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Leader (1850-1860), 29th May 1858, Edition 2 of 2, Page 16

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      Doctor Thorine. Doctor Thome: A Novel. B...

      fingers . Each of the works that he has yet produced has been stamped with its own independent and original characteristics ; each has gained in strength on the preceding ; each has been an advance towards a higher and more assured excellence . In The Warden , in Barchester Towers , in The Three Clerks , he has manifested a real inventive faculty and a real constructive ingenuity ; above alJ , a real insight into human character and into the complexities of human motives . We -were far from supposing that as JBarchester Towers was a sort of sequel to The Warden , it was a confession of arrested development in the author ' s inventive faculty ; on the contrary , on the pertinacity and continuity of purpose displayed in this elaborate filling- up of an outline , every line of which was masterly in its decisive breadth and every touch in its vigorous completeness , we recognized the hand of - the true workman and the vocation of the genuine artist . In The

      Three Clerks , where the canvas was changed , and with a new outline new figures were introduced , we were again struck by the honest , hearty directness and sincerity of the workmanship . Here was unmistakably the perceptive insight of a social seer , and the treatment of the artist . Above all , there was in each and all of these remarkable fictions a , strong purpose , not obtruded ( as the way with poor pedantic bunglers is _) with didactic dulness , mor merely subsidiary , and , so to speak , marginal , but piercing through tie story as a good or evil purpose pierces through an individual life . Defects , of course , were obvious to the critical eye : defects of craft , of style , and of humour . The conduct of the story was a little careless , not marching straight on , but turning to the right and to the left , and sometimes back , with needless ( in a young writer unpardonable ) licence . The style was occasionally bald and lax ; and the exaggeration of character was apt to degenerate into caricature .

      In Doctor Thorne we cannot fairly say that these defects have entirely disappeared , but they are sensibly mitigated , and we think amply compensated . Considering that he does not stake his reputation and success on characterpainting only , but quite as much on his constructive ingenuity , Mr . Anthony Trollope is perhaps a little too fond of taking his readers into his confidence , and , as we should say of an actor , gagging his audience . It is all -very well for alow comedy man to wink at the pit , but we feel that it ? is neither fair to his brother actors , nor to the play , nor to the more rational part of the audience , and it is certainl y a degradation to the actor ' s art . When an author has succeeded in making us feel for his personages as if they were vital flesh and blood , we resent his coming forward from the wings to assure us that they are only puppets , and that he is pulling the strings . When

      an author has anything very subtle to say we willingly allow him to lose his way for a moment in a by-path of humour or of sentiment , but even this liberty admits of very sparing indulgence . Mr . Anthony Trollope ' s style is decidedly improved ; it was always masculine , vigorous , and free from any mincing affectations and foreign fripperies , but it was often inelegant and incorrect : in DoctorThome it has lost none of its vigour and clearness , and it is less often marred by wilful negligence or coarseness . In character-painting , however , thV author of The Warden has more unequivocally gained strength . There is much less propensity to caricature in Doctor Thome : the handling is broad and powerful , but sure , and under strong restraint ; every touch tells , because every touch is the result of thought and feeling subdued with rare technical skill . We are not going to commit the monstrous indiscretion and injustice of telling the story oi Doctor Thome : but we cannot help commending-, as an example , the selection of our every-day English life for the groundwork of the tale . We are never inclined to

      chicanero . novelist on the more or less of improbability ( within the limits of possibility and reason ) of his incidents , any more than upon his legal operations , for which Mr . Trollope so modestly and frankly solicits a , novelist ' s licence . In Doctor Thorne , however , we are not called upon to exercise any unreasonable forbearance in . these respects ; the scenery , the personages , the incidents are pure English , and such as might have occurred last year ; indeed , by a casual allusion or two , Mr . Trollope has impressed a sort of contemporary actuality on his scenes . Several of the constituents of modern English society aie represented with striking force and fidelity ; the factitious aristocracy of birth and -wealth , the self-made aristocracy of brain and will , and the true aristocracy of simple faith and honest worth are contrasted in no forced , conventional manner , and in no grudging or envious spirit . We are not quite sure that in making Scateherd ( the type of the " contractor" class , a stonemason and self-made millionnaire ) die of delirium tremens 3 a . confirmed drunkard , Mr . Trollope has not ( for an excellent purpose , no doubt , and without malice prepense ) traduced the noble and

