tured for her monumental effigy, is considered a coquette, and the grand object of husband-hunting is supposed to be marred. It was not always thus in England: a fine woman, in the days of Addison, appears to have filled the station in society, that a married French lady does at the present day; she never thought of surrendering her liberty, under a seven or eight years' courtship; and if her lover offended her, it was considered his loss not hers.

We have now a hideous system of sudden rejection or acceptance that often ends in unutterable woe for the married pair and their more wretched children. All our periodicals of the present day that deal in such matters, are commenting on some recent separations. Incompatibility of temper, produced by the workings of impatient spirits on over-excited brains, is, in one instance, construed by the public voice into guilt. The men seem possessed by the same spirit that is ably depicted in the novel of "Miserimus :" women don't like to be tormented to death for the pastime of their masters; while they are single, it is their own fault if they are; but when they are married, and have a family who look up to them for protection and happiness, oh! how complete a slave is a woman to the despotism of a man, if his temper be fiendish.

So Epsom has passed with great éclat : it is graced with one victim of rank and distinction sufficient to fill up the time till Ascot. How abhorrent to me is the moral atmosphere of such places! They say Berkeley Craven's creditors hope to be satisfied by his family his family would be madder than himself if they were. What! when he paid them with his blood and soul, is not that sufficient? Did not the man coin his heart into drachms, and will not that suffice modern honour? I

:

know the spirit of gaming has reared himself an awful throne in Paris: still I think English viciousness is more complicated on that head; we tear out of town to our racing gambling mobs with greater parade and clatter, men and women together. To be sure, some of the ladies who go to Ascot go for the pleasure of an animated scene, where they can, with many other inconvenencies, get tanned, like gipsies, and choked with dust. And that brings me to the receipt I promised you for the complexion: it is simply to drop a few drops of tincture of Benzoin into rosewater that is really produced by distillation. The rose-water assumes the appearance of milk, and this is the celebrated milk of roses sold so dear: if you have been exposed to the sun, wash with it going to bed, and wash as usual in fair soft water when you rise, not with the milk of roses, because any application but water leaves a shining on the skin, which has an artificial and ugly appearance. A woman's true mind is always in her postscript, you know; I had really forgotten this promise, and had nearly left it for the post-scriptum. N'importe, a woman may think of something worse than her complexion. The Duke of Gordon died on Saturday. Hyde Park yesterday was all dulness, but the Regent's Park was crowded with carriage. company. By the bye, the Zoological Gardens sadly monopolize the drive; there is no passing; it is a hard matter for the police to carry the obstructing carriages to "the green-yard," where they carry off all the applewomen who in the least stop up or obstruct the free passage in our public streets. Addio, bella.

Square, London, May 30, 1836.

BEATRICE.

1. Plebeians and Patricians. By the author of "Old Maids," &c. 3 vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.

2. Chronicles of Waltham.

By the author of "The Subaltern," &c. 3 vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.

The simultaneous publication of these two works, without concerted agreement between their authors, is a curious literary coincidence. Each bears closely on the present extraordinary ordering of all things pertaining to society and property, yet each has taken a different path: they are graphic pictures, not on the same subject; but there is that resemblance between them, which we see in companion prints. Gaskell sketches the rise of the cotton lords, and the effect their bloated, uncouth wealth has on uncultivated minds; Gleig traces the downfall of the lords of the soil, and the effect that pinching misery and the impoverishing of the landed interest has on the moral and physical condition of the peasantry. At present, we confine ourselves to the discussion of the first-named work, which is dashed off with fire and rapidity, is ably conceived, true to nature, as far as the Plebeians are concerned, but certainly not finished with the polish and elegance of our author's admired essays. Nothing can be better than his delineation of the cotton lords and ladies; and we felt regret whenever they left the scene, for the introduction of the Patricians, who are far too angelic in their natures for human beings of any class. The character of John Manford, on the contrary, is life, drawn by a keen and close observer of the wealthmaking part of our species. The warm, but capricious affections of this parvenu; the paucity of intellect on every other subject than cotton-spinning and moneygetting; the manner in which John is managed and married, by the influence of his clamorous and coarse-minded womankind-all this is capitally done; and here is a specimen.

