TROLLOPE'S TALES OF ALL COUNTRIES.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 67, 26 June 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

TROLLOPE'S TALES OF ALL COUNTRIES.

There are. some collections of works | of art which consist almost entirely ofj , the sketches which great paiuters have made as studies for large paintings. ? Very often, too, the painter has had no intention of working his sketch up into a great painting, but has meant it to be only something done to satisfy the whim of the moment, or to ascertain what the effect would be of some new ', feat of artistic skill, or merely to keep his hand in practice. But although the : angel, or girl, or baby who forms the ', subject of the sketch may have no particular object, yet if it comes from the pencil of a great master, connoisseurs value'it highly, both on account of its '. intrinsic merit, and also because it shows the versatility of the man they admire. They like to know how he works, and how many of the first ideas he has thought worthy or unworthy of being reproduced on the permanent [ canvas. Mr. Trollope's tal^s, a second ' series of which is now published, have the same sort of interest. He is a great roaster in one particular branch of fiction. In many other branches he is also successful, but in one he stands without a rival. He alone can describe young ladies — and especially young ladies in a state of flirtation or love — as they really are, or at least as they really seem to a calm and dispassionate observer. He can sketch their characters, and paints their ways, and reveal their thoughts, and make them natural, pleasant, and easy, — not painting them as at all too good, or discreet, or wise, and yet throwing over them the air of being ladies, and making us respect them while we are amused by them. Above all, he can describe proposals. lie can make them in all sorts of forms, and have them rejected or accepted with every description of appropriate remark. This is a great feat. It is almost as hard to write a good proposal about imaginary people as to make one in the flesh to a real girl. Mr. Trollope, however, almost always succeeds ; but he succeeds because he takes great pain 3, and does not shrink from going, at considerable detail, into all that is said, or should be said, or might be said on such occasions. Nor does he succeed in his larger works without making many minor efforts which give him practice, and allow him to try ou a small scale whether a particular sort of young lady, going through a particular sort of love-making, is likely to answer in one of his more important productions. Brummell's servant was met coming down stairs with three dozen white cravats, each slightly crumpled, and said, •' These are our failures." It would be too strbng to say of these I "Tales of all Countries" that they are Mr. Trollope's failures, but they%are such first faint sketches of young ladies in different states of mind, and behaviour in different ways to young gentlemen, as he had not cared to work out at length in a serial. One specimen is that of a youns lady whose father is a clergyman in Devonshire, and who is called the Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne. She is a study of a girl at once reserved and quiet, and yet full of passion and of high pride, and all her qualities are brought \ out by her loving and agreeing to marry a gay young captain whose fate leads him to the simple region where she dwells. At first he is desperately in love ; but she is sensible and cautious, and although she likes him, she bids him go to the gay world for a few months before he makes up his mind that he would like a country girl. He returns enamoured as ever, and meets her as she is walking alone on a fine summer evening. There is no attempt on the part of the writer to shun the conversation which must ensue. Mr. Trollope quite revels in putting out in full, and in. the detail of question and answer observed in Blue Books all that the gentleman has to say to the lady, and all that the lady has to say to the gentleman. The lady is loose and trifling at first, and will not give him a serious answer ; but at last he brings her to give an answer, and then, when she has once confessed her love, she allows her hidden passion free play and lets him know how she idolises him. Thus ends the long summer day ; but when this gallant captain retires to his bed, be thinks over his wooing, and begins to be not quite sure that he is as happy as he thought he was. He is a little doubtful whether she will do in London, and, forgetting her long reserve and hesitation, he has an uneasy feeling that she has been a little too demonstrative in telling how she loves him. Impetuous young ladies may undoubtedly read this story with profit ; and the parson's daughter is quite ready to repair her mistake when, in the course of a day or two, she begins to ' perceive that her lover has a certain air of patronage in his manner to her, and ''"conveys an impression that he thinks h^e is doing rather a magnanimous thing. She is quiet for a day or two, to make sur^ that she is not misjudging him, but then^&he. fire^ up, and tells him thatshe gives him quite as much as he can give her, for she gives him her heart, and nothing but hearts are of worth. Next morning she follows up the stroke by ordering him to go with her to a sum-mer-house, wbere she explains to him her views, and offers to release him from his engagement. She could not even then believe that he would not be overpowered by so great a blow ; but he quietly says, " With . all my heart," and so all is over between them. It is a nice touch of art that, before she leaves him, she takes his band and kisses if. These are the sort of touches which make ub imagine, or recognise, that Mr. Trollope knows what girls are like. Another .'study is that of a German yovng ladVj who behaves as German

