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    On the whole , it had been better if Lady Blesaington had not Preserved these letters-if the names of the correspondents had been printed , the trablic imaginationwould have more easily sustained the eclat ot the society ov ? r which she reigned . As it is , we are tempted to exclaim , If . the boastedconversations were no better than these . letters , the Lrore-House reunions were not so brilliant after all ! ' _ ' And now for the Editor ' s performance of his task . If we were disposed to deal hardly with Dr . Madden , there are few books that have come under our- notice susceptible of more censure or more ridicule than these volumes . But we are too well aware of the difficulties of his task to be severe on the manner of its accomplishment—too satisfied with the sense and frankness of his remarks to be harsh with him for the unworkmanlike way in which he has edited these volumes . When a man receives a eouple of . thousand letters and a heap of documents , and has to arrange tasK

    these for publication , he has to p a wmen , penorm * asuewu ., will not please the public . If he suppresses rigorously , they cry , •* Why so many letters kept back ? Dr . Madden is not infallible ; the public is the sole iud " e ; for anything we know , he has kept back the best . If on the contrary he prints nearly the whole , the enraged and wearied public cries with vexation , " What is the use of an Editor if he cannot suppress rubbish ? Moore burnt Byron ' s autobiography . because he believed it would injure his memory , and has been censured for it ever since . Had he published it , the same censurers had been first to say , " Spare me from any friends ! Accordingly , we cannot blame Dr . Madden for having printed nearly a ll the matter that came into his hands , irrespective of merit . - # ., We have heard these volumes called "book-making ; " but an unfairer criticism could not be used . There is no making about it . The materials have just been printed at random , higgledy-piggledy ; and Doctor Madden has written memoranda as the spirit moved him , without a thought of repetitions , of selection , or of arrangement ; and when , after all , he finds he has omitted a great and thrusts into

    deal , he goes and makes an immense appendix to each volume , it anything that comes to hand . He tells you a fact in the text , and in a page ortwo tells it again in a note . He begins with a birth , but does not give you its date till after the death . Everybody who ever addressed a line to Lady Blessingtoh , or met her casually , has here a biography . We have a complete list of Dickens ' s works , a catalogue raisonne of Bulwer ' s , and a memoir of the Duke of Wellington . There is actually a longer life of L . E . L . than of Lady Blessington . And when he paints scenes of which he was an eye-witness , he rushes off , scissors in hand , to N . P . Willis and Patmore , and-cuts out pagesof books which the public has long since read and rejected . Nevertheless , the Doctor ' s opinions are sound : he is very impartial : he is not blinded by the brilliancy of the defunct coterie : he sees

    T . <>< 1 ir' Rlnogin / rfnn ' e «< rnps anr \ OYrvrASSPS -lllS C . enSlire With moderation and Lady Blessington ' s errors , and expresses his censure with moderation and with sympathy . And he has this especial merit , that as when Gore House was dismantled all the virtuous rushed to see the tabooed mansion , so the ' virtuous public looked for a prurient life of Lady Blessington , giving exact information on matters that none but she had aright to disclose ; JDr . Madden has been resolutely silent on these matters , and confined himself to the public career of his celebrated friend .

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    THE WARDEN " . The Warden . By Anthony Trollope . Longman and Co In these days , when people sit down to compose fictions , having nothing in the world to write about , a novel with a subject claims honour as a work of unusual merit . TTie Warden has the first . great recommendation _ of . being a story based or ^ a good and sol id foundation ^ Mr . Trollope has a subject which it is worth whileto ' describe , If " ^ ^ do ' sd ^ bTrieny without damaging the legitimate interests of his plot . He starts with th « very recognisable fact of a public charity , in a cathedral town , _ which has been fairly and admirably founded in bygone times , and" which is very dishonestly managed at the ( modern ) period of the story . The " Warden , " « or principal local manager of the charity is a quiet , honourable ,

