400 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



Adventures of Bilberry Thurland, by C HOOBON, with illustration 

 by Hervieu. 3 vols. 8vo. Bentley. 



THE intention of the author, as we suppose from the perusal of the volumes, 

 has been to decry the practice, of giving charity, and to show all the vices 

 consequent upon Mendicity. So far, so good : but if we may be allowed 

 to give our own opinion, on a matter of such political consequence, it is of the 

 highest importance that the cause should be espoused in a serious tone of mind. 

 Satire is a very powerful weapon when used by a man of first-rate genius ; 

 but in the hands of any other, it is as an edge-tool in the grasp of a child. 

 The author of these volumes intended to be a satirist : he has in effect 

 been little more than a matter-of-fact describer of low-life. Parturient 

 monies : nascetur ridiculus mus. We question whether in a moral point of 

 view, the exhibition of moral depravity is at all available in encouraging virtue. 

 On this point however, in the present criticism it is not necessary to insist. 

 We have no kind of personal feeling against the author, as we never heard of 

 his name before ; but our public duty would not be properly performed, if we 

 did not enter our protest against the system of holding up a mass of moral 

 depravity unredeemed by a single virtuous trait to public perusal. 



The life of Bilberry Thurland is that of a vagrant and thief. His mother 

 is a vagrant, his father, no one knows who ; and the son is worthy of his vir- 

 tuous parents. The female tramper instils at a surprisingly early period all 

 her own thrifty maxims into Bilberry's mind : and Bilberry, promising boy, 

 is not slow in availing himself of the maternal instruction. His adventures 

 in early life soon make him acquainted with the necessity or profit of false- 

 hood and theft ; and his precocity in the ways of evil, as he grows up, is 

 quite remarkable. We however, who have read the book, are not surprised, 

 nor will our reader be, when they see the sage advice administered to him 

 by the maternal parent. 



"They were one day passing down a green bye-lane, all cartrutsand puddle, 

 when his mother, twitching up her gown and shifting her basket on to the 

 other arm, began to talk to him after a more rational manner, giving him to 

 understand that the worldly old proverb of a rolling stone gathering no moss 

 was exactly reversed amongst people of their line of business ; with them it 

 was, Lie still and rot." 



" We must circulate," said she, "or we cannot live. If you would do well, 

 not only shift your place, but change yourself according to times and circum- 

 stances, and then like a variable wind, you will sweep into every corner. I 

 have known beggars, who through their bad judgment, have been beggars 

 on their deathbeds ; though such a dog's life as it is, a man ought to be worth 

 a Jew's eye in a few years. If you prove a steady youth, I shall expect to see 

 you in a situation to do something for your mother when she gets old. You 

 must have your eyes about you ; remember your brains are behind your eyes, 

 and what is) that for ? Take notice how all sorts of people are to be best 

 managed. It is not by always telling the same tale nor by cringing and sneak- 

 ing like a whelp with his tail cut off, that most is to be got. Some folks give 

 way in one manner and some in another, and they all want humouring to 

 their fancy. You get it of some by being very humble, of others in the way of 

 a great favour, as though you were ashamed of asking for it ; while now and 

 then there is an odd one or two that pay best on demand. I knew a man, as 

 clever a fellow as I ever set eyes on, who could tell, at full twenty yards off, 

 whether any body was likely to give or not ; and if he were, which was the 

 best way of asking him. When he saw one of these straight old gentle- 

 men coming down the causeway, who walk with sticks turned in a lathe and 

 hold themselves as upright as a victual-bag, he knew at a glance that nothing 

 was to be got there but the threat of a commitment to the round-house ; and 

 those slim old maids who walk on the breadth of a curbstone he never asked 



