THE WHITE SLAVE.

WHEN a person with a knowledge of manners and ability to portray them undertakes a fiction without the requisite genius, one of two things is apt to occur. If the judgment is cool and the ability verges toward the solid, the incidents and characters which chiefly contribute to the story are likely to be flat and literal. On the other hand, should the mind, or rather the animal spirits, partake of a liveliness running into etourderie, and not be restrained by a rigid judgment, what should be the more inte- resting passages are very apt to degenerate into melodrama run mad. The author of The White Slave belongs to the latter class of writers. His sketches of manners, and of the superficial traits of character which are obvious in discourse, are very lively and lifelike : their drawback is, that the conversation of lords is too like to be very interesting, apart from the good cheer which forms one staple of their discussions. The principle on which the writer has formed his story is borrowed from the brilliant Bulwer or the earlier novels of the Younger Disraeli exaggerated into caricature, if that were possible. "To rouse, to stir, to shake the soul, he comes" : and he does his possible in this line by inventing im- provements upon the probabilities of life such as it is portrayed in The last Days of Pompeii, or the romantic parts of Pelham. He has about as good an idea of touching the moral sympathies as Sir Edward Lytton. One of his heroines is a fool, one a moral impossibility ; his two heroes are consummate and contemptible knaves ; his villain is one of those gratuitous monsters never found but in the last piece at the play- house, when the audience getting sleepy require strong stimulants ; his Emperor, his Grand Duke, and his Imperial Family—but we may come to some of them by and by.

' One object of The White Slave is to portray the nature of the Russian autocracy, the character of the present Emperor and of the late Grand Duke Constantine, as well as to exhibit some of the social effects that flow from such a tyranny, which, of course, involves sketches of Russian society. Another, and seemingly a main object, is to bring out into strong relief the evils of Russian serfdom; the oppression to which it continually gives rise, and the terrible tyranny, according to this writer, of which it may be made the means. Except the introductory portion of the work, which is laid in France and England, the scene is chiefly in Russia : and the framework wherein the philosophy is set is somewhat of this fashion. Mr. Mattheus or Mattvei is a slave, educated by a good-hearted Russian noble, and sent to travel en prince, but unluckily not liberated. Not- withstanding a mystery and melancholy which envelop him, he marries a high-born English lady, carries her to Russia, still in a mist ; which is suddenly and unpleasantly cleared up by finding his patron dead, and he and his wife slaves to Prince Isnskoff, the villain of the piece, whom be bas mortally offended at Paris. Here is distress the first. Distress the second arises from Nadashta, a sister of Mattvei, educated like him, but like him a slave in the power of Tsaakoff. This Prince proposes that Count Horace, a French friend of his, shall disguise himself as the brother in order to gain the sister. But Horace, who is a man of sentiment, re- volts from the baseness after he has begun it; avows himself; falls really in love; and, after some scenes where the distress, as ladies'- maids say of melodramas, is " highly worked up," wins her of Prince Isaakoff at dice : and this distress seems to be pretty well ended. How- ever, Horace plays for Mr. and Mrs. Mattvei against Nadashta ; loses ; and the distress begins again: it is put an end to through court interest and an English groom ; but revives again, and is again at an end; to revive again for Mattvei • but how, or in what way, must be read to- wards the end of the third volume, by those who wish to know and can read to the end.

It will be seen that the leading incident is not original. Too accidental tote natural, the idea of a slave educated like a gentleman, suddenly re- duced to his legal status, and subjected to the power of an irritated mas- ter, has yet been often handled. We remember two "theatre royal" tragedies on the theme in our time ; and many minor productions of various kinds might probably be found by those who will take the trou- ble of the search. This writer, however, has deviated from his prede- .

cessors for the worse. They placed their actors in a remoter age, and in a transition state of society, when the circumstance was more likely to take place, and the mind, from ignorance of the reality, was more apt to receive without distrusting the changes necessary for fiction. In Th4 White Slave, a not pleasing "decies repetita' is thrust upon us HE. der circumstances that are revolting to reason. Improbability attends every step. A person who had travelled over Europe, and "married some money," would have taken the precaution of ascertaining how the land lay before he returned to slavery, if he ever returned at alL At liberty somehow in St. Petersburg, he would rather have carried his wife to the British Ambassador than placed her with a petty Russian trades- man : but then, where would the incidents and distresses have been ? Of Nadashta we shall merely say that she is a paragon, whom Russia could not produce among the slave or free. The Abolitionists have never yen• tured upon anything like the Russian peasant girl ; and those who know them know what that is saying. Borrowed and extreme as is the matter of the romance, the mode of doing it is good enough. The writer's style is vivid and distinct ; so that, however unnatural his scenes may be, they are clearly and power. fully presented ; and he has caught some of the telling effects of his prototypes. The same qualities serve him better in his sketches of so- ciety, because they are of the nature of lively transcripts. Ills pic- ture of the Russian Government, and his portraiture of the Emperor and the Grand Duke Constantine, are doubtless onesided and exaggerated; perhaps about as true as if George the Fourth cheating on the turf, Mr. Greenacre's exploits, and some other facts that might be quoted, were offered as general representations of English society. But as they often take the shape of good jokes and satire, their exaggeration is more bearable : distortion seems more germane to broad comedy than to deep tragedy. In the following account, given by Count Horace to a party who are beginning to look blank upon his freedom of remark, especially as he has not been introduced at court, the Emperor's taste is rendered very ridiculous.

" Is the Emperor in town?" inquired the poet.

