REVIEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1162, 7 March 1874, Page 6

REVIEWS.

Pascar&l : Only a Story. By Ouida.

"We can foretell, with tolerable accuracy, the hard things that will be said when the Words at the head of this paper meet the eye of anyone of that numerous and Avellmeaning class who fancy that the best way to treat any objectionable subject is to keep it oub of sight, and who seem to believe, like little children, that by simply shutting their eyes upon bogey they can at once put an end to his existence. Why, they will ask, contribute to the undesirable notoriety of a writer -who, in her sins against good taste and morality, has copied the worst features of tile worst school of French writers of fiction ? Why, when 1 there 1 are 1 Scores of novelists of irreproachable virtue at hand, go out of the way to notice one who has long been a bye-word and a reproach. Surely, it was not necessary to dip into these muddy waters, when the pure, if insipid, streams of Mr 3 Henry Wood were within easy reach. We must confess that, at first sight, there appears to be much force in these objections, yet, without attempting to lighten by a grain the weight of an indictnipnt agaiiist Ouida, every word of Which is but too true, we think that we shall be able to show good cause why her works, with all their faults, should not be passed over in silence.

]v the first place, their enormous popularity is beyond dispute. Not in England alone, but wherever the English tongue ia spoken, her novels are sold by thousands. And be it remembered that the class of readers to whom she appeals thus successfully is far above that which revels in the wateiy sensationalism of such productions as the London Journal. Some sentimental ladies' maids ami romantic haberdashers apprentices may be numbered among her admirer?, but, as a rule, she enlists the sympathies of a body of readers much superior to these in point of culture. Indeed, without an education seA'eral degrees higher than that which is usually carried away from an elementary school, it would be impossible to understand, even dimly, so allusive a writer, and one who makes so constant a display of what passes, with the half-taught, for erudition. The 13etsy Janes and the Jeameses whogloit over the thrilling but simple romances of our penny literature, must be repelled by the parade of learning which, nevertheless, is of a quality to attract a grade of readers just sufficiently abrve the former to "snatch a fearful joy " from the perusal of works so thickly studded with the most imposing classical and historical allusions, of which they can make out just enoiigh to conclude that they must be vastly line. It cannot be denied that, in point of morality, " Pascaivl "' stands higher than any of its predecessors. Though far from being white, it is at least whitey-brown. But, alas !it is also dull. Surely our sympathy is due to an authoress of whose first attempts at eschewing sack and living clearly | one is constrained to say that as she begins to be virtuous she also begins to be stupid. We miss, in Pascarel, the wickedness of Puck, but we miss also the brilliancy that half-redeemed the first half, at least, of that very reprehensible work. And so, again, the plot of Pascarel, if plot it can be called, is far less objectionable than that of <l Under Two Flags," where the incident upon which the whole story turns is a wretched intrigue with a married woman. Yet there is nothing in the former work that can compare with the striking, though over- coloured, pictures of life in Algeria. The scene of "Pascarol'' is laid, at the outset, in Verona, and though the opening chapters are, for a reason that we shall afterwards endeavour to explain, by far the best in the book, they afford more than one striking example of what we mean by a flimsy parade of learning. Ouida has discovered, possibly in the congenial pages of Lampiore, that Catullus was called Veronensis, and that his mistress was called Lesbia ; bo, upon the strength of these two meagre scraps of lore, she affects a most amusing intimacy with the old Roman — of whose writings, we will ventnre to say, she has never read one line. So, again, having consulted some guide-book, and having found therein the names of several worthies who were more or less — but ehieily more — remotely connected with Verona, she lugs in, iqyropot; of nothing, Marius and Thcodoric, Oarolus Magnus and Vitruvius, and, as a trump card, Paolo Veronese. This formidable array of great names would be just tolerable if she would writo them down once for all, and have done with them ; but, further on, the process ia repeated at Bologna, and a still larger procession of the illustrious dead is trotted out for our behoof when we come to Florence. It will be as well to get over at once the ungrateful task of stripping off these borrowed plumes ; and by way of showing how little of real scholarship underlies all this polyglot embroidery, which disfigures almost every page of this authoress's writings, we will give an instance of gross blundering in each of the three tongues that she most affects — of blundering in two cases at least so complete and elaborate, that it cannot bo explained away by any charitable hypothesis of "printer's errors." in "Chandos" we find "Thalassos ! thalassos !" She means Thalalte, and the repetition of the barbarism shows pretty clearly that it is not the printor who is at fault. So much for her Greek. In the same book wo come to " Foyor ! foyer ! " intended, as wo conjecture, for fuycz, fityez ! So much for her Trench. In the first chapter of " Paacarel," we have " Vivea lapidibus." So much for her Latin.

