a man must be a wretch and a monster who feels resentment at finding that his wife has a pure sentimental attachment for another man. Sharp, clever, stinging; her works have a sale, and her name at the head of an advertisement has a value in pounds, shillings, and pence. Knowing this, Messrs. Saunders and Otley advertised "The Gossip" as by the Honourable Mrs. Norton. The lady publicly repudiated the thing; and it then came out that Messrs. Saunders and Otley did not mean The Honourable Mrs. Norton, but a lady who, being a widow of an honourable Mr. Erskine, is now married to a Mr. Norton. We shall not interfere The following is the correspondence as it appeared in the Times "To the Editor of the Times. "SI-My attention has been called by my Publishers to an advertisement, by Messrs. Saunders and Ottley, "of a new work by the Hon. Mrs. E. Norton." I understand the author of this work to be a lady formerly married to a son of the late Lord Erskine (though the death of that lady is stated in the peerage to have taken place in 1833), and afterwards married to an American gentleman named Norton. By no rule can this make her The Hon. Mrs. E. Norton:" and as the advertisement is worded so as to create confusion and doubt, I shall be much obliged if you will allow this notice of it to appear in your Journal. "I am, Sir, &c. "CAROLINE NORTON." "To the Editor of the Times. "SIR-In reply to a letter which appeared in your Journal of yesterday, signed "Caroline Norton," I beg to observe, that no confusion between the names of Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Erskine Norton ought to exist. "It is well known to be the custom of titled widows marrying commoners to retain the title and name of their first husbands. On my second marriage, I did not think it right to form a precedent against this custom; but being possessed of a courtesy title only, I added the name of my second husband. "The late Commodore Erskine was not an American, as averred by Mrs. Norton, but an Englishman, nobly sustaining the character of his country in the service of the late Emperor of Brazil, by whom he was rewarded with the insignia of two orders of knighthood. He died in 1835 in consequence of his state of health, brought on by his wounds. "As to my identity, somewhat impugned by a statement of my death in "Burke's Peerage," as having taken place in 1838, I am free to own that I read that paragraph long since with some degree of natural consternation, but the experience of nineteen years has convinced me that Mr. Burke was in error; and I should be happy to hear that Mrs. Norton is in the enjoyment of as good health as myself at this moment. "With the deepest regret for the discomposure which the "Gossip" seems to have occasioned to that lady, * Nov. 4. "I am, Sir, "Your obedient servant, "ELIZA BLAND ERSKINE NORTON." "To the Editor of the Times. "Ste-Mrs. Erskine Norton having explained her adoption of the name "The Hon. Mrs. E. Norton," by stating that she follows a rule, I beg to say that she is mistaken. She may refuse to take the name of her second husband, but she cannot bestow upon him the courtesy title of her first, which she does in the names she assumes. I have not noticed the advertisement from discourtesy to this lady, nor from any interest in a matter which is per between the warring ladies, further than to remark, that the widow Erskine, now Mrs. Norton, has no more right to call herself the Honourable Mrs. Norton, than she has to call herself Duchess of Sutherland. Odd licences are often taken with inferior titles; but we never before heard, even in that middle class rank where titles are so craved after, that a lady was empowered to strip his title off her dead husband and hang it upon the living body of his succesWe have printed the correspondence at length below: we mention it here only that we may reprobate the publishers' part in the transaction. We put it to Messrs. Saunders and Otley whether they think such acts as these quite correct? sor. We see these same publishers are advertising a work on Law Reform by "The Right Honourable *** *** The Right Honourable Blank had better either suppress his affix or print his name: until then we utterly disbelieve his "right," and have not the least confidence in "his honour." Really these things are very disgraceful, and ought to be put down. is, as its title imports, a series of adventures exThe "Boy hunters," by Captain Mayne Reid, perienced by three boys in a hunting expedition in Louisiana. The author uses his opportunity to give frequent lessons in natural history, and some of his descriptions of slimy swamps crawling with alligators are sufficient to check any strong inclination to make one at the Captain's juvenile parties. There is no lack of perilous sonally indifferent to me, but as a measure of necessity, in common fairness to those with whom I have entered into literary engagements, and who have desired it. I do not presume to suppose I can prevent any lady calling herself by any name she pleases; but I am bound to explain that which seems purposely to mislead (since even the name of Erskine, on which the claim rests, is omitted), and to repeat, that the name assumed, "The Hon. Mrs. E. Norton," is a name which does not exist, as any one may satisfy himself by looking for it in the Peerage. 