MISS MARTINEAU'S DEERIIROOK.
THIS is a very able work, but a heavy and indifferent fiction. The helluo of the circulating library will lack the necessary stimulants of stirring incidents and mysteries to be resolved ; the more select novel-reader will miss his accustomed rapidity of narrative and variety of persons, the extrinsic interest arising from characteristic manners, and a dashing breadth and facility of execution. Both, we apprehend, will be wearied by a slender story, whose love trouble springs from a "report," and then from a separation upon an unlikely distrust ; whose opening is long delayed, as its pro- gress is continually suspended by miniature painting of unessential subjects, by microscopic exhibitions of feeling, and by long disqui- sitions, on any thing which the current of the story throws up. or will the few readers of a more patient and considerate kind award higher praise to Deerl,roole as English fiction. They will admire the various and truthful pictures of English scenery, village cha- racters, and every-day life, which Miss MARTINEAU introduces into her slow-evolving tale ; they will appreciate her anatomical exhibi- tions of the human heart ; be touched to sympathy, and driven to reflection, by her sketches of the silent, uncomplaining sufferings, which many women have to endure both in their affections and circumstances ; admire the power with which the different scenes are painted, and, with one exception, the general truth of the cha- racters—a reflex of those which lie befime us in daily life. But after a patient perusal and a carefill analysis of the work, such readers will see that its leading causes arc unlikely, or insufficient to pro- duce their consequences, or are exceptions to the common laws of nature. After they have taken from the story that which is sin- gular, or that which is unlikely, the residuum would be mere exeerpla of transcripts front every-day existence. The plan of the writer being defective, her purpose altogether breaks down.
The main interest turns on a Mr. Hope, a philosophical country surgeon, losing his practice and being reduced to poverty, through an unpopular vote, and the tittle-tattle of Mrs. Rowland, a village lady, whom he had offended by his marriage ; and the endeavours of the same amiable person to break off a match between her brother and Mr. Hope's sister-in-law. We have already remarked upon the moral improbability of the lover's separation ; the sad: denness with which Mr. Hope is reduced to poverty is equally improbable, and indeed, to its extent, arithmetically impossible. But passing this, the end of the tale is to impress the moral— suffer for the right, and all will come right at last. But in Deer. brook the parties are righted through a national calamity,—a pesti- lence which sweeps off half the village, baffling the rival practitioner whom Mrs. Rowland had set up, terrifying the lady herself into confession, and even mollifying the great man whom Mr. Ilope's vote had offended. Readers addicted to reasoning will there- fore say—" Oh, it is all very well to do right, if Providence will send fever and famine for the sake of working round,' (as Miss MARTINEAU heads a chapter ;) but what would have become of Hope's practice, and Margaret's love, had things taken their usual and natural course ?" No moral in fiction, where the author un- dertakes to exhibit the whole, can ever be pointed by accidents or extrinsic circumstances, but must spring from a conjunction of cha- racter and conduct strictly producing legitimate consequences. To bring about a happy catastrophe by such accidents as a public visi- tation or finding a purse, either thils of moral effect altogether, or gives a false view of human life, encouraging an expectation of " special Providences," after the fashion of LlussTINGssoN's " fishes " or PILKINGTON'S " hat."
It is curious to trace up the apparent cause both of the heavi- ness of Deerbrook and of its incongruities and defects as a fiction: all seeming to us to spring from deep-seated mannerism, or at least front Miss MARTINEAU'S speculative habit of mind and the success of her former delightful Tales. She formed her plan with an instinctive notion of a closely-printed tract ; she tilled it up to her publisher's demand for three volumes ; and in so doing, she gave free scope to her natural disposition to philosophize, to her taste for home scenes and home scenery, and her skill in painting them, and to a bias, cultivated by her having taught in novels, to express her own feelings, opinions, and speculations, in the form of' dialogue.
But it is not only in a superstructure too extensive for its foun- dation, that we seem to trace the effects of early labours. The incidents are sometimes of the same old cast, without the same excuse or necessity. In unfolding the laws of political economy, the many were often introduced as agents or accessories ; and rightfully, because the subject to be expounded involved the weal or wo of numbers, whose conduct was, all unconsciously, influenced by their obedience or resistance to certain laws. had Deerbrook been written to illustrate the evils of ignorance, an attack upon an anatomical school by a mob (which loss occurred) would have been in place ; so would the poor neglecting medical prescriptions, or running counter to them in blind reliance upon charms and for- tune-tellers ; or the selfish isolation of the rich from a dread of contagion. But the mobbing of a once-beloved medical practi- tioner by an assemblage of scattered peasantry, on account of a re- port that he stole dead bodies, is improbable; and, at all events, is, with the conduct of the people during the pestilence, of the class of what stage-managers call " supernumeraries,"—skilfully dovetailed, no doubt, and painted with great truth, but encumbering a story to whose progress they contribute little. The scenes, though many of them arc well depicted, require a full understanding of the persons and their situation to be appre- ciated. Of more independent matter, we give a couple of spe- cimens.