      energetic pioneers of ' . the rising democracy of labour in our age of steam . Perhaps he has not only desired to point the moral of intellect without culture , and of wealth without taste and leisure , but he has sentimentally avenged the hereditary mortgagers of old estates now fallen a prey to the new nobility of " navvies . " Yet , why should the self-made millionnaire "baronet ' s son , educated at Eton and Cambridge , die of del . treat . also ? If his early death were not indispensable to the denoftinent , we should complain of this abuse of the bottle in fiction , and we hold the theory according to which Scatcherd is made to baptize his son . Louis Philippe a satire in the wrong place . But old " Lady Scatcherd" fully atones for husband and son : she is admirably sketched , and excites our lovo and compassion , as only truth and nature can . Mr . Graham , the hereditary owner of ^ an estate mortgaged to the throat , and the victim of his titled f

      wife ' amily pretensions ; the high and mighty tribe of the DeCourcys and the Duke of Omnium , ( the dinner at the duke ' s is a gem ) , are hit off with , marvellous felicity . " Miss Dunstable" would , in vulgar hands , have been a caricature ; in the present author ' s she is a charming sketch drawn with delicate feeling awdjlnesse . In spite of certain vulgarities attending her condition , she is not only not ridiculous , but she is , and designed to be , loved and respected . On the other hand , Mr . Moflat is drawn with designed severity ; and oven his humiliation in Pall-mall cannot expiate his low-bred insolence and servility . The subsidiary cluiracters , the la wyers and the doctors , are pat in with a cunning hand ; Mr . Gazebee , the swell solicitor , is a finished study , and the rival medical practitioners in a provincial neighbourhood are so truly typical , that they will he taken for portraits in every town in the kingdom . The scene of the Borough Election has traits and touches all its own , and is full of point and humour .

      Doctor Thorne , the representative of true nobility and sterling worth has the merit of not being a personification of virtue , "but a creature of flesh . ' and blood—a good man with a good man ' s failings—and thus he en » a « es our sympathy , as his sweet niece Mary engages our affection , and we ° rejoice in the good fortune that crowns his honest independence and her steadfast love . Frank is a fine fellow , and deserves to win so good a wife ; by an ingenious artifice of the writer he forms a sort of reconciling bond between the sections of society represented by Scatcherd , Doctor Thorne Mr Gresham , and Lady Arabella ; and it is thus that the tone and purpose of the story are free from all taint of class jealousies and animosities and represent , those larger sympathies which , we may hope , will effect ' their fusion and reconciliation in the future . An acute and discerning critic in the Reviie des deux Mondes , M . Emilo Forgues , in a recent article on the 5

      celebrated " Scenes of Clerical Life / remarked that now-a-days English novels were not content to reflect the phases of society , they must also be charged with a purpose ; and that the purpose of these clerical novels appeared to be an indirect satire on church abuses—a satire reflecting in one form of art the tendencies of a sceptical and indifferent epoch . Probably the poet ( the novelist is the true poet of our day ) is seldom conscious of the purpose attributed to him by the ingenious critic , and we are not going to accuse Ir . Anthony Trollope of writing with a purpose ; he is top genuine an artist not to write spontaneously , and , as it were , unconsciously . But his "broad and vigorous portraiturehis keen insi « ht into

      , character , his subtle and penetrating observation , embrace too widel y and pierce too deeply into the society around him not to give to all he -writes the strength and , consistency of a purpose ; and we cheerfully add , that his purpose seems to us to be unexceptionable in its courageous independence and brave humanity . By-the-by , we may here take the liberty to i-ecommend M . E . Forgues , or M . E . Montegut , to take in hand the novels of this sturdy ^ and healthy " realist , " Mr . Anthony Trollope ; they will find English society faithfully and powerfully pictured in his pages , and will be at no loss to extract the purpose which he has , unconsciously perhaps , but inevitably , impressed upon his creations .

