Ranthorpe.-Chapman and Hall.

THIS book is full of talent of a very available kind, and is as promising a maiden novel as one can wish to see. Notwithstanding "certain faults of construction," and "sins against l'art de conter, which the author acknowledges in his preface, as a mere tale, Ranthorpe is interesting, amusing, and, not to speak of it pedagoguishly, instructive.

The literary aspirants of England,--by no means a contemptible class, numerically, at least,-will find much in this volume which concerns them. Let them read; and let those who while reading find their hearts fail, abstain from writing.

Before we proceed to notice the work in detail it will be well to say, generally, that its tone is that which is given out by a mind not subject to the influence of dyspepsia; yet it is clear, sharp, and animated. There is nothing morbid, nothing morose, in the satire, and nothing silly in the sentiment. Lively common sense, and its constant companion good temper, are perceptible, we think, in every chapter. Doubt, and gloom, and discontent, do not seem to have much power over the mind of our author: they never saturated it, but in his days of misfortune ran off from it as water when poured on the wing of a bird. En Revanche, his work wants some of those high attributes, moral and aesthetic, which are never wanting in the works of artists who have among their other talents a talent "pour la souffrance." The reader therefore must not expect to find in Ranthorpe many of "those thoughts that wander through eternity;" or of those fine and subtle expositions of human feeling which are to be looked for in the works of a different order of mind.

To quote from a book (Wilhelm Meister) which appears to be a great favourite with the author of Ranthorpe, we would remind our readers of the old Harper's "o'er true lay:

"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thräuen ass,

Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte

Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,

Der keunt euch nicht, ihr linumlischen Mächte."

But we must not quarrel with a skylark because it does not sing like a nightingale; only we must not forget that nightingales can sing, and do sing occasionally as gaily as larks, but with a diviner joy.

There is one thing about Ranthorpe which deserves unreserved

praise its freedom from pretension. It does not pretend to be an art novel, nor a philosophical novel, nor a dramatic novel, nor an ethical novel, nor a political novel; it is simply a narrative of the early life of an author, interspersed with reflections and general observations. These reflections and observations are perhaps the best portions of the book: they are often true and original, and almost always clever, even when incorrect or false; they are evidently the result of the author's own experience, and are not taken up by him as hear-say. Judging from such portions only, without any regard to plot, character, development, and dialogue, which are also not without merit, we should give the author credit for quick, keen, perception, considerable knowledge of the world, uncommon shrewdness, a lively sense of the ridiculous, and a thoroughly sound and honest heart.

Besides its want of pretension, Ranthorpe has one other great recommendation to the reader. It is a book that you can read through, and what is more, you can read through it easily. If you were to mislay the book after you had begun it, you would hunt for it till you could find and finish it. It has many defects as a work of art, but, we think, few readers will find it deficient in interest. There are mistakes, and crudities, and incongruities, but there are no stupidities in the book, nothing which can be called dull or flat. It has suffered by those processes which are generally beneficial to books-condensation and cutting out. We are informed in the preface that this one volume was originally three volumes. In some parts a want of amplitude and filling out in the narrative is felt; it seems as if one were reading the abridgment of a novel, instead of a novel itself, and this is in fact, the case.

Of the style of composition we may say briefly that without being excellent, it is pleasing; it is more lively than graceful or refined; there is no obscurity or circumlocution, and every sentence has something in it.

We will now give some account of the story. The characters generally are very clever and lifelike sketches: some are mere silhouettes, but still very lifelike; and there is one finished portrait, that of Sir Frederick Hawbucke.

The hero, a young poet, is thus introduced to the reader, on a rainy night, in Holborn :

"Amidst this noisy cheerless scene, standing at one of the numerous book-stalls, was a youth of nineteen, who, his hands and feet benumbed with cold, had been standing for half an hour gloating with hungry eyes upon the treasures there displayed. He was enveloped in a camlet cloak, the scanty proportions of which just sufficed to hide the poverty of his garments, and to ward off the rain. He had no gloves, and his hands were purple from the cold. His hat betokened the fidelity of an ancient servitor: it was scrupulously brushed, and shone from repeated

wettings. In a word, the youth looked like a clerk, and was

one.

"Those who looked a little closer, however, might have seen that there was something in this youth's face which belied his dress-an air of refinement and command,-a look of the English gentleman, which is peculiar to our nation, and to one class in that nation. The mouth was very remarkable: it was voluptuous and yet refined: full, yet delicate-the mouth of a poet. The eyes were of a deep blue, long and somewhat languishing, and shaded with the sweetest fringe imaginable. The forehead was delicately cut, the chin weak and faltering. A physiognomist would at once have pronounced him to be a remarkable person, but somewhat deficient in strength of will. This youth was Percy Ranthorpe."

After this description, the reader is somewhat surprised to find that Ranthorpe's father is a merchant; or, at all events, a man far above real poverty. As well as the reader can learn, old Ranthorpe lives in comfort, although, like Dogberry, he "has had losses." How then is it that young Ranthorpe is obliged to deprive himself of a dinner to buy a sixpenny volume at a book-stall? that he is so very seedy in his dress?-so entirely povertystricken? This is inconsistent. Then, the quarrel scenes between Ranthorpe and his father should certainly have been weeded out with the other two volumes; it passes far beyond the limits of probability and decency. Choleric and violent old gentlemen on the stage-exaggerated, as they always are, "pour faire rire" not "le parterre," but "le paradis "-never hit their sons a severe blow in the face by way of bringing them to reason. Sir Anthony Absolute, very much over-acted, would be mild and forbearing compared with old Ranthorpe. The reader feels quite relieved when he is dead, and the hero can follow his own devices unchecked by remorse for offending his "governor."

