NOVELS OF THE SEASON. * Lewell Pastures, by the author of
"Fabian's Tower" and several other novels does not belong to the "Jane Eyre" school, but to that of the novels, Bells, with perhaps a little more acquired smooth- ness. Singularity in scenery and persons is the characteristic of this writer's matter, and force of the style. The country in which the scenes are laid is English, but not the English landscapes we meet with. In lieu of the cultivation and teeming richness of England generally, the reader has the dreary moor, barren half-re- claimed land, and the ragged wild wood ; the sea, when old ocean is introduced, is rendered bleak from the winds that blow over it and dull from the clouds that cover it, while rugged sterile cliffs shed a sort of sterility even upon the waters. The persons har- monize with the scenery ; being for the most part boorish or brutal, and the most prominent actors superadding the effects of disad- vantageous training to a peculiar nature. Incidents with some passion or action may occasionally occur, but the occurrences mostly owe their effect to circumstances. The story is as much a vehicle to introduce startling situations, as a continuous narrative every stage of which the reader feels is carrying him to a definite end, and the scenes of which not only possess a positive power in themselves, but derive an attraction from the past and the future. Lewell Pastures is rather more subdued in subjects and persons than the author's previous fictions. The country is not quite so wild, the persons belong more to actual society ; and this greater smoothness is attained without any loss of power in delineation. The want of the novel is the want of a story. A finis indeed is reached at last, when the supposed illegitimate turn out to be legitimate, and the wrongful holder of property is dispossessed, and various other wrongs are set right ; but we reach that end through a series of descriptions rather than a continuously con- nected narrative. Some of the coarseness which seems inherent in the school of the writer is also visible. Independently of pre- vious matters in questionable taste, the denouement winds up with a couple of designs at ravishment, as the reader is led to infer, and an actual murder; for neither of which is there the least ne- cessity.
The idea of the book is not very new,—being that of an eccen- tric old man whose very nature has been curdled by the loss of his son, and that son's connexion with a girl socially his inferior ; for Sir Jasper Egremont scouts the idea of marriage, nor can Mrs. Egremont's family establish the fact. Singular and soured, Sir Jasper becomes the tyrant of his neighbourhood, especially persecuting everybody who was in any way connected with his son's career, and himself sinking down to that grasping !peculator, yet penurious drudge, which is sometimes deposed to in will cases. His ill temper is farther aggravated by a distant connexion, the autobiographical hero of the piece. Harry Tudor, being left with little and jilted in love, sells out of a crack regi- ment, retires to his barren property, adjoining Sir Jasper's, to turn farmer and improver; the granddaughter of the old man having been brought into the neighbourhood from a foreign convent, in furtherance of some Romanist project. These common elements are not developed in the most effective manner, though certainly not at all in a common way. The writer has missed a feature that might have had the novelty of an economical fiction. Sir Jasper is deep in various speculations—mills mines, and what not. Harry Tudor is improving his hungry land. ilre hear a good deal of all these things, but nothing in the didactic way. An account of Harry's agricultural experiments might have been as attractive as some of the actual descriptions or discourse.
Temper is the result of filial obedience. "A short time before my father died," says Miss Marryat, "he desired me to attempt writing. I have followed his wishes, and you have the attempt." As a first work, the story is creditable for a sustained power, with occasional effects and touches of pathos; but Temper displays in a luth degree the errors of inexperience and the absence of art. he object of Miss Marryat is didactic ; her themes are temper, and religion as a means of controlling temper. The subject was commoner of yore than it is now ; whether even children are more coerced by circumstances and opinion than they were formerly, or whether people, finding tales against sudden passion of little use, left off writino.° them. All the warnings against temper that we have read in the form of fiction have been too extreme, not to say tragic, in their instances. Death in some • Lewell Pastures. By the Author of "Sir Frederick Derwent," " Fabian's Tower,' and "Smugglers and Foresters." In two volumes. Published by Boutledge and Co.
Temper; a Tale. By Emilia Marryat, Daughter of the late Captain Marryat, Au- thor of "Peter Simple," "Midshipman Easy," &c. In three volumes. Published by Newby. Crewe Rise; a Novel. By John Gordy Jeaffreson. In three volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett.
Tom Thornton ; or Last Reaources. In three volumes. Published by James Blackwood. form or other stared the reader in the face, as the consequence of spoiling children and giving way to violent impulse ; though the every-day trouble temper brings into a household, arid the thorough selfishness which is lurking at the bottom, are quite as worthy of exposition as the more extreme forms. Miss Marryat has not escaped this common error. Beyond a quarrel at a regimental dinner, the only real occasion in which much temper is displayed by her exemplar, Laurence Arden, is when he shoots his friend and the betrothed of his sister with a rifle he happens to have in his hand. The death of Mary Arden and the transportation of Laurence follow, to achieve the final reform of the latter. If the circumstances of the story had greater vraisemblance than they possess, so exaggerated a case in existing society fails " to point a moral or adorn a tale."
