NEW NOVELS. * WE entreat our friends to seize the earliest
opportunity of making the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Asheton. The work which relates the history of their first ten years of wedded life cannot fail to be popular, but quickly acquired popularity is neither the test nor the fit reward of literary excellence, such as pervades these charming volumes. They deserve to hold a per- manent place among the best recent works of fiction, and we shall be much disappointed if the public bestow upon diem only such alight attention as is due to the average run of novels, things which fulfil their natural destiny when they are languidly skimmed over in idle moments, and speedily consigned to oblivion. We believe, however, that it ;All be impossible for the most blase reader of novels to regard this one with indifference, or to get through its first chapter without experiencing an unwonted de- gree of interest which will grow upon him as he proceeds. The author departs, as we have intimated, from established custom in not making marriage the climax of the story. The wooing and wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Asheton, with all their concomitants, are despatched in the first two hundred pages of the first volume, and then slowly come the evil days—but happily not to last to the close—which the reader had but too surely foreboded when he saw Marion Flower, " a perfect woman nobly planned," give her hand to Godfrey Asheton, with the earnestness, the devotion, and the love of the angels she so much resembled. In the character and habits of the bridegroom as described in the opening chapter, lies the key to the whole ;tory. He is an only son, blessed with wealth, health, strength, and comeliness, his age seven-and-twenty when we first make his acquaintance, and hear him exclaim as he gazes on a lovely landscape, every inch of it his patrimony,—" So beautiful, so fair a world, yet so barbarous a race to inhabit it ! " His one great misfortune is that man delights not him, nor woman either, save only those few men and women who bear the con- secrated name of Asheton.
" Born with every advantage that the most favoured son of Fortune could • 'rr. and Mrs. Asheton. By the Author of " Margaret and her Bridesmaids," &c. In three volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett. Bentley Priory. By Mrs. Hastings Parker. In three volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett. desire, few were so truly unfortunate in the results. His wealth but fed the morbid exclusiveness of his feelings—his position helped to prevent that collision with the world which a profession would have forced upon him. And his family heaped up atone upon stone of pride and prejudice, until he was walled in behind a mass of habits, rules, and ceremonies, that destroyed every chance of his being happy himself; or making others so.
" Yet was he gifted from birth with kindly dispositions, a generous heart, a frank nature ; in the school of over-refinement and fastidious no- tions he had not yet discovered the use of such good qualities. He was clever, but his talents were useless, being entangled in a net of prejudices. He felt that yearning or vacancy of brain and heart, which a really good and fine disposition will experience when its possessor leads an idle and use- less life, but he had not the slightest conception how to rid himself of it. Had he been advised to mix with his fellow mortals, and partake of their du- ties and pleasures, he would have shuddered as children do at nauseous physic, and turned from the adviser with gentlemanly and courteous dis- gust. For, let him be ever so bored—let him have a sudden and unexpected encounter with loud, healthy, and irrepressible vulgarity, he always acted with the utmost refinement of politeness. Though suffering tortures men- tally, he, fortunately born an Asheton, never forgot it. They were not without the idea (which, though unspoken, was nevertheless an accredited notion among them) that Ashetons had been created, and born among, and lived with the rest of the world, as shining lights for the purpose of show- ing what it ought to contain, and that, but for these Ashetons, it would sink at once into a receptacle for clods of the very earth from which they came; an immense bore to the Ashetons, and a grievance that put a mark upon all their countenances, sealing them with the unmistakable stamp of elevated noses and declining mouths. And it was in reference to the per- petuating the race of Asheton, a gift so necessary to the world, that was putting young Mr. Asheton into an extra state of pettishness and disgust this lovely -July morning." It is easy to foresee that such a man as this will have to learn from bitter experience the blindness of his self-conceit. The best that can be hoped for him is that the lesson may not be learned too late to enable him to repair the evil wrought by his folly.
Bentley Priory is an eminently genteel novel. If there be any question of the fact, we appeal to the best apprecia ors of the class of literature to which it belongs, and sure we are :hat there is not a lady's maid or a gentleman's gentleman in the realm,
who will not unhesitatingly confirm our assertion. This novel is .
genteel in its personages, their ways and surroundings ; its
strictly correct moral sentiments, and the decorous amplitude of phrase—a spread of verbal crinoline as it were—in whin they are dressed for good company ; in the serene atmosphere of the con- ventional paradise, fit habitat for earthly gods, to whi h it tran- sports us ; in its polished exemption from such incongruous ele- ments as stirring incidents, eventful situations, or dramatic development of character ; in its smooth evasion of everything that could excite strong, and therefore vulgar, interest or emo- tion ; in the pretentious nothingness of its frequent dialogues, and the scraps of French and Italian with which they are thickly interlarded ; and oh ! it is "killing genteel," as the Irish song says, in its uniform and inconceivable dulness and insipidity.
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