THE PLEADER. BY S. J. G. "Tis vain! oh, mother dear, forgive, forgive this stubborn heart, I cannot crush that cherish'd thought, or bid it thence depart; I'm haunted by that face beloved, so long, and oh, so well, And vain is every effort made to break affection's spell. Thy child is not unduteous, no; ah, she would fain obey; But canst thou think her heart's first love so soon may fade away? And wilt thou chide the tears that tell that love is lingering yet? 'Tis vain! forgive, oh, mother dear, forgive-I can't forget. We've never been one day apart since childhood until now, And canst thou wonder sorrow broods so darkly on my brow? We strayed when children hand in hand among the Summer flowers Together sate we by the hearth when came the Winter hours: And when our infant years were past his love he whisper'd me, And we pledged our troth one quiet eve, beneath the greenwood tree; Then canst thou chide the tears that tell my love is lingering yet? "Tis vain! forgive, oh, mother dear, forgive-I can't forget. The sunny day is dark to me, and sleepless is the night I dread its long and dreary hours, yet wish not for the light. 'Tis Summer time, and yet I see no beauty in the fields; The fragrant air, the song of birds, no longer pleasure yields. I pine for him whose presence made all nature fair to me For him whose noble heart is mine, and mine will ever be ; Then canst thou chide the tears that tell my love is lingering yet? 'Tis vain! forgive, oh, mother dear, forgive-I can't forget. My eyes are dim with weeping now-my cheek is white with woe; I smile no more, my days without or joy or gladness flow; There is no path around our home, no flower that blossoms there, No leafy tree, no prattling brook, no sound upon the air, But wakes within my heart of hearts a thousand memories; Alas! though we may hush its voice, our first love never dies. Then canst thou chide the tears that tell my love is lingering yet? 'Tis vain! forgive, oh, mother dear, forgive-I can't forget. I know he hath no golden store, nor what the world calls fame; But hath he not a noble heart and an unblemish'd name? And is not heaven's light shed o'er the path of such as he? And a mine of wealth would not our love be unto him and me? Then scorn not him, nor smile upon the rich who Not And come to woo. mine to give the hand they seek-I'll keep my promise true; chide thou not the tears that tell my love is lingering yet, For 'tis vain, all vaiu, oh, mother dear-thy child cannot forget. Remember thine own girlish days, when love first touch'd thy heart, And tell me at whose mandate would that feeling thence depart: Remember him, my father dear, now slumbering in the grave, And tell me didst thou not for him full many a trial brave? And when compelled to part, dost thou, remember all thy pain, And dost thou not remember all thy joy to meet again? Ah, Now thou wilt not chide because my love is lingering yet I see, I feel, oh, mother dear, I need not now forget. LITERATURE. ANGELA; by the author of Emilia Wyndham. (Colburn.)-To say that Mrs. Marsh is a fascinating writer, is to make use of a very hackneyed phrase, and yet we know of no word more applicable than "fascinating," to apply to the novel before us; not alone from its variety of incident and character, its descriptions of scenery, &c., although all the pourtrayal of a masterly hand: but from its life-like reality, its revelations of the inner being, as well as from the earnestness of purpose and deep religious feeling manifested throughout. The outline of the story is simple, but we refrain from giving it, through kindness to those readers who may not have been fortunate enough to have read the novel before seeing our notice of it; we prefer selecting extracts, which will convey some idea of our author's power of delineation, as also of the true sentiment of the work. We will therefore confine ourselves to stating, that Angela, the heroine, is left an orphan at the age of nineteen, with her two little half sisters and R infant brother dependent upon her. Upon the death of her stepmother they remove to London, with the old nurse, who is faithfully attached to them; and shortly after Angela enters the family the interview previous to Angela's entering of Mrs. Usherwood as governess. We quote upon her arduous duties. Mrs. Usherwood commencing with "And now, my dear Miss Nevil, to give you a slight idea of my view of life and education." She sat, the picture of robust health, at the head of her well furnished breakfast-table, eating of a game pie aux truffles-her portly frame erect and vigorous, her cheeks ruddy and blooming, her large grey eyes bright, clear, and hard as diamonds; and opposite to her sat the slender and beautiful young creature, healthy and vigorous too, but whose slight frame .seemed ill calculated to endure heavy fatigue; and whose delicate cheek, upon which the lovely roses of nineteen had already a little faded, and eyes anxious and sorrowful, ill suited to her years, told of one engaged too young in the troublesome strife for "Exertion, my dear Miss Nevil, as some Grecian orator I forget his name, but I dare say you know it; I learned it in Pinnock's questionsan excellent school-book by the bye doubtless you know it well. Where was I? Yes. What is the first thing for an orator? was the question asked; he answered Boldness:' the second? Boldness:' the third? Boldness:' and so on. I say, what is the first thing in an instructress ? 