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MY UNCLE THE CURATE."

"How shall my story open?" is the anxious inquiry of every novelist. A summer sunset-a winter storm-an extract from a letter, announcing some death or marriage that varies the relations of some half dozen members of one or two families, of whom the reader as yet knows nothing, for the best of all possible reasons, that they as yet have no existence, except as phantoms before the eye of the author -phantoms, too, whose evanescent being is of so very doubtful a character, that they are perpetually changing their shape and colour-mocking the imagination that creates them-fading away utterly into absolute nothingness, except when the mental eye is distinctly fixed on them; and yet, at times, possessing attributes of such intense reality, as to throw into shade everything we class with actual existences. tion has a truth of its own, and in its own world a reality which must not be violently or rudely disturbed. It has privileges which even we reviewers must endeavour to respect. The novelist, we must remember, is communicating to us a secret; he must be allowed to tell it in his own way. We are not to anticipate, or we are pretty sure to go wrong, and thus be punished for our rudeness. We are not to indulge in commentary; for he has the right to address every person who would interrupt him in the language of a privileged person—

"I am a blessed Glendoveer,

'Tis mine to speak, and yours to hear."

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This being so, how is a novelist to be reviewed? Is he to escape altoge ther?-is the reviewer to be silent? We plainly have no right to tell his whole story; as plainly is it impossible to comment on it with any effect, except we suppose it already known to our readers. Thus narrative and comment being, in a great measure, excluded, we can do little more than give our readers some general notion

of the kind of entertainment which they are likely to meet; and with which they will, almost as soon as these pages can meet their eye, have the opportunity of being supplied by the thousand circulating libraries of the empire.

The story, of which, after all, we must tell more than we could wish, is one of Irish life and manners; the scene, for the most part, in one of the wildest districts of the north of Ireland; in a part of the county of Donegal, in which, from accidental causes, with which the novelist has no proper concern, Celtic manners and habits still linger. The fortunes of the family of an educated clergyman, who has a church-living in this wild and secluded region, are the subject of this domestic romance. sister is married to the curate; and hence the title of the book. The curate, Hercules Woodward, is uncle-inlaw to the young Spensers.

His

Mr. Spenser, the beneficed clergyman. of our romance, is an Englishman, whose life is passed among his books; in his library are all his enjoyments. He has a sickly and troublesome wife, who, as most of her time is passed in her bedroom, is more heard of than seen. She is a second wife, with a family of young children, of whom, fortunately, we hear less than of their nursery maids and governess-the latter one of the most important characters in the book -not, indeed, the heroine, yet a heroine indeed. There are two daughters and a son, the children of a former marriage; the daughters marriageable, and the son of an age when it is fit to think of sending him to college.

The plain business, then, of the author is to get husbands for these young ladies, and provide a proper education for the young gentleman. The husbands are imported from England, and the heir eventually of this branch of the house of Spenser is sent to England for his education.

"My Uncle the Curate;" a Novel. By the Author of "The Bachelor of the Albany," and "The Falcon Family." 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall. 1849.

Mr. Spenser, the rector, is a Whig -an amiable, indolent man. His curate and brother-in-law is a Tory, somewhat of an ultra-conservative; both right-minded men, attached to each other their political predilections not very strongly brought out. Mr. Spenser's indolence is contrasted with the jealous activity of the curate; but its effect is chiefly seen in the sort of life which goes on within his own house. His sickly wife, the victim of self-indulgence, is the natural prey of her waiting maid, and of a young lady, whose ostensible position is that of governess to a young brood of Spensers, who have not yet escaped from the nursery. Her real occupation is that of learning all the secrets of the house and the neighbourhood. She is a cunning, restless mischief-maker. With the group of which she is the governess we are wholly unconcerned, as she seems to be; for they scarcely make their appearance on the stage at all. We must allow the author himself to describe the residence of the Spensers :

