CURRENT LITERATURE.
His First Love and his Last. 1 vol. By Anna Mollison Clarke. (Remington and Co.)—Lucy Brailsford, having jilted Robert Oldham, was deserted by her worthless husband. She died young, com- mitting her little daughter to the care of the faithful Robert, who sheltered the girl for her mother's sake, and as time goes on, he learns to hope that Lucy may be to him what he had once believed her mother would be. These projects of Arcadian simplicity are checked by the action of Perceval Moreton, HOU of Mrs. Moreton, a lady who seems to be hereditary ruler of Selwood and its people. According to those eternal principles which regulate the marriages of county folk, Perceval is bound to make Beatrice Sarmiento, a wealthy Portuguese, the offer she would not refuse. "Boa sang no pent mentir," we know, but it can equivocate ; and Perceval falls in love with charming Lucy, paints her in gorgeous attire as St. Eliza- beth of Hungary, vexes his mother, and saddens languorous Beatrice. In an evil hour he sees sweet Lucy sporting with her comrades, and finds her wanting in "calm, uneager " grace. He watches her beha- viour at a village banquet, and the spectre Misalliance, which ever seeks its prey among the English landed gentry, slinks baffled away. Perceval marries Beatrice, "society" is saved, Mrs. Moreton recovers her serenity, and the harmony of nature is restored. Mrs. Clarke's story is not vulgarised by strong interest, nor are her characters unbecomingly human. She writes correctly, and in one volume. Humour, unconscious of itself, lurks in the description of Robert Oldham, "who had lost one leg, but the practice of more than twenty years enabled him to manage the wooden substitute with marvellous skill, though his progress was necessarily somewhat slow." Keen insight and gracious charity inform the sentence which tells us that the American artist, Horace Farley, "went a great deal into society, not the best, of course; but then there is plenty of society which is good, without being the best." And also there are plenty of novels which are not good, without being either the best or the worst.
Previous page
