NEW NOVELS. * ONE singular feature in The Three Chances is
the tangible man- ner in which it will bring the exaggeration of novelists before the mind. A common reader may not fully appreciate inconsist- ency of character and motives or unlikelihood in the events; he will scarcely fail to realize le hyperbolical, when it appears in the form of lamentations over so common and really support.- able an infliction as deafness. The horror of a deaf man in The Three Chances is painted in a style that would be high-toned on the execution of a father, or what, as Machiavelli puts it, is worse' the loss of the estate. Manley Frere, the hero, has felt the gradual approach of the malady, and wakes one morning to find his anticipations more than realized. Not hearing the ticking of
his watch, he thinks it has stopped, and falls into meditation. Looking again, he learns his doom.
"flow long these fancies engaged me I hardly know but, when I looked et the watch again, the time was altered, the hands had moved some de- grees forward upon the dial. I had condemned my old friend, then, too soon ; it must be going still.' Once more I listened for its voice, but lis- tened all in vain ; and then the truth burst upon me at once—I was deaf— utterly deaf.
"I have told you that from the time my infirmity became apparent, I lost all hope ; yet it was not altogether so. I did indeed fall back upon my pillow confounded, as I well might be—lost in the intensity of my horror ; but then I started up, refusing to believe the fact, and wildly repeating every experiment that might belie it, though the failure of each impelled me to the verge of desperation. I seized a chair and flung it violently on the floor : it fell as if on velvet. I clapped my hands, I spoke, I shouted : a strange vibration accompanied my actions, but neither word nor cry was audible. As hope forsook me, I grew more earnest for the full conviction which was to rob me of every human solace."
Extreme hardness of hearing is not only Made the theme for a good deal of writing in this strain ; " The Three Chances" alto- gether turn upon it. Manley Frere is " engaged " at the time his deafness comes upon him, and among his epistles he writes one to his Barbara, releasing her from the engagement. The lady, it turns out, loves him, and naturally enough does not feel that the grounds for rejecting him are sufficient ; but her family have other views, and by persuasion and trick she is induced to accept her release,—which settles chance the first. Mr. Frere then accepts an invitation from "the Divets," a scheming, vulgar, and numerous family. Here he attracts the sympathy and excites the affection of Maria Palliser, a proud por- tionless beauty, who has had to undergo the sufferings of poor re- lationship, and whose orthodoxy moreover has been shaken. Maria is engaged to a man whom she confessedly accepts for a po- sition. This might have been got over by breaking off a second engagement. but Frere is not till too late aware of the interest he
• 17w Three Chances. By the Authoress of " The Fair Carew." In three volumes. Published by Smith. Elder, and Co. Liverpool Ho ! a Matter-of-fact Story. By Powys Oswyn, Author of " Ernest Unman, a Tale of Manchester Life," he In one volume Published by Hope. Lawn and Twilight : a Tale. By the Author of 'Amy Grant," he. Published J. H. and J. Parker. has inspired. Maria, rather than fulfil her engagement,. poisons herself, and Frere's "second chance" is gone. By misunder- standing, accident, artifice, and his own good-nature, the deaf man falls into the trap the Divets have laid for him, and proposes for their youngest daughter, Phoebe, a clever, bold, unscrupulous little body, but with some spirit however. Contrary to all ex- pectation, the lover recovers his hearing, and a clearer perception of the " fix " he is in. He is rescued from his trouble by a bro- ther-in-law of his intended, who has many grievances of his own to complain of, and exposes the plot. The denouement takes place during a family rumpus, of which this is a bit. "Mr. Frere had discovered, since the restoration of his hearing, that the Divets were a noisy race—often slamming doors, and talking in a higher key than was either decorous or necessary. A moderate uproar, therefore, would hardly have caught his attention or interrupted his progress across the hall. But the disturbance which saluted him as he was passing old Jesse's quarters was altogether of so unusual a character that he fancied something serious must have happened, and figured to himself nothing less than the old gentleman expiring in a fit, and his daughters weeping over his prostrate form.
• "He opened the parlour-door in haste, therefore; but a single glance upon the struggling group he beheld there, pale with anger or red with ap- prehension, sufficed to explain the nature of the scene.
"This speech, though short as Frere could make it, was not finished without frequent attempts at interruption. But it seemed that by one of the party it was distinctly heard and comprehended ; for Phebe, suddenly resigning the arm on which she had been hanging with such a show of fond- ness, exclaimed with pert and angry decision— It's no matter ! I thank my stars I ara not reduced to forcing any man to marry meleast of all such a lump of ice—such a cold-blooded, heartless being ! Oh, I don't care, Kezia! I don't care a straw for what anybody thinks ! I will speak out, and tell him my. mind once for all ! How could you, or any one expect me to like a man who behaved to me as if he had been a schoolmaster instead of a lover ? If I had been weak enough to marry him, I should have been the most miserable creature under the sun ; never allowed to utter a word or raise a finger, but under the permission of his High Mightiness. Yes, we did call you so—and well you deserved the title.'