      520 ; ¦ - .__ ¦ . . ,..;.;,__1" ' ¦ Th J...

      520 ; ¦ - . __ ¦ . . ,.. ; . ; , __ 1 " ' ¦ TH j L E A 1 ) E & - _ ' - ___^_ JIJo-J ^ May 29 , 1858 .

      Scottish Geology. The Cruise Of The Bets...

      SCOTTISH GEOLOGY . The Cruise of the Betsey , or , a Summer Humble among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides : with Gambles of a Geologists By Hugh Miller , Author of " The Old Red Sandstone , " & c . & c . : Constable ana Co . This book , the production of a man who laid the foundation of his geological knowledge whilst working day by day as a labourer in a quarry of the old red sandstone of the north-east part of Scotland , evinces talent of the highest order , a deep and healthful moral feeling , perfect command of the graces of style , ar . d a beautiful union of philosophy and poetry . No geologist can peruse without instruction and pleasure a narrative embracing at once highly philosophical views of the science to which he is especially devoted , with a just estimate of its relation to that Great Being whose work of creation he here earnestly yet humbly labours to elucidate .

      It is , of course , a posthumous work . Naturalists of any class know too well how Hugh Miller died—the victim of an overworked brain—and how that bright and vigorous spirit was abruptly quenched for ever . Mrs . Miller , after recovering from the first shock of bereavement , honed to do justice to the literary remains of her husband . Unhappily the excitement and anxiety naturally arising from a revision of his works proved over much for one suffering from such recent trials , and from nn affection of the spine and brain induced by it Mrs . Miller was in consequence forbidden for a time to engage in any work associated with intellectual exertions . Under these circumstances the Rev . W " . S . Symonds , a scientific friend of the author , undertook to perfect this labour of love . No liberties seem to have been taken with the original text . The style and arguments of Hugh Miller are so peculiarly his own that any such interpolations would have been injudicious .

      The disposition of land and water upon the sea-coast of the Western Highlands suggests the idea that from the line in the interior whence the rivers descend to the Atlantic , to the islands beyond as far as the outer Hebr ides , is all one great mountainous plain inclined slantwajs into the sea . First , the long receding valleys of the mainland , with their brown mossy streams , change their character as they di p beneath the sea level , and become salt-water lochs . The ranges of hills that rise over them , jut out as promontories till interrupted by some transverse valley , dipped still deeper into the brine , now existing as a kyle or sound and swept twice every tide by powerful currents . The sea deepens as the

      ancient plain slopes downward , mountain chains stand out of the waves as large islands , single mountains as islets , lower eminences as mere groups of pointed rocks , till finally , as we advance seawards , all trace of the submerged land disappears and the wide ocean stretches out its unfathomable depths . The model of some alpine country raised in plaster on a flat board and slanted at a low angle into a basin of water would , on a minute scale , exhibit an aspect exactly similar to that presented by tlie western coast of Scotland and the Hebrides . The water would rise along the hollows , longitudinal and transvei'se , forming bays and lochs , and surround like miniature islands the more deeply submerged eminences . he finds

      Pursuing from day to day the object of his scientific rambles , himself upon the well-known isle of Eigg just as the sun had le . 'iped up from behind the heather-clad summit of its eastern hills . One of the first objects that fixed his attention was the almost supernatural whiteness of its sandy beach . A few minutes examination and the origin of this peculiarity waa revealed . The hollows of the rock , a rough trachyte with a surface like that of a steel rasp , arc filled -with quantities of broken shells thrown up by the aurf from the sea banks beyond ; fragments of echini , bits of the valves of razor fish , the i . sland cyprina , mactridiw , buecinidae , and fractured periwinkles , Ho heaped together in vast abundance . Here the traveller should not fail to search for the pitch-atone veins of Eigg . Seen from a boat they suggest the idea of a huge pitch cauldron of the roughest and largest , cracked by the hoat , and that the fluid contents were escaping

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), May 29, 1858, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_29051858/page/16/