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l<WMr S;-1866:T THE REAPER. AQ
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RACHEL GRAY. Rachel Gray. A Tale founded...
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THACKERAY'S MISCELLANIES. Miscellanies: ...
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Historical Sketches of the Angling Liter...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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A Lady's Campaign. Journal Kept During T...
Surely , nothing more animated or more picturesque than this has been sen * torn * by any of the ready-writers in the Crimea . On the day before ? he battle of Inkermann , Mrs . Duberly writes , with the coolness of a fieldmarshal , " We are doing nothing particular , beyond firing red-hot shot After the battle , again , "We fought as all know Englishmen will fight Mrs Duberly is everywhere—a part of the array ; in fact , the array did not like ' to go into action unless Mrs . Duberly looked on—Queen ot Beautyto distinguish , as far as the smoke would allow , friends and heroes on the field . Thus , before the first attack on the Redtm : — General Markham rides up , and says , " Mrs . Duberly , we shall have a fight tomorrow . You must be up here on Cathcart ' s hill by twelve o clock . This is , in all respects , a remarkable volume . It is well-written , the narrative is rapid and connected , the successive battles are described with real pictorial effect .
L<Wmr S;-1866:T The Reaper. Aq
l < WMr S ; -1866 : T THE REAPER . AQ
Rachel Gray. Rachel Gray. A Tale Founded...
RACHEL GRAY . Rachel Gray . A Tale founded on Fact . By Julia Kavanagh . London : Hurst and Blackett . Rachel Gray is not a story of a fine lady ' s sorrows wept into embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs , or of genius thrust into the background by toadeating stupidity . It does not harrow us with the sufferings and temptations of a destitute needlewoman , or abash us by the refined sentiments and heroic deeds of navvies and ratcatchers . It tells the trials of a dressmaker who could get work , and of a small grocer , very vulgar , and not at all heroic , whose business was gradually swallowed up by the large shop over the way . Thus far " Rachel Gray" is commendable : it occupies ground which is very far from being exhausted , and it undertakes to impress us with the every-day sorrows of our commonplace fellow-men , and so to widen our sympathies , as Browning beautifully
says—Art was given for that : God useB ub to help each other so , Lending our minds put . " Rachel Gray" further professes to show how Christianity exhibits itself as a refining and consoling influence in that most prosaic stratum of society , the small shopkeeping class ; and liere is really a new sphere for a great artist who can paint from close observation , and who is neither a caricaturist nor a rose-colour sentimentalist . We wish we oould say that Miss Kavanagh ' s judgment in choosing her subject has been equalled by her success in . working , it up . We do not feel that the story of " Rachel Gray " brings any nearer to us the real life of the class it attempts to depict ; still less that " Rachel Gray ' s " piety gives the reader any true idea of piety as , it exists in any possible dressmaker . It is
an abstract piety , made up of humility , ' resignation , and devotion , feeding on Milton ' s sonnets , and quite disembodied of sectarian idiom and all other fleshly weaknesses which ore beneath Miss Kavanagh ' s own mind . Our own experience of what piety is amongst the uneducated has not brought us in . contact with a Christianity which smacks neither of the Church nor of the meeting-house , with an Evangelicalism which has no brogue ; and if , when Miss Kavanagh says that her tale is founded on fact , she means that the character of * ' Rachel Gray " is a portrait , we are obliged to say that she has failed in making us believe in its likeness to an original . We are far from meaning that there are not feelings as essentially beautiful as Rachel
Oray ' s to be met with amongst the uneducated , but the feelings run into a specific mould ; they do not exhibit themselves as abstract virtues , but as qualities belonging to aii individual character , of mixed moral nature and uncultured intellect . All this , perhaps , Miss Kavanagh knows as . well as we ; but either from too great haste to publish , or from unwillingness to give the requisite labour to her work , she has produced a book which might have been written in an ignorance both of heart and of life which we cannot impute to her . She even seems to he conscious herself of her , failure towards the close of her volume , for she resorts to the very unartistic plan of telling her reader that he would be touched by t"he sorrows she describes , if they were depicted by an abler hand .
