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    Ziwlookto heaven , find then she bent down and gamine ! ffibody , in the vain hope that life might Stl Throug h his heart-throug h his heart , and she i w that aid was unavailing . Little blood had StutvSly from the wound , hut she felt it stain her hands as they mechanically busied themselved about him . ., ¦ . ¦ ¦; _ ¦; . » What a situation was hers !—alone , in the night , on a bleak hill-side , with the dead ^ body of her hushand a dog her only companion , far away from all human help and sympathy-a long and most rugged tmth separating her from her home . Well might her heart at first fail within her !

    « ' Hers were energies , however , that fitted her to face the peculiar difficulties of her situation . The first agony of certainty over , she could summon the not ordinary powers of her mind , to aid her in performin g her duty . Reverently folding her husband s plaid over his body , she sat down by the side of the corpse among the heather , and forced herself to think . * Oh ! God , help me to meet this trying hour ! ' burst from the pale lips of the poor widow as she did this . " It was difficult at such a moment to compose her mind for reflection ; but it was necessary she should do so , and by slow degrees she succeeded . It was as d ifficult , however , to decide on the step she should take when she had composed herself .

    "To convey her husband ' s body home by her own unaided efforts , was , she knew , impossible . The long and difficult road , the darkness , and the weight of the corpse , rendered such an idea vain , and * after a moment ' s hesitation , she dismissed it . If she could have borne to trail the body after her down the hillside , perhaps it might have been accomplished with much time and fatigue ; but no , though it would have been insensible to the roughness of the > path , Mary could not endure the thought of it . « I would have felt , ' said , while long after describing the events of that fearful night , ' * I would have felt every bruise and every knock the senseless corpse received , in my own heart . '

    * " Then help , at so late Sn hour , was not to be obtained in this lonely place . There lay-at some distance behind the hills , she knew , a solitary farmhouse ; but she had nevet visited it—indeed , she had never been on the mountains before—and it would be impossible to discover its situation in the darkness . Even if discovered , it was not likely that its inhabitants would be willing to lend their aid in removing her husband ' s body , from so perilous a height , before morning dawned to show them their way .

    " Mary , by a wonderful exertion of mind , was able to think of all this , and haying done so , to form her resolution . Since it was impossible to remove her husband at that hour , she would not leave him . She would watch by the corpse till morning broke—she would remain on the wild hill alone with it , till she could obtain help . " Hour after hour passed slowly by . Mary sat still and motionless by her husband ' s body , and the dog lay at her feet . It was something to have its living , familiar companionship , at such a time . The animal occasionally rose and looked towards the corpse , as if to assure itself that it still lay in its former position—then uttering a low , plaintive whine , it would lick Mary ' s hand , and again cower down beside her .

    " Mary , however , was scarcely conscious of the dog's movements . The suddenness of the misfortuno which had befallen her seemed for a time to have closed up the avenues of her bodily senses ; and yet her mind was occasionally preternaturally and unuccountably busy about mere trifles—things perfectly unconnected with her present situation . Scenes and persons she had known in her youth intruded them-Belves with the freshness of yesterday upon her imagination—events she had entirely forgotten awoke irom their graves , and stood before her . Her little domestic arrangements , too , would have their share of notice . For- instance , she had a haunting consciousness at times of the interior of her own cottage

    —its present lonely , deserted state—the open doorthe decaying fire — and especially of the large cushioned chair in which her husband had been accustomed to sit . ' Then all these would vanish as suddenly as they had arisen . ; and with a pang of fresh agony she would look up , and see the bare wild mountains around her , and the motionless form beneath the plaid .

    " Shb sat with her arms folded across her knees , and her head resting Upon them ; nnd this position she scarcel y changed for hours . The distant light "which shono' from her cottage window faded gradually away , till it was wholly extinguished , and all was deep unbroken darkness below . The moon , however , rone higher and higher in the sky , throwing a Hood of silver rudiunco on the mountain tops , ana on the rugged rocks in tho neighbourhood of the solemn group . What a sight it shone upon !

