character of his first statement, and give an entirely different version of the battle, in all that relates to the final movements and achievements of the sixth brigade. The whole question now resolves itself into a question of time; and unless he could speak as confidently of the moment when Sir Hussey put his squadrons in motion as he does of the right-shoulder forward movement of the 52d, he could say nothing that would be decisive. As to his inferences," he cannot, we believe, call himself "an eye witness" of them; if he does, he must possess a very pecaliar faculty of vision-a kind of logical second sight;-so that, unless he is pleased to communicate his secret, the military seer of the 52d must remain in the sole enjoyment of those dazzling visions which he has conjured up, and under the influence of which he seems to experience a species of ravishment, similar to that of Bottom when he got into Fairy Land. That the 52d behaved on this with the same coolness and gallantry which distinguished them on every other occasion, we cannot for a moment doubt; but neither can we for a moment doubt that, up to the period when Sir Hussey made his gallant charges, the battle was undecided. The impression also is strong upon our minds, that had these charges not succeeded, the battle might have been decided the other, way; for had our squadrons and our battalions been forced and overwhelmed by the French in this great and final, onset, the Prussians never could have enabled us to recover the lost ground, and they must have shared in our defeat, instead of contributing to complete our victory. These points being settled, when we look to the precise time when, as well as the precise manner in which the charges were made, it is impossible to withhold from Sir Hussey the credit of coolness and judgment at that critical moment, fully equal to the ardour and courage with which he animated his brave men to the onset. Had he followed Lord Uxbridge's suggestion, the charge might have been made too soon, and our strength might have been spent before it could be brought to bear with effect upon the enemy. Even the Duke's more cautious suggestion must be considered discouraging, for, not to charge until he thought that by so doing he could break the enemy's squares, amounted almost to an interdiction. Indeed, Major Gawler's 66 Crisis" is partly written to prove the exceedingly hazardous nature of such an attempt, and that the cases are very rare where it does not bring ruin upon the assailants. But Sir Hussey judged more wisely. He waited until the precise moment when it was apparent that the French were advancing in force, and having prepared his men by the animating words which we mentioned in a former number, he led them on, with an impetuosity against which the collected might of the legions of France could oppose but a brief and vain resistance. This he did three several times, he himself being on each occasion foremost in danger; and the result was, a victory, in its consequences the most complete of any to be found in the records of history, a victory of which we are, perhaps, saying the utmost when we say, that it was the fitting termination of such a warthe Corinthian capital, as it were upon the proudest column of England's glory. The present age is so prolific in the production of authors, so prodigal in the outpourings of literary labour, that, we protest upon our critical reputation, we find it almost impossible to keep pace with them. It would require powers and perseverance of no common order, merely to keep a registry of the names of those who are daily springing up amongst us, to note their births, aye and deaths too, a thing of scarce less rare occurrence, without stopping to write a line upon their nativities or an inscription on their tombstones. Happily for us, however, the merits of many of them are of a description that excuses us from taking any notice of their existence, and we are thereby left somewhat less encumbered for the consideration of those more fortunate few, who, by their present talent or former notoriety, are entitled to the honour of contemporary notice. Not many years have elapsed since LADY MORGAN was last before the eyes of the public. We well remember the occasion, and, though we did not then exist in our present mysterious and impalpable nature, not having at the time cast off the slough of our corporeal individuality, to endue ourselves in the awful plurality of our editorial metempsychosis-we have been studying of late in her ladyship's school of metaphysics-though we were, we say, then only an eminently gifted literary individual, yet did we, upon the perusal of that signal performance, feel fully contented with the measure of mundane information which her Ladyship was pleased to mete unto us, and but little inclined to expect, far less to desire a repetition of the infliction. We have, however, been disappointed. Her Ladyship having consumed the fame which the Book of the Boudoir had acquired for her-and though the quality of that provision was somewhat questionable, its quantity was beyond all doubt very considerable-feels her hunger for notoriety again becoming urgent, and accordingly she very naturally seeks to appease so troublesome a sensation. How then is this appetite to be gratified? The preface to the pages before us contains a valuable and highly interesting exposition of the perplexities in which her Ladyship is so unhappily involved, and furnishes us at the same time with her melancholy cogitations on the distressing occasion, and her various plans for extricating herself from her difficulties. "The public," she candidly informs us, "refuses its attention to literary claimants, whose pretensions are not either founded on utility or backed by the brilliancy or brevity of their appeals." Now, her Ladyship's discretion and good sense are too excellent in themselves, and have been too often well directed by the suggestions of the public; her knowledge of her own powers is too intimate-too unobscured by egotism, to permit her attempting the former course. What then is to be done in this dilemma? Why, to try the latter, by all means—yes, vive la Bagatelle!