"'Oh, Phebe, JPhebe ! ' her sister exclaimed, clasping her hands in utter
despair. 'Nonsense, Kezia ! I'll keep terms with him no longer. He never cared—I know it from the first—he never cared for me, or anybody but that jilt Miss Girdlestone ; and now let him go and make it up with her and grovel at her feet, and lick the dust off her shoes, if he pleases : so that I am rid of him, it's a matter of indifference to me."
And so goes the hero's third chance. However, he shortly learns the truth as regards his Barbara, and returns to his first love.
Whether physical affliction or privation is a proper subject for fiction may be questioned, unless as an exceptional case, alike felicitous in conception and execution. There is little doubt about The Three Chances. The original mistake is increased by the turn of the writer, which more inclines to essay and de- scription than to dramatic narrative. Incidents, or at least events, may be found in the story, but they are used as much for description or discussion as for dramatic presentment. This gives a slowness to the movement, that, combined with the mistake of the fundamental idea deprives the book of animation when it does not arise from writing.
Mr. Oswyn's Liverpool Ho! is done in "King Cambyses' vein," and something more. It seems that when the author wrote "A Tale of Manchester Life," he had a higher opinion of Liverpool " merchants " than Manchester "men." He has since seen reason to reconsider his judgment, and the " merchants " are now degraded to the level of the men."
The "matter-of-fact story" is intended to illustrate the cha- racter and doings of the Liverpool merchants, and for that matter their clerks, since not even the office-boy. escapes Powys Oswyn's scathing wrath. The managing clerk hides "three ten-pound notes" in the hero's private drawer, and accuses him of robbery to get him dismissed. The pupil clerk, wroth at his rejection by his Clara, which he attributes to her love for the aforesaid hero, hides behind a hedge and shoots his rival dead. The merchant, Mr. Mortimore, speaks to his clerks in a style which if it is that of the Liverpool merchants and not of Mr. Oswyn, establishes be- yond all tiuestion that they are a coarse, purse-proud, vulgar lot. Mr. Mortunore, too, low as he is in mind, is connected with a tra- gedy, if he could but rise to it. Mr. Forde, the managing clerk, is possessed of some secrets of Mr. Mortimore, and the merchant is forced to force his daughter Kate to marry Forde. The only toler- able male in the book is the hero, Paul Treason ; for even his father, a genuine squire, is a roué, and an extravagant ninny ; allowing the cringing parsons, merchants, and attorneys of the Negro-blood-cemented city to fleece him and feed upon him, so that at 1,is death, Paul, the rightful heir of Foxley, is com- pelled to serve as clerk to a Liverpool merchant, under whom, as we have seen, he comes to an untimely end.
The tale of Dawn and Twilight belongs to a class of books of which we have nearly had enough ; especially when, as in the in- stance before us, there is neither any great closeness of observation nor of force or felicity of style to compensate for the absence of art in the structure, rapidity in the conduct, or vigour in the scenes. The class is of that kind which the success of the author of " Heartsease " stimulated, though the school existed before. For the most part written we believe by _fatties of highly respectable family and position, written, tales 1.a■te a feminine elegance of style, a pervading sense of raigion, and many truthful pictures of domestic life, among what may be shortly called the gentry class. The religion, however, is generally sentimental rather than vital : and though there is nothing approaching the wrong, the morality is often of a washy or at least a narrow and conventional kind. Thus, the essence of the story before us lies in the heroine, Con- stance, rejecting her lover, Gerard, when she finds that through love to her he has broken off another engagement under circum- stances of great cruelty, not to say atrocity. This is not defend- ed—quite the contrary ; but such an effort is made to explain it away, that a straightforward character in the book justly observes, "Your definitions are too subtile for me." The dangerous Jesuit doctrine of motive is pushed on into causes. The tale is tedious and dra,,oTing in its movement. This is ostensibly owing to the constant introduction of episodical family matter as it were, which encumbers the story with needless scenes and dialogues, not very striking in themselves. We think, how- ever, that there was something of inherent slowness in the writer; for this effect is found in scenes of a necessarily quiet kind, and she does not rise to the height of emotion where its necessity is obvious. In Dawn and Twilight there are situations of a striking nature ; as when Constance discovers to Gerard her knowledge of his conduct, a subsequent scene between her lover and her father, and that where Gerard views from a concealment the death- stricken Clara: but they do not leave the impression which they ought. The weariness of illness and the want of the writer's final revision might in some degree account for this, as she died when the work was passing through the press; but we think the real cause was deeper than accident.
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