is a ricketty, mis-shapen, luckless-looking child. affords for a time, grateful relief to his poor THE FIRST-BORN. In due course, Lady Caroline recovered. She no longer cared for "the mighty questions of the day," or for the "powerful minds" who were able to "grapple" with them. She found no interest in republican pamphlets; even the fine arts, and their "high-toned influences," were not what they had been to her soul. No! all her thoughts were bent on her poor, thin, sickly babe, with its great bulging forehead, large heavy head, and thin blue hands. Patriots and democrats were nothing in her eyes. Mr. Blake, the apothecary, was the most interesting man she knew; for he could give advice about her son, soothe her fears, and enter into her feelings. Mr. Hall made long harangues about the poor little boy, and laid down the plan of his education, which he said was to begin immediately! When the babe was hungry, and expressed a feeling to that effect by crying, Mr. Hall tried all he could to keep him from his repast, in order to teach him early self-restraint and patience, as well as to break Lady Caroline's spirit. But Lady Caroline's spirit was not of a breaking material, and she called in Mr. Blake on the subject, who generally routed the over "intelligent" father. Another part of little Hall's education was to be, a total ignorance on the subject of death. He was not so much as to know the word. How he was to read history without doing so is an enigma. Religion, also, was never to be mentioned to him. He was to grow up a young atheist, and to seek out principles for himself, by the "unerring light of the great rational system inherent in man." All these ideas were solemnly set forth by Mr. Hall, and he meant to act upon them. All the child's playthings were to be of an "intellectual character." .. He was to be sung to sleep with scraps of knowledge. "Night follows day;" "the moon shines at night;" gas lights us after dark;" "sleep not too much, and such sentences, his nurse was to sing in lullaby tones to the progeny of the utilitarian. As to having his boy christened, the great Samuel Alfred would as soon have had him hanged. That such a child, educated in such a manner, and by such a father, should for a few years exhibit a wonderful amount of morbid precocity, will excite little wonder; that he should have perished ere he had scarcely completed his first lustre, will excite less astonishment, and no regret. Time passing on, brings us to the memorable 10th of April 1848-a day on which, although it is the fashion for simpletons to talk otherwise, the admirable preparations of the Government prevented the pillage of London. On that day the Chartist, Hall, was of course very great, until, falling from a lamp-post where he was coarsely haranguing the mob, he was picked up by two policemen, and very properly locked up. Nor did his punishment end here; for, on his subsequent trial, he was sentenced to a biennial term of incarceration, enlivened only by the monotonous occupation of oakum-picking! This incident in Mr. Hall's career, of course wife. Unhappily for her, however, the two years' imprisonment terminates all too soon, and the democrat is liberated, more rabid and outrageous than ever. Mr. Hall, not long after, has a paralytic. stroke. THE LAST SAD SCENE. Mr. Hall trails his left leg, has no feeling in his left hand, and cannot articulate distinctly. His temper is peevish, irritable, and tormenting. His mind is cloudy, and he lives in a degradingly abject dread of death. Poor awakened dreamer! Lady Caroline Hall is calm, though sad. Her brother, and the once-despised Dean, Dr. Harewood, have thoroughly corrected the errors of her soul. She still lives with her paralyzed husband; deeming it her duty so to do, as well as to bear patiently with his froward and irritating modes. They are at present in the south of France, for his health. Lady Caroline's chief comfort lies in the contemplation of the beautiful country; her chief business is the tending of her soul; and her occupation, waiting on her sickly, fractious, fallen beau-idéal. Lady Caroline's day dreams are at an end. Her spirit is sad, and will probably ever remain so; but her disappointments and errors have softened her heart, opened her eyes, and taught her that the road to happiness is not found in endeavouring to realize the selfish musings of an egotistical "DREAMER." Grafted on to this entertaining historiette, there are two or three pleasing episodes upon which we shall not touch: we will only say that they are penned in Mr. Gwynne's happiest vein, and cannot fail to interest and amuse the most impassive reader. The character of Lord Allingham is perhaps the most natural and the best sustained in the book: his manly bearing, his quiet dignity of mien and manner, and his other various attributes, elevate him far above the "stock" young nobleman of fashionable novels, and shew that Mr. Gwynne can draw from life with a correct eye and clear judgment. But what shall we say to the miscreant Hall? The Bar, as our author observes, is pre-eminently the profession of a gentleman—a profession of which England may be proud-a profession, too, in which higher intellect, more varied knowledge, and greater acquirements are embarked, than in any other that could be cited, even in this "porter-brewing, cottonspinning, tallow-melting