'Exertion:' the existence. I am dyspepsia; exhaustion; I know not what. Now, it's a treasure. 46 As for the last, poor thing, I did not keep her six months; she had not been with me three before her head-aches, as she was always com. Well, my dear Miss Nevil, you plaining, began. have two examples before you, and I hope you will be pleased not to imitate the young lady with the head-aches. ***** With respect to the plan of study," continued Mrs. Usherwood, with an air of decision, I have my own principles also. I very much approve of the system of questions, as I before hinted. It is an immense saving of time using Pinforget nock's questions-or stay, somebody else; who. Never mind. Its astonishing what a vast deal about dates, and names of people, and places, and things, children get in that way, without the great expense of time usually consumed by reading. This leaves hours and hours of the greatest value at liberty second? Exertion:' the third? Exertion.' for the languages, music, dancing, drawing, &c. never idle myself, and I allow no one to be idle about think a great deal of the languages. I know many me. I detest idleness." She stopped for want of young ladies who can speak five, and read seven; and breath, supported nature with a little more game pie it is the height of my ambition that my daughters and a cup of hot coffee, and then after a pause went should do the same. My elder girls speak French, "I often regret the hours that were wasted in Spanish. Italian, modern Greek; everything, in short, the course of my own education. Certainly, gover-except German, which we have been unfortunate in ; nesses were very different things then to what they I was allowed to run about and play with my brothers for hours and hours in the garden, while my progress in essentials was dreadfully neglected. No wonder that I can neither speak Italian nor German, or that my progress in music, in spite of nature having gifted me with a wonderful ear, is so inconsiderable, that to play a valse or a polka is the extent of my ability; but certainly, as I said, things are carried on in a very different manner now. I expect not one minute to be wasted. Always be doing something is my maxim. And certainly my elder daughters have turned out most highly accomplished, and my younger ones seem following hard upon their steps. There is a great gap between the two families; my youngest elder is eighteen just introduced: my eldest younger, as I call her, only thirteen. Now, when they are once out, of course all this sort of thing is at an end; but, till they are out, and while in the governess's hands, I expect the most unremitting attention to business." on : are now. "I hope I shall be able to give you satisfaction, madam," said Angela. "I have not been accustomed to idleness myself, and I do not love it." That's just what I like. Love it! I can't endure it! And now, Miss Nevil, one other thing-I do hope you are always well." "As much as I can be," said Angela, smiling; "and indeed I scarcely ever know what it is not to be well." "That's charming; for it's the very reason I have parted with, I might really say, scores of governesses. Some way they are never well; always some excuse r another: head-aches; heart-aches; over-fatigue; but they are highly accomplished in every other respect. Of course, I provide masters for all these things; and the children have a French bonne; & Spanish little girl to play with them now and then; and an Italian and German master. So there is a vast deal to be done, you see, my dear Miss Nevil; and you will set a good example, I trust, of labouring from morning till night." Poor Angela! Poor governesses! for this is not, we feel, a fictitious description. We fear the Usherwood class is a numerous one, and many a poor, sensitive-minded governess has had to endure the opprobrium and slavery experienced by our noble-minded and conscientious heroine, whilst existing under the roof of her extortionate employer. And here we cannot do better than quote our author's reflections upon this subject, which find an echo in our own hearts: Ah! little do those who have not their livings to get, appreciate the hardships those undergo who have, or feel for the numbers of young creatures-delicate, sensitive, and refined as themselves-whom the ups and downs of this busy speculating world of ours consign to dependence and toil. It is a thing sorely to be lamented, in a period so peculiarly exposed to the chances and changes of fortune as that in which we live, that some greater variety of occupation is not open to young women, that there is nothing but the eternally repeated one of the domestic governess, and that the part of domestic governess is often rendered so laborious and irksome by the carelessness