    " Tho silonce of that mountain region was occasionally oppressive . Sho could hear , indeed , the rushing ot many Btreums , and the wind whistled among tho broken rooks and heath with a melancholy

    sound . She could also distinguish at times the plaintive cry of some wild animal prowling among the hills ; but all these sounds were of nature ; there was nothing of man and of neighbourhood in them . " What a long and wearisome night it was to the stricken woman ! The cold night mists settle d down , and penetrated throughher garments . She had nothing to protect her from them but . her usual dress , and she was chilled and benumbed without being conscious of it . Her mental suffering was too great to allow her to feel bodily discomfort .

    " It was long before she could weep . Her heart was too oppressed for that relief ; but at length the fountains of her grief were mercifully opened , and her tears flowed forth as if they would never cease . She sat and wept alone on the dreary mountain side ; no sounds near her but the wild unfamiliar ones of nature ; no human heart by to feel for her ; no friendly voice there to whisper consolation to her distressed spirit . It was a fearful solitude .

    " She was somewhat superstitious too , like many of her class and country , inconsequence of her imaginative temperament ; but she had no dread of the lifeless body which lay stiff and motionless beneath that fluttering plaid . Her grief was too engrossing , and he had been too kind and affectionate a husband for her to dread his presence dead . But death is a solemn , mysterious thing ; and so Mary felt , as through the long long hours she sat in company with it . She had no anxiety for the fate of the departed spirit ; she had not that terrible fear to weigh her down . She knew the depth and sincerity of her husband ' s piety , and she felt assured that he was gone to God .

    " At length , she saw the moon set , and the stars pale . Wearily and slowly did the morning dawn upon the hills ; grey and faint did its first beams steal along the sky , and glimmer on the heath where the dead man lay , and the solitary mourner sat . In one day—what a change ! Yesterday ' s morn had seen her a happy wife—this rose upon her as a poor , desolate , " broken-hearted widow . Mary ' s tears were now dried ; but though her face was calm , the agony of the past night had written itself there in lines never to be effaced . She was changed in a few hours . "

    The closing scenes are languid . The whole of that episode with Lily and Ronald belongs to the " good books , " and is somewhat tiresome . But the authoress exhibits such rare faculty that we trust she will not be discouraged , but will address herself more seriously to the task of making all the episodes and scenes parts of a whole , as bricks are of a house . Let her do that with the same keen eye for reality and dramatic characterization indicated in her two books , and we prophecy a great

    success . Little success of any kind can we prophecy for The Successful Merchant , or for Antony , the Deaf and Dumb Boy . They belong to the " good " class , just where goodness melts into namby pamby . We could not toil to the end of either . You will ask us , perhaps , why then we venture to criticise books we have not read ? That is our criticismwe could not read them ! If you doubt us , try ! " Antony" takes up a subject capable of great

    tragic and philosophic interest ; but as to this boy being deaf and dumb , he might as well have been halt and blind for anything this story benefits by it . If the author is very young , there is good promise in " Antony , " in spite of its weariness and " rosepink sentiment "; but we advise him , or her , to abstain from writing until meditation and experience have given more substance to be worked into fiction . The manner is not without a grace of its own ; but the matter is " very tolerable , and not to be endured . "

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    LAMABTINK ON THE RESTORATION . Jlistoire do la Mentauration . Par A . do Luniartinu . Tomea Set 4 . ' W . Jefla . The third and fourth volumes of this work are greatly superior , both in interest and style , to the two first . There is the same negligence both of diction and of fact ; the same sonorous improvisation , and shabby splendour of phrase ; the same the

    recurrence to favourite words and formulas ; same worthlessness in all historic respects ; but also the same narrative power , the aame unflagging animation , the same strong partisanship and detestation of Napoleon , and the same brilliant Qualities . In a Buhsequont articlo on the Battle of Waterloo we Hhall see how history has been sacrificed to romance by this improvieatore of genius ; meanwhile one single illustration will enable you to estimate tho carelessness with which he has written

    his rapid history . Speaking of Napoleon ' s descent from Elba he says , " Either because the Emperor wished to deceive even his friends by fixing the 1 st of April

