RESTORED.*
THE author of Restored only needed a somewhat more masculine- knowledge of life, or a pen more daring in the cause of truth, to. have written a durable work. The idea is excellent ; it is that of an- English Sintram, cursed from birth with defect of nature and with taint of blood, who yet succeeds by the help of one good relative. and his own unremitting endeavour in conquering his hereditary vices, and redeeming both the inward and the outward order of' his life. This idea is worked out with great clearness, with much, picturesqueness, and to a triumphant result ; but the writer's hand% lacks the force for the resolute handling of dirty things. In Sin- tram the conduct of that story is wildly ideal. Death and sin are ghastly phantoms, overcome by the youthful hero with super- natural aid of an angel mother. The epoch and the country, the moral and material armour of Sintram, are all far removed from ours. In Restored we are brought face to face with the corrup- tions of an English squire ; and if we make the criticism that he is. notof sufficiently coarse flesh and blood, it is because the book is- so noble that we are fain to regard it from the stand-point of true- art, and not from that of the circulating library.
Here is the plot. Mr. Malereward, of Malereward Park, had, been twice married; by his first wife lie had a son, Harry ; by hie, second, the sister of a Cornish parson, he had a boy and girl, whom, on their broken-hearted mother's death, he gives up to their uncle. Victor and Frederica (commonly called Freddy) are capitally and truly drawn in their wild home by the sea,— a good natural girl and boy, such as the writer has known. and seen. A fine figure, too, is the sternly-chiselled Rector of Tregarva, a figure full of breathing chastity and adherence- to duty. Happy they who have known, if but once in their lives, such a man, to whom the memory may daily turn, as to a constant rest. In grievous disaccord with this group- stands Mr Malereward, whom we are bid to understand is a violent,. drunken, and profligate squire. His violence is well done ; his drunkenness and profligacy are curiously unreal, for the probable reason that the author never saw at first-hand a drunken profli- * Renato!. By the Author of "Sou and Heir." London: Hurst and 131s,elzett.. gate man. Mr. Malereward has a gamekeeper, who is really an illegitimate son. This Deverel, though good in the main, is taunted by the trouble of the Malereward blood ; but the same 'shrinking from the real portraiture of what is vile causes his portrait to resemble that of the hero of a melodrama, the well. dressed Don Juan, whose worst crimes are set to music. The death -of Henry the heir causes Mr. Malereward to recall Victor ; and the unfortunate boy of sixteen is thus plunged from the pure atmo- aphre of a Cornish rectory right into the corruptions of Malereward Park, where Deverel, touched with pity for his young brother's innocence, tries to shield him from harm. The reader will under- tantl our lawful complaint as to the veracity of the painting of Malereward Park, when we say that the book might be read in the :eohoolroom after hours. So may Sintram or Comus,—so may not Pamela or Clarissa Harlowe, or any book where with the purest intentions a true picture of defeated vice in real life is drawn.
The Episode of Freddy and Stansfeld Erie is very good ; Freddy is as real as real can be,—the girl who reads John Stuart Mill and r ushes across country with the speed of seven-leagued boots that she may catch up the carriage which is bearing away her beloved Victor,—Freddy, motherless and more than fatherless, save for the good uncle who has reared her, has one passion in life,—her brother. She is of somewhat stouter mould than he, and cherishes him as a. hen her solitary chick. But in an evil hour comes Stansfeld Erie, the handsome, strong-willed, young lawyer of the Malereward family, and he besieges Freddy at a time when she is laid up with a sprained ankle, and is depressed many degrees below her usual level. He makes desperate love to her, and succeeds in arousing in Freddy's heart a sort of frightened and half-angry passion for him, premature as regards her girlish years, for Freddy is one of those 'women who develop late. He will have her, and though uncle Arthur, the kind, true, religious man, sees that all is not right, and tries hard to reverse the decision, Stansfeld Erie carries off his bride. Alas for Freddy! No more expeditions in seven- ieagued boots!. No more john Stuart Mill ! and, what is worse than all, no more brother ! Stansfeld is jealous of Victor ; he sees her passion for him ; her husband is weak in Freddy's heart compared with her love for her childhood's friend. 'The spring unduly bent has sprung back to its former inclination. Freddy would like to keep up with Victor at college ; Freddy would devour comfortably any trifle in the way of mathematics or political economy.. Stansfeld sets her down to do tapestry-work and call on his clients' wives ; and at last he takes advantage of a -dreadful, but, as he well knows, false suspicion hanging over Victor, to forbid all intercourse between him and his wife. How time brought about its revenges we will not tell, only observing that Freddy becomes the mother of a baby, which at first she does not much care for, because it has fallen into her lap while she was as yet too young to have ripened into motherhood ; but she consoles herself by christening it Victor, to her husband's great disgust, who comes home one day to find he has a little son baptized all in a hurry, having been in danger of death, bearing the hated name. It cannot also be agreeable to her husband that she always persists in signing herself " Freddy Malereward Erie." Altogether, this picture of one sort -of "girl of the period" is very delicately and truly done. It -shows what the writer can achieve in depicting what she has seen, for that the book is by a feminine pen there can be no manner of -doubt, But if in pursuit of fact, our authoress really desires to grapple with the darker side of' human life, and to paint such men as Richardson drew and Thackeray hinted, such men as adorned the Court of the Regent, and were the originals of the Marquis of Steyne, we are afraid we must give her the jesting advice to be. -come an Iphigenia in the cause of art and literature. It is only by marrying a Squire Malereward that an English lady can know what he is really like. But the book is an excellent book, and none but perverse critics who like truth above all things will re- gret that this amicable specimen of human nature has been touched with too light and feeble a hand. If he and his home had been quite truly painted, the book most have changed its public, and would have been of dangerous import to the youthf ul Sintrams, girls and boys, to whom it may now be confided without fear.
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