Two young medical students are introduced to the reader, in the same chapter with the hero; they play conspicuous parts in the book. One commits a murder, and the other, Henry Cavendish, becomes ranger, and turns out a much more heroic person than the hero.

"Henry Cavendish was a student of St. George's. In his appearance there was something at once prepossessing and repulsive: a mixture of the gentleman and the Mohock. His coal-black hair was trained into one long curl on either side of his cheeks, thick black moustaches graced or disgraced his upper lip, his hat was slightly cocked, to look jaunty, he carried a formidable stick, and smelt strongly of tobacco. Yet his dark eye was full of fire and intelligence: his open laughing face was indicative of malicious mirth and frankness: and the resolution about his brow, and the sensibility about his mouth, redeemed his slang appearance, June, 1847. VOL. XLIX.-NO. CXCIV.

and showed the superior being beneath the unprepossessing ex

terior.

"Oliver Thornton belonged to the Middlesex Hospital. He was heavy and clownish-looking; with a large, pale, sensual, and rather placid, countenance, the predominant expression of which was sleepiness, strangely mixed with cunning. It seemed as if his small twinkling eyes were in perpetual struggle with the somnolent disposition of his other features. It was a thoroughly disagreeable face."

Unlike most heroes in novels, Ranthorpe is thoroughly and comfortably in love before the book begins. He and his bien-aimée are affianced, and there is no cause or impediment why they should not in due course of time be married. This saves the necessity of describing the gradual development of a first love, and introduces you in medias res at once. It is after he has been for some time betrothed that the course of Ranthorpe's "true love" does not run smooth." This is entirely his own fault: the weakness and vanity of his character cause him to be led away from his first noble love, who is thus described :

"Isola Churchill was exquisitely beautiful. But her beauty was of that chaste severity of style which only strikes connoisseurs; She had few of the charms which captivate drawing-room critics, was neither sylph-like nor sportive, neither sentimental nor voluptuous. Her cheeks were innocent both of roses and lilies. I am not aware of any cupids having taken up their abode in her dimples; nor did I ever hear anything of the "liquid languishment" of her eyes. In fact, she was a girl whom seven out of every ten would call "nice looking," or "well grown," without a suspicion of the other three looking upon her as a master-piece of Nature's cunning hand. Tall, finely, somewhat amply moulded, with a waist in perfect proportion, her walk was the walk of a goddess:* perhaps for that reason few thought it graceful. From her mother, an Italian, she inherited a pale olive complexion, large lustrous eyes, black hair, and a certain look of Raphael's Sistine Madonna; from her father, the winning gentleness which softened her somewhat stern severity of outline, and converted the statue into a woman. Yet, on the whole, her beauty was more sculpturesque than picturesque. Her voice was peculiar; though musical and vibrating, it had that loudness common to Italians, but which in England, amongst a race accustomed to eat half their words, is regarded as ill-bred. But the clear, vibrating, powerful tone of Isola's voice always seemed to me a witchery the more, and was not inaptly characteristic of her frank, large and healthy soul. It gave

"I grant I never saw a goddess go:

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground."-SHAKSPERE.

T. M. W.

some persons the impression of her not being feminine, and this impression was strengthened by the simplicity of a manner free from all the permissible coquetry of woman; yet Isola was exquisitely feminine in soul. She was woman in her gentleness, lovingness, singleness of purpose, and endurance, only not in coquetry.

To those whose tastes had been kept pure, who could distinguish truth and love it, there was an indefinable charm in her manner. It would have been impossible for the most impertinent of men to have paid her common place compliments; the quiet simplicity, the grandeur of her direct and truthful bearing, protected her.

If the reader run away with the idea that Isola was an imposing woman, he will be curiously misled. It is the fault of language that it cannot convey manner, so that the term grandeur, applied to one so simple and truthful as Isola, may seem ill applied, because it is forgotten that all grandeur is simple."

The reader cannot help feeling contempt for the man, or rather the boy, who can be led away by the intoxication of vanity, and the glitter of fashion, to forsake such a woman as this, for the deceptive smiles of a giddy, heartless coquette. And, as in similar occasions in real life, which are by no means rare, we cannot understand why Isola loves Percy Ranthorpe, who is inferior to her in every respect but that of author-craft. It is precisely here that we think our author shows the deepest knowledge of human nature, at all events of female nature. Isola is just the sort of woman who could love and honour a man whom she knows to be, in some respects, weaker than herself-whom she knows to stand in need of her support in sorrow, and her encouragement in exertion; and this, not from any spirit of domination or love of feeling her superiority, but because in such strong and purely unselfish female natures all love is, in a great measure, imbued with the protecting, self-sacrificing spirit of maternity. This truth is finely and delicately shown by the author of "Ranthorpe." The passion and fidelity of the mistress is exquisitely blended with the tender consolation, the never-failing forbearance of the mother; and we feel quite sure that all Percy's mistakes and weakness, and selfish vanity, and even his neglect of herself, will never alienate her motherly heart. This kind of love does not seem to be a favourite with novel writers; at all events, it has been rarely touched, and still more rarely thoroughly treated by them. This has often been matter of regret to us, because few kinds of love are more beautiful or more capable of artistic and dramatic illustration and development.

We were very much pleased to see that George Sand, in one of her late works, Lucrezia Floriani, has taken up this subject, and has given a true exposition of this peculiarly beautiful kind of woman's love. Differing, as Isola does, in so many respects from Lucrezia Floriani, they both love their lovers with the compound love of mistress and mother.

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