'NEW NOVELS.*

THERE is not much essential novelty in The Lag of the Cavaliers., meaning Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee ; while the whole compo- sition and handling of the story is the nearest approaoh to the manner of Scott, that we have ever met. This historical ro- mance, however, is an attractive contrast to the so-called pictures of modern.life ; or the didactic or philosophic tales which have been the fashion for some years past. Nor is the book devoid of merit and interest. The -writer has studied the times, enough to make himself familiar with their historical persons, their outward manners, and their costumes. If he has not seized the chaise- • The Last of the Cavaliers. In three vohnnee. Published by Bentley. " AurheneDSehaennv, Sherwood." in PInoputleiter vfolummeache.r;puahlisTalheed bay7SauBendrentieranAdikOw.t.10"1:41".4.1 tents."lish als. ad b

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teristies of the age, why neither did Scott, whose men and women differ from us rather in externals than essentials. The idea of the story if not original is fresh, and suite removed from com- monplace. The characters are conventional after Scott, with the usual contrast of bigoted Covenanters, and debauched or indiffe- rent Cavaliers, balanced by excellent and moderate persons in the centre ; still they have well defined and appropriate qualities, with even a touch of particular idiosyncracy. The story is rather slow in its movement, and not of an exciting kind. This may be owing to the original idea, and the gleam which the reader gets at the outset, not only from a scene of second sight, in which a dying woman predicts her future to the heroine, but from the nature of the elements themselves. There is, however, a solidity about the successive scenes, which excite and support an interest, if not of the rapid kind. The reader must not from these remarks expect a very great historical romance. The Last of the Cavaliers is a skilful repe- tition rather than a mere imitation of Scott ; but it is not more. Scott has suggested the idea, the matter, and the mould, in which the matter should be cast, as well as the style of design. The author well embodies these suggestions, though with a little of the heaviness which always attends a copyist ; but he possesses some of his prototype's romantic power in the contrivance of scenes and the management of incidents. And the difference be- tween romance and the drama, or the novel of life, seems really to consist in this : in both the drama or the novel we should have the quintessence of the real ; the events to a great extent should reflect the actual, where men have to struggle with difficulties, often sink under them, or if they overcome them, achieve their triumph by vigorous exertion. In romance, things happen as we wish, and not so much by luck, for that operates in life, as in the form of the sanguine expectation most of us dream about, and the very youthful hope to realize. The good are to be rescued by means neither obvious nor natural, (in the sense of usual,) but strikingly. The bad are to be punished in like manner, and at a moment when their villany seems triumphant. More or less of the melodramatic is almost of necessity mixed up with these pro- cesses. In Scott's first three novels, he perhaps eschewed. it ; • but he began with touches of melodrama in Rob Roy, and went on increasing the dose till particular readers had too much of it. Inconsistency, not so much of character as of conduct, is likewise to be looked for in romance. In the drama or epic, kings, he- roes, and "such great dons as these," seldom appear by accident and in masquerade, at the precise moment they are wanted, to rescue some distressed damsel, save some lover from danger or death, or condemn the villain of the piece to disgrace or punish- ment. But in romance they do ; it is what they are created for, and those who rescue, those who are rescued, and those who are baffled, comport themselves as people seldom do in actual affairs. They remind us of those coups de theatre by which " the thunders" are brought down ; and soothe to say they please those who perceive their improbability. Such is the case in the opening of the book before us ; where three young guardsmen in various degrees of in- toxication, seize the heroine, benighted in the streets of Edin- burgh, and are bearing her off. Then Claverhonse appears upon the scene in the very nick of time, rescues the lady, restores her from her faint, sees her home most attentively, and next day dis- misses the service and banishes by his ipse dixit the chief offender, a relation of the Earl of Perth. In a subsequent and contemptu- ous interview with that nobleman, Claverhouse lets the reader into the secrets of his power over young Drummond, the guardsman ; which secrets are of a kind that should have sent him to the gal- lows, rather than simply from Edinburgh by voluntary with- drawal.

Although the writer himself indicates the nature of the story at starting, and, from its nature, without any disappointing effect, we will not follow his example, because we cannot do it with the same result in reasonable compass. The chief part of the scene takes place in Scotland, and the time is between the early spring of 1688, and the fall of Dundee at the Battle of Killiecrankie, the social disturbances and public events of the time forming the his- torical romance. The romance itself involves its actors in the re- volutionary currant, but the real interest arises from hopeless loves. Alice Scott the heroine, the daughter of a clergyman has been brought up as the foster child in a noble house. The heir is attached to her but vainly ; and here is the scene, when Alice has rejected him, and informing his lady mother of what has passed, beseeches to be sent home.

"The kind countess, anxious to spare their feelings and her own, gently, yet firmly, disengaged Alice from her daughter's embrace, and left the room with her. They went down stairs without a word, until they had nearly reached the hall, where Lady Glencarrig's chair and two well-armed servants were in waiting. Then the countess stopped, put her arm round Alice, and pressed her to her bosom.