and want of feeling of the employer. Yes, it is deeply to be lamented-but we think we see the dawn of a better state of things; nevertheless it is a subject that cannot too often be brought forward, and we feel grateful to Mrs. Marsh, and to all who advocate reformation in this quarter-grateful to her and all who expose the manifold evils and injustices to which the governess class is subjected. Angela's life at Mrs. Usherwood's has one bright spot in itthe intimacy and cordial friendship of Joan Grant, our old favourite in "Norman's Bridge," with whom we are delighted to renew our acquaintance: The generous, energetic little girl, who, as a mere child, had accomplished so much for children a little younger than herself, still pursued, in conjunction with many more extended objects, the same generous and benevolent plan. In the more sterling qualities of woman's nature; in undeviating rectitude of conduct; in the strong moral force to vanquish difficulties, and stifle those feelings, which, indulged in, would weaken the very sense of duty; in the power of self-sacrifice, and in that deep, religious faith, which extracts the sting from sorrow--Angela's character resembled Joan's. On leaving Mrs. Usherwood, her kind friend Joan Grant procures her the situation of companion and drawing-mistress to Augusta Warby, a friend of Joan's-a high-spirited, generous, and noblehearted girl, but whose character, through want of mental and moral culture, is a strange medley of good and evil-the latter often predominating over the former. good habits; here there were literally no habits, except the doing "everything by turns, and nothing long," can be called a habit. The only thing that preserved the character of Augusta from utter destruction, in the perilous position in which she was that heart, so richly gifted by nature, seemed by its placed, was the boundless goodness of her heartgenial influences, to pervade the whole being, and preserve it from corruption. Angela and Augusta, dissimilar as they were in character and tone of feeling, soon became attached friends. The pure and truthful spirit of the former soon acquires a beneficial influence over Augusta, almost unconsciously to herself; the former developing, by her presence merely, the better portions of her pupil's and friend's nature; but Augusta's faults, which had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength, time, and the correcting power of sorrow and illness, could alone diminish or eradicate. Mrs. Marsh has great and delicate power in delineating character, and in weaving the web of circumstance. She possesses the rare charm of consistency; we see the result of circumstance upon the character, and character governing circumstance. We do, however, object to the catastrophe at the close of the novel, made use of to bring about a happy termination, as unworthy of our author-we allude to the resorting to the Rosa-Matilda expedient of a fire, to effect the reformation of one character and make a happy dénouement. The great charm of Mrs. Marsh's writing lies in the psychological development of individual character, and not in the startling and novel incidents which characterise the romances of a James or a Dumas. We will conclude with two or three reflections of our author, which impressed us with their truth and justice.-M. T. A TRUE HEART. Honour to the heart! Honour and praise to the Honour and praise affectionate and loyal heart! and thanksgiving to the heart which can triumph over the contradictions of self-interest, the bitter influences of jealousy and envy, the fierce ordeal of rival love, and can maintain itself equitable, sincere, affectionate, and true! Honour to these two dear girls! The one, trained and disciplined by adversity, and purified and sanctified by piety: the other, warm, genial, generous, and high-minded the handiwork of prodigal nature. Both just, both loyal, both brave-both in their noble disinterestedness raised far above all the mean influences, the fierce and stormy passions, the cruel dissensions, and the still more cruel alienations to which their unhappy circumstances were calculated to give birth. It matters not with what intelligence the mind is gifted, which has received no education; which has, through the negligent waste of all the precious hours of youth, been allowed to contract trifling habits, and to lose itself in low interests. Some excitement, even to the finest natures, is necessary to awaken them to life, and make them capable of high things. The thirst for information, the noble curiosity for truth, must be stimulated, must be expanded by that development of the ideas which a good education furnishes; otherwise, the fairest natural gifts too often remain buried, and would be utterly overlooked, except that a sort of ill-understood and secret uneasiness and discontent affords painful indication of their abortive existence. An enlightened education is necessary to awaken even the desire to know-to sow the seeds from whence a harvest is to spring; love of reading most especially, that inestimable boon to man and woman, is