But it is time that we gave our readers some inkling of the story, the thread of which is so perpetually broken by long and wearisome episodes and rhapsodies that it is no easy matter to disentangle it, and present it in such a form that it can be comprehended. The earlier portion of the book depicts the childish life of the heroine, a Miss Tempest Or Tempesta, the illegitimate daughter of a worthless English gambler and an Italian singer. Neglected by her father, and almost entirely dependent upon the affectionate care of an aged nurse, Mariuccia, the beautiful and high gifted child leads a queer Bohemian sort of life amongst the artists of Verona.^ who take her for a model, and make much of her. The scene in which she is driven by the intolerable pressure of want to iing in the street 3, during Carnival time, is in the author's best manner.

Her song was an old familiar street song of the Lombard population. Far and wide on the clear wintry air, keen with the hard breath of the mountains, the strong pure notes of a voice in its earliest youth rang out like a hell over the muttering and shouting of the people. Those nearest to her listened, and hushed down the noise around them ; the silence spread and spread .softly, like the circles in the water where a stone is thrown : the boisterous gaiety dropped to a rjiiieter key ; in a httle while ail the square was still. . . . When at length the song ceased, the throng in tho great square screamed, Laughed, almost cried with delighted applause ; the people in the balconies clapped their hands, the loungers at the cafe dashed their hands on the marble tables till their glasses i\ing, the masquers and meny-makeis shrieked a hundred times— T'/ra VUccello.

The boy marked the propitious hour. He took the read berretta off his curly head and advanced among the multitude, and with the infinite grace of his nation— the grace which is so perfect because so utterly unconscious of itself— stretched out his hand to them for charity : "Some httle thing, signori, for the love of God. There ia an old woman at home who wants bread." .... The answer came from a hundred hands at onoe— from above and around, on every side. Paper money fluttered to her feet, loose silver rolled like sugar-plums ; here and there n, piece of gold flashed like ;; star tluough the air ; flowers and toys and gilded horns of sweatmeats, and ribboned playthings of the pageantry were all showered upon them from the balconies above and from tho throngs around, until their arms ached with stretching out for the gifts, he his red beretta, and .she her amber skiits.

At this point we are introduced to the hero Pascarel, who accosts the little damsel after this melo-dramatic fashion :—: —

Ha uncovered his head as he approached, and the sun fell on her face— the dark, poetic, historic face of Florence. "Ah! c.na donnulla," ho murmured softly with n smile, " money I have none to give you until T muko some more tonight. I too am an artist, and so — it goes without words— l too am poor. Nevertheless, let me thank you." fie dropped a ring into her umber skirts, amongst the violets of Parma and the daffodils of Tuscany, and turned away and vanished in the throng.

A certain mystery hangs about this personage, who, during a full third of the book, reappears atunexpected moments, in the most bewildering fashion, either to escort the little lady to herhome, or to extricate herfrom some difficulty into which her roving propensities have led her, or merely to deliver himself of some sage aphorism, such as " Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged." The son of a tinker, and by profession a strolling player, this inscrutable being is, to our mind, the most unmitigated bore that it has been our lot to encounter in the whole range ef fiction. Bulwer achieved something porteitous in this line. The peripatetic philosopher Waife, with his dog Sir Isaac Newton, in " What will he do with it ? " was no mean bore ; and the wandering painter in " Kenelm Chillingly " was grand, considered as a nuisance and a weariness to the sj^irit. But Pascarel pours forth the most melliiluous nonsense for whole pages — nay, in one instance, with very slight assistance from the admiring heroine, he melodiously maunders through an entire chapter.

i But we have so far caught the discursive spirit of our authoress as to have left the heroine standing in the streets encunibered with gold and sweetmeats, but half famished. Eeturning to her starving nurse with the spoils, she is disgusted to learn that she has disgraced herself by singing in public for money. Instead of buying a loaf with her newly-gotten treasure, or even munching — as a true Italian would — some of her sugar-plums, she rushes forth into the streets again, makes a fool of herself at a masked ball, and is rescued from insult by the chivalrous tinker's son, who escorts her home with all the grace, and more than the volubility, of a Sir Charles Grandison. Finding the old nurse dead — of voluntary starvation, as far as wo can make oat— and being now utterly friendless and exposed to insult, she flies from Verona — she doesnot seem to know very clearly whither — in search of her father. Robbed of her all at Florence, she once more stumbles upon Pascar6l, who with a brown little dai>cinggirl, Brunetta, who passses f or his sister, is pursuing his calling in those parts. Then the action of the story stands still for more than a hundred pages, which are filled ixp with the most insufferably tedious rhapsodies on things in general. But when a hero and heroine, especially in Italy, take to wandering about together day after day, quite unaccompanied, it is easy to see that matters will end pretty much in this fashion :

