"Or but to speak a word at his door," returned the other.

66

It is too awful to hear-I cannot stay near," said the first; and they hastened onwards.

At a very early hour the next morning, four or five of the most eminent medical men of the town of met together in the cell of John B- to pronounce that life had left the body, and to give their opinion as to the cause of the decease. That opinion was unanimous. It was proved that an owl made the grating at the summit of the cell his nightly haunt;

By thee the mighty steam bark's dashing prow
And swelling sails bring in the fibrous snow,
Merry to make our million wheels to fly,
With laughing groups of infant industry:
Six days of cheerful labour, while they feel
The coming seventh, by God design'd
For sweet refreshment of all living kind,

and snatches, and prayers screamed forth in agony from the solitary cell, had ceased. At that moment, it was supposed, the owl had made her visit to her quarters for the night, and probably, from hooting and flapping her wings above him, had caused the poor captive to imagine her some unearthly visitant. Always a prey to superstitious fears, and now excited to the highest degree of terror, this had been too much; he had sunk back fainting upon his bed, and the head having fallen low, he being a man of full habit, and no assistance having been rendered, apoplexy had supervened, and occasioned death.

The death of John B

was attended

Peel.

IV.

That sacred day, railway and Thames behold,
Carriage and deck all filled with young and old :
Peasant from cot-from home the artisan-
Both, from blest meal, that God design'd for man,
With all their happy children round their knees,
They whom sour preaching knaves
Would turn to starving slaves,

While their own "capon lin'd round bellies" swell with ease.t

course had been the crookedest made an outcast from his party on account of his integrity, and exposed to the bitterest vituperation. Sir Robert Peel has fallen from power, and risen in greatness. He lost a fac

tion, and gained a nation. Accusations of treachery

evince his integrity. Scornful assaults illustrate his dignity. Desertion only leaves him in unapproached grandeur. There is no similar instance on record of a party leader, and the tool of an aristocracy, foregoing all the advantages, and resisting all the temp

in almost every case.

*"Weekly Dispatch," August 23, 1846:"The closing session will be remembered in history. And the popular triumph, in the repeal of the corn-laws, by which it is distinguished, will be even less remarkable than the new light it has thrown on the character of Sir Robert Peel, and the new position in which it has placed him. At the beginning, or a brief time previously, he was apparently the permanent premier, with a stronger party at his back than ever before supported a minister; at its close, he is a private gentleman, without office, power, or party. At its commencement, he was the object of public distrust; at its close, he commands the national respect and gratitude. For the first time in political history, we have beheld a statesman in the plenitude of authority and influence, making a deliberate sacrifice of power and patronage to the rights and wants of the people -sacrificing even his own character in the estimation of those by whom he had been raised to the summit of his ambition. We have seen the man whose

ple, and work out their deliverance from the most oppressive and pernicious monopoly ever devised and upheld by the sinister interests of class legislation."

*"Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest, that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed" (Exodus xxiii. 12). "Refreshed!" Let un-christian and un-English partisans pause on this intelligible, significant, and happy expression, and then ask their gloomy and unsocial minds if it be not possible that their Saviour would, with the same inspiration that prompted his answer to the Pharisees in the cornfield, confirm the right of the poor man to sit with the partner of his labours and his cares, with their children around them, at a hot dinner, on the Sabbath; and if the same benevolent and merciful Spirit would not exhort them to give thanks to their bountiful Creator in the fields and on the waters, with their happy children in their hands, for the sunshine and fresh air, as the blessed "refreshment" that he has bestowed on them after six days of hard labour in the mine, or at the forge, or at the loom, breathing for six days a corrupt atmosphere. God Almighty allots them rest and refreshment; the hypocrites deny them both. The rank farce of the present saints is but a resuscitation of the same dastardly oppression of the poor fifty years ago. The author of these lines remembers about that period the upright, liberalminded, and English magistrate, the late Mr. Kinnaird, whom he was in the habit of occasionally meeting at the table of a literary friend. This worthy magistrate thus expressed himself on hypocrites:"These un-Englishmen send before me poor old applewomen for getting an honest livelihood on SundayI send them back. The hypocrites wish to deprive the poor hard-working man of a hot dinner on Sundays, but I hope I shall never see the day when that right shall be taken from him and his humble family about him."

+ Shakespeare--" As You Like It."

Thou fled'st their vices, e'en while they
Had better made thy virtues with them stay;
Thou exild'st, but not stabb'd, thy country's cruel foe.
VIII.

