THE FALCON FAMILY; OR, YOUNG IRELAND.* IT has been said, nearly a century ago, that did an Englishman wish to give to the native of France the most favourable idea of the powers of our language in graceful narrative, he would probably select Pope's Rape of the Lock for the purpose. What was then true has not since ceased to be so by the success of any poem more happily conceived or more exquisitely written. Were the question of our prose romances, it is probable that the Vicar of Wakefield is the volume which, if selected for the same purpose, would be most likely to produce the desired effect. Of late years its popularity has greatly increased in France, and yet more in Germany. We have sometimes supposed the question asked by a foreigner, which of the many works of fiction having Ireland and its peculiarities of feeling and manner for their immediate subject, is the best-which is that volume that, by its charms of style, is most likely to attract and detain attention -which, on the whole, gives the truest account-which is that most likely to lead to good, by the faithful exhibition of the actual state of society -which is, in short, the volume that unites, more than any other, all the elements that can fitly enter into the description of work which the question pre-supposes? We cannot but believe that to the Tales of Miss Edgeworth this high praise must be universally conceded. Miss Edgeworth's works are always confined to topics, legitimately within the range of lighter fiction. With true taste, she has avoided all the more agitating subjects which stir deeper feelings than are consistent with the character of romances of domestic life. She has not-as many of her followers have done declaimed on Irish grievances. She has avoided the harrowing narratives of murder and conflagration, which have given a wild and fearful interest to later volumes, but which, addressing themselves rather to diseased sensations than to the intellect, no work of imagination, true to the higher purposes of art, can without great danger excite. Calming and purifying the passions by sympathy, and not seeking to make the hearer react them in his own person, is the great purpose of the poetic art; and some mistake in this matter has fixed the taint of mortality on works of more power than those to which we allude. To the poet, the exhibition of the passions is permitted only in subordination to higher demands. By a thousand artifices-measured language, for instance-accompanying music-all showing that the emotion has not obtained mastery over the poet's own mind-it is attested that he it is who rules and disposes—as a creator of his whole subject-that the furies which he represents as evoked, are not tyrannizing over his own mind. Even in the creations of Scott, and still more, in those of Byron, we feel that excitement beyond the due purposes of art is often produced. Take as an instance, the minute description of the mode in which the sheriff examines the facts connected with Frank Kennedy's murder, in Guy Mannering. In our Irish novels, it is astonishing to us how entirely the business of a novelist is misconceived; and the writers every now and then tell us, in direct words, or by implication as strong as direct language, that they are exhibitingwe wonder they do not say-creating the evidence on which legislators are to proceed in improving the state of society in which we live. Surely the evidence of particular facts should be looked for elsewhere than in fiction. Surely fiction believed as fact, has lost its moral effect. In some of these volumes-Banim's for instance, the last of these writers whom we have read the description of murders and trials for murder are given with such painful distinctness, that we are every moment thinking it is a witness who * The Falcon Family; or, Young Ireland. London: Chapman and Hall. 1845. is describing the harrowing scene; and the mind is incapable of receiving, with due appreciation, the parts of the story that must be comparatively faint. The excitement in a work of fiction can never be safely such as will not leave the mind of the reader in a state sufficiently disengaged to enjoy every new tone of feeling that the master spirit to whom it has willingly subjected itself may choose to awaken. Assume such a writer to have the power of humour which distinguished Swift or Sterne, and after such a scene as we are describing, (and in the midst of such scenes occur touches intended to be humorous,) all humour is beyond expression revolting. We must anxiously express our wish not to be understood as thinking in what we say of any later novels. We have not had the opportunity of reading any recently written in connection with Ireland; and if the class of subjects, which we would exclude from pure fiction, as treated in the books we have described, be introduced, it is not impossible that such introduction may be in subordination to a higher law than that of mere fidelity of description and delineation. We feel, however, that the safer, the truer, and we will add, the higher class of fiction, is that in which Miss Edgeworth-and let us add Lady Morgan-more especially in her O'Donnell,has excelled-which, in our own day, distinguishes Lever-and as it gives us delight