"We stood thoro, close together, with tho stars above us, and on tho cool night air the scent of the crushed grapes and fallen loayos. Tn tho soft gloom, his eyes burned into mine, his arms drew me closer ; his lips touched my hands, my cheoks, my throat," &c, The pseudo sister, Brunetta, not unnaturally, takes excoption to these goings on, and informs the young * acl y °* ter own reft * re "

lations with Pascarel, expressing her wonder, which we i-hare to the full, at her stupidity in not firiding all this out before. "Nobody but a baby like you would ever have believed that folly/ s£e exclaims, with pardonable warmth. "How you 1 shoitld ever have believed it, I cannot thiuk. There have been thousands and thousands of thing 3 that ought to have told you, if you had not been as blind as an owl in the daylight." After this heart-rending discovery, need it be said that the heroine has a brain- fever ? She turns up next in ths hpuse of an old stocking-darner, who has charitably taken' her in. But it would be an injustice oo our authoress to suppose that she puts the matter in that commonplace way. No. "The old creature sits sewing on at her silken hose ; there was delicate carving all about the window, and a great shield, with a marquess's crown above — it had been a palace in the old days," &c. It is not long before she again meets with Pascarel, whom jealousy induces her to reject, though she appears to be excessively sorry that sne! ha'a refused him the moment his back is turned.

Her father, whom we had almost forgotten, now appears on the scene as a wealthy nobleman. By the help of Pascarel he discovers and reclaims his daughter, who leads for a time a life of satin and brocade. Being persecuted, however, by the unfortunate suit of a cousin, who remembers her a ragged little vagabond at Verona, and having refused him with what he considers unnecessary acrimony, she learns front him the secret of her illegitimacy, and runs away— she is always running away from somebody or something. Atter much campaigning in North Italy, in which Pascarel of course dis tinguishes himself, ' as strolling players usually do, the much exercised pair meet about the last page, and a more satisfactory state of things ensues, her own account of the matter being this :—"I: — "I wind my arms about him where we stand, and lean my cheek on his : say rather, only a httle laughter and a great love." We are left in some uncertainty — an uncertainty that is deepened by our recollection of Signor Pascarel's previous irregularities — as to whether the hero and heroine are ultimately married, but let us give the lady the benefit of the doubt. Such is an outline of this wire-drawn and most improbable story, the perusal of which has cost us many a yawn. And yet thousands of aj>parently sane and not unintelligent people can be found to devour it greedily. We can offer no explanation whatever of this phenomenon. One can only &ay of this most indulgent part of the public — non et/uidem inviden — miror nuujis. We said that we thought we could offer an explanation of the superiority of the first few chapters to the end of the work. Let our readers recall the opening pages of Consuelo, whsre the life of the heroine and her young companion is so exquisitely described by a perfect mistress of her art. Let Verona be substituted for Venice, aud the coarse touch and blurred outlines of Ouida for the delicacy and grace of George Sand, and the mystery will be explained. " What was here was not new."

So the episode of the betrayed and soured composer Ambroglio is little more than a travesty of George Sand's admirable portrait of Porpora, to which it bears just the amount and species of resemblance that a copy of a Turner made by a sign-painter would bear to the original.

Genercd Sketch of European History. By E. A. Fbeem.ut, D.C.L., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London : MacMillan and Co., 1573.