    kindhearted clergyman , who , in perfect ignorance of business matters , has accepted his trust without inquiring at all peremptorily into the conditions on which he holds his preferment , and who honestly believes that he is performing all the duties of his station if lie bestows the most watchful kindness and attention on the fixed number of destitute old men whom the rules of the charity place . under his charge . From this pleasant and innocent delusion he is rudely enough awakened by one ardent gentleman of liberal principles , who discovers that the funds of the charity are shamefully diverted from their proper use , and who—although he is the accepted lover of the good Warden ' youngest daughter—does not hesitate to expose the abuse publicly . The various incidents built up on this foundation ( incidents at which we will not look too closely here , for fear of spoiling the interest of the story ) resolve into the conscientious resignation of his place b y the Warden , and into the marriage of the active local reformer to the good clergyman ' s daughter : said reformer , be it understood by the ladies , having most

    uxoriously and properly abandoned nil assaults against the administration of the charity , so far as he was personally concerned , at the request of his bride elect . Here , assuredly , is a new and ah excellent subject for a novel —a subject which Mr . Trollope has , in some respects , treated very cleverly . The character of the Warden is delightfully drawn , with a delicacy and truth to nature which deserves the highest praise . Equally good in their nray aro the feeble old Bishop , his truculent and intensely clerical son , who bag married the Warden ' s eldest daughter , and the old men who live on the mismanaged funds of the charity . The defective part of the book is the 3 onclusion , which seems to us careless and unsatisfactory—as if the author had got tired of his subject before he had done with it . The passing introduction too of living authors , under farcically fictitious names , for the sake of criticising their books is a mistake—Mr . Trollope is fur too plever / i man , and has far too acute and discriminating an eye for character to descend successfully to suoh low literary work as that . Wo will support our better opinion of him by giving the reader a specimen of his powers , drawn from one of the best passages in his book . We quote the scene in which the truculent son-in-law of the amiable Warden tries to weaken the effect of

    the local Reformer ' s exposures , by making a highly conservative speech to the Bedesmen of the mismanaged charity : — As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech , erect in the middle of that little square , he looked like an ecclesiastical statue placed there , as a fitting impersonation of the church militant here on earth ; his shovel hat , large , new , and well-pronounced , a churchman's hat in every inch , declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker ' s broad brim ; his heavy eyebrow , large open eyes , and full mouth and chin , expressed the solidity of his order ; the broad chest , amply covered with fine cloth , told how well to do was its estate ; one hand ensconced within his pocket , evinced the practical hold which our mother church keeps , on her temporal possessions ; and the other , loose for action , was ready to fight if need be in her defgnce ; and below these the decorous breeches , and neat black gaiters showing so admirably that well-turned leg betokened the decency , the outward beauty , and grace of our church establishment . himself well in

    " Now my men , " he began , when he had settled Jus position ; "I want to say a few words to you . Your good friend , the warden here , and myself , and my lord the bishop , on whose behalf I wish to speak to you , would all be very sorry , very sorry indeed , that you sjiould have any just ground of complaint . Any just ground of complaint on your part would be removed at once by the warden , or by his lordship , or by me . on his behalf , without the necessity of any petition on your part . " Here the orator stopped for a moment , expecting that some little murmurs of applause would show that the weakest of the men were beginning to give way ; but no such murmurs came . Bunce , himself , even sat with closed lips , mute and unsatisfactory . " Without the necessity of any petition at all , " he repeated . "I ' m told you have addressed a petition to my lord . " He paused for a reply from the men , and after a while , Handy plucked up courage , and said , " Yes , we has . " " You have addressed a petition to my lord , in which , as I am informed , you express an opinion that you do not receive from Hiram ' s estate all that is your due . " Here most of the men expressed their assent . ' Now what is it you ask for ? what is it you want that you hav ' n't got here ? what is at— - " ' with voice if it out of the