"No one watched the progress of Norton's mill more closely than John Manford, he had plenty of spare time on his hands, and day after day he might be seen scanning, with anxious eyes, its building and its machinery. He possessed no mechanical genius, but he had sense enough to perceive the general principles governing the whole; and when all was complete about it, he considered it the summit of human invention.

"Neither did his mental failing prevent him profiting by the example set him by Norton. He cleared out the old hall, and with the money he had received for his land, he purchased several machines, on which he set himself and his sisters to work; and, although he

could not compete with his neighbour, he go money fast, and soon began to contemplate building a mill himself,-this being the very acme of his ambition.

"Industry, economy, and immense profits, soon placed him in a position to put the darling wish into execution-he built his mill; and this being done, the Nortons and the Manfords became the great people of their immediate neighbourhood.

"Manford was now on the high road to wealth; and for a considerable period little deserving of record marked his career. Riches produced their usual effect in altering their style of living, and brought them into contact with some of their more aristocratic neighbours.

"Several years after the erection of the mill, the sun was shining with the same splendour, on a glorious day in June, over the same landscape to which our readers were introduced in the first chapter. Then we had seen it a beautiful and secluded spot, rich in rural sights and sounds, and basking in quiet repose. There were copses, hedge-rows, and trees covered with foliage, meadows waving with grass and flowers, brooks wimpling and glancing in every ravine and above all, was a bright and clear summer day.

"Now the whole scene looked as little like its former self, as if an evil genius had waved his wand over it. Instead of its quiet and serpentine lanes, winding about in utter contempt of regularity, and without any regard for hill or hollow, two broad and level turnpike roads intersected it from north to south, and from east to west. The scraggy hedges on either side were shrouded in dust, raised by the continual rolling of carts, waggons, and stage coaches. The venerable and patriarchallooking farm-houses, which had peeped out from groves of oak or sycamore, were gone, and they had been replaced by at least a dozen huge brick buildings, with lofty chimneys vomiting clouds of dense and black smoke.

"To each of these were attached groups of grimy-looking cottages; but there was scarcely a single green field to be seen. Heaps of refuse coal and cinders piled up on all sides, with the thundering sound and Babel-like clamour proceeding from the working of several steam-engines, and the half-clad and pallid creatures who were seen flitting about, forcibly pourtrayed a pandemonium, rather than a spot on God's earth fitted for human habitation.

"Not a vestige of Shawe-house now remained. On the right stood a mansion, overlooking a sooty mass of buildings, and having some pretensions to architectural taste; its structure was plain, but regular and extensive, and a portico of stone, forming the front entrance, gave a relief to its general unpretending character. A Gothic lodge, sadly out of keeping with the appearance of the house, stood by the road-side, about two hundred yards in advance, and gave admission to grounds laid out in plots of ornamental shrubbery, close-shaven lawns, gravel walks, and rustic trellis-works, all arranged in the most

modern and approved manner, lous good order.

and in scrupu

"A handsome range of detached offices, screened from the main building by a group of well-grown arboraceous shrubs, joined to the general aspect of the place, afforded abundant proof that the owner was wealthy. The only discrepancy visible was the locality, so that the observer came at once to the conclusion, that the house and its appurtenances belonged to the proprietor of the adjacent works; common sense exclaiming, that nobody else was likely to locate such a building, in such an infernal looking neighbourhood.

"On taking a wider view over the country, several residences of a very similar appearance were seen; each of these also overlooked a similar group of inferior buildings. With the exception of these verdant spots, there was hardly a trace of the green face of nature to be seen; brick fields, collieries, mills, and cottages, forming a continuous layer.

"Well,' said Mrs. Manford, I wish this Sir John Scarsbrook would come-here we are waiting dinner at half-past two, and sitting not knowing what to do with ourselves.'

"Well, mother, never mind,' answered one of the daughters, you know we took care to get something into our insides at one o'clock; I'm not a bit hungry, and I don't care if the man don't come for an hour.'

666 'Lork, Phœbe,' said another of the polished party, how thee does talk to be sure, why I'm all in a flustration; folks say, Sir John is so impudent!'

"And if he be,' said Phoebe, 'I know one that can match him, I should like him to try his impudence on wi' me.'