"There existed some twenty years ago, and probably still exists, a parsonage in the county of Donegal, and parish of Redcross, situated close to the water edge, on the shores of a small but beautiful arm of the sea, which resembled, just at that place, one of the many romantic lakes or pools which abound in the Welsh highlands. The parsonage (a comfortable house, containing accommodation for a large family, but with no great architectural pretensions) stood on the northern side of the creek, or fiorde (as such inlets are called in Norway), so that it enjoyed a southern exposure, beside being very well sheltered on the north and north-east by a lofty range of hills, whose steep rocky sides, strewed with patches of wild vegetation (delicious browsing for sheep), rose like a wall over it. In the westerly direction, where the hills were least precipitous, a copse of oak and birch crept from their base to the very summits; and towards the east, or to the left of the parsonage, a high point of rock, which stood boldly into the water, was crested in a very imposing manner with a group of pines, or trees of that species, whose tops were fired at midsummer with the sun's beams, long before their golden track was visible upon the bosom of the lake. A few acres of green sward-the natural turf improved by not much manual labour-filled up the space between the house and the

beach, consisting of a narrow strip of sand, which, not being itself often encroached on by the waves, manifested equal forbearance to the lawn, which it seemed to skirt with silver. From the quisite, for it not only commanded the front of the parsonage the view was exloch itself, with its picturesque banks, distinguished by their air of idle grandeur, but the additional prospect of a not very distant mountain range beyond, one of whose numerous peaks was nearly of a sugar-loaf form, and domineered superbly, with its fine dark-blue cone, over the less ambitious parts of the chain."-Vol. i. pp. 43-45.

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The rector, his son Sydney, and his daughters Arabella and Elizabeth, sate enjoying the scene. An excursion to a neighbouring island was planned for the next day. There was something ominous, however, in the sunset-clouds, which predicted the storms that seem perpetually lurking to interrupt our best-arranged parties of pleasure. There was something, too, of the kind of terror which an experienced novelreader is apt to feel in the tone in which it was communicated by Sydney to his sisters, that he had asked his friend, Mr. Dawson, to be of the party. The sisters are both distressed by the communication. It, however, affects the second daughter, Elizabeth, who is described as a radiant brunette of eighteen, with peculiar alarm. While they are arranging the project for the next day, the proper hero of the book makes his appearance :—

"Hercules Woodward stood six feet three inches in his stocking-feet, and he was broad and brawny in proportion. . . He had the honestest though roughest set of features imaginable; a face as massive and strongly marked as those which sculptors assign to rivergods, a high bald forehead, bushy, reddish whiskers, and good-humoured but powerful eyes, over which a pair of enormous brows beetled, with an endeavour, not always unsuccessful, to give them a ferocious aspect.

"Such was his person. His dress was very much in keeping with it. He wore a short frock, or rather jacket, of dark-blue cloth, not much finer than frieze; it was something between a sailor's jacket and a shooting-coat. His trousers, very wide and very short, were of strong grey plaid, the coarsest of the kind that is called shepherd's, and his waistcoat was from the same piece; a black silk handkerchief loosely

encircled his hirsute throat; his feet were furnished with shoes such as men wear in snipe-shooting, and his head was provided with a low-crowned and broadbrimmed glazed hat. It

was difficult enough to believe that he was Mr. Spenser's brother-in-law, but it will be harder still to credit what is equally true-he was also his curate!" Vol. i. pp. 55, 56.

It will save trouble if we transcribe the author's account of the young ladies of the parsonage:

"Arabella was tall, fair-haired, with delicate and very handsome features; her figure was also very good, her carriage distinguished, but haughty; and the same expression, mixed with something of petulance and scorn, was visible in her eyes and on her lips.

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She was a woman without passions and without a heart. Elizabeth Spenser was not so tall as her sister, but, though younger, she was even more mature in appearance; somewhat rounder, promising in a short time to be a robust as well as a beauteous woman. Her hair was a dark brown, and nature had been prodigal to her of that loveliest of female ornaments.

Her eyes

were dark also, only more grey than black. The nose was slightly aquiline; it made her countenance a commanding one; and the expression of her mouth, too, was a further indication of energy and self-reliance. Yet the best part of her loveliness was that with which her mind irradiated her person, as the beauty of a lamp is shown by the pure bright flame within it.”—Vol. i. pp. 73-75.

It is pretty plain that Elizabeth is the author's favourite.

The curate's business at the parsonage is chiefly for the purpose of dissuading the party from their intended water excursion. He is weather wise. Virgil himself could not tell the signs of a coming storm with more unerring accuracy than Hercules Woodward; but never was prophet listened to with more of distrust and incredulity, than the curate was doomed to experience. The voyage was, however, interdicted absolutely by Mr. Spenser, to the great annoyance of his

son.

The curate returned to his own home. "I trust," said Mr. Spenser to himself, as he walked back to the house, "that Lord Bonham's friends are not at sea, or that they will get into port before the gale rises."