to announce the unknown author of this exceedingly pleasant volume. The title of the book sufficiently indicates its general purpose. In a few years the fantastic designations of Young England and Young Ireland will, probably, have passed away; meantime the writer who makes it his business to paint ere she shift the Cynthia of the minute, cannot easily have a subject more amusing at the moment, or more likely to have the additional advantage of being remembered hereafter, chiefly through such playful delineations. The "patriot passion" is one that a wise man will hesitate to treat lightly; but it is when more than delusion always linked with serious feeling; and love of country, like every other af fection, if deeply felt, is slow to speak is thoughtful, and therefore silent-is active, and therefore has no time for declamation. It is familiar with daily self-sacrifice, or rather the man of whose life it is the governing and guiding impulse, thinks of himself and his own rights, as of those of any other of mankind, and knows that any advantage to his country purchased at the expense of another, can be but deceptive. It shrinks from no dangers; it does not avoid, and it does not court publicity. In fact, it can but exist, animating and sustaining itself, in the circle of some defined duty-making home happy, and, as far as its influence extends, securing the happiness of all. But the profession of patriotism is the hollow echo of a dishonest heart, or an implied insult to those who are shocked at beholding such profession made part of an ambitious man's stock in trade, or the mere expression of a thoughtless man's general goodnature, which leads him to fall in with the language of supposed popular feeling, by assigning limits to his generous affections by which they are not in point of fact bounded. The author of this volume has taken this latter view of the class of politicians who in Ireland advocate the question of repeal, or rather of a section of them, supposed to go farther than the conscript fathers of the old Associations, which existed before Conciliation Hall "out of the earth, a fabric huge Considerable attention has been of late years directed to the preservation of such remains of ancient Irish literature as still exist. It was impossible, perhaps, that this should have been without exciting a feeling of nationality which every native of this country, reading the history of Europe, must share, when it is remembered that from the schools and monasteries of Ireland went forth the remarkable men to whom France and the German Empire were indebted for their early civilization, and this feeling was most likely to seize the imagination of young men, who, by the accidents of birth or education were connected with the extreme party in liberal politics. can easily imagine that the taste for antiquarianism-cultivated and most We fittingly encouraged by the Irish Academy-may have had the pernicious effect of leading many persons to indulge a wild and vain wish for the restoration, not alone, of the pious feelings with which the ancient crosses and reliquaries, exhibited-together with the swords, torques, thumbscrews, and other memorials of our ancestors were regarded, but for the restoration of the feelings by the 'use of the means adopted in these early times. The tastes thus created may seem to find more natural expression and development in Puseyism and ultra-Puseyism, than in the sober forms of worship that give direct utterance to the religious belief of a more educated age. Such is, we fear, the unavoidable consequence of too exclusive an attention to a single pursuit a consequence that must be hazarded, and which, even in the case of the individuals whom we regard as misled, is not unattended with some compensations. We believe that the holy men of old-and they were many -who bore the heavy burthens from which we are released, often sighed in heart for the liberty with which we are blessed, and with which they would not have trifled, as we or some of us who ought to know better, too often do. But whether this be so or not, the effort to restore the devotional feelings of a past age, by endeavouring to restore its manners and customs and outward seeming, is plainly a thing impossible. In an analogous casewhile the sense of honour distinguishes modern society as fully as any in which man has ever lived-it cannot be doubted that the feelings which we believe the institutions of chivalry to have cherished, were rather mocked than assisted by the pageant of a tournament in our day-and we can conceive a pious-minded man, who sympathises with all that is good or true in mediæval forms of worship, shrinking from them with a shudder of heart such as would accompany the thought of attesting his belief in Christianity by undertaking a pilgrimage or preaching a crusade. The state of mind which this antiquarian spirit has led to in England and in Ireland, expressing itself in both countries in fantastic follies of one kind or other, or what our author considers as such, is not an unfair sub ject for pleasantry. The gravest monk in Christendom would indulge a merry laugh at the mimicries of the Abbot of Unreason and the Lord of Misrule, and self-complacent Young Oxford will