If tainted men to change their thoughts are free,
Sure to the good-the right belongs to thee,

Thou glorious contrast to the Pitt and Burke,
Whose brightest skill was darkest work.
Like thine, ambition did their steps entice;
Thou with court-doctrine didst begin-
Ending, a virtuous crown to win;
While they began with good, to end in vice.

IX.

What though not thine a coronet of guilt,

Like that acquir'd when Sidney's, Russell's blood was spilt ?

What though thy veins can boast no regal flood,
Commingled with polluted Gallic blood?

With honey rich thou left'st the hive, to stand
Where-as thy sire will'd,

With fair ambition fill'd

Amid the flower-the nobles-of the land.

X.

There sprung young friendships, and there mortal man,
Self-love with them carv'd out thy future plan,

And round about thee thine attachments drew
The trammels of a selfish crew.

Proud and indignant now, they hear thee cry,
(While low their heads they bow)
"The time is alter'd now;

Your av'rice is in dust, my charity on high."

XI.

By thee shall wars depart from ev'ry land, And each to each bring plenty in her hand; No stain of blood is in thy victory;

No reft one's tears to dry;

No shrunken outstretch'd hand of toil unfed ; No moans from hungry infants break; But the smile speaks from ev'ry cheek,

Darnley" he has almost, if not quite, brought himself on a level with the above admirable production. "Darnley" is one of those fictions which will interest and

He

please both old and young. The opening is striking and effective. We are at once, by the meeting of the hero and Sir Cæsar, cast into a very cauldron of mystery, in which we continue to seethe and boil until the last very be reached. This chapage racter is perhaps one of the best in the book-at all events, it is the most striking. We find the astrologer at every turn. is ever ready at the nick of time to serve those whom he patronises. In conversation with our hero, in pretended league with the villain knight his enemy, in his magic and secret chamber, showing the wonders of the fortune-telling mirror, he is ever the same philosophising, sarcastic, and marked character. Indeed, the work abounds with a perfect galaxy of portraits,

bread.

XII.

As from some humble, lovely, shaded spot,
Where laurels and the myrtle crown a grot,

Springs the live crystal from its fountain pure,
Bringing its life and light from the obscure,

Till through green meads and flowers it reach the sea,
So on in shining course,

Gathering its noble force,

ly equalled in fiction. The character of the usurper of Darnley's place and estate is well conceived, and ever in keeping. Utterly regardless of any one thing except the acquisition of wealth and power, he is described as working out his plans with a cool and deliberate villany which we

thee.

XIII.

His name shall live, while our dear land shall last;
And link'd with his in all his glories past,
Villiers and Bright, and he of manly sense,
Allied alike in name and eloquence

in ancient days. But we believe that once the boundary mark between vice and vir

* Settlement of the Oregon question, and the benevolent care of Haydon and his family.

tue irrevocably passed, man revels in his own wickedness, and forgetting immortality, hardens his own soul, and looks but to the end regardless of the means. The wicked thus plunge deeper every day. So is it with this character, who, as the villain of the piece, plays no mean part. His attempted murder of Darnley, his opposition to the rights of Constance, and his treason to his king, are displayed with unusual power. The two heroines are admirable sketches. The quiet, dignified grace of sweet Constance is admirably relieved by the playful skittishness of her friend and companion Katherine Balger. Perhaps the best drawn and most natural scenes in the work are those in which Lady Katrine, while affianced to one she truly loves, still roguishly coquets with Darnley. The journey they perform together is admirably described, and enables Mr. James to give some exquisite pictures of English scenery and manners. This is also prominently the case in the description given of the munificent establishment of Buckingham's ambitious duke, at whose table dined such vast numbers every day, and where rare old English hospitality was kept in grand and magnificent style. In fact, there are perhaps more distinct pleasing pictures in this romance than in any from the same writer's pen. Henry VIII is introduced, and treated somewhat gently. It is true he is drawn at a time when he had not become the bloody and sensual tyrant which history has proved him; but we opine the nature of the beast must always have been the same. His butcher-cardinal Wolsey, fit minister for such a king, is powerfully drawn, and good use is made in the story of both king and prelate. It would be idle, in the instance of a work which is so well and so favourably known, to pursue our remarks further. But we are quite sure that, in recommending every family to procure this admirable collected edition of Mr. James' works, we are performing a duty which everybody who takes our advice will own to be a pleasing one. The series is admirably printed, neatly bound, and is quite as cheap as such books ought ever to be. A new novel by Mr. James, in three volumes, is this day published, of which we shall give an elaborate analysis next month. The title is "Heidelberg."