rarely acquired in after-years, if it has not been the happy result of a good early education. Poor Augusta was a signal example of this deficiency, and of its consequent disadvantages. What happiness might not her lively There is that in true faith, in the actual living beintellects have afforded her, had she been reared in lief in an actually existing Being of absolute beauty, the blessed habit of employing them well! With absolute righteousness, and absolute infinite benevopowers of reasoning so lucid, with an imagination so lence, which banishes the loneliness from the debright, with a heart so warm and ardent, what serted and solitary heart, and consoles for all the treasures of happiness and of usefulness might not a deformities, inconsistencies, errors, weaknesses, and ust development have disclosed! Now her character crimes of this imperfect sketch-this rude embryo was all confusion, starts of energy, flashes of intel-state of the soul's life, in which we at present exist. ect-flashes which only seemed to pass, like the vain and useless lightning, to disclose the darkness around: there was little happiness, for there was no result; The greatest proof of real kindness in these cases there was neither continuity nor perseverance. Some is to have patience; not to be in too great a hurry to one defines the object of education to be, to form see people happy again. People are so good FAITH. REAL KINDNESS. natured, so impatient for pain to end and wounds to heal, that they forget there is such a thing as skimming over and leaving a sore to fester within. They forget that happiness is a spontaneous thing-it will come when it will come: it is of those spirits that will not be commanded. The mistake proceeds in general from their kindness, though sometimes, I fear, from mere weariness; but it is a great mistake to be disappointed, because the poor sufferer cannot get quite well in what they think a reasonable time. They begin to measure this reasonable time by an arbitrary standard of their own-necessarily false; for who shall take the measure of the depth of another's anguish ? THE HALF-SISTERS. A Tale. By Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury; author of "Zoe." 2 vols. (Chapman & Hall.)—“ Zöe” was a great book, though not a perfect one; its chief fault, in our opinion, being a want of artistic arrangement -the wealth of thought it contained was often obscured instead of developed. Far otherwise is it with the present work, the gold of which is, by comparison, not beaten out and attenuated, but skilfully and beautifully fashioned. It is bad taste to "name names" for the purpose of holding them up to scorn and reprobation; but there are writers, lady-writers too, of the present day, whose works seem to us the most dangerous in the whole range of our literature; because they come out with all the prestige of mock morality-because by ignorant elders they are placed in the hands of inexperienced girls, at the age when the young heart is seeking for Truth, as a feeble plant in the darkness struggles towards a gleam of light. Youth is so ready to believe and to reverence: it is told this is truth, and it warps its own nature to think it so. And what is the result? Another generation of cramped, and dwarfed, and quarter-developed beings! one-half of the human race taught all the vices of a slave systematically, with no option between contentment with their bondage or encountering a struggle, of which moral martyrdom is most likely to be the end. Oh that these books, instead of being birth-day gifts and high authorities for the "Women" and "Daughters" of England could be burnt in the marketplace, and such works as Geraldine Jewsbury can write be given as an antidote! It is one of her half-satirical suggestions that women should be shut up for a given time, with no apparent occupation, no books, no writing materials, no handiwork; so that they perforce must think and consider "what it is they have been taught all their lives, how much of it they really believe, and how much of it they have ever practised. They should have to consider what is a real matter of conscience, and what only a matter of convention; they should have to exercise themselves truly as to what it is they really love and what are the things they REALLY hate, and what, candidly speaking, they care nothing at all about." Out of pitiful compassion, we would give them this book in their solitude, as help and suggestion in their unaccustomed difficulty. The "Half-Sisters" is a noble woman's book n every sense of the word. It will strengthen yet more the strong, and give some support to all those who are not too utterly crushed and degraded to receive help; reflecting as it does many, many phases of woman's life and nature. It is the gifted Bianca, the child of nature, unspoiled a story with two heroines-for, by as much as by false teaching, wins us to admiration; Alice, with all her nobleness crushed into her heart by cruel environments, until she believes it a very shame, fit only to be put away in a tomb, demands our pity to the degree of pain. Ya the one