REVIEW.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5015, 22 February 1878, Page 2

REVIEW.

SIR GILBERT LEIGH.* Mr. Rees's novel, Sir Gilbert Leigh, is certainly worth reading. There is much no doubt that can, with truth, be said of it, which is not altogether in the way of commendation. As a work of art, it is deficient in unity. The plot, which is a flimsy and impossible one, is of use principally as a thread on which to hang a variety of scenes of peril and adventure, in Australia, in India, and on the deep. Still, it has the great merit of abounding in incident. After the reader has got j over the preliminary chapters, which are not the most enticing parts of the book, his interest will not flag, at any rate, till he reaches the pacific shores of Great Britain. It is in the description of stirring scenes that the writer excels, and in the descriptions of quiet uneventful life that his special weaknesses become most prominent. He has something of the talent of a Mayne Reid, but none of the talent of a Trollope. The reader is first introduced to the hero of the story under the assumed name of Denis Markham. He has, owing to an extraordinary, and, as we \ think, impossible concourse of circumstances, been convicted of a forgery of which he was entirely guiltless, and transported to Australia. Before his arrival even, he had been liberated, but was, or believed himself to be, under a stigma. To obtain evidence which will free himself from the stigma, and convict the true offender is the purpose of his life at the time when the reader meets him. It would be unfair to our author further to reveal the details of his plot. It is sufficient to say that, after some time spent in Australia, the pursuit of Markham's purpose takes him to India, where he goes through the worst times of the great Mutiny. The Australian part of the novel contains a story of an attack on a station by bushrangers, and of the loss of two children in the bush, told, the latter especially, in a vivid and touching man-

ner. We have also the description of the steps by which _ a young man, in the first instance well intentioned, goes to the bad, and ends by embezzling his employer's money, and finally, by committing suicide, an incident unfortunately not without numerous precedents in the realities of colonial life. These stories, however, — for all the : . connection they have with the plot — might just as well be printed separately. In the Indian part of the novel, the state of things immediately preceding the Mutiny, and some typical scenes from.thehis- [ tory of that great disaster, are given with much force and vividness. The writer is a very strong believe? in the popular theory of the fighting capacities of his countrymen. One Englishman, even a wounded and disarmed Englishman, is evidently in his view a match for a whole army of Orientals. The book, all through, we may remark, is permeated with a warm religious sentiment of the ultra-evangelical type. ' Even the hero is not allowed to finish his career without undergoing "conversion," as Messrs Moody and Sankey would have understood the term. In these days of the loosening of so many of those ties which have hitherto bound the various classes of society together, the existence of such sobering and elevating views of life in a politician of radical tendencies, will be recognised, we think, not without satisfaction. We need hardly remark that there is not a word of truth in the report that Sir Gilbert Leigh means Sir George Grey. Sir George Grey's name, however, is introduped in the text, and an appendix is added which is devoted exclusively to a description of portions of that gentleman's career. We shall allude to this separately on a future occasion. As Markham and his friends are leaving Calcutta they find it all alive with freshly arrived troops. They were largely, as the writer says, troops which had called in at the Cape of Good Hope when on their way to China, but had had their destination altered to India by an unusual exercise of the authority of Her Majesty's High Commissioner, Sir George Grey, who may thus, as Mr Bees maintains, claim to have contributed in an important manner to the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. We will subjoin a few specimens of Mr Rees' style, taken at random from various parts of his book. The following is by no means an exaggerated description of the manner in which fortunes were made in Victoria in the early days : — "I came here overland," continued Markham. "I had taken one of old Billy Wentworth's stations on the Murrumbidgee in '48, and as I heard Melbourne was arising place, I came to see for myself. I had not been in the place three days before I was asked to buy a property in the Prahran. It was heavily mortgaged, and the man who had mortgaged it wanted to get away to see his wife, who was reported dying in England. The mortgagee offered no obstacles, and as the first news of gold being found in California was then drawing away people from Australia to the Pacific coast, the owner was glad to get a pound an acre for hia interest. There were, a hundred acres, and I speculated a hundred pounds, the mortgage money being five hundred more. The rent of the ground paid the interest, and I heard nothing more of it until gold had been found at Fryer's Creek and Ballarat, and land round Melbourne began to rise in value. I then received an offer of a thousand pounds for my interest, which I declined, as I knew that property must still rise. Ultimately I came to town myself in '52, saw it, had it cut up into streets and allotments, and in '53 I sold half of it for thirty thousand pounds, and leased the other half for twenty years at a thousand pounds a year. Pretty good for a hundred pounds, wasn't it 1 # * * * But I did a better thing than either of these by buying gold. When the returns of gold first began to be large, the