Who is Lord Bonham ?-who are Lord Bonham's friends? Lord Bonham is an Irish absentee the owner of a large estate in the neighbourhood of the parsonage, and the patron of the living, which is worth about eight hundred a-year. The friends about whom the parson's anxiety is at the moment awake, are two Cambridge students, who are making a vacation visit to the north of Ireland. these, Vivyan has accidentally some connexion with the particular district in which the Spensers are located, as he has a small estate there, the rents of which are received for him by a respectable person, with whom we are destined to form an intimate acquaintance, as he is also Mr. Spenser's titheproctor.

Of

The Mr. Dawson, whose name our readers may remember as a friend of Sydney Spenser's, was a dissolute young man of broken fortunes, who lived in a sort of Castle Rackrent on the coast. Castle Dawson was separated by wild and dreary mountains from the parsonage and the village of Redcross, in the vicinity of which the curate lived. Dawson's estate was eaten up with debt; he still, however, contrived to maintain a kind of divided possession with receivers of the Court of Chancery, sequestrators, and

ministers of the law of all kinds. He perversely fancied himself in love with Elizabeth Spenser. His visits to the parsonage had, however, been interrupted by his owing a tithe arrear, which, to the surprise of the rector, he now expressed a wish to pay, and requested that the agent, a tithe-proctor, should be sent to receive it. Randy McGuire is forthwith dispatched to Castle Dawson, and he takes the opportunity of, at the same time, visiting the tenants of Vivyan, for the purpose of collecting his rent. Randy was not the agent, but his deputy. The agent resided in Dublin, lounging about the clubs, "being too fine a man to collect rents in person, particularly the rents of a small estate."

M'Guire was a coward. In the district where his operations were carried on, there was no conspiracy against either rent or tithes ; but if there was actual rebellion against the landlord and the parson in other parts of the island, Donegal was not without its rumours of approaching war.

Randy had to ask for his tithes more than once; and, even as to rent, he did not see in the tenants the zeal for its payment to which he had been accustomed. His best friend was the priest, who had his eye on the "chaps" that would agitate the parish. It was some comfort to Randy that, on the morning he rode to Castle Dawson, Sydney Spenser chanced to be the companion of his road. As they passed the ruins of an old fortress that was called "the Black Castle," Sydney amused himself by suggesting images of danger to the fancy of the timorous old man. At last they came to where their roads parted. Randy stopped at a little inn opposite the avenue to Castle Dawson to receive Vivyan's rent, reserving his visit to Dawson for the following morning. Sydney rides to Castle Dawson.

He is received by its master with a confused and bustling welcome. Still there is something that shows his visit is ill-timed. We have said that Dawson, was in every respect, a scoundrel. When Sydney came, there were with him two associates, whom he had brought from England, and whose immediate occupation was assisting Dawson in plundering the castle of some pictures and books that had belonged to a former possessor of the place, and which, being of some value, were proposed to be replaced by some worthless substitutes.

To communicate such a purpose to Sydney is, of course, impossible. The difficulty is got over by bluster, and bustle, and falsehood. The ruffians are presented as a valuator sent down from the courts, and a wandering artist. Sydney is made to drink deep, and at the close of the evening play is proposed. There are no cards. Sydney recollects that Randy, who is at the little inn, is likely to have a pack in his pocket, and one of the ruffians walks to the inn for the purpose of getting them.

Randy was weary, and had retired to his den early. He had received Vivyan's rent, and was anxious to count the notes. There is scarcely any passage in the book which more strikingly illustrates the power of our author in that mixed style of description, which is the charm of Scott's manner, and in which sentiment seems and but seems to prevail over what is

properly observation. There is not a page in these volumes that does not show the author to be a thoughtful, right-judging, and benevolent man. Those who read the book for the mere story will not be disappointed, for the story is skilfully interwoven, and happily told; those who read it for its incidental pictures of society in a land where society itself is a picturesque anomaly, will be amused and gratified; but the character and value of this book, and of its author's former works, is of a far higher stamp than arises from such merits as these. These are but the frame-work-the necessary and carefully wrought frame-work of what we find in his novels. The author of fictions such as we are now engaged with is, in reality, educating such minds as he influences in much the same way as Spenser or any of our great allegorical poets. The education is in what constitutes our proper humanity.

