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WebsterT Middieton , Ford , Cyril Tourneur , and some other of the dramatistswho wrote in the £ rst half of the seventeenth century . The last act is very impressive , and is wrought up , not only with poetic feeling , but ¦ with skill . The combination of revelry with remorse—of festal marriage ceremonies with the yet smouldering fires of revenge—of the pageantry of the-ball-room with the muttered -wanderings of madness and the delusions of uneasy conscience- ^ all moving about in an Italian atmosphere of hot , swarthy , and wicked splendour , and terminating in a sudden and frigttful death—these are elements which we do not often find entering into the composition of modem pLays . And the language , which in the previous acts
bas been diffuse , here becomes , with but few exceptions , rapid , intense , poetically truthful , and sustained . It is painful to think of the man who could write thus ( and who doubtless could have written still better had he dedicated , his time to art ) consenting to sacrifice himself to a miserable , flashy idea of'life / and being , while we write this testimony to his faculty , a condemned criminal in a . gaol . Our apace will not permit us to make any further long quotations ; but vre append a few felicitous lines : — . This trumpet ' s breath , biows cold on me .
The mutter ed oaths Of distant drums , To follow crime without the penaltyla still the bitter attribute of Mngs ! ( Doubtless , Robson now wishes that it was his bitter attribute too . ) " When , like a wanton , I did hurl myself , All shivering with hate , into thin . 6 arms . There is art essence , —love , — engoldening Xdfe ' s harsh excrescences , as doth the moon The continents of clouds , which threat with waste The labour of the husbandman . My goodness with my childhood fled . They hand in hand in dimmer beauty fade Along the distant vista of my memory . Or did she wail , like -winds a-thro' the aisles Of motmyfidfirst The pilot guiding with his palsied hands That old . ship through its dreamywasteof ' years . ( Spoken of the Duke after his madness . ) — ThflSQ . grey hah" 3 , which have a . foolish way Offalling o'er mine eyes to hide my tears . ( Spoken by the Duke . ) She looketh like a snnset , Guido , when There is a tempest brooding in the west .
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A BATCH OF BOOKS . Many a book must be noticed briefly , or not at all . We have , on our table , a large variety of such publications—novels , tales , sketches , arid other miscellanies—which it would be unfair to ignore altogether while it would be impossible , and not very interesting , to treat them separately at any length . The author of Hidden Links ; or , £ Jie Schoolfellows , 3 vols . ( Newby ) , for instance , claims a paragraph . His book is a mistake . It is all confusion and inconsistency ; the links are continually snapping ; the love is cold , the passion pale , the heroes and heroines are people of deadly dullness , who seduce , and gamble , and forsake conjugal roofs , and are brought to miserable ends , in that sad , silly way in which some novelists will persist . More reformers are needed in the department of diction , or the reader Avill shun a
three-volume novel as he shuns a haunted house , or a man of one idea . An example of a book with one idea is Miss Bessie S . Turner ' s Niube : a Tale oj Heal Life ( Saundcrsand Otley ) . It ia a . story in which a hard-mannered husband scowls a proud wife from his home to a retirement . 'ifc Dulwich , where Niobe is born unto her . Niobe , the central lmly <> f the group , ultimately marries , and that is Misa Turner ' s conception oi romance . However , she is not guilty of three volumes ; lier ' talc of real life 1 is told modestly in one , and is pleasingly written . Ofiier fictions we have , multitudinous and varied : — The Torchlight , ; or , Through the Wood ( Sampson Low ) , by Harriet A . Olcott , a dim , ' relig ious story , quietly and sweetly narrated ; Victoria ; or , the World Overcome ( Sampson Low ) , by Caroline Chesbro , also on a religious basis ;
Cl-uremont ; or , the Undivided Household ( Trubner ) , intensely devotional ; Anlii / niid Leaves ( Trubner ) , by L . Maria Child , a series of spirited and amusing sketches ; and The Ladder of Life : a Ilcart-Uislori / ( Iloutlcilgo ) , by Amelia B . Edwards . This last ia an uncommonly spasmodic production . Miss Edwards belongs to the startling school , -which vises above sense and grauuhar . Her pages coruscate witli phosphoric figures oi speech , miraculously brilliant eyes , lightning glances , strange iiiv , bluebranching veins , streaking pale brows , under piles oi' rich , glo . ssy hair . Miss Edwards seeins to have beon infected with wide wide worMLsin . Miss Maria M'lntotih , Avho wtrilcs VioUt ; or , Found at Last ( lloutludge ) , is * more inventive and entertaining , and far less intent upon thrills and corneta-piston variations . Violet is a really clever picture of wild life on the I Now Jersey Coast , with glimpses of more polished society in the inlui * °
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malefactors are condemned . Again , instead of the dismal " weak porridge " and " boiled beans , " &c , each convict is allowed daily nearly two pounds of bread , one pound and a quarter of meat , and half a gill of rum . Cocoa sweetened with sugar , is also supplied him for breakfast and supper . The luxuries of such a ' diet will be better understood if we compare it with th rations doled out to the soldier . The soldier ' s allowance is limited to one pound of bread and one pound of meat per dieni , besides which he has to buy his own groceries and other articles de luxe . The convict also reposes in a comfortable bed at night . What a contrast is all this to the life spent bv thousands of honest toiling labourers in this country . Liberty , it is tru e is sweet . It may , however , be doubted whether the dread of returnino- ' to such a state of bondage acts very strongly upon those who are annuiilly ° dis . gorged upon these shores from , our delightful , balmy , lovely convict colonjoa
where the amenities of nature are not too much interfered -with , by the severities of prison discipline . No less than five hundred and fifty convicts returned to England from Bermuda alone during the past year to be let loose upon society . Amongst these were men convicted of heinous crimes and who had been sentenced for long- periods of transportation . Few of them , we can safely assert , remained out the legal term , of their sentence There is one more fact which we must allude to . The sense of justice inherent in the British public . refuses to allow ' the convict ¦ to labour , without remuneration . He is , therefore , never without pocket-money with which ' to add to his little luxuries , or , if he be economical , to save up . The sum thus accumulated proves a little capital on bis discharge . The amount however , is very inadequate to establish him in England , and is not uncommonly squandered away within a week after his arrival .