In point of literary ability, Crewe Rise is a superior novel; but clever writing is not the only thing required in fiction. When, as in the case before us, it delays the reader from the story, and when the story is finally reached retards the narrative and flattens the interest by overdone descriptions and disquisitions in the form of dialogue, thought, close observation of still life, and facility in expression, may really conduce to mischief. "Crewe Rise" is the name of a small market-town in Suffolk. The main purpose of the tale to which this place gives a title, is to depict the thoughtless and under all circumstances the wicked ex- travagance of a young man at college, and his subsequent redemption of name and character by a resolute discharge of duty in the world. The idea is good, and of the time; but we do not think the plan well conceived for the object aimed at, the conditions in Crewe Rise being too peculiar. The actual execution is tedious. One-third of the work is occupied with minute and very often purposeless pictures of the buildings, landscapes, and inhabitants of the town, enlivened a little by country occurrences but the whole too often vitiated by a mawk- ish simplicity. Vi;lien the story really begins, the manner is better, though the old taint of affected quaintness and writing for the sake of writing obtains too much throughout. Had the author thrown his knowledge Of small market-town life, and of the coun- try round it, into the form of sketches connected with a leading story, such as Miss Mitford used to produce, he might have turned his materials to better account. This picture of a small potentate of a small country place is a pleasant sketch ; but a whole volume of things not better, and many of them not so good, merely to introduce us to the beginning of a book, is rather de trop. " To Crewe Rise morality, life-indolence is no trifling offence when it is discovered amongst the lower orders, but it becomes venial, nay, almost laudable, in those whose fathers were not necessitated to toil. The pre- judices of the little town are all of an aristocratic tinge, and this is one of them —idleness is honourable amongst the high-born. And no one would for one instant question John Carewe's title to the éclat of birth. To hear the peo- ple talk, you would be led to think him a strange exception to the rules Na- ture has laid down for herself—devoid of bones, skin nervous system, in short everything except blood ; it being an undisputed /act that John Carewe is one of the old stock—all blood and no mistake about it.'
"For twenty years the king has lived in the lodgings he now occupies over the large shop in the market-place. Ile took them at first for only a short term, till he should fix on a house. But for various reasons (amongst others, the limitation of his income to an annuity of 1201. a year) he has kept them on and on, till now he regards the first floor of Civil and Chat's, and the little garden behind the house, as his proper home, and one he should be sorry to quit. He likes the position very much : the windows are cheerful ; and he can see every one who comes to the doctor's house, and all the customers as they enter the shop below. Ile says he can pass away an hour or even two hours looking out on all that goes on around, studying hu- man nature, and seeing so much that is pleasing in the lower dowses, as they move about cheerfully on their business. "His amusements are as simple as the beings amongst whom he dwells. In the genial weather, he fishes in the streams of the country round, and manages to present many a bountiful basket of fish to his friends. In the colder part of the year, he makes pedestrian excursions about the country with the quick eye of an antiquarian, always bringing home with him tb.: likeness ot an old chimney, or a previously undiscovered brass from a church. He reads the novels and magazines, occasionally sends some note-and- query information to county papers, canvasses every contested election for the Conservative Member, and presides, by request, at the parish dinners and book-club suppers. "In such occupations his objectless but not useless life passes away."
There is a certain novelty, in Tom Thornton, though not of a very attractive kind ; an enforced residence at Boulogne and the life which leads to it being the subject of the fiction. Poor Tom has been a "fast" young man throughout : fast at college; fast upon town; fast even when driven abroad, as long as his means lasted ; and only becoming slow when a prison in Boulogne, the death of his wife, a physical disease of the heart, and the utter exhaustion of cash and credit, stop the pace and finally his life. Such things are in society, and therefore they may claim a place in fiction. The accommodating university tradesman, the keen but flattering money-lender, various kinds of low attornies—a class whom the writer hates—and the various good fellows who accompany a man on the road to ruin or join him at the jour- ney's end, are all more or less characters in their way. The worst is, that treated gravely the hero can inspire but little sympathy; his satellites, if we have them as they really are, would be too coarse for art. Such a theme must be treated satirically, after the style of "Gil Bias" or the "Rake's Progress." There is a degree of natural or wilful folly in which regret has hardly a place, and even pity is mingled with contempt.
The author of Tom Thornton has not seen this true character of his subject, and aims at a romantic interest, by an impulsive mar- riage, family differences that aggravate real distress good feeling on the part of Tom, and good fellowship on the part of some of his irregular friends. Ho also displays a knowledge of life in not earieaturing even the objects of his aversion, money-lenders and lawyers. At the same time, the narrative has little incident, and what incidents we have are mostly of the commonest kind : the style is diffuse, perhaps weak, and too appropriate to the theme.
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