RAYMOND DE MONTHAULT. * Mii MonoArt in Raymond de Monthault rather
exhibits acquire- ments advantageous to the novelist than qualities essential to the production of a fiction. He has a knowledge of Welsh and Eng- lish history, especially of the time and place in which his scene is laid—the Welsh borders, in the reign of Stephen. He has studied the social condition of the period in general, with all the zeal of an " ancient Briton" and a Morgan. He is familiar with the names, genealogies, myths, and superstitions of Wales. Though his style is too strained and embroidered, it is not without a cer- tain force ; and he possesses a kind of pictorial power in reviving the forms of the past. It is as an historical or antiquarian essay- ist, however, rather than as a novelist. He wants the judgment in the choice of his materials and the skill in their use which are denominated art. He is also deficient in that dramatic spirit which enables the novelist to vivify his selected materials and present them in a natural manner. In Raymond de Monthault the reader observes too frequently the "modus operandi "—how it's all done.
The conspicuous character of the piece is the Norman Lord Marcher, who gives the title to the book. He is drawn not exactly after the received fashion ; for Mr. Morgan is too well read in the chronicles to need to imitate modern fictionists. Raymond is such a man as the ancient monks delighted to paint an opponent, " without God, or fear, or pity " ; to which the modern essayist has added the qualities which he considers, and perhaps rightly, characterized the Norman barons as a class, such as resolute self-will, disregard of the rights of others, an iron frame, and an iron cruelty in overcoming opposition. The mischief in character-drawing of this kind is, that we lose sight of the man altogether in the enumeration of his qualities. When the person has to be shown in action and discourse, we have an automaton made up of abstractions. Such is the Lrd Marcher, such are many of the other persons. As are the men so are the times. They are often presented too coarsely in their cruelty and crimes, unrelieved by those touches of nature, whether humorous, or passionate, or remorseful, which are found in reality. Perhaps the facts, even though supported by authority, may sometimes be needlessly correct. The sickly sentiment of ignorant romance- writers, in investing the past with a refinement and chivalry which never existed, is bad ; but the naked exhibition of cruelty and tyranny is almost as bad for purposes of art. Mr. Morgan seems as if he went on the principle of collecting all the ferocities that might have been perpetrated in the reign of Stephen and saddling them all upon Raymond.
Years before the opening of the tale, Cador Hardd, a Welsh chieftain of large possessions and larger soul, had been the friend of Raymond, and served him well in various straits. Notwithstand- ing this, Cador, his wife and household, were butchered at a ban- quet, where he was entertaining Raymond and other Normans. Cador, however, was only left for dead. After wandering about, he returns to take service with his would-be murderer, under the name of Jarl the Breton, a condottierri leader, who ever wears his visor down—a man in an iron mask. When the curtain draws up, the consequences of Raymond's offences are gathering round him. The Welsh, whom he as Lord Marcher has plundered and massacred— the Church, which he has defied—the Templars' in whose order a brother of Cador is a member—the friends of Matilda the Empress, to whom he is opposed as a partisan of Stephen—have combined to attack him. As the action goes on, he is left by Jarl, who, having slain most of his old enemies save Raymond, now joins the league against him. At last he is deserted by the daemon to whom he has had resort ; the banner of his house is re- placed by that of his supernatural friend, and, after witnessing the death of his three sons and his followers, and receiving disabling hurts in single combat with the now avowed Cador, he sinks with his castle into the earth, as the villain of a melodrama disappears with his stronghold beneath the stage. Here is the process ; not devoid of power, but too much in the fashion of the Castle of Otranto and the school which did not deem it necessary to explain
the supernatural.
"'Thorough,' this time Pere,' replied the son, from his hollow calque, while he sprang upon the Breton. "The crimson plume and barred helm of Jarl Bronz had disappeared. In lieu of them shone forth the marble-clear face and short jet hair of the man that, as his name implied, had been renowned through Cambria as much for the heroic beauty of his person as the largeness and generosity of his soul. "'It's the hand of Heaven, and needs no sinful aid,' exclaimed Talvarran, borne away in a swooning state by his followers ; whilst Guadere in his turn fell before the Venetine, dashed from between him and the Marcher by one fearful stroke—a quivering corpse—against the ancient seat of the Grey Mason.
"The Templar sheathed his blade—the Venetines, by a common impulse, became rooted as statues.