kingdom of Great Britain.' The Bar, numbers altogether, only between 2000 and 3000 members: as contrasted, therefore, with the other learned professions, its numerical importance may seem small, more especially when it is considered, that of the above number only a very small proportion follow the mere study of the law: the majority have been "called," in order to obtain a status in society, or are engaged in intellectual pursuits of an important and exalted order. Be it remembered, too, that it is in their hands that the power of the Press is mainly vested; it is by them, through its instrumentality, that public opinion is directed, its taste elevated, and its judgment controlled. It is from their pens, and theirs almost exclusively, that emanate those anonymous but brilliant corruscations of genius, which, in "leaded bourgeoise," scintillate daily at the matutinal board, and instruct while they delight. Within the dark and solemn laboratories of the Temple-time out of mind the refuge and abiding-place of literature, and science, and art -night by night, and day by day, thoughtful and learned men incessantly are toiling, and silently but surely, by their mighty labours, are effecting the amelioration of their species. In all the accomplishments, the varied branches of knowledge-in all those stores of wisdom that can elevate and dignify the mind,-there may be found proficients such as no other community can produce. United by the ties of learning and of wit, associations exist among them, whose object is the advancement of lite rature and true philosophy, and the fuller development of the powers of the mind. Surely, surely, then, has our author erred in portraying a character in every way so detestable as that of Hall, and then holding him up to the world as a sample of the genus "Barrister." In a body composed of several hundred individuals, some doubtless there must be, destitute of the nobler characteristics that typify the class; but the public, judging only from Mr. Gwynne's specimen, may be led to adopt the exception as the rule. Were the majority of the members of the bar addicted to atheism, socialism, chartism, or any of the other anserous absurdities with similar ultimates, then could we find no fault with the course Mr. Gwynne has taken: but when, to the best of our belief, scarcely one could be pointed out, even among the very canaille of the profession, with such characteristics as are appended to Hall, it is perhaps a little unfair that a stigma of this kind should, by implication, be attached to a body of men, who number amongst them the aristocracy of the literary world. page. The Dean's Daughter; or, the Days we Live in. By MRS. GORE. 3 Vols. 8vo. Hurst and Blackett. THE general characteristics of Mrs. Gore's novels are so well known, that it is quite unnecessary to dilate upon them here. Her last differs in few essentials from its predecessors, and its authoress might readily have been inferred, had the name not appeared on the title"The Dean's Daughter" has the beauties and blemishes of her former works; the same accurate representation of fashionable life; the same failure in delineating other scenes with which the writer cannot be expected to be so familiar; the same sallies of wit, of lively repartee; the same lengthy dialogues, occasionally smart, but more frequently dull and tedious. The Dean of R- (one of the diplomatic initials established by Mrs. Gore and others, as if it were dangerous to print the name of a town) was amiable and indolent, gentle and liberal; regularly seen in his stall, rarely in his cathedral pulpit; but when there, he was pronounced by his lady-hearers to look like a saint. His love of ease, his habitual melancholy, estranged him from the whist-tables of the coteries in the vicinity, and the dinner-tables of his highly respectable and very dull neighbours; and he was regarded as a model of abstemiousness-gruel at nine, and bed at ten. A CLERGYMAN'S CAREER. The dean had undergone his share of the rough visit 1853. ings of adversity. While his elder brother, Lord Mildenhall, enjoyed an income of 15,000l. per annum, he, Reginald Mordaunt, was one of the younger children, who divided among them as many hundreds; and though the army and navy, and the results of Egypt, Dunkirk, Assam, and the yellow fever, had decimated the tribe, Reginald, the best looking but funniest of the family, had been fostered in a humble berth in the church, that he might eventually repay himself for the cares of curatehood by the fine family living of Mildenhall. As if covetous of the perils conceded to his martial brothers, he chose to create to himself the danger of starvation, by marrying, while still penniless and unbeneficed, a wife as highborn and poor, as delicate and helpless, as himself. To the shame of his cloth be it spoken, it was a runaway match; and the families of both parties, having before their eyes the fear of involuntary contributions to their maintenance, resolutely disowned the young couple. After contending four years against sickness and poverty, Lady Mary Mordaunt died, if not for want of the necessaries of life, certainly for want of its luxuries. The widower was left with three children, Reginald, William, and Margaret, the youngest, who was at once adopted by her maternal grandmother, the Dowager-Countess of Bournemouth. The two