On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    T ER Pole J BaBMJ*Ky3,1885 HUS aEAP- . M...

  • 

    FIVE FICTIONS. Philip Lancaster. By Mari...

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Jjjlvxng- G Reece. Toa-Isrieevemmpoh'ine...

    swing against ttojttaca of Ea * ope with , this . handful of £ BT 6 r-patiente and oM ^ ia « . ThkPaleTwere constantly iU-tteated : two or three were assassinated . A Greek S ^ wS pole ^ t ^ e road tothe Pir . eus : the called him to ac ^ t , tito Greek refused to fight , saying that he did not know whom he had to do with . ' Sny £££ the Pole , "lam an officer , as yonax ^ and ™ rethan you are , for ^ 1 have fEt , and' am ready to fig ht again - The Greek had the courage to holdto his . Sa ^ did not fight . Despite this unworthy treatment theipoor . Poles toed ; to SSS-themselvea usefoL A fire broke out at Athens . The Greeks « Jlected , as usual , iolookonand' make a noise . The Poles exposed then- lives . Shortly ^ Aey were driven away fiom Athens because they gave umbrage to Russia . They were A ™*? from their houses with a brutality which added to the odious nature of the tranMctioo . They were embarked without being allowed to arrange their affairs , and atarted . for Aaierica without money . The Greek government , to justify its conduct , nubliahed in . its official journal those documents seized in the house of the chief of t oe Poles , General Milbitz—their proclamations addressed two years before ^ to the Creeks of Bulgaria , and Servia to exhort them to beware of Russia .

    The most amusing part of Greek policy is this , that whilst the ^ ole nation affects to commiserate the wretched condition of the rayas of the Turkish empire , it persists ia maintaining the law , which excludes those rayas * who may be induced by false reports to come and replenish the solitudes of the young country , from all the honours , and , above all , from all the emoluments of office . The fact isihat the true Hellen—the man who fancies he < jan see Constantinople from the top of the mountains of Arcadia , and who teaches hisrwife to promise Constantinople a 3 a reward to good childrenlooks forward to the time when he shall be able to : conquer the new empire of Turkey , expel or slaughter the Moslems , and keep the Christian rayas m a bond of modified serfdom ; or , as the prudent , express it for European ears , ia a kind of tutelage until they have reached a political and moral development equal in magnificence to that of tha genuine Autochthons . It will be well for statesmen to keep in mind this feeling in any future arrangements ; for , whatever may be the destiny of the much-talked-of Christian population of Turkey , they must not change their condition for the sole

    profit of " free Greece . " . . We had noted several other points for observation in M . About s lively and fascinating volume ; and perhaps what we have said will scarcely give a correct idea of its contents . We have insisted on matters that specially interest us . M . About goes over the whole ground , talks of manners as well as of government , and prefers telling a good story to giving a statistical table . He . is eminently a cheerful traveller , and knows how to record his agreeable impressions in epigrammatic and sparkling language . Will he allow us , in parting , to say , however , that we wish he would discard for the future from fcis na <* es the French conventional Englishman—the imbecile islander who until obtained

    will not give a hand to a fellow-creature m distress ne nas an answer to the question , " Are you a gentleman ?"— -the fabulous fop who carefully preserves his own accent in speaking foreign languages , for fear of not being recognised as a Briton—above all , the branchy peer of the realm , who is always marrying , some exquisite beauty , treating her ( as was to be expected from the commercial principles of one of a nation of shopkeepers ) as " a thing he has ^ boug ht , " finally abandoning her to a succession of . amiable foreigners—foiy shame upon them!—all lovely , barbarous ladies , French included , are extremely naughty , and love to . punish the honest awkward boobies who marry , without appreciating them , in a way peculiarly pleasant to themselves ? If M . About can get through this breathless question , we hope he will ponder on the hint it . contains . His Englishman is an unreal being ; and his- presence in such agreeable cages is liable to perpetuate the extraordinarily erroneous ideas existing in I ranee as to our national character . What is intended as harmless pleasantry is taken by the mass of tne