look with a grave smile on the doings of the modern monastery in which our author has placed his imitators of the rule of St. Benedict. It is not impossible that Young Ireland too will be amused at some of the scenes in which the extravagances of the enthusiastic young man, who is here given as the representative of that party, are pictured; and the matrons of both countries who have marriageable daughters, will admire the dexterity with which Mrs. Falcon, who, however, owes as much to good fortune as to good management, contrives to dispose of her young brood among Celts and Saxons conquering all the prejudices of blood and race in the one instance, and, in the other, winning, in the very fastness of the monastery to which he had retired, an unhappy Puseyite, who there loses his vocation. But this Mrs. Falcon must be described, and for this purpose we shall avail ourselves, in the first instance, of the ornithological information contained in the motto to the first chapter of the work before us : "Most of the hawks and owls are averse to the trouble of constructing nests for themselves. Thus the brown falcons take possession of the old nests of magpies or squirrels, to which, as far as we can learn, they never add any fresh materials, nor take any pains to repair damages or render them tidy."-Rennie on Bird Architecture. A letter to Mrs. Freeman, Harleystreet, announces the intended arrival of Mrs. Falcon and family from the country, and their wish to take possession of the house of the Freemans during their stay in London. The Freemans are about leaving town, and the request cannot be decently refused. In a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, and her brother, Mr. Chatworth, we learn that the Falcons contrive to live, for the most part, at other people's expense-that by living in other people's houses they save house rent, servants' wages, poor rates, and assessed taxes. Falcon himself has generally some little agency or temporary employment. From their piratical and predatory habits, Falcon is generally called "the Red Rover," and the lady goes by the name of "the Gipsy." She has all the gipsy peculiarities, the brown complexion, the vagrant habits, and the loose morality still it is impossible for the Freemans to refuse their house, and it, or rather some rooms in it, are at the service of the invaders.The Freemans retire, and the conquering army enters. When they and their goods are safely deposited in Harley-street, and the author has a moment of repose from following the voluble tongue of the lady, he employs it in a description of her person :— She "Nobody who heard or saw Mrs. Falcon, as she stood thus issuing her orders to every body round her, could doubt for a moment that she was commander-in-chief of the squadron. was a woman in the August of her days; brisk and blooming, with black hair and brown complexion, her nose slightly aquiline, her lips small and compressed; her eyes, dark, piercing, bold, practical; her features in general regular and massive, with a free and daring expression, which had a charm of its own for those who like what the French call une beauté insolente. She was above the middle height, and looked even taller than she actually was, in consequence of her remarkably stately and commanding carriage.' The picture of Falcon is given in similar detail; it adds, however, little to the view which is first given of him -he is cleverish rather than cleverhe, from time to time, filled several situations—managed lunatic asylums— conducted national schools-audited the accounts of cowpock institutionswas at one time deputy librarian to the British Museum, and was now about to leave a railroad company's employment as inspector, in order to take office as secretary to the Irish branch society for the Conversion of the Polish Jews. "Mrs. Falcon had the usual success that follows the steps of a fine and a clever woman, where she had not the sharpness or the jealousy of her own sex to cope with. Wherever male influence was ascendent, the gipsy was seldom repulsed, and often received with hearty welcome. What man, who had either the eye of a Rubens for florid beauty, or the taste of a Borrow for Zinganee adventure, could contemplate either her person or her character without admiration? In houses where petticoat government was established, she had a more difficult card to play; and she relied, of course, upon her intellectual resources and diplomatic abilities altogether. Lucy, the brown girl, was playful and sprightly, with an agreeable knack of attracting the attention of governesses and masters, wherever she went; by which she not only improved herself, but often gratified the truant young ladies of her acquaintance, who preferred battledore and shuttlecock to counterpoint, or Mrs. Gore's novels to the German grammar." There is but little incident, in the ordinary sense of the word, in this volume and that little is chiefly valuable as illustrating character. Some two or three exceedingly amusing chapters are devoted to shewing how the Falcons live, and all the devices by which they fix themselves on this body for dinner, and that body for lunch-how they manage to drive about with Mrs. so and so's servants and horses. These scenes