boys were barely clad, and untaught, except by their father, to whom their education had been a heavy toil for seven weary years since their mother's death. During this time the honourable and reverend valetudinarian lived on, in all the depressing bitterness of poverty; friendless and forgotten by all, save the poor under his ministry. The dowager countess and her unmarried daughter, the prim and severe Lady Milicent Bourne, at length sent little Margaret and her fussy nurse to stay with Mr. Mordaunt, while their ladyships visited the German spas. The father at first quailed before the childish semblance of his lost saint, but he soon learned to love her with a perfect love. Her youngest brother, William, also loved the little girl, but the eldest scowled upon her like a Cain. When Lady Bournemouth returned to her stately hall of Hephanger, she heard such a tale of her boy-grandsons from the nurse-how they could swear, and beat all the village boys at hop-scotch-that she wrote a long-winded letter, as bitter and bilious as it was long, to Lord Mildenhall, upbraiding him with the delinquencies of these two lads. Exceeding wroth was the noble lord, not with his brother, but with the wickedly meddling dowager; but he felt that something must be done for the desolate member of his family, who was yet his heir, and something was done, although not out of his lordship's own overflowing coffers. He wrote to the Premier of the day, strongly soliciting promotion in the church for his brother. As Lord Mildenhall never spoke in favour of ministers, and never voted against them, they felt a double obligation, and at once appointed Reginald to the rich Deanery of R. Here, as we have already intimated, he was as "soft" as the dignitary whom Pope has immortalized. He transacted business, however, when he could not help it; but he had rather at any time sit, and muse, and listen to the daws of the venerable cathedral. The boys he sent to Eton, and then to Oxford. Meantime, Margaret grew in grace and beauty, but pined for younger companionship than a querulous grandmother and repulsive aunt, while the dean seemed altogether devoid of all paternal fondness. The tears he shed over the memory of Lady Mary " had produced, like the drippings of the Knaresborough well, a fine petrifaction." But his daughter paid him a fortnight's visit, and all his kindly feelings burst forth freely, for she "made a sunshine in a shady place"-the dingy deanery. "Regy" spent a vacation with his uncle Mildenhall, who mistook the big boy's insolence for spirit, and liked him accordingly; for his lordship had an only daughter, and joyed to see the "pluck of his heir presumptive. "Willy," lighthearted and affectionate, was at the deanery, and seemed all a father and sister could wish. Fortune now smiled upon the man on whom she had frowned for years: he became rector of the rich living of Mildenhall, and began, to his own surprise, to save money. Another change ensued. Lady Bournemouth became kinder to Margaret, and more chari table to the poor, as if the shadows of coming death had warned her. She fell, one fine summer's evening, into what was accounted her customary doze, but the sleep, was that which knows no waking. Unconscious of this, Margaret, who alone watched by the old lady's side, walked forth to hear the nightingales. On her return there were lights and angry voices in the room, and Lady Milicent screamned to her: "This is your doing, Margaret Mordaunt; you have murdered your benefactress." The Rev. Dr. Macwheeble then appeared, and loudly quoted texts to silence the clamour, announcing himself as the husband, privately married, of the Lady Milicent! All marvelled, and all submitted to the hectoring doctor. The physicians arrived, and pronounced the death natural, but no inquest was held the deceased was a well-jointured lady. After the funeral Margaret hastened to her father, who never before felt her so completely his own dear child. William was at the deanery, and his sister shewed him a paper which the deceased lady had given her on the very day of her death. It was a formal will, all in her ladyship's own handwriting, in favour of the Mordaunts, duly signed, but not witnessed. Margaret was told that it was but waste paper; but William, sanguine and in debt, would consult men of business upon it. Lazenby and Son, highly respectable attorneys, pronounced it a valid will. A LEGAL OPINION. Lightly has more than one lawsuit been commenced, entailing ruin upon generation after generation! The Lazenbys clearly did know something of their profession; they understood the art of entangling a client. The opinion they obtained was strongly in favour of establishmouth." It was no longer called a paper. It was styled ing the "holographic will of the late Countess of Bournecurtly a will. Messrs. John and Daniel Lazenby expressed much regret, indeed, that they had not been consulted in time to enter a caveat before probate was granted, as they found it had been, to an earlier paper, propounded by the Lady Milicent Harriet Macwheeble, daughter of the deceased countess. But it was not too late. A suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, or a bill filed in Chancery, would soon settle the business. The perplexed dean then became a plaintiff in Chancery, as his daughter was a minor, and he was entangled "heart and