'I am, Sir, "To the Editor of the Times. "SIR-I beg to refer Mrs. Norton to "Dod's Peerage" for this year, pp. 635, 636. Blackstone states that none but duchesses legally preserve their titles in a second marriage; but it is to be hoped that usage will never in this country stamp second marriages with degradation; and that a title once bestowed, whether by the Sovereign, a father, or a husband, may remain with the individual, except in cases of attainder or divorce. A contrary practice, it is well known, has led in foreign countries to very immoral results. of a name, or the substitution of a letter for a name, are "This is the question on a general basis. The addition points too trifling to be commented upon; and I am quite satisfied with Mrs. Norton's personal assurance that she meant no personal discourtesy to myself. "I am, Sir, "Nov. 8. "Your obedient servant, "ELIZA BLAND ERSKINE NORTON." incidents. A huge bear follows one of the boys up a tree, and to the end of one of its horizontal branches: another animal of the same genus, but of that different species which cannot climb, drives them all three up trees, and besieges them there. Opossums, wolves, lynxes, fall to their rifles, and they in their turn are taken and tied up to be tortured by the Indians. The volume is well adapted for "young people.' Douglas Jerrold collects his fugitive papers, and labels them "Cakes and Ale.' The cakes have plenty of plums, and the ale is so well spiced we taste the ginger hot in the mouth too. The "Memoirs of Doctor Blenkinsop," by the author of "Paddiana," are coarse and dull, without being very farcical. Of course the great "Stowe" literature proceeds in its cheap, and somewhat dishonest, career. We hear that one publisher boasts he has made 10,000l. profit by three editions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and every scrap the Lady ever published is being reprinted, very much to her annoyance, and with no great advantage to her literary fame. We have no wish to add to the publicity of such very unfair doings. There has been, and still is, a pamphlet controversy as to the solvency of the existing Assurance Companies. Mr. Christie, of the Scottish Equitable, and Mr. Thomson, of the Standard, have published somewhat alarming pamphlets; but as we hope to be able to apply ourselves more specially to this subject in an early Number, we refrain from here anticipating what we shall there have to say, or from pronouncing an opinion which further inquiries may, perhaps, in some measure modify. Of the Serials, we find that "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," by the author of "Handley Cross," has just been completed. We cannot recommend that any ladies should be introduced to the sham captains, Seedybucks, Quods, and Bounceys, with which the work abounds, and still less to the very equivocal, or rather unequivocal, Miss Howards and Miss Glitters, who are described as turning the mansion of the Scattercashes into " a house full of trumpets." Our sporting friends, however, will find the broad coarse fun of the thing very much to their taste; and Leech's illustrations are an attraction that would carry us through a much duller book. We are told that this periodical circulates largely in rural districts, and among the owners of the soil. All such will thank them for introducing to their notice a little book which will turn a dry, albeit, an interesting, study into unmixed amusement. Here they will find a history (illustrated by George Cruikshank!) of the miseries that beset a landowner during the process of converting 250 acres of swamp into a fine, six-field shift, turnip-bearing farm. Who C. W. H. is we suppose we must not guess; but those who relish the rich humour that runs through the volume, and note how scholarship and worldly experience are brought to bear upon the subject, will have no great difficulty in making up their minds as to the paternity. The "Marvels of Science" belongs to a class of works whereof we had prepared a