is the Actress, first from roughest neces sity, and then from ardent love of Art-from the loud speaking of the genius that is within her: the other, the rich man's acknowledged daughter, surrounded from infancy with the material comforts of life, and the cold world-maxims that almost stifle her soul. The storm of LIFE comes to both, and the one is shattered by it as a tree by lightning. It is not our purpose to give the details of the story, or dwell on its subordinate characters, Enough that the latter are truthfully conceived and forcefully pourtrayed, and that the interest of the whole never for a moment flags. There is not a dull chapter in the two volumes, and not a few of their truths are shown by the sparkling light of wit. The character of Conrad is sketched in a masterly manner, and his refuge at last is most natural. Our extract shall be a conversation between Bianca's unworthy lover and her future husband. "It is all very fine talking about liberality and all that, but a professional life ruins a woman as a woman. They all of them follow their profession, not from any high love of art, but to gain their living, and that takes the shine out of any ideal or poetry that might invest their art; they do not be lieve what they profess to set forth, they do it for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and get out of passions that are aroused, the envy, the jealousy, the it as soon as they can. Then, consider the fierce stimulated vanity, the self-love, susceptible almost to insanity; and for what purpose do they pay this fearful price? To amuse a few hundred lazy people for a couple of hours, who go to see them, not to have any great or high thoughts stirred within them, for one-half of them don't even understand the good things that are said; but to have their ennui gently stimulated, or because they don't know what else to do with their evening; and the life and soul of a wo man is to be melted down to minister to the caprices heart for the very thing they go and applaud. Can of a parcel of people who have a contempt in their such a mode of life be anything but a degradation to the women engaged in it?" "Because the mass of people in the world are stupid, and blind, and coarse, I do not see how that degrades the individuals who make it their business to endeavour to refine and cultivate them," said Lord Melton. "First-rate people are, and always will be, firstrate," said Conrad, "no matter what their profession; but as regards the stage, of which we are more particularly speaking, the gain is not worth the exnot to be taught virtue in earnest by seeing virtue in penditure of body and soul it requires; people are play; they go to be amused, and don't thank you to be anything else; and I have too strong a feeling about women to desire to see them sacrificed to any such hopeless notions. Men may stand it better, but what is it that professional life does for women? Take Bianca, if you will, as a specimen; she is one of the best, and what has been its effect? it has unsexed her, made her neither a man nor a woman. A public life must deteriorate women; they are thrown on the naked world, to have to deal, like us men, with all its bad realities; they lose all the beautiful ideal of their nature, all that is gentle, helpless, and confiding; they are obliged of necessity to keep a keen eye to their own interest, and, having no inherent force or strength, they are reduced to cunning; their intercourse with others becomes a matter of interest and calculation; they may, and many of them no doubt do, keep virtuous in the broad sense of the term; but, in their dealings with men, they use their sex as a weapon; they play with the passions of men to some degree like courtesans; they use the charms of their persons to carry their purposes; they may have no intention to realise illicit hopes, but whilst a man is not quite hopeless, he will exert himself with a zeal, which, if he were quite sure nothing was intended, would be circumscribed by a very wooden horizon. The soft plastic virtues which are the charms of a woman, are all lost-and how can it be otherwise? Look what a professional career is. It is a life that turns men into tigers-a state of war and fierce struggle; a man must be ready to tread down every obstacle, even if that obstacle were his best friend; he must know no friends, nothing but patrons or rivals; every nerve strained to the full to work his way forwards to fame and distinction, unless he have, along with that, a fierce and fiery will, an indomitable perseverance, and a stern energy that, as it were, makes him nerved with iron and sinewed with brass, he will be trodden under foot; it is a state of war without bloodshed; and what ought women to have in common with such a career as that? They have not physical strength for a hand to hand fight; they are incapable of any concentration of energy, or drudgery of hard work; the best results they produce are graceful failures; their beauty lies in falling short, rather than achieving. A woman's work cannot be judged on the basis of its real merit, like that of