CLOUDES LEY.*

IF the London University, amidst its multitudes of Professors, had established one for Mental Morbid Anatomy, no candidate could have coped with Mr. GOD WIN on that ground. It would seem that Clomdeeleyj Tale. By theAntkor of Caleb Williaeur. 3 vols. /tondos, 1830. he had been long in the confessional, and shrived so many deadly sinners that the language of penitent crime had become his mother tongue. Poets are said to lisp in numbers : we should judge, from Caleb Williams, Mandeville, Cloudesley, and other of this writer's productions, that his earliest essays had been in the last dying speech and confession line. A fit emblem and frontispiece of his novels, would be an unfortunate wretch on the wheel, cursing his errors, and crying out in agony for a drop of water to cool the horrors of a burning tongue, already giving him a foretaste of the pains and penalties of that which was to come. In a short extract made last week from Angelo's Reminiseenees, occurs an anecdotd of FOOTE, who, it seems, had placed before him for dessert after dinner, the spectacle of many hundred flies sticking on treacle or gummed paper, and struggling in the miseries and convulsions of a clammy death : ever and anon the potentate of farce would stretch out his toothpick, and, by a crushing stroke of its blade, put an individual who had .sufficiently amused him out of pain. Had this story been told of the author of Cloudesley, we could have understood it. Other venerable philosophers have been represented in their retirement contemplating the hour-glass and the skull as typical of the brief duration of life, and its speedy and certain end in death ; but Mr. Gonwier should be drawn in the attitude of noting down the mimic writhings of a frog conveniently impaled on a skewer upon his writing-table, as emblematic of that state of man which it seems to be his fixed taste to dwell upon and describe.

Cloudesley is, like the other romances we have mentioned, a black case of conscience. An uncle has cheated his nephew of his birth- right, and he is punished by a life of remorse. He tells the tale of his crime and his sufferings to a convenient auditor, and the public is permitted to hear the secrets of the confessional. This outline is ably filled up by the vigorous octogenarian : the situations are well con- ceived, and the motives and modes of action of the persons of the drama are natural, and exceedingly well described. While no other novel of the author of Caleb Williams impresses us with a higher opinion of his power in tracing the sources of error, and representing the manner and bearing of persons in cases of extreme delicacy, we are far from saying that, on the whole, Cloudesley is a novel which will please the impatient public of the present day. A modern reader must travel with speed through his book ; passions must wait at short distances, like relays of post-horses, to wing him. on his way ; inci- dents must rise up at every turn, to vary the route : he takes no time for reflection—if he ever thinks, it is so mixed up with his reading, that he may be said only just to put out his hand from the carriage- window to take in a plate of sandwiches, or perhaps he despatches his cold chicken as he goes, en route, without losing a moment : so that at any rate he runs a risk of indigestion, however little he may swallow. If any person has witnessed the uneasy condition of a tra- veller accustomed to burning wheels, accidentally caught in one of the "Old Heavy's," a sure but a proverbially slow coach,—such, for in- stance, as that venerable tub that some years ago used to rumble with its eyeless steed between Bath and Gloucester,—he may form a lively idea of the sufferings of a circulating library reader entangled in the nets of Cloudesley. The novel is only in three volumes, and yet such a person would pronounce it the longest book he had ever read in his life. First of all, the author proceeds very methodically. When he introduces an actor who has been concerned in public affairs, he very obligingly gives us considerable political summaries of the history of Europe for the period : thus, in the course of this ro- mance, we get, en passant, a tolerable notion of the history of the world from the birth of Peter the Great to the revolution in isssoesrLe, the country anciently called Greece. These summaries, we allow, are very well done—written neatly, and treated luminously : but what are they to Cloudesley, or Cloudesley to them! The author, of course, has established a little bit of connexion, tied up a small knot, and bound them to his story ; but they are, nevertheless, no part or parcel of the tale. But this is not the only cause of tedium ; the author writes as if he had still to live a hundred years, and in prac- tical opposition to the proverb, " ars Longa vita brevis." He has the air of always saying, " I cannot be hurried "—" let me take my time "—" let us resume "—" lest you should not remember what I told you, I'll tell it to you all over again." Cloudesley, though he gives his name to the novel, is not the hero of it. The person who fills that post is the pseudo Earl of Danvers, the wicked uncle who defrauds the posthumous child of his elder brother of his title and estates. After the lapse of many- years, and after submitting to great domestic misfortunes, which have taught him the vanity of the objects of his ambition, he narrates the his- tory of his crime to a young man whom he proposes to employ as an agent of communication between himself and his defrauded nephew. Cloudesley is the accomplice of Lord Danvers : he had been the con- fidential servant of the late lord, and after his death he joined the uncle in concealing all traces of the heir. The obscurity of the mar- riage of the elder brother with a Greek lady, Irene—a sweet charac- ter — and the circumstances of his death in Austria, render the scheme easy of accomplishment. Cloudesley has the, bringing up and education cf the injured child, to whom he becomes passionately attached, and whose rights, the rights which he had mainly contri- buted to defraud him of, he ultimately determines to establish. The change in Cloudesley's feelings towards the boy, his whole beha- viour to him, the analysis of their nature and cause, and his subse- quent proceedings, are altogether admirably depicted. This portion of the work is worthy of the author's fame, taken at the highest: we would venture to name it as his ebeltdceuvre. Besides this consi- derable branch of the story, there are many others greatly deserving of praise., We much admire the melancholy history of the unhappy father's domestic affliction; the criminal lord, who sees his beautiful children drop off one by one, and in each blow of death feels the chastisement of his crime. The character of the Greek ladies is also charming : so is the sketch of the chivalrous disposition of tlw elder brother, who is shot in a duel. The part of Borromeo, a blunt and misanthropical Italian, which we perceive has been selected as point et appui for the puffs, we cannot admire: it is a very imperfect out- line, which, to be natural or even intelligible, wants at least filling up. The narrator of the-whole story, whose name we scarcely know, is but very slightly connected with it incidents ; yet we must say, his share is very artfully sustained: we do not accuse him of imperti- nence,—though the history of his adventures at the Court of Russia does undoubtedly- look like the commeneement of an abandoned de- sign. It has no relation to the rest of the book. This is very like life, where events and persons do not come round so nicely as in ro- mances ; but the novelist is, we think, bound to prefer the vraisent- blable to the vrai.