" Alice, I told your mother that if she did not regain her health, you should become my child. I say it once again my daughter. You have acted as few but yourself would have done in this greedy and ambitious generation, as your wise and honest father's child should have done, and ye have earned not my love, it was always yours, but a double share of my esteem and con- fidence. I can do little for you now—no human power can interfere between parent and child—but when she is taken from you (I treat you as a brave and thoughtful woman, Alice, not as a child), when that time comes, ye may call me your mother as freely as though you had stood with my son be- fore God's altar, and I will never fail you.

" ' Dear madam, how good you are !'

"'My bairn, one thing before you go ; you do not love my son. Assure me of that, that I may reproach myself less ; not having, by my imprudence, broken two hearts instead of one. How could I be so bhnd as not to read him better?' I do not; no, Lady Glencarrig, your son is neither more nor less to me than he was ten years sync. Oh, madam, I am so grieved for him ; help him to forget me. The happiest hour I can hope to see will be that in which I hear that he is wedded to one who will know his worth and repay his love.'

"'God knows, it will be a happy one to me,' replied the countess, de- spondingly. And now, Alice, tonight we must delay no longer; but I will see you soon again. Commend me to your mother. God bless and keep thee, my bairn.'

"When Alice was gone, the lady took up her little silver lamp, and re- mounted the staircase on her way back to Flora's room. She was about half way down the gallery when a door leading into a suite of uninhabited rooms opened near, and the earl crossed her path. She stopped with a quick pal- pitation of the heart ; she had not yet had time to think of him, or consider her own line of conduct. Lord Glenearrig also stood still for an instant, then tried to pass on. His mother was in the way. " ' David !' she said.

"He looked almost vacantly at her, but his lips drew together as if he were choking down a sob. " ' Alice is gone, mother.'

" Gone, not to return, of her own free will and desire. David, my son, let me tell you —,' she hurried on, for his face grew dark with pain. " Let me pass, mother.' "'Let me tell you my poor boy —'

"'Mother, I say, 'let me pass. Another time, perhaps, I can hear you. I would not fail in my respect, but if you persist — '

"She gave way, submissively, for she heard his thick, short breath, and saw his pale lips close again; he sprang by, disappearing into the obscurity of the side staircase which conducted to his own apartments, and as she looked after him, with his noiseless tread, his bent figure, his colourless dress, she half-fancied that she beheld some mournful ghost revisiting the scenes of its past sorrows, and not her own bright-eyed, gallant, high- spirited son. "With a look of just such meek endurance as Alice herself might have worn, she pursued her way to her daughter's chamber, to comfort the still weeping girl."

The story of The Dean, or more properly his character, is too exaggerated either as a picture of life, oi for a telling career in fiction ; though to produce this last result seems to have been the object of Mr. Aikin. The eventual Dean and "popular preach- er" of the tale, is an Irish peasant youth, gifted with great person- al advantages, and great intellectual abilities ; he has also innate lofty ambition with miraculous perseverance and determinate will. As a labouring peasant boy he advances as far in learning as the Greek Testament, though by what methods is a mystery. By black ingratitude, arson, and robbery, Mike Moore gets money to support him, though in poverty and privations at Trinity Col- lege, while he studies for honours and the English Church, epos- taey being a mere flea bite. His objects obtained, he next turns up as a powerful evangelical preacher at a town in the north of England. A marriage for love, and the enmity of a widow who has wooed him though in vain render the Reverend Mr. O'Moore by no means happy, while he finds religions fame is more easily obtained than church preferment. However, his wife dies, and his prospects mend He becbmea tutor to: a young lord, acts is a sort of domestic chaplain to his invalid father, gets a living, marries a second time, much more successfully in a worldly point of view, and rises in the church. The remainder of his career is designed to illustrate the author's idea of church parties, and an unprincipled clergyman, who is a hypocrite abroad, and a tyrant at home a little misappropiation of charitable donations being addecta his other peccadilloes. Surely much of this is not only contrary to the likelihoods of life and natural probability, but is needlessly exaggerated. The extraordinary abilities and energy of Mike are barely possible in their successful exertion : biography can show a few such exam- ples in learning ; but we do not remember a ease where learning and literary or oratorical success, were combined with social and worldly advancement, without some early patronage of some kind. The story of Life's Foreshadowings, in last week's Spectator, was not remarkable, as a true reflection of life ; but the subscription of neighbouring gentlemen to give a poor lad an education is in it- self a probable enough fact, and when a profession is in view, less ability and perseverance than Michael aloore's are started on a career. Some such plan as this would have been more effective, as being more natural, than the scheme concocted by Mr. Aikin; and would have removed the stigma of ingratitude and crime from the future dean which, in a tale, are quite other things from a worldly ambition or intense selfishness. This critical de- fect becomes a practical fault in the working. We hear of the dean as a popular preacher and saintly "creeper into houses to lead captive silly women," but we miss the religious unction ; he rather appears as what he is drawn, a man of intellect and power, who, by the by, scarcely seems to attain the position and prefer- ment he is entitled to by nature. Neither are his life and clerical career consistent. His misdoings are not enough connected with the Church, or with the apparent object of the writer as to Church parties. Amid a life in which conscience, feeling, and family duties are alike put aside for hard aggrandizement, flashes of a high and generous spirit occasionally burst out, and such as are more congruous with the intellectual nature of Michael Moore. This appears especially towards the end ; when he has been brought to see the error of his ways and determines to ascend the pulpit, knowing it is for the last time. The worldly web he has woven with so much pains is closing upon himself ; his health has broken, and conscience is asserting her power. The son John, who is with him, is one of his children whose character or happi- ness he has just not sacrificed to his ambition.