-be brief and brilliant, the overpowering glories-the astounding philosophy of the Book of the Boudoir" are yet dazzling our eyes and ringing in our ears, and the "Dramatic Scenes" will surprise us in our weakness, and overpower our energies ere we can have time to rally them for resistance. Let us now follow the authoress in her train of desponding reflections upon the hardships of her position. "The Candidates," she continues, "therefore, for cotemporarary notoriety must seek it by other means than the pathways, battus et rébattus, of book making, and book selling. They must, if they can, obtain cards for a royal breakfast at Sion, or a fête at Chiswick; or, if this fail, they must try the Dramatic Scenes from Real Life, by Lady Morgan, in two volumes. London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit-street, 1833. Sunday mart of the Zoological Gardens; and by staring the eagle out of countenance, or joining the bear in a tete-a-tete, out-dressing the maccaws, or out-chattering the monkies, insure the desired qu'en dira-t-on, the object of their frivolous labours." Accordingly we must suppose that her ladyship having made trial of, and failed in many of those notable and sapient schemes for acquiring notoriety, for attracting to herself the attention of those who are, unfortunately for her, either warned by her former flippancies, or unexcited by her past extravagancies, being unable to obtain cards for a royal breakfast at Sion, or a fête at Chiswick;" and finding, no doubt, "the eagle at the Sunday mart of the Zoological Gardens to possess as bold a front, as unabashed and dazzling an eye as herself, and discovering that even the worthy sober Bruin is quite competent to sustain his part in a "tete-atete, as a grave philosopher, a professor of unintelligible jargon and maudlin metaphysics with as much edification and far less danger to his auditory than his fair opponent, she has been driven as a last hope, to attempt "out dressing the maccaws," in all the motley garniture with which she has tricked out these two volumes, and undoubtedly she has succeeded to admiration in " out-chattering the monkies," till their very jaw bones must have grown weak in despairing emulation of her "frivolous labours." We cannot ourselves vouch for the truth of the assurance that "this homely thing may be read running or dancing, like a puff on a dead wall, or a sentiment on a French fan," being too portly in person, and too much attached to the heaven of our easy chair, to attempt either foolery; but we can without difficulty give unbounded credence to the fact, feeling certain that a lanker body or lighter heels than our own would be coerced either to run away in consternation, or dance in the extacies of rage and desperation, ere he had waded through the pages of this unintelligible production. For ourselves, however, as we said before, we are given to the enjoyment of our ease, and deem that the grandeur and poetic effect gained by an indulgence of "splendida bilis," but poorly compensate us for the loss of our digestion. Besides we have to do with one of the fairer portion of creation, and would willingly, if it be possible to do so, preserve our temper and exhibit our politeness. We therefore much prefer to engage her ladyship after her own piquant, discursive, dramatic, "liveable, give and take," harum scarum, and agreeable manner, being of opinion with the Roman satirist :"Ridiculum acri Fortius ac melius magnas plerumque secat res." Her ladyship is an adept in Latinity, so we shall make no apology for our quotation. "It is no easy matter," quoth her ladyship, in the commencement of her labours, "to write up or down to the present state of British literature." We are inclined to acquiesce most fully in the former portion of her observation, and taking for granted, on her own showing, the correctness of the latter, we joyfully offer her our most sincere congratulations on the happy achievement of so arduous an undertaking. She has indeed done more she has written below the level to which our literature has heretofore descended, and may claim for herself, without fear of dispute, the honor of fixing the zero in the scale of literary composition, beneath which, we imagine, no hand will be found sufficiently venturous to add one mark of graduation. Feeling, moreover, as her ladyship informs us, that "there is no legitimate literature, as there is no legitimate drama," she proceeds in the volumes before us, with the laudable design of endeavouring to perpetuate the degradation of both, and by uniting them together, with all the insulting mockery that might preside over the marriage of worn out beggars, she ushers into the world this literary monster, combining the feebleness and faults of both parents, without inheriting the vigour, the dignity, or the inspiration of either. The dramatic scenes are accordingly not prose run mad, as has been the fate of many an unhappy piece of prose in its time, but prose, torn limb from limb, narration disjointed and inter sected by an eternal recurrence of stage