    readers as positive fact ; Jttne-tenths ot our neighbours look upon English as a set of idiotic sentimentalists , perpetually going about the world howling " OialJeimfr ^^ ments the misapprehension is kept up by similar means . . We heard the other day a grave artist state that thousands of English go every year to Italy and buy pictures to persuade the world that they appreciate the arts ; but they don't want their purchases—send them home . by water , and never wish to see them again;—there is , in fact , a large warehouse built on the banks of the Thames—he had seen it—in which all the works of art bought in Italy for the lost fifty years by private Englishmen still remain in bond ! Nobody doubted the fact ; and the only remark the anecdote excited was wade by a well-known political writer , who said , " It must be true because it is extraordinary . * We should like to see this absurd impression done away with , because it is not good for the French to believe that the principles of liberty can be best applied by a nation of eccentric buffoons . ii

    T Er Pole J Babmj*Ky3,1885 Hus Aeap- . M...

    T ER Pole J BaBMJ * Ky 3 , 1885 HUS aEAP- . MS ¦¦ ———————^—^ i—BB 1 ¦ SSSB—BWB ^ BBSMSWMBS ^ S ^ BBS ^^ I ^ BISIP ^^ Sl ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ " ^^^^^*^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ¦ ¦ ¦ . ^^^^^^

    Five Fictions. Philip Lancaster. By Mari...

    FIVE FICTIONS . Philip Lancaster . By Maria Norris . Saunters and Otiey Matilda Comdale . By Charlotte Adams . Routledge Mildred ; th & J )( mghter . By Mrs . Nowtou Crosslond . Koutledge . The- Old Chelsea Bun House . Hall , Virtue , and Co T 7 ie JStey-Son . By F . N . Dyer . Bentloy . Miss Nobbis possesses in a very eminent degree all the qualifications for a highly successful novelist except one . She has a clear insight into the delicate individualisms whicU mark the various components of middle-class eociety ; she can paint them faithfully and in good keeping throughout a atory ; she has a happy veiu of humour ; she is exceedingly liberal in her views , free from social , political , or religious prejudices , sensible in her own views and suggestions , and she writes clear , intelligible English without any attempt at fine writing , or that vulgar weakness oi strongnnnded penwonien laborious siruggles after mystic profundity . All this she can do—but this

    she cannot do—or , at any rate , allows no sighs ' in Fhthp Lancaster ot tne power to do it—she eunuot construct a story . A mure fragmentary , desultory ,,, rambling , and unexciting series of incidents strung together more at random , without any view to a whole or to a definite conclusion , wo have seldom , road . At the aiune time , wo must state that we were constrained to read the entire three volumes from beginning to' end , and even with mora pleasure than is often our fate when journeying through this' territory of our literature . The , want of the power to construct a story is a

    deficiency not , remediable by study or volition—the story-teller nomorejS than the poet , poems and stories being equally of tke creative power Hence , in our inability to tell whether Miss Norris possesses or does not possess that power , we can . offer no advice to her . If the former be the case , we can predict a high rank for the writer of Philip Lancaster among pur female novelists— -if the latter , the sooner she leaves this department of letters the better . We should have considered Matilda Lonsddle as belonging to that delightful class of books of the tenderest insipidity , spiced with cant , called Books for the Young , had it not been for the absence of any intimation to

    that effect on the title-page , and the presence inside of too many words not eadable by the young . We do seriousl y hope , for the honour of our country , that there does not exist in the British islands one person capable of reading Matilda Lonsdale fluently , who could possibly take the slightest interest in it . Story there is none ; not even the meagrest attempt at one ; characters there are none ; there are only a few incidents that must have fatigued the actors , and that should have been forgotten in the acting . A wet day in the smallest country town could not be tamer and flatter than the life of Matilda Lonsdale . The writer can speE correctly , and that is all

    the power she manifests in this book . Hildred is very little removed from Matilda Lonsdale , and is only removed at all by the fact of there being a story ; a good one potentially , but spoiled in the telling . Hildred ' s father is an immensely wealthy merchant , and when she was a mere child he settled twenty thousand pounds upon her by deed of gift , which has been amassing interest until . she comes of age , which she does immediately on the story opening . She then discovers that the money so invested had been placed in her father ' s hands by a French Count just before the Reign of Terror , that he had been executed together with his wife , and that her father had invested the money in her Jaehalf without making the slightest inquiry regarding the heirs of the dead Count . of the but will find