"Well, Phoebe,' continued her mother, you must mind your P's and Q's with him. They say his sister, Lady Lucy, and the Earl are coming to the hall, and may be, they'll ask us to some of their grand parties.'

"I don't care much about it,' said Phabe, 'we've plenty of folks 'bout em.'

"The conversation ran on in this strain for some time, and was only interrupted by the sight of a carriage driving at a rapid rate through the gates. The female Manfords, notwithstanding their assumed lady-like composure, were, as the mother said, all in a twitter!' Their expected guest was of far higher rank than any individual they had as yet associated with, and, like all rich vulgar people, their notions of the 'quality,' as they called them, made them uneasy, when about to be brought into contact with one of them.

"At this moment Sir John was announced, by their awkward footman.

"The ladies rose and blushed, and their visitor having shook hands with Mrs. Manford, and bowed individually to the daughters, said

"I must apologise, my dear Mrs. Manford, for having delayed your dinner, but, the fact is, my sister arrived at Vale-hall just as I was stepping into the carriage, and detained me for a short time. But where is my friend, Mr. Manford ?'

Luckily, at this moment, our old friend,

Johnny Manford, was seen approaching from the factory, and in the excess of their good breeding, the three female Manfords rushed one and all from the room, no doubt to notify to John the presence of Sir John.

"When Manford made his appearance, he presented most of the traits we have noticed at an earlier period of his life; his person was indeed stouter, and his outward man improved. His countenance though still the same was yet different; acquired importance, and intercourse with the busy world, had softened down some of its most prominent idiotic characteristics, but the expression remained in a great measure unaltered.

"There are few people who behave with any grace at dinner; whether the act of eating be in itself ungraceful, or whether the artificial restraints imposed on society, by the arbitrary goddess of fashion, make dinner an awkward meal, so most undoubtedly it is. If a man or woman sit down positively hungry, the case is improved, as the instinct of hunger proves an overmatch for factitious delicacy. On the present occasion, the truth of the foregoing axiom was strikingly illustrated, when all the parties, save John and Sir John, had already got something in their insides.'

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Talking not being an essential requisite, very little was said beyond an occasional remark from the baronet to his host. The young ladies handled their forks clumsily, and the lady-mother drank too much wine. After awhile this imbibition, joined to two stout glasses of brandy and water, which she had previously drank to keep up her appetite, made her eloquent in her hospitable attentions, and this, too, when her guest was becoming satisfied with his good cheer.

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"Try another piece of duck, Sir John-it's one I fed myself-and plucked too-the servants tug and tear them so, I always dress 'em myself-let me help you, you see it's as brown as a berry, and as tender as marrow.'

"Sir John courteously declined the proffered morsel.

"Taste another slice of lamb, then, Sir John; Jem Ward, the butcher, swore it was a real Downshire one, and put on a halfpenny a pound-I told him, that wasn't I expecting you, I'd have eaten nails, sooner than be done by him.'

"Again Sir John bowed, and declined.

"Do take a bit more of the stewed tench,' continued the indefatigable hostess, 'it's a charming fish; I eats them myself since they cleared the pit of dead cats and dogs, that the factory lads had thrown in.'

"And so on, through a well-filled table,Mrs. Manford recommending each dish by some piquant remark of a similar nature to the above, and her guest as punctually declining.

"The meal, however, like other mundane troubles, had at last an end, and a choice and varied selection of early fruits was placed before them. The young ladies were more at ease in cracking nuts, and swallowing grapes, and in whispering their thoughts, as they sat gathered together in a close knot. Mrs. Manford, now in her altitudes, and with a face gloriously illuminated, amused her visitor with a spirited and graphic account of her house

hold appurtenances; such as the number of her servants, the colours of her carpets, and various other highly interesting details. Sir John, who was a well-bred man, and a man of the world, listened very patiently to an amusing edition of Mrs. Malaprop, till John Manford, pulling out his watch, iutimated to him that his time was nearly up, as he called it; and that he must be off to the mill shortly.

"The ladies on this hint withdrew, and the gentlemen were left to their wine and their business."

Turn we now to the companion picture.

