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60 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
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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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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
* * 1.—The Angel John In The W House . P...
last new novel which holds up the mirror to everybody ' s private absurdities , like the ' Virginians ; ' or it may echo back the tones of
a great man departed , like ' Tom Brown ' s Schooldays . ' It may be full of passion and incident , showing existence such as highly strung
natures find it to be , and the more phlegmatic like to fancy it;—or it may be a minute delicate painting of every-day life en beau ,
a picture of the -world on a summer Sunday , a book "which , seizing the characteristics of a people and a time , contrives to represent
them at once faithfully and gracefully ; so that intelligent readers are delighted with the truth of the portraiture , and gratified to
find the result so handsome . Such a book was ' Sir Charles Grandison ; —such a book is ' The Angel in the House . '
Let no one smile at the comparison , and think it an indignity to the modern poem to compare it to the ancient novel , —dusty fusty
_jseven volumes , printed in close small type . We "will undertake to prove it good *
When _Hichardson , exceedingly disgusted at the coarseness of Fielding , proposed to give a picture of real life among the
drawing - rooms of England , all the educated ladies of that day delighted in his photographic art . Sir Charles Grandison is
intensely true , and the powder and the periwigs , the bowing and the scraping , the maroon velvet coats with gold buttons , and
petticoats looped up with cherry-coloured ribbon , are only the out-ward covering to as real a group of dramatis _personce as ever walked
the stage of romance . When he said to her "Ah , my dear Angel ! " and she replied
, casting down her eyes , " O , best of men ! " they were none the less Harriet and Charles , and we believe that a more perfect picture of a
past time does not exist in any language , except in private letters and diaries , than is given in « Sir Charles Grandison' of the early days
of George III . In the same sense , ' The Angel in the House ' is an absolutely
accurate account of a betrothal and espousal which took place some ten years ago in Salisbury Close . Doubtless , if the inquiring
reader will search the * Times' of that year , he will find ( in the month of July ) a paragraph running thus : — " At Salisbury Cathedral
by the Dean , father to the bride , Honoria Churchill , to Felix Vaughan , , Esq ., of ; " and in these finely printed pages he will find all the
delightful details . Society in Salisbury Close is at once elegant and religious—so is this book ; it is full of subtle refinements of speech
of dress , of manner , and it aims at the constant subjection of all life , to an interior law ; this also is true of the book . People who live
in Salisbury Close pay the most delicate reverence to womanhood —in Salisbury Close;—so does this book . Life there is intellectual
well-ordered , affectionate ; it is a triumph to the credit of poor , , blind , naughty , ugly humanity , to have succeeded in bringing this
rare aloe-blossom of existence into flower , and we are delighted with ,
60 Notices Of Books.
60 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1858, page 60, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031858/page/60/
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