We shall give two favourable specimens of this work, from portions of the story to which we have alluded. The first relates to the in- tercourse between Cloudesley and his injured ward, still a child. His treacherous guardian has taken him to Italy, where he falls ill.

"Cloudesley and his family had lived nearly three years in Italy, when Julian was seized with the small.pox. For a day or two before the disease mani- fested itself, he appeared exceedingly indisposed, was in a high fever, and slept but little, and that uneasily, and with restless and convulsive stertir°ers. The little fellow laboured under great depression of spirits, and exiiressed a pre- sentiment that he should die. Cloudesley and Eudocia were alarmed with his situation, and treated him with the utmost tenderness, overwhelmed as they were with the apprehension in what way the symptoms they observed would terminate. They had no children of their own ; the beha.viour of Julian had been at all times kind, affectionate, and amiable; he had never, till now, given them a moment's pain ; and their lives seemed bound up in the life of the child.

" On the evening of the second day, about sun-set, he became more trait- quil and serene. lie felt exceedingly weak, but was able to collect his little thoughts. Eudocia was in tears; and Cloudesley had hold of the child's hand, and gazed on his countenance with disturbed thoughts and anxious

observation. Julian looked first at the one, and then at the other. My dear mother I ' said he, my dear father l do not afflict yourselves for me. I think I shall die ; and I can bear that very well. If I die, I. shall be happy. Our Saviour loved little children, and said, of such is the kingdom of I leaven. But I cannot bear to see you uneasy. Of what consequence arn If If I had lived, it should have been my study to recompense the great trouble you have taken about me. I have nothing to recollect in all my life, but y.eir perpetual goodness and kindness to me. Cheer up, mv dear parents ! Do not make death bitter to me, by the sight of your sorrow I Gad will bless you

because you are good. Lay me in the cold ground ; put the sod over ; and return; and be happy in each other ! Oh, how you deserve to he happy!' " The words of the child were intended for comfort and consolation. But they were so affectionate and so resigned, that they produced something of a contrary effect. At intervals both Cloudesley and Eudocia betrayed their feelings in sobbing. But they endeavoured to restrain themselves. And, when he had ended his kind expostulations, they dried their eyes, kissed him, and smiled upon him as they smoothed his pillow. He had a sweet and composed sleep. Towards morning, the poison that lurked within hims broke out, and showed itself upon his body, his limbs, and his face. From that hour he grew better. The distemper was of a favourable sort ; every thing turned out well ; and finally, not one mark remained in his face of this criti- cal visitation.