The Tudor Sisters; a Story of National Sacrilege. Newby.

This is one of those novels which, taking rise in a morbid state of religious feeling, fully justifies the saying that its authors tone is that of a parish scold, and his taste that of a strolling manager. It is a mys tery to us how any man can write, any publisher publish, or any reader read, such monstrous attempts at historical narrative.

It is lamentable to think that our circulating libraries are filled with such trash. One extract, already more than once quoted, will illustrate our views:

"Alas, poor Jane! the embrace was cold to her: for he from whom she sought it unclapsed her twining arms; and, though there was tenderness in her manner in which he seated her, and screened the

from the night breeze, he spoke no word of comfort;

but, retiring from her contact with more than con

jugal respect, leaned over the gunwale of the boat,

apparently more sorrow-stricken than resentful. Jane was touched; but when she fancied she saw a

tear trickle through his fingers, glisten in the moonlight, and drop into the water-overcome by that

which woman cannot resist, much less so gentle a creature as Jane, she could forbear no longer; but

rising from her seat, made a step forward, exclaim

ing: Guilford, dearest Guilford, share with me thy sorrow. Thou wert but now, to all seeming, joyous, and sang'st right merrily. Sure, sight of thy Jane hath not made thee sad! Think not, Dudley, how we parted-all is, long ago, forgotten.' 'Peace,

peace, oh! peace!' cried a voice, in which sympathy

struggled to be harsh, or let thy words scotch in the deep damnation of my guilt. Thus gently, they are adder-stings.' The head of the speaker was raised a little-but other motion he made none; and that

voice, oh! how changed from the Dudley of happier days! A peremptory cry of Woman, be still!'" uttered by a tall, gloomy-looking figure, who stood in the stern of the boat, with arms, authoritatively folded, watching and controlling all, struck Jane down into her seat-in a panic of surprise and apprehension. Whose was the voice, at the command of which her breath was to be still? Whose the

compelling power that urged the oarsmen to strike

so rapidly, and strain the bark so swiftly through the waters? Why did not her Guilford assume the

command? But could he be there, and brook that

his Jane should be tongue-tied by an unfeeling ruffian, with 'Woman, be still!' Why, indeed, was she thus torn away from the protection of one whose home and heart were opened to her, and who would have sheltered and shielded her Dudley too? There is a feeling without a name which creeps over the trembles in every nerve, and shakes in every limb, heart and brain, tingles in every drop of blood, when first the sense becomes conscious of a harrowing pang, but before the thrill is given. Jane felt that feeling now, and looked desparingly around her. Could she have been betrayed? it was his bird-call, his well-known wooing song. She felt the voice was

changed: could sorrow thus have changed it? No! that insulting mandate, 'Woman be still!' and oh!

it was a heartless mimicry, or why the submission to that cold caress! Conviction came like a flash, some

thing cracked in the recesses of her brain, her heart

thumped against her side, and, half-leaping with the shock, she fell senseless at the feet of her mysterious betrayer. The long-loved lure had beguiled her to her undoing. It was the mother calling her lamb

over a precipice!"

Belford Regis. By Miss Mitford. Bentley.

This work is too well known to require any comment. It is quite sufficient to remark that it has been just published by Mr. Bentley in a cheap form, and that its high and noble aim must secure for it in this form an extended circulation.

Charlotte Corday; an historical tale. By

Rose Ellen Hendricks. Groombridge.

The press generally asserts that this young lady has improved. We certainly acquiesce in the statement; for, from writing a volume of the very worst poetry we ever remembered to have read, our author

has advanced to the composition of a very pleasing historical tale, of which more next month.

Lost or Won, or the Love Test. By the author of the "Maid's Husband." Colburn.

This is one of those tales in which the writer endeavours, by improbable incident and distorted passion, to make up for want of inventive powers and true knowledge of the human heart. The tale is so ill managed, and the catastrophe so absurd, and so strangely brought about, that we abstain from further notice. The writer is not without ability, and should he succeed in conquering his ambition for straining after effect would produce, we have every reason to believe, a somewhat pleasing work. At present he is too partial to the striking and the outré to be either pleasing or profitable,

The Wild Irish Girl. (Colburn's Standard Novels.)