Oh , passion ! eloquent pages have been wasted on thy woes ; volumes have "been written to tell mankind of tliy delights and thy torments . To no other talo will youth bend its greedy ear , of no other feelings will man acknowledge the power to charm his spirit and his heart . And here was one who knew thee not in name or in truth , and yet who drauk to tho dregs , mid to the last bitternepB bis cup of sorrow . Oh ! miserable and unpootio griefii of tho prosaic poor . Where are ye , eleuienta of power ami puthoa of our modern epic—the novel ? A wretched shop that will not take , a aickly child that dies ! Ay , ami wcro tbe pioture but drawn by an abler hand , know , proud reader , if proud thou art , that thy very heart could bleed , that thy very aoul would bo wrung to read this page from a poor man ' s story . To scold a reader for no t feeling is a way of trying to make him feel which is more feminine than felicitous . A move favourable specimen of Miss Kavanagh ' s style is the" scene in which Rachel Grny is introduced to tlie reader .
A little ftix-roomod Inhiho it was , exactly fusing tho droouy , haunted mansion ' and oxpofiod to all tho noises aforesaid . It was , aim , to » ny tho truth , an abode ¦ of poor and mean aspect . In tho window hung u drostminkor's boavel , on whioh wa © modestly inscribed , with a lint of prices , tho name of" Uaciikl Quay . " It -wiie accompanied with xmttoniht of yellow paper t «! eovoa , trimmud in every colour , an old book of fti « hio » m , and beautiful mu \ bright , us if renrod in wood or meadow , a pot of yellow orocuwort in bloom . They wore cloning now , for evening was drawing in , and thoy knew tho hour . They hnd opened to light in tho dingy parlour within , and whioh wo will now entor It wjvh hut a littlo room , and tho woft gloom of a taring twilight half-filled it . I ho furniture , though poor and old-fashioned , was slurupulounly clean ; and it whone again m tho flickering iiru-light . A fuw diaoolourod priutu in hhirk iratnoH hung ugaiiirit , tho walls ; two on- three broken uhiim ornaments adorned tho wooden n-uiutol-Hliolf , which wiih , moreover , doooniU'd with a dark-looking mirror in n , mu of turiiiuhod gold ,
By tho firo an oldorly woman of grave and nt-orn anpoi't ., but who had onuo boon UandBomo , Hat reading tho nowHpapur . Now i , ho window , two npproutioon wnvod » m < l « rtne nuperintenclonco of ltiichol Oruy .
A mild ray lit fell on her . pale face and bending figure . Slie sewed on , serious and still , and the calm gravity of her aspect harmonised -with , the silence of the little parlour which nothing disturbed , save the ticking of an old clock "behind -the door , the occasional rustling of Mrs . Gray ' s newspaper , and the continuous and monotonous sound of stitching . Rachel Gray looked upwards of thirty , yet she was younger by some years . She was a tall , thin , and awkward woman , sallow and faded before her time . She waB not , and had never been handsome , yet there wa 3 a patient seriousness in the lines of her face , which , ^ when it caught the eye , arrested it at once , said kept it long . Her brow , -too ,-was broad and intellectual ; her eyes were very fine , though their look was dreamy and abstracted ; and her smile , when she did smile , -which was not often , for she was slightly deaf and spoke little , was pleasant and-ys ? y sweet . _ ...
She sewed on , as we have said , abstracted -and serious , when gradually , for even in observation she was plow , the yellow crocuses attracted her attention . She looked at them meditatively , and watched them closing , with the decline of day . And , at length , as if she had not understood until tlen what was going on before her , she smiled , and admiringly exclaimed : — " Now do look at the creatures , mother ! " Mrs . Gray glanced up from her newspaper , and snuffed rather disdainfully . " Lawk , Rachel ! " she said , " you don't mean to call crocuses « reatttres —* do you ? I'll tell you -what though , " she added with a doleful shake of theiisad , * ' I don't know -what Tier Majesty thinks ; but / say the country can' * stand it vatndh longer . " Mrs . Gray had been cook in a Prime Minister ' s household , and this had naturally given her a political turn . " The Lord has taught you , " murmured Rachel , bending over the . flowers with something like awe , and a glow spread over her sallow cheek , and there came a light to lier large brown eyes .
