THE SMUGGLER.
MR. JAmEs's " Smuggler " is not one of your romantic and picturesque ruffians of the "Will Watch" school—who figure on the stage in Guernsey frocks with white kitties and black belts stuck full of pistols ; but a wealthy, business-like, contraband trader, who lives in grand style, and is a magistrate of the county, employing his only son in planning and directing operations with the acting smugglers. The scene is laid on the coast of Kent, near Romney Marsh ; and the main subject of the novel is the seizure of a very valuable cargo of "run goods" by a strong force of dragoons. A skirmish takes place ; the smugglers are defeated, many are taken or killed ; and the prisoners are lodged in a church. The church is attacked by the rest of the band ; but the smugglers are beaten off by the military, aided by the peasantry. These incidents, the author tells us, actually occurred about the middle of the last century ; and the defence of Goudhurst Church on the occasion is still talked of in the village. The loss of this heavy venture ruins Mr. Radford, "the Smuggler " ; and his hopeful son Richard, whom he had destined to marry the heiress of a neighbouring Baronet, is shot in the attack on the church, by one of his own comrades, out of revenge. The sentiment of the story is supplied by the passion of two officers of dra- goons for the daughters of Sir Robert Croyland ; the eldest of whom, Edith, had been promised by her weak-minded father to Richard Rad- ford, as the price of Mr. Radford's secrecy on the subject of a homicide perpetrated by the choleric Baronet on one of his gamekeepers. The man's death is proved at last to have been accidental ; the accusation alleged to have been made and signed by the dying man being a fabrica- tion of Radford's, forged for the purpose of getting a hold over the Ba- ronet, and thus obtaining his countenance and alliance.
These commonplace materials for melodramatic fiction are scarcely worked up with the usual tact of Mr. James ; and the characters, though elaborately described, want vitality. An attempt at variety is made by the introduction of an old bachelor brother and a maiden sister of Sir Ro- bert Croyland : but the character of an eccentric man masking benevo- lent feelings under the guise of cynicism is not new, nor in this instance happily developed. The lovers, of course, have "no character at all." The descriptions are rather less vivid than is ordinarily the ease in Mr. James's writing; the expanding process, by which the matter for a short tale is diffused over three volumes, rendering the colours and outlines fainter by amplification. Still The Smuggler is readable ; though it is slow and heavy work to any but kill-time readers.
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