the consciousness of political proscription, and cause him to feel more respect for himself.' We beg the counsellor's pardon; as long as the Irish peasantry have half the land parcelled out among them, in allotments seldom exceeding an acre for each family-occupy, in common with their pigs, mud-cabins without chimneys or windows-feed on potatoes-lie on straw-and look up to the beggars of this country for an enviable display of wearing apparel, we cannot but smile at the whimsical conceit that 'Catholic emancipation would fill their minds with respect for themselves.'

The fact is, that the peasantry and politicians of Ireland affix very different ideas to the removal of Catholic disabilities.

There is a deep feeling on the part of the Catholics that they are not so well off as they ought to be; and they do not feel easy with regard to any thing that relates to government or the state of the country: I conceive the feeling originates in what they call the want of emancipation: and with the common people the idea, I am aware, they entertain of emancipation, as they call it, is a division of property: I am fully aware of that: they have little idea, as far as I know, of what it really is; but almost one and all of the common people understand by it a restoration of the forfeited estates, to which many of them claim to be heirs.' - Ev. of the Rev. Henry Cooke, before the Lords, 18th March, 1825, p. 214.

None of the witnesses venture expressly to deny that these are the views of the peasantry; although some of them attempt to make us infer that no such expectation prevails in Ireland, because no difference is perceptible between the selling price of an estate which has been forfeited and that of another which has not. One, of the witnesses, however, naturally and satisfactorily explains this, by stating, that no difference of price exists, because there is no such feeling on the part of the buyers; such ideas of the restoration of forfeited estates are confined to the lower order of Catholics; in which class the purchasers of estates are never found.'

We cannot help suspecting that the more active members of that order of Catholics, to whom alone the removal of political disabilities can be an object of real importance, have taken great pains to mislead the peasantry upon this question, with the view of enlisting them under their banners, and giving additional weight to the applications which have periodically been made to the legislature in their behalf. The wretched peasantry have been taught to consider their destitute condition as the effect of the political exclusions to which, as Catholics, they are subject; and not, as in truth it is, of the vicious social system under which they have the misfortune to live, as occupiers of the soil of Ireland.

VOL. XXXIII. NO. LXVI.

H H

ART.

ART. IX.-1. Tremaine; or the Man of Refinement. 3 vols.

1825.

2. Matilda, a Tale of the Day. 1 vol. 1825.

3. Granby, a Novel. 3 vols. 1826.

THESE three popular works have so many points of resem

blance that we are naturally led to consider them together. 'Tremaine,' the first, is not a novel of action, nor does it present any pictures of passion; it is rather a story serving to string together the expressions of certain feelings and opinions; and in this respect resembles, though it is very inferior to them in its portraiture of manners, some of the productions of the Edgeworth family. We should say that it was the work of a polished and sensible rather than of a very brilliant mind; but the book shall speak for itself; and we will first give a survey of the story and afterwards some remarks on the opinions which it inculcates.

It opens with something of dramatic effect in the arrival of Tremaine at his country-seat. He is a man of fortune and accomplishments, and of distinction in the fashionable and political world. From these, however, he had retired, not very well contented with either. His situation and the feelings arising out of it are well portrayed in a chapter, which, though it is but the amplification of the sketch in one of our essayists of a restless man who changes professions and is blown about by every wind of opinion, is so well dilated and detailed, that we recommend it to very especial consideration.

He had also tried love, but a man like Tremaine was even less likely to be satisfied in his pursuit of love than in that of fortune. Yet though often disgusted in his nearer approaches to women, he received a strong impression at last from a natural and pleasing girl, whom he accidentally stumbled upon in a pretty cottage in France, where she was residing with her mother. Concealing his 'wealth, in his romance, his eccentricity, or his refinement, call it what you please, he conceived the strange design of experimenting upon the strength of his young friend's attachment to him, removed from all extraneous influence, even of hope.' The experiment at first promises very happy results; the young lady loves him for himself, and his happiness seems assured. It is, however, undermined, and at last blown up. He accidentally learns that his mistress's is not a virgin heart; she had had a former predilection for a young officer, the companion of her childhood, which had, however, entirely yielded to her passion for Tremaine. This preference was moreover shown to Tremaine under circumstances highly flattering. The captain, who had been some time separated from

the

the young lady, had in the interval received a large accession of fortune, while his rival was preferred, though avowedly a lover of uncertain expectations, and supposed to be dependant upon the bounty of a relation. This is not sufficient to satisfy the fastidious man's delicacy. He hears that the captain is expected, and acting upon what he considers as a principle of honour, determines to leave him a fair field. He accordingly makes a somewhat ambiguous, though not dishonourable, retreat, which he justifies awkwardly by letter. It is not very wonderful that a young lady, left under such circumstances, and under the tutelage of a motherstudious of her interests, should revert to her old admirer. She does so; and, as a piece of poetical justice, is by him abandoned. in his turn. But our business is with Tremaine.

Nauseated with love, he determines to study men and manners; and makes the tour of Europe. He returns; and is elected a member of parliament. The result of his attempts in the House of Commons is well imagined. A fastidious person can hardly ever succeed in this place, where a man must, for the most part, blunder into excellence; where he can only thoroughly form himself by practice and failure; and must make himself a useful speaker, as a boy makes himself a useful horseman. He He may undoubtedly make a set speech without much risk; and so may the boy put his horse through practised paces, and prance about a riding-school; but in business, as in the field, the comparison holds good. Tremaine is now disgusted by the success of some of those, who owe it to their very coarseness and insensibility. He is disposed, by natural habits, connexions, and illhumour, to oppose administration; but a man of refinement, the essence of whose character consists in taking nice distinctions, is not fitted for a party-man. A well-imagined accident, however, overrules him; he receives a severe chastisement from the late Mr. Perceval, and, in his anger, enlists with the opposition. He is not happier in his new connexion. The leader of the Whigs plays him a shrewd trick, and he beats a retreat into Northamptonshire. He goes off, however, with a flourish of

trumpets.

