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rical , legendary , and literary sketches , strungtogether upon a plan which publishers demand rather than authors supply , because they imagine that by such meaus a connected air is sriven to a series of unconnected stories . The plan in this case is the shadow of a shade . A . company of some half-dozen artists and others are supposed to assemble , ' and to interchange the stories which compose the volume , as they gaze upon pictures and photographs of the individuals who form the central objects of the stories . A few uninteresting words at the
commencement o f a sketch , and a few equally uninteresting remarks at its conclusion , are all that we see of our entertainers . They are like phantom 3 howmen ; they cannot place a picture before us without a few bony gesticulations ; and when in bosky tones they endeavour to tell us which " is a lidn , " the words seem to stick in their thin and impalpable throats . They are present to satisfy a superstition in the publishing trade , and the quicker they do their work , the better we like them . They are the froth on the top of a tankard of beer , which it is necessary to blow away in order to get at the fluid .
Dr . Doran does not confine himself to las own country , but treats us to French , Spanish , Danish , Greek , and German sketches . There is an account of Andre" Chenier , the French poet , who perished in the Reign of Terror , and whose poems were collected in scattered scraps of manuscript after an interval of more than twenty years , There is a string of Sylvanus Urban gossip , giving a somewhat touch-and-go picture of our country and our countrymen a century back . There is a picture of England as drawn by foreigners ( a rather overworked subject ) , the foreigners being Alexandre Dumas . Max Scltlesinser , and Heyne . The latter
savr him descend shivering and : hungry from his garret , and was delighted to share with him , what he was never very reluctant to take , her sotipe , bouilli , and litre o-• wine . For dessert poor Jacqueline bestowed on her illustrious aqd vagabond friend the rarest fruit which she had in her shop . The Door girl strained her very utmost to make Lantara prefer her back parlour to the public-house , and the careless fellow had just begun to appreciate each according to its real value , when Jacqueline suddenly died . Lantara plunged for consolation into the nearest wine-shop in the street . Under his repulsive and fiery exterior there was still some tenderness of sentiment . No pressure of thirst could induce the drunkard to part with a
landscape which he had painted on one of his sober days , while Jacqueline carolled one of her rustic lays at his side . In the garret next to that in which Lantara passed his last days there lived an old opera-dancer , almost as drunken , and quite as desolate , as the painter . She saw him one morning crying over this landscape in question . ' 1 wonder , ' said she , ' that you do not sell that country-piece ! ' ' Sell it ! ' cried Lantara , not too tipsy to be unsentimental , * . never ! never ! I can hear Jacqueline's voice in it , coming to me through the foliage / " He drank on till wine killed him . In his last
illness be was carried to the ' Hopital de la Charite . A confessor stood by his bedside administering what consolation he could . * Rejoice , my son , ' said the priest , ' you are on the road to Paradise , where , as long as eternity lasts , you will behold the Almighty face to face , * ' Face to face ! ' muttered the broken-down artist —and he did not mean it profanely , —* face to face ! what , never in profile ?'—and with this artistic query poor Lantara died . " The book is nicely got up in the matter of paper and type ; aud is embellished with a very good portrait of Doran , from a careful photograph by Herbert Watkins ,
ought to be spelled Heine , as he maybe confounded with the old classical scholar . There are several legendary relig ious pictures , "Our Lady of Boulogne , " and others ; and as a set-off to the pictures of the English by foreigners , there are pictures of foreignersT > y the English . In this latter paper the author pretends to find it difficult to spell the name of a Polish village , and he tells us to pronounce it by sneezing five times , and adding iski ! This maybe given as a satire upon the vulgar wit in which the average English traveller indulges at the expense of his foreign friends ; but , any way , the joke is rather mouldy , and had better have been left out .