"When the child was lying, as they thought, in the most alarming situa- tion, and which would probably terminate in death, the conscience of Cloudesley (lid not fail bitterly to accuse him of his misconduct towards the little victim. ` Here he is,' said he, 'like a Iamb brought out to the sacri- fice. I am his murderer; and he thinks me his friend, and calls me his father. I ought to have stood by him, •velien every one deserted him. Was not my late lord my great benefactor, who took me from a jail among felons, and made me his companion and friend ? He confided in me, and felt sure that I would suffer no harm to happen to him or his, which it might be in my power to prevent. I had a right, it may be, to think ill of tile human species, and to regard war as declared between me and my kind. But this should only have bound me a thousand times the more to rnygenerous master, who assuredly never did me any thing but good. And what have I done in return ! Why, when this child was deprived of every friend, and lay at my mercy, while in his infant form was centred every claim to my humanity and my gratitude, I conspired with his enemies to destroy him. Who can doubt, that, if I had stood up in his favour with a firm and a manly mind, the conspiracy would have been quashed, or rather would never have existed ? He would have been acknowledged, as he was born, an Irish peer, and in near prospect to an English earldom. An ample provision would have been awarded him by the laws of his country, out of the estates to which he was born to succeed. But I have said him, as Judas sold his Saviour, for a miser- able pittance of dirty pelf. FIe would have bad guardians appointed him, and have been taken care of as a British nobleman. All this was in my power ; and what glory should I have acquired, by dissipating, even in em- bryo, every plot that was hatching against him ? 1 could have placed him under the protection of Prince Eugene, and the English ambassador, and the imperial court of Vienna. He would then never have contracted this fatal disease, in a corner so remote from his true country, here to perish unac- knowledged and unknown, lie would have lived, and.not thus have been cut off in the morning of his days. He would have entered in due time upon the career of honour, and his name would perhaps have been consecrated to the latest posterity in the page of history. Can I ever forgive myself? Am I

not the most consummate of criminals, blasted with e towards the noblest of masters, and at the same time guilty of the murder of the sweetest and most promising child that was ever born to breathe the vital air?'

" It was about twelve months after this, that Cloudesley himself was taken ill. He had been engaged in a hunting-party ; the chase was long; and he had come home exceedingly heated, and quite worn out with fatigue. He had retired early to bed ; but, before morning, all the symptoms of a virulent fever showed themselves in him, lie was 'delirious for several days; and it was only by the care of a very skilful physician that he was at length restored. Julian was, to the extent of his power, his indefatigable attendant. Not Eudocia herself was more careful ; and the patient, when insensible to every thing else, always showed tokens of being particularly soothed by the kindness of the boy. Julian watched all his symptoms with unwearied care ; when they appeared most threatening, he would for a few moments leave the room, that he might indulge in a passion of tears ; and, when they were favourable, his eye would glisten, his cheek was suffused with a glow of intense pleasure, anl he would give vent to his feelings by running to eta-

brace his pretended mother. When Cloudesley was recovering, the conva- lescent a thousand times called up to his recollection those beautiful verses • of Shakspeare :—

" /le with his band at midnight held my head;

A ad, like the watchful minutes to the hour, Still and anon cheered up the heavy time,

Saying, What lack you/ and, Ni'here lies your grief?

Or what good love may I perform for you Many a poor man's son would have lain still,

And neer have spoke a loving word to him—

But I, at my sick service, had a prince."

The next is a beautiful and affecting passage, describing the loss of his children by the guilty father. None but a father—nay, we had almost said, a grandfather, whose love for his successors increases ill a geometrical ratio—could write so touchingly of children, their little ways, and the heavy blank they leave in a parent's heart when they die.

Eleven years have now elapsed since I first received the letter from Cloudesley, which threatened me with what I regarded as the consununation of mortal evils. That consummation did not arrive. But in what respect was I the better ? The expectation of what is tremendous is perhaps more dreadful than the event. Ile who is cast prostrate to the earth can fall no lower. If I had been driven from the society of my fellow men, if I had in- habited a wretched hovel on a barren heath, if I had had nothing to subsist on but the roots that my own hand had cultivated, if I had known that, wherever my name was repeated among the inhabitants of earth, I was regarded as a monster, betraying the most sacred trust, and perpetrating the most cold-hearted villainy, 1 should then have known the worst. There is a principle in human nature by which the sufferer in almost all cases reconciles himself to what is inevitable, is complete, and cannot be reversed. He looks round, and considers rather what he has left than what he has lost. He ga- thers up the fragments of the wreck ; he arranges them along the walls of his cell ; he says to himself, This is my dowry and inheritance for the remainder of my existence ; he desperately adapts himself to the hardness of his for- tune, aud considers how he shall nalssi the best of it.