Nothing promises better for the progress of education in the future than that our leading men in the various branches of Imtnan knowledge have at length begun to write school books adapted not only for advanced students, but for the upper classes of the primary schools. Nothing has been more melancholy than the miserable fragmentary and objectless compilations placed in the hands of the children composing those classes, where bits of geology jostled fragments of poetry, and moral tales were freely mixed up with chemical experiments. History was dealt with in these works much in the same manner ; they were larded with isolated narratives of important events, which were shorn of all interest by ignoring their connexion with previous history a,nd subsequent events, and by the entire strangeness of the names of the actors and places. The school histories were scarcely better. Diy unmeaning catalogues of names and dates unmercifully follow each other page after page, and no attempt is made to show how one event led to another, or that the personages of old times were men and women of like passions with ourselves. It was this absence of all human interest in these books, which in all probability led the lato Mr J. S. Mill, in his inaugural address at Sfc. Andrews, to argue against the teaching of history in schools, and has caused more than one experienced schoolmaster of our acquaintance to declare that the historical novels of Scott and Bulwer, and Shakespeare's historical plays, are the best histories for boys and girls. This much we can affirm that our love of history, which has grown with our growth and strengthened with our years, dates from our tenth year, when a whole summer's day, from morning till dark, our new friend Ivanhoe was our companion beneath a spreading birch tree. Whence, indeed, can a child gain a more vivid impression of the state of things produced by the Conquest, than from those charming pages ? There are the two hostile races, dwollei'B in the same land, living face to face. Where ia the luxuriant eager life of Eug-

land, rev'ivi'% from tlta long winter ol the middle ages, be ttef fainted than in Kenilworth? King Jamie we* kiiow 1 intimately, and how Scots appeared to En'glisbmen, ana , England to the Scots from the Fot'tiii^ei of i Nigel. No disquisition on the civil wars tip* pears 1 dull to the student who has mastered" WoodSfso^k and Peveril of the Peak in his early yoiitnV Jn- a 1 thousand pages the Covenanters, with t&'eir stern unyielding faith, the desperate gailatttry 6f -fihe Royalists* the devotion of the clans, a'sflt the intrigufes of the leaders on both sides, live with *• vigour 1 that infuses life into the dry bones of bfetoyy, W&o ever conceived of Loui3 XL, tivaft i'new nob Quentin Durward ; or realized , the ''Scot abroad," to whom Quentin's worthy uncle, rmd sfout Major Dugald! Dalgetty were strainers 1 JP^or must w© from our catalogue of hisfiori'es- for t&e young omit "Esmond," and "The Virginians." Except one burrows into the biogra"pMes, and letters, and journals of the time3 — a -workfor mature years and full leisure — where ds& shall we realise so vividly the social life of the diay'a o"f good Queen Anne and the Georges ?' True, historical accuracy is often departed from' ; bti£ that we m&f correct in) after days ; tfr fc^'en 1 if we' do not, what matter ? We have" se'etf the actors in' the great events of old in the 1 flctih. The dt'amatic truth is preserved ; and", Itjtaft is onef chief aim of historical study, vrf. ttteve watched human hearts beating with o'lf emotions under a garb very different from that of the much -vaunted nineteenth centary, in days when individuality went for smnethirig, and Mrs Gamp was not. But these, though the best of books for schoolboys, are not schooi-books. It would be desecration to call them 00.- No boy worth his salt requires the shadow of compulsion to drive hha to their pages. Mr JVeetnaln's book is emf* nently a schoolbook, and w^tf hereby ventitro strongly to recommend it to the jfre-w Zoa"-" land University Council as a text-koo% for" European History more within the capacity of candidates of sixteen, and less punishing to the parental purse, than Hallam, Creasy, and Bryce. It may be procured for ss, while the authorised text-books would stand the recalcitrant father in at least £5, and after all be a long way over the head of his son. Mr Freeman's object has been by a rapid conspectus of European History to provide a framework in which hereafter may be set more detailed studies of particular periods of sections of history. Mr Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, for instance, which is named by the University authorities, is one of the best historical works in our language, but its value is doubled when we learn briefly from Mr Freeman the causes which, from the remotest times, led up to the Constitution of that Empire, and its general relations with the world beyond its limits. Mr Freeman teaches us its functions and anatomy, of which we are perhaps apt to lese sight in the full and finished work of Mr Brj oe. Mr Freeman has in fact accomplished a feat which, until the best men — the men of original research— entered the lists, seemed hopeless ; he has produced a book which the most advanced student of history, and any intelligent schoolboy of fifteen, may read with equal pleasure and profit. In Greece, in Germany, throughout Europe, but above all in England, he has proved himself the foremost English historian long ago. His present taskia indeed humbler, but not less difficult or useful. No one who had not by dint of lifelong labour and original research mastered European history in detail as a whole, could have given us thi3 "sketch" with its exact proportion, its perfect perspective, and its admirable unity. The mere abbreviator or compiler knows neither what to omit or what to retain. His task is to compress, not to exhibit the anatomy of his subject in a few leading characteristics. If a large map has to be reduced by a skilful hydrographer, say, for school purposes, he will seize on the marking features of the country, and boldly depict them. The bungler will insert much that is of inferior value, omit much that is cardinal, and after all present but an unintelligible blur. Mr Freeman's work is eminently one not to be judged of by quotation. A sample of that, the main merit of which is severe adherence to his preconceived plan, can give no more idea of its merits than a single brick of a wholo house. It can only bo judged as a whole. His plan ia simplo and true. He looks upon the whole history of our race, from its first appearance on the European stage to the great era of Christ and the first Emperors, as tending to the establishment of the Empire. The unity of _ tho Empire continued until it was Christianised, and then he traces the consolidation of the States of the modern world from the dissolution of the Empire. We have said, advisedly, that an extract by which to indicate the merits of the book was like a brick as a sample of a house. However, to prove the quality of tho material, wo will lay before our readers Mr Freeman's account of the growth of towns in the Middle Ages, it may be detached from the structure with less injury to itself than perhaps any other fragment wa could select, and well illustrates the lucidity and breadth of his treatment and the limpid clearness of his style :—: —