This is also a new edition of a work so popular as to require little notice from us. It is a tolerably faithful copy of human nature, and contains nothing that can be considered as objectionable.

The Topic. Parts III and IV.

London, Mitchell.

66

This publication has fully justified the good opinion we expressed on the appear. ance of its earliest numbers. The idea is an excellent one, and requires only that the plan proposed should be adhered to closely, with such an amount of talent as we find already enlisted, to ensure a successful result, though perhaps to be attained only gradually. It is important however that the real topic of the week, so often as the public mind is occupied by one engrossing subject, should be seized upon without delay. When the nine days' wonder have gone by, it may be vain to attempt to resuscitate public interest. The parts before us are devoted to the following questions Railway Liabilities," "The Poor and the Poor Laws," "Humboldt's Kosmos," ," "Mexico and the United States," "Art Unions," "Flowers and the Flower Shows," "Continental Travels," On the question of the "Poor and the Poor Laws" there is much in detail from which we dissent; but many of the suggestions are excellent, and particular with regard to the employment of paupers. The review of the "Kosmos," though necessarily, within such limits, giving but an imperfect analysis of the work, is by a writer familiar with its "great argument," and may be read as a good introduction to the book itself. There is a very full and statistical notice of Mexico and its resources, and a

view of its present position as regards the American States, closing with a reference to the prospect of the English holder of Mexican bonds, whose position is certainly not improved by the war, nor likely to be by its almost certain result. The paper on Art Unions takes up their defence against the opinions of Sir Robert Peel and other influential patrons of Art, that they operate unfavourably as regards the advancement of true taste. They have not certainly done much hitherto to promote that; but the taste they create or sustain is better than no taste at all; and if any other causes shall be set in operation tending to give an higher direction to popular feeling in the matter of Art, the Art Unions will be directed by the current; it is impossible that they should effectively offer any resistance to its onward way.

The Dream of the Opium Eater. By Owen Howell. Matthews, Warwick-lane. There is much originality and force in this wild little poem, mixed with much that is quaint and overstrained.

Lives of the Queens of England. By Agnes Stickland. Vol. IX. Colburn.

This is a delightful volume, to which we purpose next month devoting an especial article. The subject is Mary Beatrice of Modena.

Father Darcy. By the author of "Mount Sorel." 2 vols. Chapman and Hall.

From the two old men's tales to "Father Darcy," we have carefully studied this much bepraised writer in the earnest endeavours to solve a riddle, which seemed so easy of solution to every one else, viz. where the great merit lay. Ability, much power of description, a minute picturing of character, we allow to exist, but these qualifications do not make up for a somewhat questionable morality-all who have read the two old men's tales will fully coincide in this-nor for want of nature in the men and women who are introduced; for ourselves, we know of no fictions less pleasing to read than these. There is no sustained interest in the story, and the only attraction appears to be in the profusion of pointed sentences, which read like profound truths, but which are oftener but tinsel sentiment. The style is undoubtedly good, as style is now received, but as novels, as true descriptions or pictures of life, as books which may do us good, or even amuse us with any accompanying advantage, we cannot see the purpose. For our own parts we never can sympathise with a writer whose sole purpose seems to be to lay bare the sombre, bleak, and bad side of human nature. It is but just to own that while opening up to us scenes of vice,

"At the request of several persons of distinction, who have visited the Reform Club, particularly the

to show the evil of these things. God knows the world is bad enough, but the avocation of literature should rather be to lead to virtue by pursuasive arts than to terrify by minute dissections of crime and evil. We here give an extract:

A CATHOLIC GRANDMOTHER.

“Tall and rigid in her figure; her hands thin and delicate, veined and sinewed in large knots and tendons, were clothed with a sort of black velvet mitten, which displayed one morning ring upon the right hand, and a small one encircling the wedding finger on the left. She was sitting in a large chair covered with black leather by the side of the window, reading, in a book bound, as such books then were, in black, richly ornamented with gold. From time to time, the book, and the hand which held it, would sink into her lap-while her large melancholy eyes were fixed upon the dark heavy plumes of some immense and gloomy fir-trees, swaying and heaving in the wintry wind. The two little children that were in the room with her were two little boys, her grandchildren. Their mother was dead; their father, the son of this lady, was Robert Catesby. The little creatures looked pale, and their features were sharp and sickly; their large eyes were encircled with that dark black ring which is a symptom of early suffering and decay; they were not clothed in black as was the lady, but in little coats of dark maroon colour, ornamented with silken fringes; and their small open collars were of rich needle-work. Their appearance was that of children carefully attended to; but their looks were dull and almost terrified. They sat crouching together in a corner of the room, near the fire-place, playing at some little quiet game they had found for themselves; whispering to each other when they spoke; and every now and then casting a sort of fearful glance at the lady, and round the room, which was now being wrapped in the fast closing shadows of the dark and dismal evening."