are, on the whole, lively and well imagined, and remind us of the old Spanish novels, in which the distress always turns on some disappointment or other in the larder, or some device to escape the evils of an enforced fast. Still, of this part of the work there is, perhaps, too much, and we think the author succeeds better in dialogue, than in direct narrative. The Red Rover's mission to Ireland, as secretary to the society for converting the Polish Jews, is likely to prove valuable to him, in more ways than one. His salary he proposes to eke out by writing a work on Ireland; and hence, a visit to Mr. Primer, bookseller and publisher, in Paternosterrow, and proprietor of the Metropolitan Mercury, to which Mr. Falcon had, from time to time, contributed scientific articles, on wooden pavements and the health of the parrots in the Zoological gardens. A bargain is soon struck. Primer, however, insists, as a condition, that it shall be null and void, in case his "commissioner " does not actually, in person, visit Ireland, hear both sides of the question, and see Maynooth and Darrynane Abbey. He has lost money by some very clever tours in Ireland, which disaster he attributes altogether to the authors never having 'Polish Jews!' exclaimed his wife, throwing herself back in her chair, and closing the blue book; and what do you know about the Jews? The notion of your converting Sir Moses Montefiore, or Baron Rothschild! Convert them to what, pray?' "My dear, course.' to Christianity, of "Christianity!-and what do you know about Christianity?' "Mr. Falcon ought to have known a great deal about Christianity, for he had been, amongst the other vicissitudes of his life, a temporary member of most of the thousand and one sects into which the religious world is divided; the same rambling propensities which marked his character as a secular personage, having influenced his spiritual estates also, and led him to box the compass of conventicles and churches. He had been a Trinitarian and a Unitarian, in his day; he had been a Baptist for a month, an Anabaptist for a fortnight, and an Antipodobaptist for three days. The Moravians had once seduced him with their love feasts; but, perhaps, their banquets were not as substantial as he had reckoned on, for he soon became enamoured of Quakerly simplicity, and purchased a brown coat; on which, before the moon filled her horns, he superinduced gilt buttons, having returned in a fit of orthodoxy to the bosom of mother church, where he nestled comfortably for a season, until a casual visit to North Wales revived his desultory tendencies, and made him as nimble a jumper as any Williams, Jones, or Ap-Griffith in the principality. These, too, were but a few of his wanderings in the wide field of religious doctrine. No wonder, then, that he should think it a little hard that Mrs. Falcon should say- What do you know about Christianity?'" But it is time to introduce the representative of the Young Ireland Party. Two Irish law-students are seen walking in St. James's-squarethe younger of the two is Tigernach Mac Morris. "He was tall and slight; his features were handsome and intellectual; his cheek was pale, but it was the paleness of study or temperament, not of disease or dissipation. The expression of his eye, which was dark and bright, was something between melancholy and fierceness; but the most striking of his personal peculiarities was the length and profusion of his hair, which hung in thick shining black ringlets over each temple, while at the same time it fell down in equal plenty behind, upon the collar of his coat, where it was crisped backwards, forming a thick continuous circular curl, like a solid groove of ebony, through which with a bodkin you might have passed a ribbon. In short, his hair, both in its redundance and elaborate arrangement, was almost a feminine feature, and the wind seemed to be toying with it under that impression. Although the day was warm, he wore a dark-green cloak, which he folded ambitiously about him, with a palpable attention to effect; and this unseasonable attire heightened the general air of sentimental ferocity by which he was distinguished, and at which, perhaps, he aimed. Although he was very young, scarcely twenty-three or twenty.four, it was evident that he either was, or considered himself, a personage, with some imposing character to support, or some startling career to run." His companion is a few years older, and is in nothing very remarkable ; he represents moderate opinions, and discusses Irish affairs with moderate good sense. He is of the middle height -moderately well looking-and moderately fat;-a young man, that, if not at the moment, when we find him chatting with Tigernach, yet in some two or three years must become middle-aged Ireland. A few words of their conversation is given, from which we learn our Celtic hero's hatred of all that is Saxon. While they are talking, the Falcons pass, and Emily is struck by the resemblance of Mac Morris to Carlyle's description of St. Just, the revolutionary leader. MacMorris is attracted by the dazzling vision, and gazes on the Saxon maid; "her beauty heightened by the elegant simplicity of her dress, which displayed her figure to the best advantage, while |