The Senator shrugged his shoulders, as if in pity of such ignorance or affec- tation.

" Of course," replied Madame de Baval; " and he must have arrived before two, for at that hour the Imperial standard was flying above the winter palace, and the telegraph working." " Do you know," observed Madame de Rudiger to Horace, " that he works the telegraph with his own august hands. When you see its black ladders moving, the Emperor is personally transmitting orders to his fleet in the Black Sea or the Gulph of Finland, or to his representative in Warsaw, or to his lieutenant in the interior of the empire. Yon have not yet seen our Emperor."

" Pardon me," said Horace, " I have both seen and conversed with him."

" Conversed with him !" echoed the bystanders with one accord, for they had all been narrowly watching for his presentation. " Pray tell me where and when?! exclaimed Madame Rudiger, half in astonishment, and half in disbelief.

" This morning," answered Horace, " under singular circumstances."

" Oh tell us all about it," said Madame Obrassofi in a tone gently insinnai " Most willingly. You must know that I was this morning wandering thro the Imperial picture-gallery of the Hermitage; and I was tempted to visit p atelier of a certain talented countryman of mine, who, making a ladder of his ar- tistic merit, has stepped into the drawingroom from the guardhouse, though his manners still savour a little of its coarseness.

" Ah! Lesseps," exclaimed Madame de Baval: but she added, in a tone of Fo: found respect, "the Emperor takes great notice of him." " Oh, he is a charming painter " chimed in the Senator; " there is something very winning in his solcherlike frankness."

• Well," continued Horace, " you are probably aware that the Imperial mu. nificence has set aside a room in the Hermitage for the foreign artists."

" We know, and are proud of it," said the Senator again.

" In this atelier, then, I was inspecting one of the painter's pictures—a battle,. scene, full of spirit, in spite of all its Dutch minuteness. But Lesseps bimial seemed in ecstacies over the very insignificant figure of a drummer in the back- ground. I believe,' he observed to me, with immense satisfaction, that no mail bat myself could have shown so distinctly what that fellow is doing.' I remarked that the action of the drummer was umnistakeable, but that I certainly did nut conceive the peculiar merit of its representation. At ! ' said the artist, with one of his terrific oaths, he is beating the drum—anybody can show a drummer striking the parchment: but what is he beating? " I suggested that lie should have marked the tune with notes and bars upon the drum.

"` So much for fame ! ' said Lesseps, throwing down his palette with a condor air of desperation: paint for a public which thus appretiates your talent ! 'Now Sir,' lie continued, this is the most striking part of the picture. No drum.: major in the world could look upon the position of that drummer's wrists and not perceive that he was beating the retreat. Just look upon this figure, he said, and then on me'; and he seized a drum and drum-sticks and began tattooing,—for the atelier was like an arsenal, with instruments musical and warlike. First he beat the 'Diane,' and then the march, and then the retreat; awakening all the echoes of the endless apartments of the galleries. Now,' he repeated, look first on me and then upon my figure': but as he paused, we heard, to ourutter astonishment, behind another easel, the sudden rolling of another drum; and an officer in ruin- form, a man of colossal stature and imposing aspect, who had entered unperceived and snatched up another instrument, appeared before us."

" Ah ! the Emperor," exclaimed Madame Rudiger. " Exactly: Lesseps acknowledged his presence by a similar rolling; and for more than twenty minutes I was deafened by their rattling in emulation of each other on the sonorous parchment."

" Ah, ah ! Lesseps; you did not expect to be rivalled thus,' at length said the Emperor. " bombes!' replied the artist, did not think there was another man in the empire, out of a drummer's uniform, who could have sustained that nnggaa rous male and faultless roll I A foot-soldier, Sire, has been made in six weeJag Conde became a general in six months; and in our Revolutionary war we maths, commanders as quickly as we baked abatch of biscuits. In a word, there have, been heaven-born soldiers and heaven-born generals; and to make an Emperor, a. man has only to be born in the purple, as a chicken is hatched in a hens egg: but who ever saw a heaven-born drummer?'

" You are right, Lesseps,' replied the Emperor; we both know that no man on earth could learn to roll with that perfection under a twelvemonth of assiduous practice.' And then his Majesty took up a musket, and went rapidly through the exercise."

BLASPHEMOUS PERVERSION OP RELIGION.

"What," says the Imperial Catechism, " are the duties religion teaches to- wards the Emperor, as his humble subjects?" Peter the Great forbade that his people should style themselves his slaves.

" We owe him," replies the answer, " devotion; obedience, fidelity, taxes, ser- vice, love, and prayers, all comprised in the words fidelity and devotion." Q. " In what should this devotion consist? " A. " In the most absolute respect, in words, in motions, conduct, thought, and actions."

Q. " What obedience do we owe the Emperor?" A. " Entire, passive, and in every respect unlimited obedience." Q. " In what consists the fidelity we owe the Emperor? " A. " In the vigorous execution without examination of all his orders, and in

the act of doing all that he exacts without a murmur."

Q. " How are want of respect and infidelity towards the Emperor to be consi- dered in a religious point of view? " A. " As the most detestable sin and the most horrible crime."

Q. " What books prescribe these duties?" A. " The Holy Scriptures, particularly the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles." Q. " What examples confirm these? "

A. " That of Jesus Christ himself, who lived and died the subject of the Em-

peror of Rome, and submitted himself respectfully to the sentence which con- demned him."

" What I" exclaimed Horace, " is such a catechism taught to your Russian children? You have surely substituted the name of the Emperor for that of God?"