somewhat extended notice. The publishers, however, have been anxious to throw all their books upon the market, so as to get the subscriptions into their Christmas accounts. Works are pouring in upon us even as we write. The "Publishers' Circular" contains the titles of upwards of a thousand publications, born into this cold world within three months. We are compelled, therefore, to postpone to our next Number a review of the progress which our generation is making in the arts and sciences. As to attempts to reconcile Science with Revelation, they are very dangerous things in the hands of half-taught men. We never yet knew a man of real scientific acquirements whose faith in Revelation was shaken for a moment by any discoveries in science he might make; and we all know very well that Newton, who was the greatest of philosophers, was, at the same time, the humblest of Christians. Such men as they who wrote the Bridgewater Treatises can tread safely on such ground, and their works cannot be too often, or too cheaply, reprinted: but great harm may be done to weak minds by superficial writers who have no qualification for the task they undertake, except excellent intentions. Real learning makes a man humble, and trustful in things beyond human ken; and such men need no such books as those to which we allude. When such books are written, they should be done by a great proficient in the science dealt with; otherwise they do harm. For a multitude of miscellaneous works we must refer to our subsequent notices, indexed as they are by the Table of Contents. "The Stowe Papers" have not been published at the moment we write; and of some recently-produced volumes-such as a whiskey-flavoured book from an Irishman-we shall only say, that a glance at them is sufficient to convince us that they are only directed to the book-societies, with the hope that their titles will induce curiosity. If accident should give them notoriety, we can administer a corrective hereafter: if not, we see no good purpose in disturbing their obscurity. REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by the Right Honourable Lord JOHN RUSSELL, M.P. Vols I. and II. London: Longmans, 1853. The THE succession of great poets is broken. grave has closed on Moore-on the poet who indulged our youth with luscious song, and whose Eastern love-verses will in all time to come cause young bosoms to palpitate with pleasure, and young eyes to stream with tears. Ever, aye, for ever, will Moore be the poet of youth, whether for weal or for woe. Generation after generation, throughout the widespread continents where thought is born in Anglo-Saxon words, will feel the influence of this dead man's fancies. They may criticise him in their manhood, they may perchance despise him in their age, but they may not deny that with bounding hearts and quickened pulse they have read and loved him in their youth. Full many a swain and many a fond maid whose far-back distant ancestor is yet unborn, shall feel the sweet communion of their souls best touched by his mellifluous cadences, and shall sob together as they read. Through long vistas of years yet to come, and in lands yet to be peopled, Hinda and her young Gheber will sorrow, love, and die. Thou, for my sake, at Allah's shrine; will wield many a union betwixt discordant creeds; and when the catastrophe is reached, and those lines are sighed over together All eyes are turned-thine, Hinda, thine Its melancholy radiance sent; Shrined in its own grand element ! And Iran's hopes and her's are o'er! Deep, deep-where never care or pain Shall reach her innocent heart again! hearts will soften, and combine like gold and quicksilver. Far be it from us to attempt to determine whether good or evil may predominate in the eternal workings of the gone poet's thoughts; but this we know, that the poetry of Moore will act on human hearts as springtide does on birds and flowers. Such were the words in which, in the second Number of this "REVIEW," we announced the death of the last of our great contemporary poets. We have no other or better words wherewith to hail the first instalment of the full materials for some future biography. More prudent than his race, Moore took pains to lay up for his family a hoard he could never be tempted to dissipate. Doubtlesss, it often comforted him to think that the few lines he jotted down at bed-time, shortly descriptive of the events of the day, would come forth into light when he was gone, and would give warmth and sustenance to those he loved. In his choice of a literary executor, also, the poet has shewn a prudence which almost discredits his genius. A merely literary man would have woven all