A HOLIDAY TO HARD-WORKING PEOPLE.
Her true holvdays were such us the afternoon of this day, —hours suddenly set free, little gifts of leisure to be spent according to the fancy of the moment. Let none pretend to understand the value of such whose lives are all leisure; who take up a book to pass the time; who saunter in gardens because there are no morning visits to make ; who exaggerate the writito, of a tinnily letter into important business. Such have their own enjoyments; but they know nothing of the paroxysm of pleasure of a really hard-working person on hearing the door shut which excludes the business of life, and leaves the delight of free thoughts and hands. The worst part of it is the having to decide bow to make the most of liberty. Miss Young [a lame governess] was not long in settling this point. She just glanced up at her shelf of books, and down upon her drawing-board, and abroad through the south window, and made up her mind. The acacia with its fresh bunches of blossoms was waning above the window, casting in flickering shadows upon the floor ; the evergreens of the shrubbery twinkled in the sun, as the light breeze swept over them ; the birds were chirruping, all about, and a yellow butterfly alighted and trembled on the nt the moment. It was one of the softest and gayest days of spring; and the hest thing was to do nothing but enjoy it. She moved to the south. window with her work, and sewed or let the wind blow upon her face as she looked out.
The landscape was a wide One. Far beyond, and somewhat below the gar- dens and shrubberies in which the sunener-house stood, flat me:alines stretched to the brink of the river, on the other side of which were the park-woods. All was bathed in the aliernoon sunshine, except where a tree here and there east a flake of shadow upon the grass of the meadows.
EMPLOYMENT FOR UNHAPPY.
The unhappy are indisposed to employment : all active occupations are wearisome and disgusting in prospect, at a time when every thing, life itself, is full of weariness and disgust. Yet the unhappy must be ernidoyed, Or they will go read. Comparatively blessed are they, if they are set in fiunilies where claims and duties obit, el and cannel he escaped. In the pressure of business there is present safety and ultimate llanler is the lot aflame who have feet' llereSSUry OCeltpati0118, enthreed by other claims than their own harmless- ness and profitableness. Reading often finds. Now and then it ntay beguile; but much oftener the attention is languid, the thoughts wander, and associa- tions with the subject of grief are awakened. Woinen, who find that reading will not do, will obtain no relief from seining. Sewing is pleasant enough in moderation to those whose minds are at case the while ; but it is tut employ- ment which is trying to the nerves u-lieu long continued, at the best; and nothing can be worse for the harassed, and fio those who want to escape from themselves. Writing is bad. The pen hangs idly suspended over the paper, or the sad thoughts that are alive within write themselves down. The safest and best of all occupations for such sufferers as are fit for it, is intercourse with young children. An infant might beguile Satan and his peers the day after they were couched on the lake of fire, if the love of children chanced to finger amidst the ruins of their angelic nature. Next to this comes honest, genuine acquaintanceship among the poor; not mere charity-visiting, grounded on soup-tickets and blankets, but intercourse of mind, with real mutual in- terest between the parties. Gardening is excellent, because it unites bodily exertion with a sufficient engagement of the faculties, while sweet, compassion- ate Nature is ministering cure in every sprouting leaf and scented blossom, and beckoning sleep to draw nigh, and be ready to follow up her benignant work. Walking is good; not stepping from shop to shop, or front neighbour to neigh- bour; but stretching out far into the country to the freshest fields and highest ridges and the quietest lanes. However sullen the imagination may have been among its griefs at home, here it cheers up and smiles. However listless the limbs may -have been when sustaining a too heavy heart, here they are braced, and the lagging gait becomes buoyant again. However perverse the memory may have been in presenting all that was agonizing, and insisting only on what cannot be retrieved, here it is first disregarded, and then it sleeps ; and the sleep of the memory is the day in Paradise to the unhappy. The mere breath- ing of the cool wind on the Mee in the commonest highway, is rest and com- fort which must be felt at such times to be believed. It is disbelieved iu the shortest intervals between its seasons of enjoyment ; and every time the sof- krer has resolution to go forth to meet it, it penetrates to the very heart in glad surprise. The fields are better still ; for there is the lark to fill up the hours with mirthful music ; or, at worst, the robin mid the flocks of fieldffircs, to show that the hardest day has its life and hilarity. But the calmest region is the uplandSwhere human life is spread out beneath the bodily eye ; where the mind roves from the peasant's nest to the spiry town, from the schoolhouse to the churchyard, from the diminished team m the patch of fillew, or the fisherman's boat in the cove, to the viaduct that spans the valley, or the fleet that glides ghost-like on the horizon. This is the perch where the spirit plumes its ruffled and drooping wings, and makes ready to let itself down any wind that Heaven may scud.
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