    Hildred decides that she will not touch a penny money , out the heir and restore it intact . Now it is evident that out of this material an excellent story might have been made—the search of Hildred for the count ' s heir might have become , in adequate hands , a companion to Evan ^ eline—a Pilgrimage of Princip le as hers was a Pilgrimage of Love . No such thing , however , does Mrs . ' Grassland do . After having talked bi" about what she is going to do , Hildred never does anything whatever towards finding the heir , but simply distils the most feverish Methodism with a consumptive sempstress until a young man proposes to her and is accepted , who turns out , without any effort on Hildred ' s part to discover it , to be grandson of the executed Count , so that Hildred pays the money to her own husband , and the story ends with justice being-done by the blindest

    chance , and without the slightest self-sacrifices _ Xlie-quantity ot scripturephrases-in the book will * however , ensure its sale . " ¦ Many and singular are the avocations and employments that human beiugs will of their own will select-as their contribution to the progress of-society . Nothing so lofty but some man will scale it—nothing so mean but some one will descend to it ; nothing so perilous but some will dare it ; so pusiUani , nious but a small soul is found to do it . Here we have some lady or gentleman unknown , who for seven years has placidly walked out of the worlds arena , and leaving Corn Laws , Crystal Palaces , Ministerial incapacity , and the Crimean war to settle themselves , has taken his or her camp-stool into a corner , and busied himself in reading some twenty volumes of two-centuryold literature , and in assiduously unlearning the English language of to-day , not to get out of the Past tne lesson for the Present , but simply to be able isodes of human xistence with certain

    to write a batch of possible ep e a . vraisemblance and local colour correct to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries . The Old Chelsea Bun House is the last note of this striking-backwards clock . —We-haveJittle sympathy with this bastard antique . We cannot see why a meagre tale , that no one could write in modern English without its meaereness being sun-clear , should possess any additional claim to notice because all words now ending in " ancy" or "ism" are spelt with " ation" instead , aud " worser" is always used for " worse . " Neither can we see why u work which no publisher would think of printing in to-day s type , should be worth printing in red and black , in the imitated typography of hist century . Surely the Present has other claims upon its sons and daughters ; surely the dead Past has enough dead of its own to bury , without a member ot the living Present sending a-supererogatory family of illegitimate Pasthnga for it to inter Waiving this serious fundamental objection , and imagining the OUX Chelsea Bun House to be a bond fide production of last century , it is pleasant reading enough . We read ib with a kind of feeling that it is genuine , and DUt

    . ____ ; : _„ . ' ^> .. ^ . / inuninl-anKn i viill n . mist il < TG : WUCll W 6 that we are improving our acquaintance with a past age ; but when we come to recollect that it is not genuine , we feel how our time has been wasted , and conclude that if we have received any impressions from the book we had bettor erase them aa so many delusions . When wo have paid our half-dollar to see Joice Heth , and learn after that she was not 170 years old , and did not nurse Washington , it is no satisfaction to be told that she was a very good make-up of that age , and really was a physical curiosity . Mr . Dyur , the author of the Step * Son , ie , we believe , a young man , who , when much younger , wont through that phase of literary wild-oats sovmig , the writing and printing of a volume of verse . It ia a great proof of Mr . Dyer ' s good sense that he has now taken up with plain prose , lor this reason , and also because we think that of first attempts nil nisi bonum is a good critical maxim , we desire to speak as favourablyof the Mep-Son m w conscientiously can . The whole work boars unmistakable marks oi the writer having sedulously and persistently done his best : he has ¦ «•»«»""* nnmmlttl * « fr , fV . nml has told it with the most scrupulous care . lJ * c HUfjh '

    Son is accordingly well written as regards ita Kn- | lrih a » . l an n . »»«»«»« any conceit or effort removes a host of w nor faults . We would , ^ ver , suggest to Mr . Dyer that the elements of his story only ip ^ . " ^" ™** stage of cultivation , and that he seems to have ignored ^^ " 7 < £ <"" progress of sterling fiction . Mr . Bodeiiml u a country gentleman « , fiftya siefeasp ^ s ^ SE po » e Lis lioubolioM . Mr . Budcuiul ' s Second mle is » I ' rofcMtimt , « nd JuJia

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03021855/page/19/