Tremaine gave a farewell dinner to his friends, in which professors of politics, professors of belles lettres, and professors of good breeding were pleasantly mixed. The savoir vivre' (non meus hic sermo) shone out on this occasion with a splendour seldom equalled; and it was ob served, that the master of the feast was never less listless or splenetic, and never seemingly in such good humour with the world as while thus in the act of taking leave of it—perhaps for ever. Two days after he arrived at Belmont."

We always hail the arrival in the country, of the hero of a work

of fiction, and the author usually achieves much by dispatching him thither. It is attended with much the same effects as turning a horse out to grass, and produces salutary influence both upon body and mind. Don Quixote is never so delightful as at the Duke's, nor Gil Blas as at Lirias, nor the Spectator as at Sir Roger de Coverley's; and Falstaff eating a dish of cheese and carraway-pippins in Master Shallow's orchard appears to us as a giant refreshed. This charm, however, cannot be expected in the rustication of Tremaine: for á distinguished statesman once well observed that it required a great stock of health and animal spirits to bear the country.' A picture of fastidiousness must be wearisome every where, but is most so amidst green fields. Tremaine's retirement opens with new disgusts and new disappointments. A squire calls on him in long breeches and short boots, with many strings and straps. These prisca vestigia fraudis disconcert him. The conversation of the visitor rivets the impression he has received, and Tremaine seems to adopt something like Hall Wharton's opinions, and

'to think

Alike about a country dog and squire;
That both are only fit to sleep and stink
By their own fire;

And when awake are only good

To yelp and halloo in a wood.'

His domestic duties do not satisfy him more, his steward bothers him about bills, and his bailiff about bulls. The listless calm which succeeds this short sea of troubles, and which had threatened to overwhelm his ill-found bark before she was yet fairly anchored, is as distasteful to the man of refinement: and in the absence of worse vexations, he discovers that he has done wrong in fixing his residence in Northamptonshire, in a small place which had not been the usual residence of his ancestors, but which he had ornamented at a great expense. He accordingly retrogrades again, to speak in the cant of modern warfare, and falls back upon his family mansion-house in Yorkshire. To this immediate resolution he is indeed determined by an accident. He falls sick, and his physician seeks to cure him rather by a change of life than by a course of medicine. That he did well in this we have little doubt; but we cannot help thinking that he would have aided his operations by physic; and we suspect indeed that Tremaine's was what is termed a calomel-case,' and as likely to have received benefit from Dr. Gooch, or Dr. Holland, as from the Reverend Doctor Evelyn, of Evelyn Hall; a gentleman, who afterwards disciplines his morbid and melancholy humour. A Dr. Asgill, however, who was at that time the patient's physician,

certainly

certainly played his part well, as far as moral discipline could go. He made Tremaine read his letters; and to make a man read his letters in the jaundice is no small achievement. Now among these was one on business which required his presence in Yorkshire. This was a glorious opportunity, and not to be neglected. In Italy, make the melancholy man-who thinks he has at some time or other been bit by a tarantula-dance, and you cure him. In England, make the melancholy man-who thinks he has seen the vanity of all flesh-travel, and you do the same. Tremaine is trundled off into Yorkshire, in a barouche and four, which, we rejoice to say, is not in this place, as ou another occasion, denominated une barouche à quatre chevaux.'

Though we did not follow Tremaine into Northamptonshire with much pleasure, we contemplate him with more satisfaction in Yorkshire. It is difficult indeed, except when the St. Leger Stakes are the order of the day, for any one to keep his ill-humour in the kind circle of that hospitable county, whither we should willingly carry a foreigner as exhibiting the picture of society which is the most creditable to England. Fortunately Tremaine did not arrive at the only evil moment; to wit, about the time of the Doncaster races; did not hear the balance of betting books struck, nor see priests metamorphosed into horse-jockies. On the contrary, he was lucky enough to fall in with an excellent and sagacious man, a specimen of a better and more natural union, that of the rector and the squire, showing a happy resemblance to the graft of the plum upon the sloe, the excellence of the fruit being by no means injured by the rudeness of the stock. This rational man, with

A healthy body and a virtuous mind,'

is a good contrast to Tremaine, and having been the friend of his youth, though somewhat his senior, applies himself to the correction of his sickly propensities with as much judgment as assiduity. Some exceptions, however, might be taken to his (Dr. Evelyn's) dietetic system. He finds out that sour wines such as sauterne and claret disagree with his patient, and in this he may be right; yet we cannot but question the propriety of making a bilious convalescent dine under a tree, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and-Oh! dura messorum ilia!—of drenching a weak stomach with that mixture of port wine and milk, which is denominated syllabub. But the doctor of divinity, like the doctor of physic, relies principally upon moral medicines and a very pretty and amiable daughter (the father was a widower) is a most efficacious assistant. If she reared poultry, she read Guarini's Pastor Fido, (we wish she had preferred Tasso's Aminta,) and had 'a pretty soft hand and an airy foot.' Moreover, her cheek was dimpled