" But the man who, every morning that he wakes, wakes with a dull, aching pain, with a mighty depression of spirits, with an indescribable load weigh- ing at his heart, and who, after a few moments, recollects what all this means, and what he has to expect, lie is truly a wretch. Expectation, fearful ex;-:ectation, is to him the vulture of Prometheus preying on his liver, which still grows again as fast as it is devoured. his wound is ever fresh ; no time con a it ; no balm has the virtue to skin it over. I knew not on what day the final tills:shiei would arrive; hut I had an assured conviction that arrive it must.

" Yet niy days and my hours were not all of sorrow. I had a wift, the most exemplary of her sex ; I had children that improved every day in to- wardli !less and beauty. I looked upon them, and was joyfril : I looked a second time, and my agonies grew a thousand times the fiercer, because I had such relations and holds on my affection. Fool that I was ! Why had I not had the courage to take the hard lot which I had brought upon myself, alone, and without involving others in the miseries that awaited me ? Vil- lain and poltroon that I was ! What right had I to embark all these innocents among the storms that were engendered by my crime ? " My wife had borne me a son and a daughter, before.the time in which I received Cloudesley's letter ; she brought me two more childeen, one of either sex, afterwards. They were as beautiful as the day, and not less affectionate and docile than they were beautiful. You have seen the youngest. What was there wanting to make me the happiest of men ? Yet I was miserable. I have lost the whole of this family, one by one, except this last.

" My children vere exactly similar in constitution the one to the other, cast, as I may say, in one mould. They came into the world with every pro- mise of health, of vigour, and of living to the farthest period of human ex- istence. They knew no sickness, were for ever joyous and happy from morning till night. Their limbs were formed in the most exquisite propor- tion, and their cheeks were marked with the roses of health. Intelligence and sweetness rivalled each other in their infant counterances. They grew from month to month, and from year to year, in stature,' and, as it should seem, in favour with God and man.' Every added season appeared to he productive of a new tendril, twining itself round the heart of their father

and mother. Their first essays to walk, to hurry with doubtful, eager steps from the arms of parent to parent sitting at a little distance from each other, their unassured lispings of articulate sound, and attempts to give to each of

us an appropriate, endearing name, were delicious beyond the power of words to describe. Their learning to read, and all the little lessons we excited them to commit to memory and repeat, were an inexhaustible source of entertain- ment to us. Their gambols on the turf, their races after one another, their wrestling in sport, their struggles for mastery, their tumbling and rising, and the cheerful laughter that crowed in their little throats, and ran over from their eyes, we could sit for hours to observe. To these wild and lawless amusements, the jargon of the babe, succeeded, in due course of years, the song and the dance, the musical instrument and the pencil. In all they gave us satisfaction.

"We were the most gratified of parents, till my eldest boy had nearly com- pleted the eleventh year of his age. We then gradually perceived an altera-

tion in his health. -His checks burned with a low fever. is nights were marked with profuse perspiration. His flesh daily wasted away. His 'I'- petite decayed. He grew languid and averse to activity and exertion. Our anxiety respecting him became extreme, and we consulted a multitude of physicians. They knew not how to account for his disease, and called it atrophy. We tried change of air, and bathing in all its forms. Nothing

was of the smallest service to him. The malady proceeded with gigantic strides ; and in less than two months from the first attack, he was a corpse.

It was almost impossible to conceive so perfect a skeleton as he was when his body was stretched on the bier. At first he appeared to suffer much from the inroads and tediousness of the disease, the lengthened days and sleepless nights. But he never murmured, and was always anxious to relieve the un-

easiness of his parents. And, when he died, it was without a struggle. it was in a manner impossible to discern when the final change took place. He

expired ata beautiful watering-place in the south of Ireland ; and we deposited his remains in a vault appertaining to the barons of Alton in our own parish.

" Ills scarcely in words to express the grief that Selina and myself felt for Iris loss. He was our first born, the heir to all my titles and estates, and the heir in reversion to the rank and property of the elder branch of my family in England. Such he would infallibly have proved if he had lived, unless a certain fatal reverse had occurred, of the possibility of which Selina had no suspicion, and which I could scarcely be said seriously to have expected. He was two years older than our next child, a daughter ; and our hearts were bound up in the life of the boy. "But, beside the direct sorrow with which this event afflicted us, it al- tered all our views and feelings on the point of domestic comfort. Life and death are conceptions of a peculiar sort; we habitually combine the idea of death with that of an age in a certain degree advanced ; this is what we call the course of nature ; we know that every man's time must come, and that all must die, nut, when we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the,

mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us. Infancy is indeed subject to peculiar perils ; but my sun had outlived the hazards of infancy. Parents who lose their children in infancy, for the most part endure their loss with philosophy. The children in so short a period had not had time to entangle them in a thousand webs, to become the heart of their hearts. But at eleven years of age the case is totally dif- ferent. We have watched their stature, the unfolding of their limbs, the growing feeling and thought that speak in their eye their accumulating pro- ficiency. I began to regard my boy almost as a companion ; I asked his thoughts upon a variety of questions ; I drew hints for deliberation from his innocent and guileless suggestions. I began to connect the thought of him with the idea of the world, to consider what would be the destination and fortune of his manhood, in what occupation or pursuit he would be likely to prove most happy or most honoured. Every year he loved his parents, better; every year we loved him more. All this was suddenly extinguished. In less than two months we saw him decline from the most enviable health ; be became a corpse; and the earth hid him for ever from our sight. "The loss of my son had introduced a new inmate under our roof—this was the grim spectre, Death. Hitherto our residence had been sacred ; it seemed as if he dared not invade it. The customary suits of solemn black,' usual in families, so that such as are easy and luxurious in their circum- stances are induced to lay up in readiness what may be called for at a short notice, were entirely unknown at Dunmaine. • Death came to us a stranger- guest from a far country, never before seen within our walls. We did not place a chair at our social board for our ever to be regretted son ; but in spite of that omission, we felt that there was a vacant place, and that place always seemed to be tenanted by the fearful enemy to our peace. He for ever bran- dished his dart, and we knew not whom he would strike next.

" We watched with indescribable anxiety over our remaining children. We were like persons whose house had been robbed of its most valuable pro- perty with circumstances of peculiar atrocity, who find a voice in every wind, and who, if a stair does but creak, expect the next moment to see ruffians, armed with cutlasses and bludgeons, bursting their chamber-door, and standing by their bedside. Every wind that breathed, every shower that fell, might be the outpost of the foe descending from the mouutains, and might bring pestilence and desolation on its wings. We never felt secure. We watched the flushed cheek, and the heavy eye; an interrupted perspiration filled us with alarm ; and a cough shook us to our inmost soul. But all our terrors were nugatory. The children that remained to us had every appear- ance of doing well, and living long; their high spirits, and from time to time even their boisterous mirth, seemed to mock at the timidity which haunted us in all our enjoyments. Thus we went on for the space of two years.

"At length the enemy came. My pretty Teresa complained one evening that she felt herself quite out of order, and that she had a violent pain in her side. We put her to bed. She will be well to-morrow, I said. Remember, Selina, how often we have teased ourselves with useless forebodings l—She was not well to-morrow. Another and another day came, but brought with it no amendment. Her symptoms had a frightful resemblance to those of her lamented brother. Selina attended her with the most unremittcd perse- verance. She did every thing she could devise to inspire the child with cheerfulness and hope.

" But, when Selina withdrew from the couch of the suffering and affec- tionate Teresa, and found herself alone with me, she no longer put a curb on her anguish. ' I see it all she said. 'There is a black and noisome vapour that hangs over our house, which nothing can drive away or disperse. Ex- actly at this age our son sickened. Exactly at the same age all our children shall perish. To an unobserving and superficial spectator our two youngest still appear full of health and of promise. I see them even now the ghosts of themselves. To my maternal and prophetic soul they exhibit the parched and withering surface, that indicates the internal fire which consumes them. Death has surprised our castle, and has already planted his stations and his sentinels, securing to him the perpetual possession. An inexorable Provi- dence has given us children, that greatest of earthly blessings, only that they may insensibly mix with our blood, and identify themselves with every fibre of our frames, that they may become the substance of our lives, and the air that we inhale ; and that, when this incorporation has been completed, they may be taken from us, that the main pillars upon which our house reposed may be struck away, and the whole be made a heap of rubbish, and a monu- ment of desolation.'

" Teresa expired, even as her brother had died, the same mere skeleton, the same shrivelled assemblage of bones with a covering of skin. From the period of this melancholy event Seliaa never looked cheerful, or recovered her former self. Yet the uninterrupted constitution el things held on its course, alike indifferent to our hopes and alarms. We had now only two children remaining; but they, with the buoyant spirits of youth, soon forgot their former companions, and were as frolicsome and playful as if those companions had not even already sat. in the clouds, and beckoned to the others to come after them. Selina, however, as I have said, was never con- soled ; and the burthen of her complaint was, I see myself childless. Ishave lived in vain,—for it is the province, the glory, the function of woman on earth, in sorrow to bring forth children, and so to rear them that with credit and honour they may occupy their place in the rising generation, and equal at least—it is to be hoped more than equal—the parents that gave them birth. IS is impossible that I can survive the pernicious blast that is sweeping away our house!—Thus was Selina like the patriarch's sultana-wife in the Scrip- tures : In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and much weeping, Rachel that wept for her children, and refused to be comforted.' "