this mighty mass of papers into a diffuse and necessarily imperfeet biography. He would have had a reputation to make; and so would have popped himself, like the wren upon the eagle's back, and bored us with his intrusive twitterings. Lord John Russell has no literary reputation to make or mar; he has his own well-defined station in his country's history. The statesman, whose youthful achievement it was, to strike the fetters off thralled conscience, and who in early manhood could boast that he had recast the complex constitution of this free England, and that his workmanship was excellent in action, needs no other renown. In such a man, to write ambitiously had been a weakness- to attain success second to any other, would have been a sad failure. Nothing of the sort has been attempted. Like a man of business, Lord John first set about fulfilling the object of his friend's bequest, by obtaining from a publisher the means of placing that friend's only remaining relation in a posi tion of comfortable independence. This done, like a man of sense, he applied himself strictly and soberly to the execution of his task; remembering ever that it was the poet who was to speak, and not the editor; prefacing as little as usage would warrant, arranging, dovetailing, very seldom annotating, but testing every thing before it passed to type by the simple touchstone of the good taste of an English gentleman. The result promises to become a book that will be read like Boswell's Johnson, and form the horn-book of every pique-assiette. Those, however, who expect to find here the life of Mr. Little, and the frolicsome doings of all the naughty Julias, no-better-than-they-oughtto-be Chloes, Kissing Rosa's, and half-melting Fanny's, will be woefully disappointed. We strongly suspect that Moore wrote the history of the first twenty years of his life on purpose to warn all others off this ground; and, so far as appears from these volumes, he might have lived the life of Origen up to the time when, two months after the fact had occurred, he darkly hints to his mother that he has become a Benedict. In truth, never did a man's life, as written by himself in his letters and his diary, so utterly differ from the mind of the poet as depicted in his writings. In the latter, he is sometimes a great scapegrace, always a great patriot, hotheaded and impulsive, passion-full and eager, scattering duties to the winds, and pursuing pleasures with unhalting speed, teaching treason to talk in well modulated English, and praying for vengeance upon all sorts of tyrants with an energy that would give us to expect a poet seven feet high, bearded to the eyes and bare-armed to the shoulder. That is Moore in his imagination. Moore in his acts was the kindest and most constant little creature alive; doting all his life through, upon his excellent and strongminded mother (great men always owe their greatness to their mothers), and writing her two letters every week of his life; making it his first duty to support his father; continual in anxious tenderness to his wife; chronicling in his diary, with open pleasure, every little act by which she testifies her affection; and interesting himself in all the decorative details of babyhood: being altogether as affectionate, equable, and "livewithable" as if he had been no more a man of genius than Mr. Christopher, and no more a poet that Mr. Herries. As to his red-armed patriotism, he certainly had a strong theoretical love of freedom, both of thought and action; but in his youth he passed through Trinity College without being implicated in any secret society, and was the intimate of Robert Emmet, without having ventured one pace in the scaffold ward footsteps of that gifted enthusiast. In his manhood, he thought O'Connell a disgusting demagogue. While all Ireland was toasting Moore as the pink of patriots, he was absolutely refusing to sit in Parliament. He was quite right. His patriotism was an abstraction much too volatile to be concreted into votes. Had he soberly felt all that he in his inspiration wrote, he would have known it nearer, seen imperfections, perhaps entertained disgusts: as a mere vision, there was nothing to tarnish its glory. But à propos of this fragment, we must not go off into an essay on the life and genius of Moore: let us to our little analysis. The volumes contain, first, a preface by Lord John Russell, succeeded by two notes; one containing an extract from the Irish Quarterly Review, and the second, a spirited defence of Tasso, a subject which is known to be rather a specialité of the noble editor. Secondly, we have an autobiography of the poet in seventysix pages-" A Memoir