    "A hundred a year , " muttered old Moody , a as came ground . ¦ "A hundred a year ! " ejaculated the archdeacon militant , defying the impudence of these claimants with one hand stretched out and closed , while with the other lie tightly grasped , and secured within his breeches pocket , that symbol of the church's wealth which his own loose half-crowns not unaptly represented . " A-hundred a year ! Why , my men , you must be mad ; and you talk about John Hiram ' s will ! When John Hiram built a hospital for worn-out old men , worn-out old labouring men , infirm old men past their work , cripples , blind , bed-ridden , and such like , do you think he meant to make gentlemen of them ? Do you think John Hiram intended to give a hundred a year to old single men , who earned perhaps two shillings or half-a-crown a day for themselves and families in the best of their time ? No , my men , I'll tell you what John Hiram meant ; he meant that twelve poor old worn-out labourers , men who could no longer suppbrt ^ themselves , who had no friends to support them , who must perish miserably if not protected by the hand of charity ; he meant that twelve such men as these should come in here in their poverty and wretchedness , and find within these walls shelter and food before their death , and a little leisure to make their peace with God . "That was what John Hiram meant r you have not read John Hiram ' s will , and I doubt whether those wicked men who are advising you have done so . I have ; I know what his will was ; and I tell you that that was his will , and that that was his intention . - " - .

    Not a sound came from the eleven bedesmen , as they sat listening to wnat , according to the archdeacon , was their intended estate . They grimly stared upon his burly figure , but did not then express , by word or sign , the anger and disgust to which such language was sure to give rise . " Now let me ask you , " he continued , " do you think you are worse off than John Hiram intended to make you ? Have you not shelter , and food , and leisure ? Have you not much more ? Have you not every indulgence which you are capable of enjoying ? Have you not twice better food , twice a better bed , ten times more money in your pocket than you were ever able to earn for yourselves before you were lucky enough to get into this place ? And now you send a petition to the bishop , asking for a hundred pounds a year ! I tell you what , my friends ; you are deluded , and made foolsof-by wicked-men who are-acting-for- their own ends .- ~ You-will . never-. get ~ a hundred pence a year more than what you have now : it is very possible that you may get less ; it is very possible that my lord the bishop , and your warden may make changes— "

    "No , no , no , " interrupted Mr . Harding , who had been listening with indescribable misery to the tirade of his son-in-law ; " , my friends . I want no changes , —at least no changes that shall make you worse off than you now are , as long as you and I live together . " " God bless you , Mr . Harding , " said Bunce ; and " God bless you , Mr . Harding , God bless you sir , we know you was always our friend , " was exclaimed by enough of the men to make it appear that the sentiment was general . The archdeacon had been interrupted in his speech before he had quite finished it ; but he felt that he could not recommence with dignity after this little ebullition , and he led the way back into the garden , followed by his father-in-law .

    This certainly promises well for the author ' future , if he gives us more books . Assuming and hoping that he has not written his last-novel yet , we will venture to point out to his notice two defects in his manner as a writer which he may easily remedy , and Avhich , he may take our word for it , are felt as serious faults , not by critics only , but by the general public as well . The first of the defects is , that Mr . Trollope speaks far too much in his own person in the course of his narrative . It is always the reader ' s business , never the author ' s , to apostrophise characters . The " illusion of the scene " is invariably perilled , or lost altogether , when the writer harangues in his own person on the behaviour of his characters , or gives us , with an intrusive " I , " his own experiences of the houses in which he describes those characters as living . . This is a fault in Art ; and , if Mr . Trollope should doubt it ,

    we refer him to the stage as an illustration . Did he ever see a great comedian talk to the audience over the footlights—except perhaps when a writer of burlesques forced him to forget what was duo to his Art ? On the other hand , does not a Clown in a pantomime—who has nothing whatever to do with Art , in any high sense of the word—always .. talk to the audience ? This is a rough illustration ; but it will do to express what we mean . The second defect of manner which we have noticed in Mr . Trollope is a want of thorough earnestness in the treatment of the more serious passages of his story . The mocking tone is , well enough where the clerical aristocracy , and the abuses on which they live , form the subject for treatment . But where the main interest touches on the domain of real feeling —as in the chapter which illustrates the filial affection of the Warden ' s daughter , and the struggle between love and duty in the heart of her reforming lover—it is vitally important to the true effect of the scene on the

    Untitled Article

    164 THE I / EA 3 ) ER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 17, 1855, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2078/page/20/