2. The Loom versus the Land, is the cry of the day; and certainly the loom is at present raised triumphantly above the lords of the soil, and all their ancient crests and heraldries. The author of the "Chronicles of Waltham," somehow, is not of that class of political economists which considers a man a better citizen, and more advanced in civilization when employed in making stay-laces or doll-eyes, or spinning cotton threads, than in causing loaves of bread to abound. Would it be too cruel a punishment, to condemn the political economists who have starved and destroyed our peasantry, and would exalt spinning jennies above the plough, to have nothing to eat for two or three days but doll-eyes and cotton-dust? perhaps they would find out at the end of that time, that it was a highly civilized action to produce a loaf of bread, and that people who grew it deserved to be paid for it, as well as the artisan whom Mr. Babbage contemplates with such rapturous enthusiasm, who made eyes to match vast warehouses full of dolls' arms and legs. Alas! Othello's occupation is gone! that useful, that gloriously employed manufacturer, the hero of Mr. Babbage's popular episode, may puff out his enameling lamp, and go to plough,-Dutch dolls have superseded other dolls, and the demand for glass eyes is exceedingly curtailed. This is the fate of fancy buttons and buckles, and a thousand other fripperies produced by manufacturers, which, oddly enough, are exalted above their due worth by the present race of political economists, who are withal all utilitarians, and, strange to say, patronise the production of the most useless articles that the human creature can fancy that it needs. These gentry, when contemplating the cotton lace on a washerwoman's cap (for no other woman would wear such vile trumpery), exult and shout with joy that it costs only eightpence a yard, when formerly Mrs. Suds could not buy lace of that width for less than eight shillings. But supposing she only wore muslin borders, what then? No divine law would be violated, no natural bent of the human mind would be warped, if such a transition were to take place. When God placed man in a garden to till and to dress it, he at once pointed out the

most noble, the most happy, and the most healthy occupation his creature could follow, even in a sinless and obedient state. The favourite dogma of political economists, that the cultivator of the earth is in a barbarous state, is therefore an unscriptural one. The vices, the ignorance of the tillers of the soil may brutify them, but not their occupation; for the highest intellects, from Virgil to Lord Bacon, have delighted in the cultivation of the earth: but, according to Messrs. Adam Smith and Babbage, the denizens of Paradise should have made buttons, and Bacon relaxed his mighty mind by weaving and tagging a gross of staylaces. The author of the "Chronicles of Waltham" evidently believes his Bible, and with a masterly hand traces the causes of the present sufferings of our agricultural population, partly from the violent changes in the value of property and labour during the last fifty years, and partly from the dreadful state of demoralization the peasantry plunged into when labour was scarce, and character was not needed to obtain employment for man or woman. Crabbe startled and alarmed his country,

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by painting the cot As Truth will paint it, and as bards will not." Three-fourths of his reviewers abused the poet for giving such horrid views of human nature; the rest were wise enough to compare his pictures with their originals, and found them true! And why should unreclaimed, ignorant human creatures be a whit better than Crabbe and Gleig have painted them? Let those who neglect the religious education of the rising generation of infant Tom Overys, Mary Tapsa's, Peter Grimes, or Dick Solleys, answer, if they can. The "Chronicles of Waltham" is a work of great importance in a moral light; it is likewise carried on with powerful ability-the character of Charlotte, the overseer's daughter, is followed with breathless interest. Every page that is turned by the reader versed in country life, is found to contain some home truth or convincing reasoning. In this manner, the author details the annals of a village in Kent, from the commencement of the present century to the stack-burning_era which began in 1828. It is one of those works that are destined to obtain a prodigious influence over public opinion.

The Church Review and Scottish Ecclesiastical Magazine. Nos. 1 & 2. Fraser and Co., Edinburgh; Smith, Elder, and Co. London.

Our worthy contemporary has taken the office of defender of, and periodical repository for the Church of Scotland. The papers seem well written, but being chiefly on subjects that we consider technical, neither our religious tenets or tone of employment

will permit us to discuss them more closely, than to observe, that they bear a tone of dignified tolerance, well becoming an Established Church. There is one paper, on Domestic Worship, which is written in a very beautiful spirit; it contains an assertion, alarming, we think, to society in general, and this is, that, from statistical inquiry, it is found that not more than one person out of eight attends public worship of any kind. If we were to pursue the inquiry, and ascertain what proportion of that eight were men, we doubt that it must be allowed that the lordly sex were in a very godless condition. We fear,

moreover, that the devotional duties are not more numerously attended in England than in Scotland.