banks got irightened from some cause or another. I never could to this day understand it, but the banks really became alarmed either that the gold obtained was not of the value which the assayers gave it, or that there would be a fall in the price of the metal from a glutted market, or that the demand, for gold would cease. As I say, I don't know what it was, \ but, as a fact, the banks suddenly reduced the price of gold to two pounds ten and two pounds twelve an ounce. When this happened I was in Melbourne, and a fool might have seen the opportunity. Here was gold, a commodity of the absolute value in the market in London of £3 17s 6d an ounce, being hawked about at just two-thirds of its value. When I tell you that I saw the chance and took it, I merely say that I was not an ass. I raised all the money I could get. I mortgaged everything I had ; station, stock, property, and all, and raised from the Bank of New South Wales, whose manager and directors knew me well, thirty thousand pounds. With this, I bought twelve thousand ounces of gold. I shipped this to London, and all the charges for freight, insurance, and other matters only amounted to sixpence an ounce. And now I went to another bank and obtained an advance of two pounds an ounce on this very shipment. So two days after I had purchased and transmitted this parcel, I had again twenty-four thousand pounds to my credit. I again bought gold. Ten thousand ounces this time, overdrawing a couple of thousand pounds at this fresh bank, and sent this gold through them. I got another advance of twenty thousand pounds, and I now gave myself up to gold-buying; and advertised in all the diggings that I would receive gold and hold it in Melbourne for diggers and others, giving them credit for the current price. I thus went on buying and giving advances for nearly three months, when I had seventy thousand ounces of my own gold on the road to London, and about twenty thousand sent to me in answer to my advertisements ; then the business ceased, for the banks had received advices from home, and the price went up at one bound to three pounds sixteen an ounce. There was consternation among the gold-buyers ; these golden harvests are soon over. When I balanced up, my three months' gold-buying left me a credit of one hundred and eighteen thousand pounds. I touched one or two other things as well, which turned out wonderfully, and altogether, at the end of '55, I had made two hundred and fifty thousand pounds." The following is one of those apostrophic paragraphs of which the writer is somewhat too fond. After describing the prosperous condition of an industrious emigrant who had been a few years in the colony, he proceeds in a strain that would not, we think, be altogether to the taste of a portion of his constituency : — Oh ! reader, if thou canst do so, influence the industrious poor to turn from the overcrowded cities and country places of England to those favored lands where plenty crowns the labors of the honest, where every man may reasonably hope to have his own freehold to live in during the evening of his life, and to leave behind him to his children. To those who will work and save there is no place in the world like the colonies of England, and speaking of those I know — Australia and New Zealand — I say that the change from England to them, to the hardworkiug sober man is worth ten years of life. Strive then, 0 philanthropists, endeavoring to assist the down-trodden and oppressed hinds of Dorsetshire, and places of a kindred history, to leave a condition of bondage for the glorious liberty and plenty of the new Britain of the South. Millions upon millions of acres wait for the spade and plough. Himitable forests wave to every breeze. The wilderness in silent expectancy slumbers till the voices of men shall wake its echoes, and their hands draw forth its treasures for the sustenance and comfort of the sons and daughters of want. Peace and plenty offer their golden fruits to the industrious. Stay not, O lovers of men, your efforts. "Be not weary in well-doing ; for in due season ye shall reap, if ye faint not." In alluding to one of his secondary characters, a young man studying for the bar in Melbourne, he describes aspirations which we presume may be looked upon I as his own. He desired as soon as he could to enter the house of Assembly, for the purpose and hope of his life was to enter into Colonial Politics. In that arena he might be useful and happy. In that sphere, even move than if he were a member of Parliament in England, he could be of use. For he recognised the fact that the Colonies of Great Britain, especially the Australian Colonies, weje

destined rapidly to possess the wealth, the population, and the power of a great and ancient Empire. He saw not far off the day when many millions, of Anglo-Saxon people, a\ " eh » and contented, would people Australia, New Zealand, and the Islaads of the laeific, ever growing; in weajth. and I numbers. He dimly perceived the pq^ibility I of a federation, first of the Australian com. I munities, and ultimately of all English nations, in a magnificent union, which, hold, mg the greatest part of the habitable globe, and ever growing in numbers, and wealth, and power, must inevitably dominate and govern the whole world, till the * English flag and the English power would everywhere protect and cherish freedom, knowledge, and religion. I From the scenes of military adventure I with which the book abounds, we may I take the following. It is necessary to I premise that an English party of refugees I are holding an old fortress, where they I have their women and children The I time is after nightfall, when they are I apprised that a strong body of Sepoyb are I approaching. The drawbridge is down. I and the ropes have been cut by treaohery. I The handful of Englishmen have been I placed behind the guns, in a position I where, aided by the darkness, they areß invisible to the attacking party... Thel writer then proceeds — •■....