"'The curtain will soon fall on the closed drama, the chorus is tired and the lamps die out ' ! said the Dean. Don't leave me John tillthe stage is dark, quite dark, and the mourners go about the streets ' !

"'Father I will never leave you while I breathe ; no duty shall be strong enough to call me away from you. But tell me, tell me by the dear love I bear you, is all peace ? Are you happy'? The old man's lips guiver- ed, his eyes were suffused with mist, and his white head sank on his son's breast, but he spake no word. Suddenly he lifted up his head again : I will preach tomorrow John ' ! " Father, I entreat you not to do it' ! " I will preach tomorrow ' ! he repeated.

"There was a large congregation, and a great gathering of young clergy- men present, to hear the Dean's last sermon. He knew that many in the ministry would come and he directed much of his discourse to them. He did not refer to hidiself, but yet he laid bare much of his own soul ; he held up the wolf in sheep's clothing, the false shepherd, to horror and de- testation. He dissected the inmost heart of the -hypocrite, when the gar- ment of lies had been torn off; he bade him tremble lest the curse of leprosy should cleave to him for ever.

"His voice, at first weak and faltering, gathered strength as he pro- ceeded, and rose to solemn grandeur. He told them above all to be manly, straightforward, honest ; honest with God, with men, and their own souls. He told them he knew a man, who rich in all God's good gifts, and with every means of usefulness, fell like Lucifer,. the Son of the Morning, be- cause he had begun life with one dishonest he, and went on lying, to sus- tain that lie ! He told them if they believed the Gospel, to hold fast the cement that bound the stones of the building together, the communion of saints, to belong to no party, to despise and reject no one for his outward garb, but to receive every true soul, as Christ's brother, whether he came dressed in the black robe of the teacher, or the fine white linen that sym- bolizes the righteousness of the saints ; for party spirit,' said the Dean, is the tares which the Devil sows among the Gospel wheat, in the field of the world, to mar and choke its growth.' "lie alluded but slightly to his own closed work, told them they would hear his voice no more nor see his face. They would hear another and a better man, who would feed their souls more worthily. "If the solemnity of the scene or hour had permitted an outburst of feel- ing, there would have arisen the cry of ' No ! no' ! The Dean read those words in the faces of his congregation ; he went on, in answer to their looks.

"The popular preacher is not the man to preach to dying sinners, he forgets his own mortality—how shall he remind them of theirs ? He is his own God, how shall he say to them—' Little children, keep yourselves from idols' ! But if you meet a man who is lowly in his own eyes, who seeks for no other men to bow down to him, listen to his voice ; as for mine, God has silenced it ! Farewell' ?

"And the people wondered, and the Dean went home to die."

This extract will show that Mr. Berkeley Aikin holds a power- ful pen ; but it is not exactly the kind of pen that is thoroughly adapted for the novel. While the author is speaking from him- self all is well ; though he has a shade too much of the periodical or article style. When he has to speak in the character of his persons, something of the exaggeration 'visible in his plot, is felt; it is not the utterance of the dramatis pergola° but of the writer. This characteristic lowers the tone of the work, and reduces the tale to a lesser grade than that on which the mere ability of the author would have placed it.

In some points the Honourable Lena Eden's False and True is an improvement upon her previous fiction of "Easton and its in- habitants." There is a more distinct story ; it is more compactly- put together ; there is more of it, and in it, though it does not rise to very active movement, but in that it may be truer to modern life. The dramatis personte may be less racy and fresh than several characters in the former tale, but they are better adapted for use in a novel, and some of them are distinctly marked. It is, however, curious enough that here, as in Easton, the fashionable persons appear less real than those of humbler life. The heroine's step-mother, Lady Dynely, whose "great ob- ject in life was to be thought an affectionate woman, and had practised the art for so long that she at length perfectly mic- ceeded in persuading herself and several of her friends that she was 'all affection"—the elderly peer Lord Penniston, ;tout, red- faced, good-natured, but not over bright, whom widowed "all affection" contrives to marry—the sour, dissatisfied, Lady Louisa Lonsdale, who is always grumbling, and always with the feel- ings of a genuine grumbler—recall the theatre or the novel, rather than that real life which the Honourable Lena Eden must have seen. The brusque independent ways of the heroine and heiress Pamela Dynely, and the indifference and affectation of the " false" lover Dudley Harcourt,—false alike to the woman he loves and the " fortune " he aims at, are probably originals from nature ; but they are both singular and with no approach to the typical. False and True is a pleasant book, where ease predomi- nates over strength, and sensible perception over anything ap- proaching to deep thought ; but it does not rise beyond the com- mon novel except by the social experience the fair writer may be supposed to possess, and that she does not make the most of.