bridge with a couple of twelve-pound shot in his pockets. The story of the Lost Heir is long and rambling. His father killed, his nurse kilt, the hero is adopted by a good-natured Irishman ; joins the, French Guards ; takes the Bastile ; marries a woman who, but for a most miraculous chance, would have proved to be his own sister, or his mother's daughter any way—but who, when narrowly inspected, turns out to be neither of them. He then quits La belle France; recovers his property in the dear country, where he as at this-moment living and hearty, an active member of the 'Sociation, and a liberal patron of the Rint. His rival—the heir that was not lost—one of your singularly clever, cool-headed, and daring dogs, who fail in every thing they undertake, quite in the order of nature, having been cheated, out of the object of his choice, to whose money he has a strong attachment, determines, in revenge, to run away with the wanton wife of a bourgeois, who has no money at all ; and gets poisoned for his pains, in a bumper of burgundy, administered by the husband. The husband poisons himself and his wife at the same time, out of jealousy; which, in a Frenchman and a Parisian, it will be admitted is also "extremely like life." The Prediction is better than the Lost Heir. The tale is full of the horrible, but many of the pictures are well drawn, and the language is simple and vigorous. The author has a strong affection for French words, with an equally strong dislike of French grammar, which he exemplifies in almost every page cif the first two volumes.
5. To the frivolous, Ringstead Abbey will afford amusement by its story and incidents ; to the sober, instruction from the soundness of its principles. Its morality is pure and practical ; its religion simple, consistent, heartfelt, fruitful in patience, meekness, charity, and all good works. The character of Lady Delamore, her conduct under great affliction, and its final reward, are finely drawn.
6. This volume is a wonder in its way. There is neither an Irish nor French nor fashionable character in it. The imagination of the writer is of the matter-of-fact kind ; and his work carries us back to the days of DEFOE. The hero springs from the lowest orders of the people, rises to a clerkship, becomes a barrister, and successively attains to the honours of Solicitor and Attorney-General, Baron of the Exchequer, and Lord Chancellor. The whole story is told so simply and so naturally, that if we could only contrive to forget the politics and politicians of the last twenty years, we should be tempted to take I he novel for a history : even as it is, the earlier portion bears much of the appearance of a piece of autobiography.
7. The Anniversary Calendar contains a goodly array of interesting facts and much pleasant anecdotical reading. It is beautifully printed.
8. The design of this book is commendable, and the execution respectable. Its fault is, that in the progressive sciences, the book is at least twenty years older than its date. Gas lights are not alluded to' in Galvanism, DAVY is not even mentioned by name ; in AUrostation, the last experiment noticed is that of the balloon belonging to the Polytechnic School in the earliest campaigns of the Revolutionary war. Some of the references are wrong; a paper of Annisos we observe given to LOCKE.
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