soul in meshes of red tape; the most fatal net, perhaps, that can envelope a human destiny." Now came the gaiety of the Mordaunts, and its reaction. Reginald was with Lord Mildenhall in Rome, and was engaged to marry the viscount's only child. The Hargreaves, who lived near the deanery at Dursley Hall, gave grand entertainments, to which even the stayat-home dears attended. Sir Thomas Hargreave was a millionaire, a scheming Parliament-man, a cotton-spinner in Lancashire, with uncles, aunts, and relatives, all having the virtue to be very rich. He was blessed with He was blessed with three grown-up children, a son and two daughters. Richard Hargreave and William Mordaunt were fast friends, and had been college chums. Margaret, by the congregated fashion of Dursley, was suddenly "converted into an angel." Young Hargreave was her ardent but not yet avowed lover, and the love was not reciprocal. What others called manliness in her admirer, she called coarseness: she pronounced him a man without a soul, and with a wideawake; a man who knew no French, but was well up in the art of draining! Herbert Fanshawe, another college acquaintance, eloquent, intellectual, and exceeding smooth-spoken, was also a guest, and made an impression on Margaret's heart. Dursley Hall, indeed, was a sort of ark, filled with creatures of various characteristics-fashion, business, relationship, courtship. Sir Barty Tomlinson represented THE NEW TOADY OF OUR DAY, The old must remember of their own knowledge, and the young may have been taught by novelists and dramatists (who teach more, by the way, than their scholars are apt to admit), that the toady of former days, and the parasite of other centuries, was a complaisant, compliant creature, making its way in the world by subservience and acquiescence. It is not so now. The distinctive features of the class had grown too notorious; the nature of the beast was apparent at a glance, and all were on their guard. At the present moment, look out, on arriving at a strange house, for the man who complains to his host that his wine is corked, to the hostess that her children are troublesome; the man who bullies the servants and overworks the horses; and in the shape of a domestic tyrant, or, at all events, of the man universally contradictory; you will be pretty sure to find the dirty dog of the establishment. Margaret, somehow or other, attained the character of an heiress, and was more admired than ever; but the evil days came. Her father was stricken with delirium, and then with death; his ravings were dreadful: " Mary, have ruined our poor children. I have left them penniless to the mercy of the world. I must burn in hell. Oh! agony. I suffer, suffer-Mary, save me!" And so he dies. Some 14,000l. which the dean had saved, had been consigned by him to promote his eldest son's marriage, and he hoped to live to save more for his other children; but death came too quickly, and came too quickly, also, for the respectable attorneys, who wished to arrest the dignitary on his sick bed, for the law-suit went against him. The dean's children (except Reginald) are soon penniless and homeless; but an elderly spinster, Martha Hargreave, with 80007. ayear, shelters Margaret, for whom she will provide, and teaches her how to rear fancy poultry. Ralph Hargreave, who speaks broad Lancashire, and has great influence with the government, obtains for William Mordaunt a Dick Hargreave scampers here and there to place of 2501. a-year in Somerset House, while forget Margaret, but returns with renewed offers of his hand and fortune. Margaret, however, cannot forget Fanshawe until he marries another, and then she seriously inclines to the suit of Sir Richard Hargreave, for Sir Thomas was dead; and six years of married happiness glide imperceptibly away. These events occupy two volumes, and the third is filled-unnecessarily, it seems to us-with Margaret's reminiscences of her first love, her repinings, wonderings, and platonics with Fanshawe, but all in honour, if not in conjugal delicacy; and we part with her a disconsolate widow-Sir Richard having been killed in a railway collision, and his young heir maimed for life. Mrs. Gore has generally ended her novels more cheerfully. In 3 Vols. 8vo. Amabel; or, the Victory of Love. By MARY ELIZABETH WORMeley. THIS is a tale of love the principle, as distinguish- the heroine and the grandmamma of the authoress. Amabel de Karnac is the daughter of Viscount Louis Amable de Karnac, a French emigré. He fled at the earliest blast of the Revolution, intending to return and enjoy his estates as soon as it had subsided. His aristocratic friends, citing the precedent of a marquis keeping a cook's shop in Oxford, obtained him a situation as French master in a ladies' school, whence he persuaded an orphan pupil of seventeen, an heiress of course, to elope with, and to marry him. But the young bride's fortune was locked up until she came of age, and her friends had flinty hearts. The couple lived in a mean place in Deptford, where Amabel was born. A sister of the Viscount, hearing that he had settled, came to Deptford, and industriously supported herself there by her needle. Her employer, Mr. Sibbes, a storekeeper, astonishes the pale and timid Louise de Karnac by an offer of marriage, accompanied by the production of his account-books, to prove that he was a