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KOTICES OF BOOKS. 125
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.
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--- - 1.—Tlwrndale; Or B The Lackwood Co...
conflict of opinions , " indeed , is this age witnessing , a conflict wherein the tender and loving sufferthe bold and unscrupulous harden ,
, the many hope , the few believe , and some are doomed to despair . »•• • * Thorndale' is a many-sided book , and touches upon all or most
of these phases . In Thorndale himself we have the loving , unsatisfied soul , questioning vaguely of what is , and longing
intensely for what may be . Disappointed in heart , aimless in life , with the hand of death upon him he retreats to Italythere to linger
, put in what peace and sunshine , internal and external , he may find , the few short months of a career marked by no outward actionbut
, deeply scarred and furrowed by the harrowing questions of his time and education . It is while thus awaiting his end in a villa
near Naples that Thorndale writes the diary -which falls accidentally into the hands of the soi-disant editor , and is thus
presented to the public . Four friends , the solace and delight of his youth , live with him in memory in his retirement—I / uxrnore the
poet , Seckendorf the materialist , Clarence the Utopian , and Cyril , whom , having left a speculator and questioner , Thorndale re-finds
a Cistercian monk . Luxmore , designed by his father for the law , cherishes the ambition to be a _j ) oet : —
" I give to Luxmore without scruple the name of poet , for , though he is entirel of his y unknown is remembered to fame except —thoug by h a his few poem personal , alas friends ! failed , , yet and he perhaps had the not peculiar a verse
justl characteristics y or unjustl of y the , to poet the — poetic had character at least the . Wherever weaknesses there we generall was beaut y attribute or a , noble emotion , there , I think , was truth for him . Philosophic or speculative y
beautiful inquiry seemed thought to was end , with like any him beautifu in its l own thing mental in nature excitement to be . admire A gran d d for or , itself l . ' " Philosophy , like Love or War , did but ' add another string to the ' yre
Of this ambition Luxmore gets cured by the very ordinary phenomenon of a volume of verses falling still-born from the press .
" ' I am smiling , ' he said once to me , at the recollection of a certain midnight scene still very vivid in my memory . I see myself alone in a garden . A lanof not tern ni digg is ht on ing the the for bod ground hidden of his . treasure I victim am di ; gg : nei yet ing ther a I di deep am g deep I hole an assassin and in the from earth , bury time . ing I to am , in time certainl the dead look y
stealthil g , y around y to see if any one is watching , me . This hole , this pitthis grave is at length completed . I draw from under a neighbouring tree a , sack which without I some had deposited solemnity there of action , heavy in its with destined its secret burden . It . is This indeed I lay a , dead not
, grave disgrace thing : it . is Here my dead I commit poem it ; to and the here earth I bury . "Dust it , —safe to dust at least ! " I from exclaim further as I shovel in the mould " ashes to ashes ! " as I stamp it level with the rest of the
soil . ' * * * After this ; honourable burial conferred upon his defunct producwishes tion , and of in his a fa mood ther , and I suspect enrolled , of himself sheer a despondency student of law , he in had one yielded of the Inns to the of
Court . When I returned , from the Continent he had taken up his abode in the Templeand spent his mornings as an industrious pupil in the chambers of a
, special pleader . " Seckendorf , by education a Catholic , and , spite of his
materialistic tendencies , retaining in the inmost recesses of his soul a
Kotices Of Books. 125
KOTICES OF BOOKS . 125
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1858, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041858/page/53/
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