_Tales of the Peerage and the Peasantry, Edited by Lady Dacre. New
York: Harper & Brothers._
We had been looking with much impatience for the republication of
these volumes, and henceforward we shall look with still greater
anxiety for any thing announced as under the _editorial_ supervision
of Lady Dacre. But why, Lady Dacre, this excessive show of modesty, or
rather this most unpardonable piece of affectation? Why deny having
written volumes whose authorship would be an enviable and an honorable
{47} distinction to the proudest literati of your land? And why, above
all, announce yourself as editor in a title-page, merely to proclaim
yourself author in a preface?
The _Tales of the Peerage and the Peasantry_ are three in number. The
first and the longest is _Winifred, Countess of Nithsdale_, (have a
care, Messieurs Harpers, you have spelt it _Nithsadle_ in the very
heading of the very initial chapter) a thrilling, and spirited story,
rich with imagination, pathos, and passion, and in which the
successful termination of a long series of exertions, and trials,
whereby the devoted Winifred finally rescues her husband, the Earl of
Nithsdale, from tyranny, prison, and death, inspires the reader with
scarcely less heartfelt joy and exultation than we can conceive
experienced by the happy pair themselves. But the absolute conclusion
of this tale speaks volumes for the artist-like skill of the fair
authoress. An every day writer would have ended a story of continued
sorrow and suffering, with a bright gleam of unalloyed happiness, and
sunshine--thus destroying, at a single blow, that indispensable unity
which has been rightly called the unity of effect, and throwing down,
as it were, in a paragraph what, perhaps, an entire volume has been
laboring to establish. We repeat that Lady Dacre has given conclusive
evidence of talent and skill, in the final sentences of the _Countess
of Nithsdale_--evidence, however, which will not be generally
appreciated, or even very extensively understood. We will transcribe
the passages alluded to.
"'And dearer to my ears'--said Lady Nithsdale 'the simple ballad of a
Scottish maiden, than even these sounds as they are wafted to us over
the waters!'
"They stopped to listen to the song as it died away; and, as they
listened, another and more awful sound struck upon their ears. The
bell of one of the small chapels often constructed on the shores of
Catholic countries, was tolled for the soul of a departed mariner. As
it happened, the tone was not unlike one of which they both retained
only too vivid and painful a recollection. The Countess felt her
husband's frame quiver beneath the stroke. There was no need of words.
With a mutual pressure of the arm they returned upon their steps and
sought their home. Unconsciously their pace quickened. They seemed to
fly before the stroke of that bell! Such suffering as they had both
experienced, leaves traces in the soul which time itself can never
wholly efface."
_The Hampshire Cottage_ is next in order--a tale of the Peasantry; and
the volumes conclude with _Blanche_, a tale of the Peerage. Both are
admirable, and worthy of companionship with _Winifred, Countess of
Nithsdale_. There can be no doubt that Lady Dacre is a writer of
infinite genius, possessing great felicity of expression, a happy
talent for working up a story, and, above all, a far more profound and
philosophical knowledge of the hidden springs of the human heart, and
a greater skill in availing herself of that knowledge, than _any of
her female contemporaries_. This we say deliberately. We have not yet
forgotten the _Recollections of a Chaperon_. No person, of even common
sensibility, has ever perused the magic tale of _Ellen Wareham_
without feeling the very soul of passion and imagination aroused and
stirred up within him, as at the sound of a trumpet.
Let Lady Dacre but give up her talents and energies, and especially
_her time_ to the exaltation of her literary fame, and we are sorely
mistaken if, hereafter, she do not accomplish something which will not
readily die.