Besides describing Bermuda as a convict colony , " A Field Officer , " after indulging in some gross indiscretions of criticism , general and particular notices it as a naval and military fortress , the value of which as an outpost facing the American continent , he deems not sufficiently appreciated by our government . Further , Bermuda is treated as a colony . Its remoteness , its primitiveness , the beauty of its scenery , and the salubrity of its climate , all give it a particular claim to the attention of Englishmen . The Bermudas ' too , were the first islands in the Western Hemisphere which received colonists from England . Their loveliness was much dwelt upon at the time , that is , the latter days of Shakspeare , and some are -willing to suppose that Shakspeare laid the scene of The Tempest in one of them . But whether Ariel warbled here or riot , the calabash-tree is still shown beneath which the poet Moore reclined and sang , mourning over his exile from those gay circles in . which he loved to shine .
COlDTVICT LIFE IN" BERMUDA . Bermuda , a Colony , a Fortress , and a Prison ; or , Eighteen Months in the Somers Islands . By A Field Officer . Longman and Co . * ' Give me leave to tell von , " said Sydney Smith , wishing to deter his countrymen from indulging in too hopeful dreams of the bliss of convict life , * ' transportation is no joke . Up at five in the morning , dressed in a jacket , half blue , half yellow , chained on to another person like two dogs , a man standing over you with a great stick , weak porridge for breakfast , bread and water for dinner , boiled beans for supper , straw to lie upon , and all for thirty years . " Such is the vague , fanciful vision which floated in the mind of the facetious canon of St . Paul ' s . Whether the picture is
exaggerated , or whether this , is a faithful transcript of things as they were , what a charming change , at least for garotters , burglars , and homicides , has taken place . ^ We Ivave only to study the actual condition of such felons as represented in the pages of " A Field Officer , " to become acquainted with the -difference . Thirty years ! Can anything be more illusive ? The prisoner as well as the judge knows , when sentence is passed upon him , the penalty is nominal . It has so long become the practice to commute punishments , that the most hardened . villain may calculate upon the following composition : Transportation for life means ten years ; for fourteen years , perhaps six ; ten means four ; and seven , three . We are informed that by far the greater number of the prisoners at Bermuda are still upon this footing . it is
as . well that our traditionary notions of the severity of convict life should be corrected . The public seems pretty well convinced by this time that our system of penalties has altogether broken down . It has not served the . purpose of repressing crime ; neither has it effected any moral change in the condition of those who are its objects . Can we hope that the kappv medium between extreme leniency and extreme severity will ever be hot upon ? ^ Can wo liope that such a course of training shall be adopted that the prisoner , when sent adr ift upon the world , shall have cast aside his old propensities . If ever such a consummation be achieved , it can never be by the ridiculously short periods of confinement above mentioned , nor by allowing the law such unequal application as is to be found in the commutation of sentences .
These observations we casually throw out as incidental to the volume under review . » A Tield Officer" dwells with some emphasis upon convict discipline , trom him we have a forcible contrast to th « exaggerated picture of Sydney Smith . To go . into the daily existence of thS prisoners . Instead ot rising a ; fvyo o ' clock , their labour commences at half-past seven m summer and eight m winter . At mid-day they are marched off to their dinners to which agreeable t oak they devote themselves for an hour and « half , lhe greatest care is taken that they shall work i » the shade , and in the summer there is a total cessation of labour from eleven to wo o ' clock " £ e tlS * r PP ** " ™ ' At 8 ixi » ^ c evening during summer , and five in . winter , the prisoners return to tho hulks or the barracks The labour of the day is tW over . Chains , except for mutiny , a ? e never used Thus , nme hours * tho maximum of labour to which these t Jdel y LeXd
Though , the question of convicts has occupied the principal portion of our notice , being peculiarly appropriate at the present moment , the reader must not suppose the book of " A Field Officer" is devoted essentially to this subject . He will find whatever is interesting in the colony agreeably described , though the present volume may add little to his previous knowledge of these remote islands . The writer enters into a description of the natural features of this cluster of three hundred and sixty-five islands—the orthodox number , according to the patriots wlio wish to square the number with the days of the year—into their trade and commerce , resources and capabilities , local governments and native authorities . He also raises the veil of social life , and lets us see some of the peculiarities of existence in a country fifty miles in circumference , whose greatest excitement is the arrival of a bimonthly mail or the presence of a ship of the line . The spot ; finds favour in his eyes , and he recommends it as a place of residence to certain classes . Who these are , and what axe the grounds of his recommendation , we leave the reader to learn from the book itself . We ought to notice that some very well-executed coloured illustrations accompany the work .
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% m | HE LEAPEB . pjfo . 359 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 7, 1857, page 138, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2179/page/18/
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