Another thing must here be mentioned which was of special importance at the time we havo just come ta. This was tho growing up of the towns into greater—in some parts into the very first— importance. In tho old state of thingsGreek and Roman— tho towns had, so to speak, been everything. Every freemnn was a citizen of some town or othor, nnd tho Roman dominion throughout was a dominion of ono city bearing rule over othor cities. The Teutonic settlements everywhere drove tho towns bnck. None of the Teutonic) nations were usod to a town life. Thoy looked upon the walls of tho towns as a prison. In Britain, our own forefathers, who knew notiling at all of Roman civilisation, seom at first.to.

have utterly destroyed the Roman towns, and it was not till some time after the first conquest that new English towns began to arise very often on the old Roman sites. In the other Provinces, the Goths, Franks, and other Teutonic settlers Hid ndt destroy the Roman towns, but they lost hruch of their importance and local freedom. But as civilisation began to grow again, new towns began to spring up, and the old towns to ■win back something of their old greatness. In Germany tho Saxon emperors were great founders of towns ; and both there and in other parts of the Empire the old and new towns alike gradually won for themselves great privileges, which made them almost independent within their own walls. And, as the Imperial power declined, and tho counts and dukes grew into sovereign princes, so in tho same way the free Imperial cities grew into sovereign commonwealths, acknowledging only the outward supremacy of the Emperor. And in many cases like the towns of old Greece and Italy they joined together in league for mutual defence. Thus in Northern Germany, the Hanseatic League— the league of the great trading towns— became a great power in all the Northern Seas, and often gave law to the If ings of Denmark and Sweden. But the part of the Empire where towns rose to the highest pitch of greatness, was Italy, especially the northern part. There, from the eleventh century onwards, tho towns, as we may say, became everything, just as they had been in old Greece. Here nearly the whole country was parted out among the dominions of the different cities, and the whole land became again an assemblage of commonwealths, independent of any power but that of the Emperor. But, though the freedom of the Italian towns became greater than that of the towns in Germany, it was not so lasting. In Germany a great many of the towns always kept their freedom, and three of them— the'Hansc towns of Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg -are supiuate commonwealths even now. But in Italy most of the cities fell, just as those of old Greece did long before, into the hands of native lords or tyrants, or into those of foreign princes. Thus it whs that Italy became divided, 01 rather grouped together, into the various principalities which have lately been joined together into the restored Kingdom of Italy. But a few Commonwealths conli ived to go on till the end of the last century, and one very small one— that of San Marino— remains still.

We think we need quote no more to convince our readers of Mr Freeman's power of combining brevity with clearness and, within due limits, thoroughness, or of his power of expressing his ideas in language that the simplesc may understand, and the most cultivated imitate with advantage. Very different this from the high-polite extracts, which foiin the staple of "Advanced Headers " and the like, which seem chosen mainly for the length of their words. It is no mean art to present in such pure and simple phrase, deep and complicated problems. It is the meanest of arts to att-rnpt to hide shallowness and poverty under the cloak of high-sounding phraseology. Weneed onlyaddthat Mr Freeman's sketch appears only as the framework to be filled up by the histories of the several countries ot Europe, which arc entrusted to separate writers, though he edits and is rtponsible for the whole series. Volumes on England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Gi e«co are already in preparation. If Mr Freeman's fellowiab.mrers are inspired with only a measure of his spirit, this will be one of the most valuable series, as regards the intellectual culture, to those who have not the time or opportunity to consult the originals of history, which our age has seen, at all events in England.