"Of all his garrison, his domain, his family, the Marcher alone lived. And his helm also was now thrown of He cast it from him to the ground, and with features bloodless, but unshrunk by terror, with his brow borne high, and his eye as untroubled and commanding as ever, he strode across his dead son, and confronted the man whose clan he had massacred, whose love he
• Raymond de Monthault, the Lord Marcher: a Legend of the Welsh Borders ljy the Reverend R. W. Morgan, P.C. Tregynon, Author of Verities of the Laura," &c. In three volumes. Published by Bentley.
had betrayed, whose body he had riven with wounds in the sanctuary of his chamber, on his festal night, on the bosom of his wife, above the appealing hands of his innocent and helpless child. There was a grandeur which ap- palled the heart in the quenchless pride of the Norman's full, direct glare on the Venetine chief, in the sibilant distinctness of the few words that burst from his lips, in the engine-like fury with which his steel lit on the uplifted axe. A rare and beautiful vision was it—could it have been separated from its adjuncts—to witness the practice of arms of these two warriors in the ma- ture perfection of such consummate strength and judgment,—to see life and death beaten to and fro from weapon to weapon, yet never descending, nor between the bodies and hands of the champions. The blows of De Mont- hault were delivered with miraculous skill, reduplication, and potency—the solid steel of the axe on which they fell gleamed like an anvil lightened by coruscations of sparks. Nevertheless, the wrist of the Venetine moved neither right nor left : under it his aspect was fixed rather on the Marcher's face than his sword, and though his enemy poured stroke upon stroke till the castle reverberated with the quick and echoing din, the soul of Ceder Hardd seemed absorbed in drinking in the last looks on earth of his once Norman friend, Perchance, across the long dreary waste of hatred, the memory of his early affection passed like a mournful spectre ; perchance the utter deso- lation in so brief and swift a period of the man whose most effective stay he had himself been, or, still more, those bubbling trickling streams which oozed out from every joint and crevice of his panoply, attesting the avenger's work nigh already done, contributed for a moment to arrest the Venetine's arm.
"And the Templar also—scarcely recovered from the bewilderment which had affected him in meeting in his own and his order's secret emissary, his murdered and long-lamented relative—betrayed some such emotions. "'Spare him, Cador—spare him, brother—spare him for penitence and God!'
" With the hoarse cry and spring of a tiger the Baron turned upon the speaker. A rush of scintillations marked the concussion between his sword and the burnished helm. De Fosse sank on his knee. Before him, ere the Marcher could repeat the stroke, bounded once more Cador Hardd the Venetine.
"For some time nothing more could be distinguished than the figures of these two men in mail, one with a sword, the other with a battle-axe, en- gaged in the traversings of a mortal issue. " A silence deep and sudden then followed. He with the sword sup- ports himself against the pedestal of the standard. His shield is riven, his corslet rent—his sword shivered ; the purple fluid wells from breast and loin and limb. Above his head, with the ghastly aspect of the Spirit- Mason devouring him from its centre, tardily descends the Stipas Cloud. He lifts his glazing eyes : they encounter nought but that indescribable image of terror. The castle now reels from base to pinnacle. Every Venetine has abandoned it. Collected below, breathless as the very stars at night, as the oaks on the hills, they watch the last of the catastrophe of that far-execrated keep. "And the Marcher was left alone on high. Upon him alone, erect in the light of that blended fire and darkness, every eye in that great camp was riveted. With dying features, one hand grasping the staff of that frightful bannerol, the other clutching the hilt of his fractured blade, his three dead sons at his feet, his castle foundering to the abyss, he turned, after one look of ineffable scorn on the Tenant of the Cloud, his full front towards the wide and awe-stilled armament of the Venetine. his countenance, blanched as the silver, was haughty as ever, and his final gesture of defiance fraught with the majesty of an expiring empire. " And, fold upon fold, the pall of the Stipas Fiend fell upon him, upon his sons, upon the many dead, upon outwork and tower and donjon of the vast pile of the Marchland fortress. Upon them, for hours, like a bill of midnight, it brooded, noiseless, impenetrable—subsiding lower and lower, till with the first faint exhalations of morn it coiled downward and disap- peared for ever in the nether earth. " On the charred level where once soared the rock and castle of Mont- hault, the bodies of the slaughtered Venetines alone next day indicated the locality of its existence. Deep, deep, where no human plummet will ever sound, had descended the Marcher's hold, the Marcher's treasures, and the Gold Fiend's Cloud."
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