CARLETON'S TALES.
Foca out of six of these tales have already appeared in the pages of the Dublin University Magazine. The new productions are "Jane Sinclair, or the Fawn of Spring Vale," and "The Cla- rionet."
"Jane Sinclair" is the story of a young girl that, having formed an attachment to a youth who is subsequently unfaithful, goes de- ranged and dies. The moral designed by the author is excellent- " to warn sensitive and sentimental young ladies, that the foolish indulgence of a first affection, and the nursing it into the great business of their lives, is not only a piece of egregious folly, so far as they themselves are concerned, but also a source of calamity— and not unjustly so—to those parents and relatives who choose to make pets of them in soft and sentimental nonsense." This moral, however, is not well illustrated. Jane Sinclair is not only, as Mr. CARLETON says, a "sweet, amiable creature," but with a peculiar character in mind, and a peculiar constitution of body. Her intense susceptibility of sudden impressions—the ten- derness, or if it pleases better the weakness of ber disposition— and the delicacy of her organization, all show a nervous irrita- bility and constitutional delicacy foredoomed to early death ; or which can only be saved by a mixture of medical and moral appli- ances—change of air, regimen, exercise, and mental training—such as few physicians and parents can carry out even if they had the means. Hence no general moral is impressed, because every one will say this case is so singular that it touches not me. The exe- cution of the tale, too, is over-elaborated. The incidents being
few and slight, the author has endeavoured to produce effects by minute painting of pettinesses, which too frequently degenerates into fine-drawn verboseness ; as well as by the insertion of his own reflections, that, however just or well-expressed, are too devoid of novelty and force to set off the other parts of the composition.
"The Clarionet" is a tale of very humble life. Two children, a boy and a girl, are left orphans in a poor Irish village ; the boy being blind. The mutual sympathy of isolation and distress attracts them as children, and subsequently ripens into affection : after troubles, springing from ill-founded jealousy and illness, they marry, and go forth into the world to depend upon the clarionet-playing of the husband : the career of the pair, which had previously been fully developed, being thence briefly touched upon till its close. This tale seems as peculiar as the other ; and in a narrow view it is so ; but it takes in a wider range, and touches deeper and healthier sympathies—the sufferings, the hopes, the happiness of the poor, conjoined with the charity, patience, and religious submission, that form so redeeming a trait in the character of many of the Irish. The death of the blind child's parents—the deep melancholy aris- ing from their loss and his own privations—the ill-usage and suf- ferings the orphan submissively undergoes from the poverty of the persons who took him from charity, and find him as he grows up so heavy a burden—the all-pervading nature of his affection for Jane, and his agony when he fancies he has lost her—together with many incidental scenes, are drawn with great skill and power, toned with deep pathos. Nor is there any thing harsh or sordid in the paint- ing of the darker parts : when the temper of Willy's protector breaks out, it is violent, not brutal. At the same time, the story has this peculiarity—that we have as it were the poetry of poverty : every thing connected with it is elevated and spiritualized, even to the dialogue, which is divested of brogue through preserving its idiom. And we mention this more distinctly, because some de- viation from nature, most generally shown in a glaring peculiarity of character, is a rock which Mr. CARLETON has a tendency to run against. Fardorougha, Jane Sinclair, the Clarionet-player, are all persons with some natural peculiarities carried to excess through peculiar circumstances ; and however powerfully singu- larities may be drawn, they have no permanent hold upon the mind—nothing pleases us long but true representations of general nature.
We have not space, in this stirring time, for any scenes from "The Clarionet-player " ; but here is an example of the author's philosophy.
BALANCES OF BLINDNESS.
Many have asserted, that those who happen to be deprived of sight after that period of life from which they can date what it is to see, are necessarily more unhappy than those whose spirits are troubled by no such memory. It is said that they are far more capable than the others of estimating in its fulness the extent of their affliction. The blind who remember sight certainly repine more acutely than those who do not. That they are pressed down more heavily and embarrassed in a greater degree by the inconveniences of blindness must be obvious to all. In the latter, nature has not had time to accommodate herself to the privations which come so unexpectedly upon her. Her unity of action is destroyed by habits long adapted to a faculty which has ceased to exist. Social misconceptions crowd upon her, which are not only useless but injurious, inasmuch as they cannot operate through that medium by which they previously acted. All this tends to render the situation of such persons more comfortless, and their tempers less placid than are those of the unhappy beings who have never seen. But, on the other hand, that blank in faculties which occasions the cheerless calm of one of those who are born blind, has been filled up in them, and though the eye be dark, the memory is full of light and beauty. Heaven in all its mightiness and sublimity has been seen, and their heart, like the face of Moses, yet shines in the due effulgence of God's glory. Not so those who have neither the memory nor the hope of light. As they cannot be moved by the remembrance of the good that has passed away from them, so are they less unhappy than the others. But then the sense of loss keeps alive in their minds a constitutional melancholy, which, as they know not the nature of what is lost, never quickens into any mood beyond its own placid and mournful resignation. Their sagacity is better cultivated, and those collateral instincts which alleviate the sorrow of their life, are more beautifully drawn in to their support. So wisely does God temper the good and evil in life, and so harmoniously are they blended in the web of our chequered ex- istence. The blind who have seen, for instance, though pining under a more vivid perception of their calamity, draw an ample consolation from the con- sciousness that they have known the nature of the sense that has been taken from them, that the secret of the strange sense is known. Those again who are born blind feel that the mysterious light is veiled to them during; life, and as they have never seen it, they are consequently stirred by no ideal image of its beauty beyond the vague guesses of a mind conscious of its privation, but ignorant of that which has been lost, withheld from it by the will of the Being who has marked out their condition in life.
Previous page