The Gastronomic Regenerator, a Simplified and entirely new System of Cookery. By Monsieur Alexis Soyer. Simpkin and Marshall.

We

From the portrait of the author in the first, to that of his deceased wife in the last, part of the book, this work is replete with amusement and instruction. There is more, indeed, than meets the eye. are persuaded that, apart from his gastronomic genius, M. Soyer is a decided wag, and that while treating his subject with solemn gravity, he is laughing in his sleeve at the inanity of mind in such of his patrons as seem to make eating the business of life, the god of their idolatry. The bit of "distinguished personages who have honoured the author with their approbation," is curious. We find the Duke of Cambridge at the head, and we know not whom behind, being, however, but patrons of the author's extreme cleverness, and not making eating the summum bonum of existence. But we have not now to write a homily on the sumptuary vices of the age, but to notice the most remarkable cookerybook ever published. M. Soyer's preface is a curiosity:

to refuse anything in my power, for indeed it must have been the fair sex who have had the majority in this domestic argument to gain this gastronomical election. Why do you not write and publish a cookery book?' was a question continually put to me. For a considerable time this scientific word caused a thrill of horror to pervade my frame, and brought back to my mind that one day being in a most superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial hall, by chance I met with one of Milton's allegorical works, the profound ideas of Locke, and several chefs-d'œuvre of one of the noblest champions of literature, Shakespeare; when all at once my attention was attracted by the nineteenth edition of a voluminous work; such an immense success of publication caused me to say: Oh, you celebrated man, posterity counts every hour of fame upon your regretted ashes.' Opening this work with intense curiosity, to my great disappointment what did I see?-a receipt for ox-tail soup! The terrifying effect produced upon me by this succulent volume, made me determine that my few ideas should never encumber a sanctuary which should be entirely devoted to works worthy of a place in the temple of the muses. But you must acknowledge, respected readers, how changeable and uncertain are our feeble ideas,through life; to keep the promise above mentioned, I have been drawn into a thousand gastronomic reflections, which have involved me in the necessity of deviating entirely from my former opinion, and have induced me to bring before the pub. lic the present volume, under the title of The Gastronomic Regenerator,' throughout which I have closely followed the plain rules of simplicity, so that every receipt can not only be clearly understood, but easily executed. I now sincerely hope, ladies, that I have not only kept my promise, but to your satisfaction paid tribute to your wishes. You have not forgotten, dear reader, the effect that monstrous volume, the said nineteenth edition, produced upon me; therefore, I now sincerely beg of you to put my book in a place suited to its little merit, and not with Milton's sublime Paradise,' for there it certainly would be doubly lost."

The next page unfolds to us a matter which is headed " important," and which is certainly so, being "a description of the composition of the work;" this should be read, and its facts digested with becoming gravity. To this succeeds "Soyer's New Mode of Carving," à propos of which we have the following:

"To illustrate this just question I will relate a curious and historic anecdote. Having one day served a'petit diner tres recherché' for five persons, in which was 'poularde à l'ambassadeur,' a new and rather voluminous dish of mine. After the first course, a message was sent me that the gentlemen had found that dish so good, they regretted I had not sent two poulardes instead of one. At first I took this message for a pleasantry, but a short time after three parts of the poularde came down in a state that if exposed over a laundry door would have served for a sign, without having recourse to those popular words, 'mangling done here.' The sight of a dish so greatly disfigured made me collect a few of my little culinary ideas. Nature, says I to myself, compels us to dine more or less once a day; each of those days you are, honourable reader, subject to meet en tête en tête with a fowl, poularde, duck, pheasant, or other volatile species; is it not bad enough to have sacrificed the lives of those animaux bienfaisans' to satisfy our indefatigable appetites, without pulling and tearing to atoms the remains of our benefactors? It is high time, for the credit of humanity, and the comfort of quiet families, to put an end to the massacre of those innocents."

It would be impossible to follow the whole of the series of recipes which suc