direction, time, place, scenery, and copious explanation of characters that are too feebly formed to develope themselves, and frequently too ambi Emily, under cover of of whose characters, and much factions. Lad violence of two joyous and happy temperament, and naiveté, says and does a great many rude, and very careless of the feelings of her acquaintances. Poor Mrs. Quigs ley, the housekeeper, is very well con ducted and natural, and we leave her with much pleasure to the consolations of her cat, Mungo, the only friend she 麵 possesses, if we except Jerry Galbraith, We must, however, pause for a moment, ere we dismiss this portrait that her ladyship has drawn of an Irish ய magistrate. If by the delineation of an ignorant, wretched, low-minded squireen-a being who is as vulgar in sentiment and language as replete with low cunning and fawning baseness as the hind that he crushes beneath him, her ladyship intended to depict to the of eyes an English reader the charac ter of an Irish magistrate, we wish her joy of her successful effort, feeling convinced that it is but a shaftless satire Mr. Henry Lumley Sackville, an English gentleman, who has acquired a large estate in Ireland, by right of his wife, Lady Emily, comes over to visit it in company with the latter, her sister, a led captain or two, and the usual accompaniments of French waiting-maids, and insolent domestics. They arrive at the manor, which is si 3+ a respectable and honorable body men, and that the caricature is too extravagant to excite aught but disgust. The following dialogue, vol. 1, p. 8, between Mrs. Quigley and Jerry Galbraith will be the best elucidation of our remark: "Mr. Galbraith-God save all here! Is the coast clear Mrs. Quigley? Mrs. Quigley-Och! the Lord be praised. Is it you, Mr. Galbraith, are come at last? Well, it's time for you: better late nor never! Come in, Sir, I wouldn't have wet the tay, if I'd thought you'd have come at all, at all, but I gave you up entirely. During this apostrophe Mrs. Quigley assists in disrobing Mr. Galbraith. Mr. Galbraith-Thank you, ma'am, thank you. I beg your pardon, I'll just lave my surtout outside if you plaze. **** Take care, ma'am, if you plaze, thim two little travelling companions is mighty touch and go sort of gentlemen, * * * * I'll engage Judy has good care of me in regard of a bit of fire in my own little glory hole. The Magistrate sits down to break fast, and having remarked that "grief is dry demands "a thimble-full of brandy" in his "tay," and gradually breaks to his friend the death of his spouse Shure, ma'am, the late Mrs. Gal braith is dead and buried in Mogherow churchyard.Aye, indeed, ma'am. Mrs. Quigley expresses her surprise, and his Worship proceeds in his detail: “All of a sudden, ma'am-just as if you would say a drop of punch went the wrong way. She made a wry face, and dropped as if she was shot, upon the floor. And so, ma'am, as it plazed the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, to take my poor woman to himself, I conveyed her to her last home this morning, on my way here, and she was launched, I may say, into eternity, in the church-yard of Mogherow, at ten o'clock this morning." Mr. Galbraith, in addition to being one of the quorum, is agent, or we would rather imagine from his deportment throughout, steward to Mr. Sackville, and the justice is naturally and laudably employed in conspiring with his crony, Mrs. Quigly, to render his master's residence disagreeable and in convenient, and to frighten away the enlightened and philanthropic landlord with stale stories of Irish diablerie. The housekeeper having recounted the vast delight of the ladies at the novelty of living in an Irish Castle, Rack-rent, the man of warrants sagaciously intimates the propriety of starv ing them from their stronghold. But in regard of the dinner-all the French cooks in the world cannot serve a good one, with bad matairials, and nothing to cook them in; for I take it for granted (slily) you did'nt lave an ould stew-pan in the place ?". "Mrs. Quigly demolishes his hopes on the starvation scheme by the assu rance that the "quality" came provided not only with edibles but also a complete cuisine "a whole cart of coppers from Dublin." Jerry rich in expedients responds, "But they can't roof the house, nor stop the rat-holes nor make tight the windows and doors, all in a month or six weeks, and for the ould furniture, some of it since King William's time of glorious memory, and before." Another failure--"the ould furniture". was hugely admired. The magistrate essays once more. "But I hope ma'am you hurried all the Captain's Frenchified new things into the Castle wing and shut it up as if it was saled with wax." To his extreme gratification he learns the lady has done her part as well as any justice could have acquitted himself. "Very good ma'am, and then the rat in the box in the library which Mr. Sackville wrote to have ready for his own sitting room. Ye conservators of Ireland's peace Ye "trusty and well beloved" of your sovereign! hear this and be silent. Know that you are only the Dogberries of your own times, that this female Conrade doth "not suspect your place," that she doth "not suspect your years—” that she hath written down asses. ye Grant us patience ye powers of philosophy! A magistrate of the 19th century plotting with a wretched menial, the pitiful, dishonorable contrivance of frightening a family, with a philosopher at its head, by the efficacy of a rat in a box. Yet this is what her Ladyship has the hardihood to offer to the world as a "scene from real life,” to which it bears about as much rescm |