men; consequently, it never is; there is always a gallant fiction which guides the judgment. All that a professional woman achieves, then, at such a grievous cost of all that is charming in her nature, is only to do what a man would have done much better. The intrinsic value of a woman's work out of her own sphere is nothing, and what are the qualities developed to make up for it? She has got to a knowledge of evil, for she has had to fight against it-to put it aside (if indeed she have put it aside); the bloom and charm of her innocence is gone; she has gained a dogmatic, harsh, self-sufficing vanity, which she calls principle; she strides and stalks through life, neither one thing nor another; she has neither the softness of a woman, nor the firm, well-proportioned principle of a man; from her contact with actual things, she is slightly masculine in her views, but the woman spoils their completeness; she cannot attain, at least she does not attain, to manly prudence and grasp of intellect. She is a bat in the human species; when she loves, she loves likes a man, and yet expects to be adorned as a woman- -the good gods deliver us from all such." "And this," said Melton, sarcastically, when Conrad paused, out of breath, "is the inner side of the flattery with which you deify the successful artistes who minister to your pleasures; this is your secret opinion of the women, who, like so many roses, are crushed and exhaled, to produce scarcely one drop of perfume! It is lucky none of them hear you, or we should have the rest of the season turned into a desert. The nymphs of the ballet would be strangling themselves in their garlands; and as to her Majesty's female servants, the singers and actresses, they would be throwing up their engagements at a minute's warning, and Lord Byron's Curse of Darkness' would fall on all pleasant things! Try this fresh claret, and tell me, in sober earnest, what women ought to be, and to do, to meet your notions of female perfection. What is the birthright of excellence they lose in making use of the talents Providence may have given them ?" "The sort of woman I dream of for my wife, is, in all respects, the reverse of Bianca," said Conrad, gravely. "A rational, though inferior intelligence, to understand me and help me in my pursuits; clinging to me for help, looking to me for guidance; a gentle, graceful timidity keeping down all display of her talents, a sense of propriety keeping her from all eccentric originality, either of thought or deed, her purity and delicacy of mind keeping her from all evil, rather as a matter of exquisite taste, than from any idea of the coarse realities of things, right and wrong. She would shrink from evil instinctively; and it is your pleasure to keep her fragile, graceful nature from being too rudely tried; you know she has no strength, therefore you preserve her carefully from all danger. There is something inexpressibly touching in a true woman's helplessness, her graceful prejudices, and aversion to everything that is too prononcée; she is the softened reflex of her husband's opinions-she does nothing too well. For the woman, whom alone I could love, would be too delicate to desire to attract admiration by her accomplishments; she would be religious, because she could not help it, but she would be alike removed from philosophic doubt or enthusiastic bigotry. A woman ought to have too much taste to be either a sceptic or a saint. Quietly at anchor by her own fire-side, gentle, lowvoiced, loving, confiding-such is MY ideal of a woman and a wife; and certainly a professional woman would not be likely to realise it." "Bravo," cried Melton, " 'you paint well, upon my honour. I must take a glass of wine to recover from such a vision of exquisite helplessness. Your taste seems a mixture of Oriental notions and European customs. I agree with you, however, that wise guidance is precisely the one thing needed by women, and precisely the thing they seldomest obtain. Women fall very unluckily into the world: they have all sorts of precious qualities and capabilities lying within them, which they know not how to use aright, and it is their misfortune that in dealing with them, secondary motives are alone appealed to. Women are put under plenty of conventional restraint, there is plenty of punishment in store if they go astray, but no broad principle is ever given on which they may take their stand; arbitrary enactments, no matter how surrounded by a chevaux-de-frise of social excommunication, unless they recommend themselves to the heart and conscience as in themselves right and true, will fall down like houses of cards at the first breath of a strong temptation. Women from their birth are kept from that knowledge which contact with the actual things of life alone can give; they are placed in a state of pupillage; and how, I ask you, do men fulfil the task they have arrogated to themselves of laying down the law for women? All women feel their weakness, and wise guidance and government is what they all yearn after. I question whether a woman ever took a lover without a hope |