of myself, begun many years ago, but never, I fear, to be completed"— occupied only with the recollections of his early youth, and terminating with his nineteenth year. Lord John Russell fills up the intervening period, 1793-1806, with a selection from the poet's correspondence during that period. The letters are all addressed to his mother, his father, or Miss Godfrey; but sometimes those letters contained enclosures of others he has received from Lord Moira and other great folk with whom he was living in London. In 1806 occurred his duel with Jeffrey, and Moore has left a special memoir of that occurrence. Thence for twelve years onwards the tale of the poet's life is told only by his correspondence. We leave him in 1818 writing to his mother, to Power, to Jeffrey, and to Miss Godfrey, and we are summoned away to the opening pages of his diary. This diary commences on the 18th August 1818, when Moore was thirty-nine years old; and as one year of it fills rather more than the latter half of the second of these volumes, we may expect that this will be the staple of the eight volumes yet to come. It is infinitely more interesting than the letters. In his letters, the poet writes to please or to inform his immediate correspondents. He has to scold Miss Godfrey for her remissness; he has to tell Lady Donegal how he had half promised to write an epilogue for Mrs. Wilmot's tragedy; to inform Mr. Power that Mr. Joseph Strutt sent his carriage for him and Bessy (Mrs. Moore), and sent them back again from Derby to Mayfield in it: much more frequently than all, he has to tell small matters of caps and tapes relating to his wife and daughters in those bi-weekly letters which, all her life long, he wrote to his mother. Often, indeed, he relates to his correspondents things that it cannot but interest posterity to hear, as when he deplores to Miss Godfrey that Bessy "looks so wan and feeble as to make me quite miserable," attributing the cause to "those domestic cares which she feels much too anxiously and busily for that repose of mind and body which is so necessary to her." Again, when he writes from Mayfield-being at that time in the height of his fame-to Power, begging him to send him five or six pounds, for he had no money at all in his house. So, when he tells Mr. Power, the publisher, "Murray, has been offering me, through Lord Byron, some hundreds (number not specified) a-year to become editor of a Re view like the Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Jeffrey has fifteen;" and when Jeffrey duns him for articles for the "Edinburgh," offering him from twenty to thirty guineas a sheet, yet rejecting a review of Glenarvon, under the pretence that Horner had advised him not to mention the book. So, we are glad to know the intimate thoughts of the poet upon the Irish agitators of his time, and are a little startled to find him (who, according to Lord J. Russell, "always adhered to the Roman-Catholic Church," and who answered an importunate proselytizer by the words, "Sir, I was born and bred in the faith of my fathers, and in that faith I intend to die ") writing to Lady Donegal, in 1815, of the Dublin politicians "I do not think a good cause was ever ruined by a more bigoted, brawling, and disgusting set of demagogues; and though it be the religion of my fathers, I must say, that much of this vile, vulgar spirit is to be traced to that wretched faith which is again polluting Europe with Jesuitism and Inquisitions, and which, of all the humbugs that have stultified mankind, is the most narrow-minded and mischievous.' All these, and a thousand other interesting matters, are mixed up with much of that affectionate commonplace which we like to know that the man used, for it tells us what manner of man he was; but when we once have known it, we scarcely care to read its continual ite ration. The diary, on the other hand, has not in it an unwelcome word. The best manner in which we can convey to the reader the extent of amusement he may expect, will be to pillage for his use a few specimens. This is the style in which he hits off a dinnerparty at Bowood. Sept. 19th. Wrote some letters and walked out with W. and Mary D.; dined at Bowood: the company, two Miss Edgeworths and Dumont. . . . . Some amusing things mentioned at dinner-Madame de Staël very angry with William Smith for his act in favour of the Unitarians: thought it was an act for the abolition of the Trinity: "C'est vous donc (said she, on being introduced to Smith) qui ne voulez point de mystères!" Talked of Penn's book about the end of the world, and Swift's ridicule of Bickerstaff's prophecy, which I must see. Swift says the only persons