British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII / January and April, 1871

by Various

Ierne. A Tale. By W. Steuart Trench. 2 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co.

If Mr. Trench's 'Realities of Irish Life' was something more than a history, 'Ierne' is something more than a romance. It is full of vivid pictures of Irish life, and is inlaid with historical information, political disquisitions, and didactic comment. We are not sure which presents the truer portraiture, the history or the romance, probably the latter. It appears, in spite of the extravagance and impossibility of its incidents, to reproduce with the fidelity which long personal familiarity enables, various aspects of Western Irish life, its fine culture, enthusiastic genius, and heroic patriotism in the higher classes; its wild passions, its half-savage instincts, and its no less noble patriotism in the lower. The representation is not a very hopeful one; at least, whatever hope there is in it must be found in the gross inconsistencies of thought, and in the unaccountable impulses of feeling which made Ireland such an enigma to Lord Killarney; the blind, deep-rooted infatuation about the ownership of land, and the notion that all improvements by Saxon possessors are inimical to its reversion, so that the better the landlord, the worse the feeling of antagonism excited, is profoundly perplexing. Mr. Trench has so thorough a knowledge of Irish feeling that we must accept this representation as true. Even the excellencies of a Saxon landlord, and his solicitude for the improvement of his estate and for the comfort of his peasantry, are specific reasons why he should be shot. Mr. Trench writes in full sympathy with the people in their sense of wrong. Few nations have been so oppressed and peeled, and no generous or even just Englishman will deny that, however unreasonable and fanatical Irish treason is now, when for nearly a century everything that could be done to redress the tyranny of the past has been done, it has traditional justification which almost exalts it to patriotism; and Mr. Trench feels the difficulty of so adjusting his sympathy as that while he justifies the national resentment of the past, he may condemn the continued treason of the present. Of course he sees no possibility in the dreams of repealers, and wishes every wise friend of Ireland would denounce repeal as the worst thing that could befall her. He can only, with ourselves, hope that the measures of redress of the last two Parliaments which leave Ireland almost literally without a grievance, will gradually discredit political agitation, and engender loyalty. He does, indeed, half suggest that a royal residence in Ireland, occasional visits from the Queen, or the Prince of Wales, would, as an appeal to Irish sentiment, be more potent than even the disestablishment of the Irish Church, or the enactment of the Land Bill. If so, it is a pity the experiment is not tried. As a romance, Mr. Trench's book is scarcely worthy of criticism. Ierne's personation of the ghost and her marvellous movements and achievements generally are simply preposterous. We tolerate the romance for the sake of the pictures of Irish life interwoven with it. Inveterate novel-readers will get through this, others will skip the tale, but even then the book will, by its information concerning national feelings and prejudices, and its delineation of various scenes of national life, faction fights, midnight drills, meetings of conspirators, and wakes, and especially by its racy delineation of national humour, and its careful description of noble scenery, amply repay persual.

Véra. By the Author of 'The Hôtel au Petit St. Jean.' Smith, Elder, and Co.

The Charm of 'Véra' is twofold; first, it introduces us to the interior of Russian life, and excites our interest by the delineation of modes of thought, feeling, and life, very different from our own. Next, it is written with great literary skill; the author's first work, which delineated Provençal life, will have prepared its readers for excellent workmanship in this. It is a story of character rather than of incident. Véra is a Russian Princess, affianced in marriage to Count Alexis Yotoff, her cousin, but the contemplated marriage is one of convenience rather than of affection, and when Alexis falls at Inkermann, he is wept with tenderness but not with passion. Colonel St. John, the nephew and heir of Lord Kendal, who lies wounded on the field of Inkermann, is assailed by some Russian stragglers, Alexis interposes to save him, and accidentally falls a victim to St. John's pistol, which he is in the act of discharging. He receives from the dying Alexis some souvenirs which he engages to convey to Véra and his family. His wounds affect his memory, and years elapse without his being able to redeem his pledge, and recall the names of either Alexis or his friends. In the meanwhile he becomes acquainted with Véra, and, although twenty years her senior, they are mutually in love. Their love, however, is sadly marred by cross purposes. At length St. John discovers, under critical circumstances, that Véra was the intended recipient of the souvenirs, and that his was the hand that deprived her of her lover. For awhile the discovery is fatal, but a fortunate railway accident affords an opportunity for explanation, and all comes right at last. The artistic excellence of the work is in its delineations, and the undertone of thoughtful sentiment, if not philosophy, that runs through it. Its text is the inevitableness of destiny; and the way in which the story illustrates this is as original as it is clever. It is a very charming novel, one of the very few which we wish longer.

Episodes in an Obscure Life. Three vols. Strahan and Co.