The Mascarenhas: a Legend of the Portuguese in India. 3 vols. By the author of the "Prediction." Smith, Elder, and Co.

Two years since we predicted that the author of the "Prediction" had resources of genius and information amply sufficient for the production of a highly-finished and beautiful romance. That prophesy has been fulfilled to the very letter, by the publication of the " Mascarenhas," which is, in good sooth, an historical romance of the first order. It is one of those works into whose minute discussion we can enter freely, without any fear of crushing the young shoots of talent by severely noting the faults ever pertaining more or less to inexperienced authorship. Where we find a mixture of talent and error, we often pat the heads of young authors with a general notice of encouragement, when critical analysis would be almost a cruelty. No such fear withholds us from the examination of such a second work as the present, where talent is perfected, and faults discerned and subdued by the good sense, good taste, and candid spirit of its author.

The choice of subject is boldly original, the adventurers of a Portuguese family of high rank at Goa are interwoven with the struggles between the Mahratta and Moslem dynasties in Hindostan. The time is the ascension of Aurungzebe to the Mogul throne. The characters are well sustained, and strikingly diversified; by means of close inquiry, and minute research into works relative to Hindu and Moslem manners and history, they act, speak, and think, in strict accordance with oriental costume. The scene between Aurungzebe and his vizier, and that between Seva and his uncle, the Prince Sevagi, are finely imagined, and executed with dramatic power, particularly the latter, which has not the clog of narrative, always dangerous when thrown into dialogue; yet the narration of Aurungzebe is both lively and charac

3 H-VOL. VIII.-JUNE,

teristic, and, therefore, not to be classed with the heavy specimens we often condemn in contemporary works. The portrait of the heroic Mahratta, Prince Sevagi, is the best we have seen in any work of fiction of the present year.

The story turns on the rescue of the Mahratta princess, Ailya, from the sutteefire, by the Portuguese soldier, Xavier Mascarenhas. She is the sister of the brave Sevagi, and becomes the wife of her deliverer, and mother to Seva, who is the hero of the tale, in our estimation, at least. Ailya, who long adheres to the darkest idolatries of the Hindus, becomes estranged from her husband, and suffers voluntarily the severest deprivations of loss of high caste, to which her escape from the fiery pile has subjected her. Seva has been rescued from the power of Aurungzebe, and brought up with his uncle, the Mahratta sovereign. At last, worn with suffering, the Princess Ailya voluntarily offers herself as a victim to the pile she had escaped in her youth, thereby removing a family reproach from her brother, the heroic Sevagi, and saving her son, then under condemnation through a false accusation. The development of this scene affords a good specimen of the work; though it is far from the best, it is most easily detached, and therefore best suits our limits as an extract. Sevagi is remonstrating with the intolerant Brahmins, who demur at admitting the poor victim into the presence of their demoniac idol, Kali:

:

"The Princess Ailya hath been accounted purified, her voluntary expiation accepted, her stain effaced:-is the daughter of a hundred kings who, by this night's sacrifice, becomes the deified companion of immortals, unworthy to stand within the temple her ancestors erected? to bend before the altar her ancestors enriched? By the spirits of Kedarnath, she shall walk through this temple to her throne of fire! the deities who witnessed her expulsion shall behold her curse reversed! by your voices was she degraded to the vile; by your voices shall she be raised to the most high, and the self-existent shall receive her uncontaminated!'

"The Suttee hath too long put off atonement, hath been inexpiably defiled,' exclaimed the pandaram; she dies to avert calamity, not to win back her forfeit caste.'

"She bath omitted the customary pomp and offerings, refused to follow the usual ceremonials,' chimed in the priestly satellites.

Her body must revert to its original elements, her spirit become purified by ten avatars, before she can witness the unveiled glories of the wonderful,' resumed the pandaram.

"Then by the mighty powers to whom I consecrate my sword and battle-axe, she shall not burn exclaimed the raja-Is Sevagi to light a Chandala's funeral pile! No, by the undying lamp I have sworn it-1!-Sevagi!' "The priests fell back amazed.

"I will appeal to the pandaram of Jagannath, continued the raja; 'let him pronounce upon