glad at the end of the world, were a man going to be hanged and another going to be cut for the stone. Talked of Perry. Lord L. said, that when the Philharmonic Society was established, two or three years ago, Perry gave up writing the leading political article of his paper, in order to write the accounts of the performances at the Philharmonic-a This letter occurs at Vol. ii. p. 73. As to Moore's Roman Catholicism, it may be further remarked that be sometimes went to church, had his children baptized into the English church, and that he begged off going to confession when a boy, and never went afterwards. In his Memoir he says, 66 My mother was a sincere Catholic, and even gave in to some of the old superstitions connected with that faith in a manner remarkable for a person of her natural strength of mind." good story, but not true. Ayreton wrote those musical criticisms. I mentioned a good scene I was witness to at Perry's table, when the Duke of Sussex dined with him, when, to his horror, he found he had unconsciously asked a brother editor to meet his R. H. This was Doherty, the well-known, unfortunate, ways-and-means Irishman, whom Perry had asked, without knowing much about him, and without intending he should meet the Duke of Sussex, who had only fixed to dine with Perry the day before. The conversation turning upon newspapers, the Duke said, in his high, squeak tone of voice, "There is a Mr. Dockerty, I find, going to publish a paper." I looked towards Doherty, and saw his face redden. "Yes, sir," said he, "I am the person : I had the honour of sending your Royal Highness my prospectus." I then looked towards Perry, and saw his face blacken: the intelligence was as new to him as to me. I knew what was passing in his mind, but so did not my honest friend Tegart, the apothecary, who, thinking that the cloud on Perry's brow arose from the fear of a rival journalist, exclaimed, with good-natured promptitude, to put him out of pain, "Ob, Mr. Doherty's is a weekly newspaper!" It is altogether excellent. Perry is as good-natured and honourable a man as I know anywhere, and does honour to the cause he has so consistently and ably advocated. We talked of Bowles's copy of the "Institutes" of Calvin, to which he has had a drawing prefixed, of Servetus roaring in the flames, and Calvin reading to him: underneath are the words which Calvin used in describing Sevetus's sufferings, "Ter reboabat, Hispanico more, Miserecordia." Dumont tion, and who had held, against Calvin and Beza, that talked of Castalion as one of the first teachers of toleraheretics were non glorio puniendi. He then cited Bayle and Locke as able champions of toleration. I said that Bayle's ideas of religious freedom were, as well as Locke's, fettered by his prejudices against the Catholics. This he, Dumont, granted as to Locke, but denied as to Bayle. I fiud, however, I am right: in the preface to the "Commentaire Philosophique Bayle not only praises the penal laws of England, but proposes a league of all Christian princes (non Papistes), and even of infidel princes, against Popery, and says, "Ce ne seroit pas une ligue moins honorable que celle qu'on feroit contre les Corsaires de Barbarie.” Here is a history of two days, shewing how a good husband, with a kind wife, when he stays out of nights, is not scolded, and how he makes up for it by a day's domesticity and a game of cribbage. Fancy Hafed and Hinda playing cribbage! Yet, if all had gone right, it must have come to that or something like it. Oct. 19th. Had promised Rogers, who was coming to me this morning, to meet me half way. Mrs. Phipps, upon whom I called as I went, came out with me in order to get a glimpse of "Memory Rogers." He and I walked to my cottage; much delighted with the scenery around; said he preferred the valley and village before us to the laid-out grounds of Bowood. Shewed him some of my Sheridan papers. He mentioned "Memoirs of Jackson " of Exeter, written by himself, which he saw in MS. some years ago, and in which he remembered there was a most glowing description of his pupil, Miss Linley, standing singing by his side, and so beautiful that "you might think you were looking into the face of an angel." I wish I had these "Memoirs." Walked with him to the village, and then as far as Phipps's, where I was to dine, in order to go to the Devizes ball in the evening. The party, Macdonald and Miss Mayham, the Phippses themselves, and I. Mentioned after dinner my invitation to Beckford's. Phipps bid me take care what I did, for Sir Richard Hoare was called to account seriously by his brother magistrates the other day for having visited Beckford: and was obliged to |