This is one of the few books that leave the critic no alternative but simply to heap together words of eulogy. Its least and lowest merit is its literary workmanship, and yet we scarcely know where we could look for more vivid pictures of accurate observation, of chaste simplicity, and unpretentious power. The large-hearted geniality, manly piety, and unwearied benevolence of the anonymous writer inform his eye and guide his hand, throwing gleams of radiance, aspects of humour, and visions of hope over the sad conditions of squalid misery which he describes, without a particle of Dickens's falsetto. He exhibits the noble kindly-heartedness and heroic self-denial that are often to be found in combination with rough exteriors and chronic misery. 'Little Creases,' 'Mr. Jones,' 'the Matron of the Refuge,' 'Emily, the crossing-sweeper,' 'Bessie,' 'Sam and his wife,' 'Peter and his wife,' 'Blind Stevens and his wife,' and half a score others, are illustrations not only of the kindly and often heroic human nature that there is among the poorest, but of the benevolent patient optimism in the writer that sees and exhibits it. It is long since 'Annals of the Poor' were recorded with so much genial sympathy and unconscious art.

The conditions of life described in these sketches are a humiliation and a sorrow. Never before have the underlying evils and miseries of our gilded civilization been so vividly portrayed. Legislators and philanthropists have a Herculean task before them in the amelioration of the physical and moral evils of such districts as the East of London—the overcrowding, the adulterated food, the festering disease, the moral corruption, the extreme penury, the lawless vice, the wretched ignorance, the impassable gulfs, not one but many, between the rich and poor. East-end ministers of religion know them, ragged-school teachers and City missionaries know them, few else have any conception of them. Little do travellers who arrive at the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway know that within a stone's throw of the platform scenes such as are here described are any day to be witnessed. The good and the evil both—the good in spite of evil that is simply appalling—conditions of poverty, lawlessness, vice, and suffering are nowhere in the wide world to be surpassed. Legislation may do something to remedy this state of things; commercial prosperity may do something; but it is, we fear, chiefly the result of an indolence and vice that neither can touch. In every village there are drunken, idle vagabonds; in great cities this element is fearfully multiplied and intensified, and it brings misery upon hundreds who are not of it.

All honour, then, to brave, patient, Christ-like men like the author of this work, who are content to live their obscure life, if they may but do something to alleviate it. Theirs is the only influence that can regenerate vice, or in any way effectually deal with it. We know something of the district which the writer describes, and happily we can testify to scores of young men and women of the upper classes who visit it, and cheerfully give evenings and Sundays to teach ragged children, instruct their mothers, and, so far as it is wise, afford them substantial help. No one can doubt that a clergyman, gifted as is the author of this work, has chosen his lot, abjured the ease and elegance of refined life which might have been his, that after the example of his Master he may seek and save the lost. How simply, sincerely, and wisely, as well as with what unconscious self-sacrifice, he does it, this noble book will show. With characteristic self-abnegation the author does not give his name. Every reader will heartily say, 'God bless him;' and if our recommendation could avail it should carry his book into every rich man's house and every comfortable home in the land.

Earl's Dene. By R. E. Francillon. In Three vols. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.

'Earl's Dene' has too obviously been written for the critics to satisfy a critic. The course of the narrative is interrupted by appeals ad clerum, which disturb the sense of illusion without convincing the judgment. The tone of the book is apologetic and explanatory, as if the author were under terror of the critic's lash, and were conscious that the movement of the story would seem so capricious as to require justification. This is a mistake in art, which seldom carries any compensation with it. The ordinary novel-reader is the most unexacting of human beings, and has unlimited capacity of digesting improbabilities; while the cultivated and analytic reader will be too conscious of the complexity of motives to be scared by superficial inconsistencies in the delineation of character. Thackeray was guilty of frequent 'asides,' but they were only outbreaks of cynicism or of pathos; incessant eruptions of psychology are less pleasing, if not more inartistic. But in all respects, this very defect included, 'Earl's Dene' is far above the level of common-place fiction. Though not strikingly original, it is evidently a transcription of life at first hand, and as seen through the medium of a refined and delicate intellect. The atmosphere of the book, though now and again disturbed by storms, is pure rather than bracing, and is fragrant with the aroma of refined reflection, which must be the outcome of long and intense experience. Decidedly feminine, we should say; overflowing with observations on the sex that look like self-revelations, and with sketches of the male animal which are inexpressibly grotesque when they are not weak. If anyone wants to see how Bohemia and its denizens picture themselves in an alien mind, he should study the portrait of Dick Barton, a cross between Caliban and Porson, an absurd and utterly impossible monster. But the characters are for the most part carefully drawn, by slight repeated touches, however, rather than by bold and luminous strokes. The dialogue sparkles with French esprit. There is obvious shrinking from common-place, as when the author refuses to describe first love; and, lastly, the novel is a novel with a purpose. It shows to men the ways of that great god 'Circumstance,' who seems a very Moloch, and winds up the tragedy by a general holocaust of his victims.