    as the date of the proposed expedition , or else because his natural impatience rendered delay intolerable , he surprised Europe , and , perhaps , surprisedhim self , by anticipating precipitately the time agreed upon . * Fifty pages further on Lamartine attributes—without any " perhaps " or qualification- —this anticipation of the fixed time to his knowledge . of the intrigues set on foot by theDuke of Orleans ,-and that he " determined , at all risks , to crush this rival by precipitating his departure from Elba . " To those familiar with Lamartine ' s

    method of compiling history this discrepancy will admit of easy explanation—the book from which he was copying , at page 28 , said one thing ; the book from which he was copying , at page 76 , said another—voiiek tout . There is a terrible apropos about these volumes . We seem , in reading their infamies , to be reading of 1852 . The servility which smoothed the path before the tyrant from Elba has been faithfully parodied by the servility which has greeted the blackguard from Ham—with this difference in favour of 1815 , that the man to whose ambition France then was sacrificed was at least a great man , and one who had crowned her with laurels as well

    as thorns ; he was a man whose genius no one denied , whose personal influence no one could resist . Whereas the degraded blackleg who now commands the servility of France has nothingeven among blacklegs—to recommend him . What he was in obscurity , we in London know—the most insignificant of those who visited Gore-house ! what he is in power , Europe has seen . Yet he , by force of sheer unscrupulousness , aided by a ruffian army , exacts more implicit obedience , tyrannises in a more absolute and odious manner , than the

    great NapoleOn ever dared ! But whose the fault ? We grieve to say it—the fault is in the French army and the French public . They have shown themselves precisely the same unscrupulous tools and servile subjects as in 1815 . Does any man suppose that the officers of an English army would not long ago Have thrown up their commissions had such a coup d'itat , so executed , and so continued , been ventured upon in England ? Why , then , are the French officers silent ? Read Lamartine and

    see . What can we expect from an army whose very highest officers , the Soults , the Neys , the Labedoyeres—military heroes—played the most shameless and treacherous game , always siding with victorious power ? Napoleon is beaten—they desert to the Bourbons ; Napoleon returns from Elba—Ney vows to bring him before Louis XVIII . in " an iron cage "—he departs , finds the people sympathizing with Napoleon , finds it probable that Napoleon will succeed , and accordingly betrays his trust to betray it again !

    We declare that nothing has given us greater pain of late than the reading of these volumes by the lurid light of December , 1851 . It has shaken our old love for the French Nation . It has shown us that the mass of that accomplished and amiable people is still greatly retarded in its development by the powerful remains of barbarism . Accustomed to proclaim themselves the " brain of the world "—

    the " centre of civilization "—they are , as we cannot help believing , so clogged with barbarism as to be incapable of self-government . What is more characteristic of the barbarian than this shameless treachery , this abject servility ! The highest officers in the army , the prefects , magistrates , and middle classes , all submit to a Louis Napoleon—a disgrace indelible , if such men could feel diegrace !

    But for the sake of unhappy France let us also add that all her honest minds are deeply , mournfully ashamed of what has befallen her . Alas they form but a weak minority ! Let us also note , for the glory of the lettered class that now , as in 1815 , they are free from the disgrace of abetting tyranny . The Church , of course , blesses Louis Napoleon—whom will not a Jesuit bless ? But the Lay Priests of the Nation indignantly keep aloof . To the honour of journalism , be it said ; that except a ( o \ v hired bravos of the Veron and Cassagnac

    school , none of the journalists have he , sitated — they have not prostituted their talents , as Marshals and Generals have prostituted their swords ! One of them said in a , private letter the other day , " Accustomed to consider myself something because a Frenchman , I am now reduced to the humiliation of considering myself something in spite of my being a Frenchman . " And this feeling is general among the lettered class—a feeling of national humiliation 1

    Wo have been led away from Lamartino ' s book , by the reflections it suggested ; but we shall return to it , and notice its amuBing account of Waterloo .

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    Jan , 31 , 1852 . ] # fr ? fer&frflV ffi

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 31, 1852, page 109, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1920/page/17/