The picture of Randy reckoning his money is perfect :

"The passion for money was illustrated strikingly and curiously in the character of the little tithe-proctor. Randy was remunerated for his services with a fixed salary, and he was scrupu lously honest and punctual in making over to his principals all the sums he received; but he delighted inconceivably in the mere act of receiving. The mere sight and touch of the moneythe mere flapping of the wings of Plutus passing ever so fleetly over him, gratified his disinterested covetousness inordinately. The uncleanest rag of a banknote the filthiest dress that ever filthy lucre wore a tattered old note, which he was not even to retain possession of, perhaps, for half a-day thrilled with rapture his little yellow palm, made his fingers quiver, and his eyes dance and glitter. So far his avarice was sensual, almost the only sensual luxury the poor old man was acquainted with; yet at the same time, was there ever so pure a form of the love of money? For it was not for himself he grasped it; if he was rapacious (and it was only the fear of Mr. Spenser's displeasure that kept him from being a Verres in his line) it was not with the slightest view to his own profit, but simply out of a strong affection for the sight of the paper or the coin itself. Mammon had never a sincerer worshipper. Mammon did little for poor Maguire; housed him poorly, clothed him sparingly, put scarce pound of flesh on his bones, fed him

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grudgingly on herrings and potatoes, varied only with eggs and rashers of bacon, supplied his extraordinary length of nose with only a penny-worth of snuff weekly; yet was the devout little old proctor more loyal to his false god, than many a Christian is to the true and bountiful divinity who clothes him in soft raiment, lodges him in a palace, and feeds him daintily thrice a-day.

"No sooner had he climbed the steep narrow stair-case, or more properly ladder, which led to his familiar roost, than closing the door he squatted himself down on a rough-hewn deal chair, over his twinkling farthing candle (a peeled rush dipped in the melted fat of sheep) to reckon out his money, and perform the necessary little operations and tendernesses towards it, previous to vesting it respectfully in the old black-leather case, which (as we have seen) he always carried in a privy pocket wrought into the breast of his coat, on the inner and left side, so as to be as near his heart as possible.

"One by one he took up the notes delicately and reverently, as some great scholar and editor in the Vatican might handle a fragment of a lost decade of Livy discovered in a state of extreme decay, dropping to pieces like tinder. Then he very gently smoothed down every piece of bank paper separately; no lady's maid ever handled a berthe of the costliest point more daintily."-Vol. i. pp. 216-219.

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Randy is next day robbed of this money, and of a sum received at Castle Dawson. But we anticipate. Sydney is led into play, and is a winner. at last is got to bed; and then commences the spoliation of the pictures and articles of vertu at Castle Dawson. The sale of the pictures at Castle Dawson had been directed by the Court of Chancery, but no provision had been made for their being valued by any competent judge; and this omission suggested to Dawson the easy fraud in which he was now engaged.

Never did Lapland witch or wizard brew a more convenient storm than that which was predicted by Hercules Woodward; and the weather that followed was favourable-marvellously favourable to all the purposes which we must suppose present to our author's mind, when he first sketched the young ladies at the parsonage. And the rain after the storm was as good as the storm itself. It rained

cats and dogs, and lieutenant-colonels -it really did! We wish we had Griffith's map of the district, to learn all about lakes, and bogs, and rivers, or that our author had given names to his localities. Well, we must do without them, and get on as we best can. But how shall Lieutenant-colonel Dabzac and Mr. Trundle get on, who are riding during the stormy sunset to a dinner-party, and find a bridge which they have to cross, the only one for many a weary mile, broken down by the violence of the flood. Trundle is Lord Bonham's agent; is busy with a hundred plans for the improvement of Ireland; and the Whig parson's is as good a name as he can get to his memorial, praying the imperial parliament for thirty millions to develope the resources of Ireland. More he feels it not reasonable to ask, but less he will not take. Lieutenant-colonel Dabzac is an Orange Lieutenant-colonel. He is one of the Ulster magnates; will rule all things with a high hand. The Whig parson views him with what our author describes as a natural antipathy. Not so his elder daughter. He is the very man for her. A week of variable weather keeps him a willing prisoner at the parsonage. There is rain enough for some two or three days to confine the parties to flirtation within doors; and then the sky brightens ; and we have out-door rides, and finally an excursion to the magic island, of which we have before made mention. The within-door amusements are varied by occasional readings of essays by Mr. Spenser; for indolent as he is, he is by no means an inactive author. have from him a pleasant chapter, entitled "Directions to Governesses," and a philosophical romance, emulating Gulliver's journey to Laputa, describing the country of Higgledy-Piggledy:

We

"The island is so called from the Higgledies, who constitute the smaller and wealthier part of its population, and the Piggledies, who constitute the greater and poorer portion.

"Up to the beginning of the present century, the island had a sort of legislature of its own, not extremely unlike the British Parliament in form, called the National Harem-Scarem. Marvellous things are recorded of the HaremScarem of Higgledy-Piggledy, which

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