In the opening sketch—called "A Picture in Three Panels" —we move in English society of the last Century , with Dr . Dodd , Mrs . Bellamy , Griffiths the publisher , Dr . Wesley , and Oliver Goldsmith , —the most lovable character in literary history . In all such resurrection sketches the performers are wooden ; they talk , as they never did talk while on earth ; their attitudes are angular , and they are jerky as marionettes . Goldy may have been a fool in conversation , and Dr . Doran does not improve Mm . J > r . Dodd is more elaborately portrayed , and repulsive as he is , we like the portrait better than that of the transcendental Wesley . We give a neat and complete little French story of Lantara the painter , as a specimen of the author ' s agreeable style : —
"An artist of quite another stamp once made the Rue St Denis joyous . I allude to ( in one sense ) the French Uorland , —gay , dissolute , tippling , and inimitable Lantara , The death of one bo loved paralysed Lantara as It had done Vanloo . In other respects , however , the awes were dissimilar . Lantara was a painter of country scenes , and these he executed amid the din and dirt of fth * noisiest and dirtiest parts of Paris . He { loved mature much , bat the bottle more ; and he drank the deeper because he could not see more of nature . His
jmwI was a bright gem , and his body was its very course and ugly setting . He wa « for ever expatiating on the loveliness of the country , imagining or painting its ' beauties , and he the while was tipsily lounging before Ilia palette , or uproariously descanting in dark taverns , or warmly making love to some laughing fruit-seller , -whom he loved the more , he said , because she dealt in natural productions . This tipsiest of painters met with fho very pearl of fruit-deal « rs , in a certain Jacqueline , whose voice was like a bird's , and whose smile was like
nothing on earth , but—as the wine-loving artist was -wont to remark—but in its bright promise , only like the tainbow in heaven . Jacqueline was the friend , mistress , And guardian angel of the painter . She lived in the lower part of the house , in the « ttia of which the desolate artist had a refuge rather than » home . He was a solitary man Without family or Wo , and Jacqueline , who reverenced Mm when sober , and pitied him when drunk , loved and helped him , with all hi * merits and defects . He would have died of starvation hut for the poor fruit-girl , who
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FATHER AND DAUGHTER . Father and Daughter . By Miss F . Bretner . Translated by Mary Howitt . Hall , Virtue , and Co . Miss Bremeb ' s reputation is peculiar . She made it immediately with the English public when her first productions were presented to their notice . Her status as a literary artiste was at once assigned to her , and her subsequent works were quite in harmony with the popular decision . It was felt that a new writer of Nature ' s school had manifested her presence in the literary world . Nd one , after-perusing Miss Bremer ' s first simple and faithful delineation of Northern life and manners , ever desired or . expected to see
having a Vertebral disease of which the sure Pn , i r idiocy or death . The father is deliberate ^ medit ^ mg suicide , by starvation . He coolly infown * ?¦' daughter of the fact , ami then a good deal of « r losophy and many more extracts from ancient " authors are brought forward and q uoted hv ti father , in justification of- his determination by tht daughter , as arguments to prove that the determine tion is a wrong one . The " father" j 8 onlv in duced to suspend his attempt on his ljfe hr th ~ threat that the " daughter" would terminate hers exactly in the same fashion . Father and daughter remove to a farm in their possession , and then bvtlu * aid of new scenery and new amusements , the nro fessor acquires a new stock of health , and his morbid fancies become gradually fainter . Baron Axtel visits Rosa , renews his vows , and is told that the znarriaee cannot be so long as the professor requires his daughter ' s constant care . He vows eternal fidelity and immediateltransfers his love to
y Cora , a youn e cousin of Rosa ' s . This new love becomes known to Rosa , and when the Baron offers his hand again , some time afterwards , she rejects him , and acquaints him with scenes that had been witnessed by her own eyes . Rosa is then at the house of the Baroness , who has just died . She makes preparation to return home and in order to expedite her journey she embarks with the mails on board a small boat during the winter season . Here we have a minute history of the journey , the perils of the travelling party , their sufferings among the ice , from starvation , cold , and sudden death , and though we are assured that all the circumstances are founded on facts , and are taken from a newspaper statement of the mishaps of * real mail-bag party , we hardly think the general reader will consider them of sufficient value in themselves , or having a sufficient connexion with the story or its moral , to entitle the narrative to be reproduced at such length . Rosa is rescued from all but inevitable destruction , and she lives on . with her father and brother at their new home . Baron Axtel
and Cora are united * and several years afterwards the professor dies . There is a Madame Carlander , the aunt , with her two only teeth , Mulakoff and Sebastopol , her physic for everybody , and especially her " head cure for the stomach . " She is the only really " Breraer-like portrait" we have , and might have been made a good deal more of with advantage to the story . This is all that Father and . Daughter contains worth noticing . The materials are of the slightest , and the moral not likely to be very fully appreciated here , where the standard of filial duty and love is placed on what we would venture to term higher and more refined grounds than in Sweden . Of course the book will be read by everybody . Many will applaud , but more , we think , will be inclined to adopt our estimation of its merits .
