is a family likeness between thole two books. Both of
them introduce us to some very respectable society, and both aim at ,gratifying the popular taste of the day for excitement, with or without art. So far as it has gone, the present spring has not pro- duced a single novel which will live until this time next year, and we do not suppose that either Lady Chatterton or Captain Bere.sford will be disappointed when we inform them that their works are not likelyto be handed down to a very remote posterity. The story which Lady Chatterton has to tell is very full of love and adventure. A young girl thinks she h as given her heart to her cousin Charlie, who disappears in a mysterious manner at the threshold of the book, just as another cousin named Audley enters upon the scene. This Audley is so handsome that we are expressly told all the young lathes fell in love with him when he went to church, and it is therefore not surprising that the heroine, Lora Grey, follows the general example. She has 5,000/. a year, and Audley is heavily in debt—consequently her preference for the young man is not disagreeable to him, and they marry, Charlie of course being pushed aside to make way for the new love. So far this is strictly in the order of common events. It is not very long before Andley contrives to run through his wife's fortune, and Charlie's also, who is supposed to be dead, not without strong grounds for suspicion that Audley had a hand in helping him to his end. One day a friend of her husband's comes to Lora, informs her of Auclley's ruin, and offers to clear him of his debts if she will receive his attentions. Naturally the lady feels faint and desires the intruder to leave the room. Unexpectedly the missing Charlie comes to life again, and goes to his "ancestral home," only to find his betrothed married to another, where- upon he describes his own sensation as follows :—" Regnier, I am weary, weary in mind and body, heart and souL Were it not that I dare not offer to God of that which would cost me nothing, the world in its restricted sense should see me no snare." Perhaps the world in its unrestricted sense, whatever that may be, might have seen him again, but he does not enter into further particulars. He goes away without having seen the faithless one, and presently, Audley having disgraced himself as far as a man can well do, and the authoress (after the instinct of her sex) having made all sorts of excuses for him, he gets shot in a duel, and so makes an end. As all novel-readers will anticipate, Charlie marries Lora, and they give themselves up to future felicity.
That is the story, and it is not told without many of those little digressions which are thought to have a very soothing effect upon young ladies. Love alone will not make a dish to their taste ; it must be sugared over with tender and gentle reflections. Thus we 'have the following delightful thought upon autumn :—" The work of nature is done, and the bright red and yellow leaves, dancing in the slanting and parting sunbeams, seem like glorified spirits liberated from the trials and responsibilities of this world, and fluttering away to scenes brighter still. All seems to breathe of rest—that delightful word. Oh! that we may be worthy to enter into that rest !" This is a very proper sentiment, and it will cause the work to be much admired by good people. We confess, however, that it never before occurred to us that a withered leaf was like a glorified spirit, but as we have only seen one of these objects, and Lady Chatterton may have seen both, we do not venture to dispute the justice of her comparison. Here is another pretty thought :—" If dreams are (and if they are not, what are they?) crooked growths from the waking thoughts of the day, as branches sprout from the trunk of a tree, why is it that notori- ously they often come from an opposite direction?" In order to answer this question it is necessary to understand it, and we much regret that we are not in that favourable position. If dreams are crooked growths, Sm., why is it they come from an opposite direc- tion? We can only answer in the solution which Dickens's "Jack Bunsby " had for all difficulties of this kind, "If so, why not ?" What "opposite direction" is referred to? And why should not dreams come from thence, wherever it may be, as well as from anywhere else? But we must not attempt to enter into verbal criticism with a lady who can quote Greek so charmingly as Lady Chatterton. This is something really new in this description of a young lady's charms, which completely silences cavil :—" Lora's . . richly-coloured eyes looked (what shall I call it?) conditional scorn—decided scorn dependent on something undecided ; her eyes • Grey's Court. Bitted by Georg:alas La' Dhanerton. Two vols. London: Smith, Eider, and Co. MIS.
Hoods and Masks Di Captain Cl. do In Poor Bereatord. Tbree-vols. London: DAS.
expressed scorn by ay with the optative." Nothing can be more effective than this, except the vengeance which the authoress causes to fall on a Mr. Witherbrain. Thissentleman writes an unfavour- able review of a lady's novel in the newspapers, and the authoress makes him marry the identical lady—.a retribution which may not be strictly poetical, but which is as signal and complete as the most vindictive could desire. The unfortunate reviewer had better have married a woman whose eyes expressed her passion by " in the optative," and that must be bad enough for any average criminal.
Of Captain G. de la Poer Beresforcl's book the author has placed it out of our power to give a very intelligible account. A good many people are killed in it one way or another, and the manner of their death is described in language which would be an ornament to the walls of any slaughter-house, if the description was pasted on the walls. After reading a good many passages of this sort one feels a little sick :—" Yes, there he lay, a hideous mass of almost unrecognizable flesh ; congealed masses of dark and eicatrizing blood were everywhere seen ; the under jaw and mouth shapeless, the nose as well as forehead riddled, and in the widely- opened eyes death had imprinted a fixed and malignant scowL" This bloody work was done in a terrible duel, the other party to it being also found by the heroine apparently senseless. But when she addresses him he answers in the following manner, which used
to be much in vogue at Richardson's show That voice again Am I in heaven? Oh, joy! relief ! mercy I let me hear it once again !" Captain G. de la Poer Bereaford's story may be very clever of its kind, but there is one passage in it which is so inco- herent that we defy anybody of ordinary intelligence to follow it, and that passage unfortunately occupies the whole of two volumes. Thus there is a slight difficulty in getting on with the narrative. It is Upon the whole the strangest book mortal man ever tried to read, and if the reader thinks this cannot be so, let him see what he can make of the following extract :—
"It is easy, nay, reasonable, to imagine those brought up and born among these scenes possessing that deep-rooted love of country so fre- quently assigned to the Irish—that love that fatally leads the possessor of some hovel, scarcely worthy of the habitation of one of God's creatures, to commit some foul crime, some ensanguined deed of revenge, to maintain, and which really is incomprehensible to all reasonable and reasoning populations, nevertheless the fact cannot be disputed."
The book is all like this, " which " as Captain G. de la Poer Beresford would say, we do not profess to give an account of the story. We should say that an emended edition of it might be useful in schools as furnishing exercises in grammar, but we are afraid it will not answer so well for mere amusement. But supposing that the reader can get over the incoherency we have mentioned, and has no objection to a good deal of blood, and does not mind the absence of a plot, and takes no interest in the delineation of character—then he may like the tale.
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