■ No, sound was to be made nor shoV firedl all the word of command was given by Denial Markham. They were not kept long infl suspense. The tread of an advanoinoß column, although apparently made as sotfl as possible, was heard distinctly, and thcH eyes of the watchers saw in the starlight iH dark mass advancing stealthily up the roadß The head of the approaching troop was riefl more than fifty yards away, when it halted! while two or three dark forms crept warilJß up to the drawbridge, and seeing that thfl bridge was down, crept back with.the newsfl [t then came nearer and nearer still. Thß hands of the besieged held their rifles'. iiH readiness. Nearer came the Sepoys, anfl the long black line could be seen stretchinH down the road till it waa lost to sight ifl the distance. There were not less thafl three hundred men. N» word of ' commanH was given, and the suppressed excitenkeiM became maddening. They approached ftM bridge— still no sound.. The first files steppcH on the floor of the drawbridge, and passiifl over, passed under the shadow of the arcfl way. The clear loud voice of » Denis Marfl ham rang out like a trumpet, " Fire! " afl m an instant the flames leaped out from tM cannons mouths and from a score of riflJH The column suddenly stopped, swerved-™ and fro as the rifle bullets and cannon-s&oM swept through its ranks, and then sent U]S scream of surprise and terror, in which tH cries of the wounded mingled and w<fl lost. Wm The arrival of the refugees at Hwfl lock's camp brings put the writer's ligious vein at its best. ■ The air had grown comparatively cofl| the odours of spices and flowers were float^H lazily from the ruined and trampled gard^B near, and a sense of peace like the peaceH heaven, fell upon those who had been^H lately rescued from the very jaws of de JB Suddenly a voice, clear as a bell, andct^fl as the very night itself, but a voice fromßß unseen speaker, broke the silence wit^B verse of a Christian hymn. flfl " There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose ah their guilty stains." The tones, well-known to the soldiers fl Lord Claudias Lancelot — they were thosJH General Havelock — came from the inte^H of the temple ; and, as Ned Brenton looflfl towards the building, he saw from e^^H opening that the place was lit up within.^H he looked, the curtain of Lady Alice's pJB quin was drawn aside, and as if. conanßH that Brenton was beside her, she idm^H asked, "where are we, Mr Brenton ?" H| "In safety, Lady Alice, at last; we afl| General Havelock's camp, and the voice^H hear is his, where, in the temple yonder,Mi and his soldiers are worshipping, not but God." w^A As he finished, the singing of the h^H commenced, and the praise of five huo^^| hearts rolled out into the evening air,^H upwards to the calm heaven above, it^^fl words of Cowper's glorious hymn. PerlJ^H never since they came from the broken t^H of the Poet of Olney, had the sublime vS| , a more reverent audience than those -^^H both within and without the t^satfe of i^^B -now joined or listened to that mghty sflH The verse ended, the General again out, — .<^^H " The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day ; And there may I, more vile than he, HH Wash all my sins away," Again the deep chorus rose, bearing its swelling stream the words which body the glad tidings of man's salvatio^H the blood of Christ. Once more the j^H was heard giving out the words. TherwH something indescribably grand in the ao^H| under the circumstances which surrou^^B them. Just snatched from destruction^^! now in safety,— wearied with toil and w^^B ing, coufusion and danger and confliot^^^B now in perfect quiet,— the land ful^Hj rebellion and bloodshed, yea, their very^H stained by the blood of battle, and tj^H selves surrounded by its dreadful incid^B| —yet listening to words which spoke of J^H lasting peace and love : beneath the shaHH vi a shrine of idolatry, impure, degra^^H and devilish sacred for centuries to thenism, — bat listening to a song 'nfl^l conveys the whole Gospel of God's lo^H man, a Saviour dying for a sinful wfl^B The two last verses fell sweetly upofl^B listeners' ears. -jj^Hj The appendix is largely devoted t«H denunciation of the Imperial GovernrHjH departments. There is something of^H in text also, though it is, on the wB|H fairly free from controversy. A Caj^H Hedley is made to express himself as^H lows after the massacre of Oawnpore :^^B "I have been in the service all my lifeHfl continued. ' ' My father died in it at Chi^^fl wallah ; my only broker at Moodkie. itt^H have we grudged our blood in the field, this is too much. Our wives and chil<^H| our sisters and our friends slangh^^H because the Government wants to savH^| money. May the curse of the orphans'^H fall," he continued now with vehem^^H "upon those who drew away the Enj^^fl troops from India, and made it possiU|^| this mutiny to take place ! • W«|^H trampled upon these people's ancient^H| judices, we have truckled to.their iniqu^^fl practices for the sake of gold. We lflH that they were a race of robbers and^^H derers ; we have armed and drilled i^^fl into soldiers, and then to save gjnne wrei^^H money, the Government of England, or^^H War Office, have taken away the whip 'vw^fl alone could keep these bloodhound in o^^H It's all very well to curse the niggers BB have actually done this, but curse Government which first inclined therJ^H do it, and then gave the opportuHH Historians will not accuse them, bec^^H they will not ace beyond official despat^^H but I — l will accuse them before the ment-seat of God of the murder of^^B children, and of my sister and of poor T^Bh widow." '^^1 We think we have given enough ii^H| above to tempt our readers to peruso^H book for themselves. We may take fIH well of our author in the meantime.