thriving government contractor. She wept for a fortnight, and then the "descendant of a long line of Breton nobles became the wife of the store-keeper Sibbes." Her brother advocated the match with un négociant Anglais, and was soon afterwards drowned accidentally in the Thames. The Viscountess returned to her friends, taking her child with her. She soon married a Captain Talbot. Mrs. Sibbes then urged her husband to adopt little Amabel, and urged it warmly. NON-INTERFERENCE. Her enthusiasm had lost sight of opposition to her wishes, and she was both suprised and angry to discover that her proposition was met by Mr. Sibbes with coldness. He did not approve of meddling with other people's children, he told her; the Viscount had been much expense to him already, and Madame de Karnac he especially abhorred. 'Say what remains when Hope is dead? She auswered-Endless weeping!"" And the character of Louise must have resembled that of the mother of the Boy of Egremont; for, though excited into energy by the approach of care or danger, since all hope of ameliorating her condition had forsaken her, she had become almost weak in mind. The authoress quotes poetry frequently, and often very happily; but we do not see the analogy between the lady of Egremont, who lost her son, and the lady of Mr. Sibbes, whose tears moved her husband to adopt her niece, and bring her to Deptford. The contractor's business increased, and he removed from Deptford to Malta, where, during Napoleon's subsequent continental system, he traded largely with the Levant. Bella Karnac (for so her name was Anglicised) grew up a pretty and careless, but affectionate child, and then ripened into a lovely girl. Mr. Sibbes took his wife and niece for a trip to Gibraltar, but Malta was rooted in the young girl's affections. It had so romantic, so ancient, and so obscure a history. It had belonged to Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Huns, Saracens, and Normans; to emperors of Germany, kings of Arragon, knights of Jerusalem, to French and English sovereigns, of whom Amabel loved to hear and read; but her education was scant and desultory. The only stipulation with regard to her training was, that she should be brought up a member of the Church of England; but in Malta she inclined to Romanism: its poetry impressed her fancy, though she cared little for its creed. A VOID. And it was well for her that she had even such slight links to bind her by a crude notion of loyalty to some form of Christianity; for the Doctor, her presom ceptor, called himself, in the disguised language of the times, "a philosopher." He could point out bigotries and fallacies, could make her feel a void-a want, by laying bare the insecure foundations of her faith; but there were points on which her warm young heart distrusted him: she accepted a great many of his opinions, always in the hope of seeing through them something never there. Two years thus passed; and Bella, now sixteen, grew restless and oppressed by the vagueness, the inapplicability of her feelings. She had no one into whose bosom she could pour them all, and learn by the mere recital that they were exaggerated and wrong. Then was felt that void which nature has implanted in a young girl's heart:-to teach her, perhaps, that human life is incomplete without the union of two souls. The party were now living in the house of Dr. Glascock, who saw that Amabel required a suitable companion, and invited to his house the young wife of Captain Annesley, who had just come out to Valetta. Annesley was a seaman, as was his friend, Captain Warner) a widower with two young children), and a social and merry party was thus formed at the Doctor's. Warner was as fond of telling his adventures as was Othello: he was older than Amabel; but, as the Moor said, "that's not much;" and he was greatly impressed with the young lady's beauty, kindness of heart, and vivacity. A few years before, a young French midshipman, Felix Guiscard-a mere boy then -had been wrecked on the island, and was a favourite playfellow of Amabel whilst he remained in Malta. He was now a young officer, wounded, and a prisoner, and Captain Annesley had kindly conveyed him on board his own. ship, the Sea Gull. Here he was visited by Dr. Glascock and Amabel, who was a most tender nurse. She remembered her old playfellow, and one evening sat watching his cot until it was dark: her dog sat in her lap, but ran to the sick man, and returned to Amabel, his paws wet with blood. She gave the alarm; Dr. Glascock found that the stripling had, with suicidal intentions, removed all his dressings, and was bleeding to death. The English doctor's aid was timely, and Felix recovered. The youth seemed sobered by his attempt, and submitted to live. Then came the whispers of first love COURTSHIP. Oh the joy of those first days when Amabel could lead her patient out into the summer air at sunset; when she sat by him in the garden, and sang him Breton lays, or listened to his descriptions of her father's home! When women discuss together the mysteries of courtship, they often remark that it is a pity the task of love-making has not been confided to them. They understand the secret workings of the heart so much better than the sex to whom it is per mitted to be demonstrative; their tact is so much finer their attention is so much more habituated to |