the gifted writer stray from her proper path into regions of sentimentality or melodramatic maudlinism . We have before us a work which has led us to regret that it was written by Miss Bremen Father and Daughter might have made a name for a less distinguished writer , but we fear to he rich harvest of well-earned laurels that rightly adorns Miss Bremer's brow it will not add a single leaf . The nature" that we so much admired in the clear , life-like , andquietly humorous pictures in Home , the II Family , and the earlier works , is wanting
here . There ia the hand now and then visible of the master , but there is also the '" prentice hand" unmistakably too conspicuous . Miss Bremer tells the reader , in the preface , this : — "I am . tired of the old story of lovers ' sighs , hopes , torments , quarrels , reconciliations , fascination , and happiness or despair . I am tired of writing about them , as if the romance of life had not something more beautiful , something better . " From this exordium the eager reader will naturally be induced to expect in Father and Daughter " something more beautiful , something better" than even established favourites have
evinced . Let us see whether this expectation will be fulfilled . About eighty pages at the commencement are devoted to dialogues between Professor Norrby and his daughter , Rosa Norrby , who live a studious and secluded life at Wisby , in Gothland , and extracts from the works of Crcsfir , Onto , Seneca , Marcus Auxelius , nnd other antique authors of exploded metaphysical fallacies , sweetened with doses of paternal and filial love . The professor makes his daughter independent in circumstances nt twenty-one , and then gives her permission to vary her studious lifo by visiting the
some relations at Stockholm , Baroness Norrby and her son , the Baron Axtel Norrby . Hoaa takoa leave of her learned parent , begs hie largo walking-stick for her compagnon de voyage , and makes her first appearance to Baron Axtel , a Swedish buck of the first head , walking-stick in hand . The baronet at first despises his rooopp cousin , bat soon afterwards , on the discovery of her great talents and amiability , changes his opinion , falls , or aflfects to fall , in love with her , and makes her an oflqr of his hand , which offer Kosn accepts conditionally , A letter is received by Rosa which induces her to return suddenly to her father ' s house . Shu finds him in a drooping state , smitten with blindness and
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BOOKS FOR YOUTH . The Boy's Book of Modern Travel and Adventure . By Meredith Johnes . , . » t * J £ False Appearances . A . Hall , Virtue , and Co , The Canadian Crusocs . By Catherine P . Trsul . A . Hall , Virtue , and Co . The Kangaroo Hunters . By Ann Bowman . Koutlcdge and to . 77 * E y KA Boy in Japan . By WUHam Ddt ^ ^ The Bay '* Book of Modern T ™ * a " *? ZiZ \ hl not a collection of imaginary sketches , but s for tne most part composed of extracts frpm some of our most popular books of travel , with covm ng tions of actual incidents and particulars of awums regions from the original works themselves . The Author has judiciously blended » n 8 « rijotwnjift amusement . Binding , type , paper , nnd illustrations " ^ S ™ , is one of those j ^ ft * "g * tales with a moral which Mrs . Holland , M « . iSI jr wood , and Mrs . Trimmer have '"^ jyPJKto Mrs . Mackay , the authoress of th ° P ™ " lca 8 ing volumetakes high rank among these pwasi k
, writers of juvenile moral fiction . t b . The Canadian Crusoe is of su / hcicnl ™« JJjJktona , tain the editorial revision of ^ f ^ f ' f ' S public The first edition instantly established _ self » favour , the second will enlarge tho audience «» u putation of the work . . om 0 of V The Kangaroo Hunters is as » musing Jj » ome Marryat ' s or Chamier ' a best VrodwtmB > authoress , we hope , will pardon us for & ™ B £ l of advice . In writing for childhood or ^ g >« ^ ^ plioity of stylo ought to be enrofu I * nj » . d liead Defoe ' s " liobinson Crusoe , " and . It will w that the secret of its universal charm w w »" and pure Saxon made use of . . . ^ rea d The English Boy in Japan Is not a book to w and thrown aside . The roannow , curtomj , •" ^ gends , aa tho author Wmwlf toll * w , ' » ft 0 . lathered from tho Ifttost as well as the gj "'^^ thorlties , the only imaginative part is tiu > i vehicle which tho author hft ^ ft . do Pf , A , lrt 8 to no poso of conveying tho informal Ion » 10 / " «" ,. doubt eager reader * In its most attractive wrni
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1412 THE LEADER . [ No , 457 , December 24 , 1858
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 24, 1858, page 1412, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2274/page/12/
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