ladies, are, we suppose, accustomed to do, and who is pleasant, and with a kind of heroism, but who is also more undisturbed and practical than her lover likes. This lover is a young Englishman who has come out to learn business in the banking-house of which the father and the uncle of the lady are the proprietors. Of course he falls in love with Isa, who, of course, knows he is in love with her. But she has so much to do in the way of business for him, as he is a lodger in her father's house, ami she is so business-like and calm, that two years steal away before he tells his tale. At last he finds an opportunity and a tongue, and goes through it very nicely. Isa tranquilly remarks thatbhe must have a day to think over it. To his surprise, he finds his offer the subject of a regular family debate, which is conducted freely without his presence being an obstacle. His proposal seemed to be considered exactly as if it had been an offer to take another sitting-room at a slightly-increased rent ; and Isa, though quite willing thai", metaphorically speaking, his room should be let, was also quite willing that the best arrangements possible for all parties should be made. The discussion ends by an agreement that everything shall go on as it is for a few months, and Isa explains to her admirer that " We are not betrothed as yet, you know, and perhaps we may never be so." To ' which he not unnaturally replies, "Isa." The months pass away ; relatives are applied to without success ; and the result of the final deliberation is, that Herbert is told he may either be betrothed to Isa and wait four years to be married, or let the thing come to an end at once. Isa is quite ready to acquiesce in this, but Herbert thinks it hard on him, and finds it still harder that Isa does not think it hard, lie asks her whether she really loves him, J and with a fine power of analysing and stating her feelings, she replies, 'I do not love you so that I need make every one around us unhappy because circumstances forbid me to marry you. That sort of love would be baneful ; and thus waiting would not make me unhappy. I should go on as I do now, and be contented." Herbert's remark is — "Oh, heavens ! " Afterwards Isa warms up, and teases her uncle into letting Herbert be admitted as a partner, and in this part of her behaviour she shows romance as well as courage. Still, to English readers, the parson's daugl ter is a dearer type of a possible wife than ' this too tranquil German. These are good girls, but Mr. Trollope can draw naughty girls too. One of the most amusing stories in the collection tells of a gentleman who travelled about the Continent with a grownup daughter and a young second wife, and who kept his wife's jewels and his money in a box. This box was the great object of thought to the whole family, and they were overwhelmed by their anxiety lest it should be lost. At length it is lost. The party — accompanied by a young gentle2»an, a casual travelling acquaintance, who is supposed to tell the story — land at Bellaggio, and when Mr. Greene and the ladies are established in their rooms and come to count their baggage, the one precious package is missing. TLe whole house is thrown into confusion ; Mrs. Greene denounces everybody as a thief; and the unfortunate young gentleman is persuaded or ordered by her and her stepdaughter, with whom he has struck up an incipient flirtation, to go off to Como and Milan to see if he can find it. His search is unavailing, and he returns. Soplionisba, as the lndy of his passing affection is called, rewards him with a confidential history of her family, consisting principally of abuse of her step-mother. Soon, however, things are changed, for Sophonisba takes.it j on her to assure her papa that their ; young friend will Jend them all they want. This frightens him, and when they go to the Serebelloni Gardens, to have a stroll and a tete-a-tete, he candidly tells her that it will be impossible for him to advance Mr Greene any money at present. Then Sophonisba's arm dropped all at once, and she exclaimed, " Oh, Mr. Robinson V In the end the box is found in the wretched Robinson's bedroom covered with a rug, and he is, of course, thought to be a swindler by all the family, excepting in a half sort of way by Sophonisba, who good naturedly remarks " that it may be accidental." But Sophonisba — though a neat sketch of the pretty and tolerably well-behaved girl whom we are not meant to like — is excelled by another of Mr. Trollope's young ladies, in a story which seems to us the best ia the book, and which is called " A Ride across Palestine. *' The narrator tells us how he was once sitting lonely in an hotel at Jerusalem, planning an expedition to the Jordan and the Dead Sea, when he vva s told that a young Englishman wished to see him, and in walked Mr. John Smith. He is a nice, delicate, melancholylooking young man, and the narrator takes a fancy to him ; and when Mr. Smith says he has come to ask whether, as he too is staying alone at Jerusalem, he may join in the expedition to the Dead Sea, the proposal is cordially accepted. Mr. Smith is punctual the next morning, and rides some miles no a hard Turkish saddle without uttering a sound or syllable of complaint, but when the halting time comes, is found to be so faint and stiff" that his stronger companion has to lift him to the ground. At last they reach the Dead Sea, and the narrator, being enthusiastic, determines to bathe in the waters, in order to say he has done so ; and he earnestly'implores Smith to join him, that some day he may tell his children of his feat. But Smith replies that he : does not expect to have any children, and does not like bathing, and gently rides away behind a clump

of trees, where he awaits for his more advent uroMS companion. The same scene is repeated at (lie Jordan. They pass through Jerusalem, and as Smith, hearing that the narrator is going to Jaffa, expresses a wish to go there too, they reach the sea together, and are just going to start off in the Austrian boat for Alexandria, when an infuriated old gentleman rides up to the hotel, and seeing the narrator, accuses him of eloping with his neice, Miss Julia Weston. Then a scene follows, such as might be expected. The uncle laughs at the notion of his being asked to believe that the gentleman travelled with his uiece and honestly thought her to be Mr. Smith. So he calls on the narrator to marry his niece at the neatest British Consulate, or else take the punishment he deserves. Most of this work an inferior artist could have done, but the conclusion is touched in with the hand of a master. The narrator has to own that he is married, and although he sincerely wishes to spare Julia's feelings, aud to get her and himself out of a scrape, he cannot help trying to ascertain whether she looks disappointed at hearing a piece of intelligence that must end thfir intimacy. To let Julia's disappointment be seen, and yet to make her perfectly proper — to give the impression that she is sorry her days of being Mr Smith are over, and yet that she has not involved hersel/' too deeply — is a task which few artists could fulfil as Mr Troliope has fulfilled it. — Sat. Revieiu.