The mere novel reader , who cares only for excitement or amusement , will find little attraction in " Rachel Gray / ' The story , as we have intimated , is of that quiet kind , which depends for its pathos and its humour on . the delicate and masterly treatment of slight details , and in this sort of treatment it is altogether deficient . In our judgment , then , " . llachel Gray "is a failure ; and it is our disagreeable duty to say so , for the sake not only of the public but of the authoress , from whose talents and diligence we hope for better things to come . _ ,
Thackeray's Miscellanies. Miscellanies: ...
THACKERAY'S MISCELLANIES . Miscellanies : Prose and Verse . By W . M . Thackeray . . Vol . II . Bradbury and Evans The second volume of the " Miscellanies" is not equal to the first , yet it contains some very agreeable pages . The whole of the " Yellow Plush Papers" here , with their grotesque hieroglyphs , their monstrous and impossible spelling ; also the " Jeames Papers ; " " Sketches and Travels in London ;" " Novels by-Eminent Hands ; " and " Character Sketches . " Even those who most admire the genius of Thackeray , and we are of the number , must regret that more severity has not been exercised in the selection of fugitive papers . Many of the present voLume served their purpose in the pages of Froser and Punch , and should have been left there unexhumed ; we particularly condemn the republication of that attack on Bulwer and Lardner in the " Yellow Plush Correspondence ; " dot do we see any justification in the intrinsic merit of several other papers for their being reprinted in this permanent form . If , as we noticed in the review of the first volume , a critical
and biographical interest attaches itself to the sketches and preludes of a great artist , that interest is almost entirely disregarded in this publication owing to the absence of the indispensable dates . Why the date and . place of each was not given we cannot imagine . There could be no difficulty in the author ' s assigning the date . It would have occupied no space . But it would have given a value to productions which they have not intrinsically , because it would have enabled the critic to trace the growth and development of a style , which all England acknowledges to be among the most remarkable of all the styles our humorists and satirists have exhibited . The great sameness of the themes upon which he plays is salient in these " Miscellanies ; " and one would like to know whether the consummate pictures in "Vanity Fair " and " Pendenxiis" were results of which the " studies" are here given , or whether what we here take to be studies were feeble cop ies , painted when the hand was weary and the brain unwilling . But in these volumes , late and early , first thoughts , and thoughts feeble from exhaustion , are assembled pell-mell without a word of indication .
The finest things in this volume are unquestionably the " Novels by Eiument Hands : " a series of parodies representing Bulwcr ' s novels , James ' s novels , Mrs . Gore ' s novels , Lever ' s novels , and Disraeli ' s fictions ( the others write novels , but Disraeli ' s are too peculiar- not to deserve a special name ) . In the whole range of parody we know of nothing at all nppronching these , We marvel if Disraeli could ever again write one of his Oriental absurdities , after his trick had been so mercilessly exposed , his fustian so ludicrously reproduced , his style surpassed with suck case even in those parts upon which he most piques himself . It seems to us that if he had been labouring continue in it after
under the author ' s delusion up to that time , he could wot - wards . He may have believed his melodious assemblage of words was eloquence , and that his descriptions had a glowing truth about them , until Thackeray showed him how easy such eloquence is , how Holy well-street can be painted with an Oriental brush which sbnll make the ltosp of Sharon grow in its gutters , and tho splendours of Damascus glitter in its back parlours . Thaelceray ' sskeleton of the novel " Coillinj ^ by" is quite a study . Only inferior to it is the parody of Bulwer with its wonderful mimicry of Bulwer ' s " eloquence , " capitals , no-meaning , slang , nnd pedantry . Excellent also , both in style and spirit , is the paper , " Going to sec a Man Hanged , " which was a real transcript of experience , nnd excited great attention on its first publication in Froser tho date is affixed to this paper , although why it is singled out we know wot . "What has been done in this ease should Uixve been ilone in all .
Historical Sketches Of The Angling Liter...
Historical Sketches of the Angling Literature of All Nations By Robert lUnkev . J- Russell Smith , London . Fishers , who are also fishers of books , will thank Mr . ftlakey for his industrious compilation of piscatorial ana , from the earliest biblical records of the taking of fish down to the death o > f tho last jack caught by Mr , Jones at Tottenham .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 5, 1856, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05011856/page/19/
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