TWELVE TEAY•8 AGO.
TALE authoress of Letters to my Unknown Friends appears as a reli- gious novelist in the book before us; perhaps without exhibiting so much of the " tares atque rotundas "—the perfect work—as in her former book. The literary merit may be the same, but it does not produce quite the same effect, because not exercised upon so congenial a theme. The writer's nature is more adapted to didactic composition than to fiction : she can discuss or enforce the topics of religion or morality, and depict or analyze a character, better than she can personify them, combined with all the other traits that go to make up an individual person; but she can do these last better than she can select and modify the events of life in order to construct her story and exhibit her dramatis personze in conduct.
Twelve Years Ago consists of two parts ; first, the commencement of the term, and then when the twelve years have passed away. The main object of the book is to show the insufficiency to happiness of worldly splendour even when attained by our own success; and the benefit which may arise from failure, or disappointment in our affections, by weaning us from the world, and directing us to vi- tal religion. Mary Churchill, the heroine, is beautiful, amiable, and rich, besides possessing great strength of character. She is understood to be engaged to her grandmother's neighbour, Sir Henry Arderne ; and she is deeply though not perceptibly in love with him, as he is with her, although there has been no distinct avowal. But Sir Henry is weak and infirm of purpose. He has allowed himself to be entangled by a "beauty" in an inferior rank of life, and is entrapped into marrying her. Shocked, lees by his marriage than by the discovery of the weakness of her lover, Mary henceforth abandons herself to solitude, or social repulsiveness, till her health finally gives way; and she learns at last to feel, that while her trouble and her coming death have been brought on by her own wilful repining, they have been made the means of turning her thoughts towards true religion. The "Twelve Years Ago" narrates the events connected with her disappointment: the time when the book opens evhibits her dying ; and the conversations between herself and a formerly slighted friend discuss some subjects of morals and more of religion. One of the most interesting is the question of poetical justice ; which Mary considers to obtain throughout life, so far as that our misfortunes may be traced to our conduct, and that happiness is irrespective of ex- ternal circumstances.
The story of Mary Churchill is not the only subject of the first part of Twelve Years Ago. There are various sketches of a country town and neighbourhood; with the triumph and unhappiness of a born coquette, who, bent upon raising herself in life, manages to marry a grave gentle- man of the neighbourhood, just after he had encountered a refusal. Like Lady Arderne, however, she is punished by her very success. Lady Arderne has to put up with her husband's well-bred indifference or actual dislike, and the distinct line of demarcation which is drawn by the aris- tocracy of the neighbourhood : Clara's activity and cleverness are kept in check by her high-principled, determined husband; and she passes her fife in a really false position—one opposite to her natural bent.
Considered as a fiction, the governing incidents are rather forced and unlikely, while the movement of the story is somewhat slow. Bat they are admirably improved for the purposes of the authoress. Everything is made to point a moral, and a useful one ; always just, we think, cer- tainly always enforced with elegance. We take as an example, the re- flections on Sir Henry Arderne's entanglement.
" The neighbours, from the Earl of B. down to Mrs. Morton and Clara, ob- served upon the occasion, Poor young man/ he has been cruelly taken in.' Some amongst them added, What a fool he must be!'
"Few had the good sense or the good feeling to believe that he had brought this punishment on himself; and that, instead of its being the work of fate or chance, or even entirely of the woman who had entangled him, it was the natural as well as the just result of his own selfish imprudence. The victim upon such occasions is never an innocent or altogether an involuntary one. Some downward steps must have been previously taken, some mean vanity indulged, some forget- fulness of honourable position manifested, before a plan of entanglement will even be devised, mach more error still before it can be carried into effect. It is not surprising, that when fathers and mothers see such catastrophes as those of Sir Henry Arderne,—when they behold the proud and the refined, even those who are guarded by another attachment, fall into the snare of a misalliance, and involve their whole family in their irreparable descent—it is only natural that they seek to draw still more closely around the hope of their house, the safeguards of worldly prudence, of ambition, and of interest But each of these has in its turn proved unavailing; and the only safety to be attained, is by going to the very root of the matter, and removing the bait from the hook, the fascination from the syren. "The man whose natural taste ..13116 been cultivated and enlightened by habitual study of the higher schools of art, will not merely be indifferent to the gaudy colouring and coarsely-rounded forms of the more vulgar artist—he will be decidedly repelled by them. They serve not as a symbol to excite ideas on which his mind can rest with pleasure; there is nothing in them to blend and sympa- thize with the refinement of his taste.
" The taste of the connoisseur in pictures may not only be cultivated to this point, but even entirely created; and the man who, from his natural turn of mind, could contentedly admire a modem portrait merely becauseit.possessed bright co- louring and not disagreeable form, may, by diligent study and persevering effort, acquire so much refinement of taste as to turn with indifference from every work of art that did not present a type of that refinement. Why may not the same su- periority be attained to in the appretiation of living beauty; and all attractions be- come uninteresting, as well from habit as improved taste, except such as are ty- pical of internal refinement?"
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