312 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[MARCH, 



could himself have originally contemplated. 

 To make a story the vehicle of the intelli- 

 gence he wished to present to his readers 

 was, in our story-reading days, judicious 

 enough ; but then the structure of the tale, 

 with his particular views we mean, should 

 undoubtedly have been of the very simplest 

 and most obvious kind; and not like the 

 present, requiring such frequent and reite- 

 rated efforts in the way of explanation, that 

 the whole account, and no wonder, has an 

 air of clumsiness, and a want of common 

 skill about it so desperate and improbable 

 too are the expedients, to which the intract- 

 able nature of his plot compels him to have 

 recourse many of which would have been 

 quite as applicable in any other quarter of 

 the globe. 



To unravel the story, though it might 

 even save the reader some pains, perhaps, 

 would take up too much of our space for the 

 actual value of the performance. It is 

 enough to state, that the heroine is intro- 

 duced as a foundling and foundlings in 

 the "novel" world have always abounded 

 from the days of Menander rare as they 

 are in the real one that neither father nor 

 mother is known that a gentleman, one 

 Major Carrol, in the tumults of the last 

 Irish rebellion, visiting, as a magistrate, a 

 cave in the south of Ireland, where some 

 rebels were known to be secreted, just in 

 time to perceive the nether part of the 

 chief escaping through a fissure of the rock 

 the rest being shot by the soldiers found 

 a poor woman wounded, with an infant in 

 her arms, which she put into his hands, im- 

 ploring him to protect it that he took the 

 child, a girl, and brought her up with his 

 own girls, much to the dissatisfaction of his 

 unamiable wife that as she grew up, Mrs, 

 Carrol's envy and jealousy grew too, bd- 

 cause the beautiful and accomplished girl 

 clipsed her own daughters, and, therefore, 

 she insisted upon her being sent out -of the 

 way to India, to a brother of her's, a colonel 

 in the Indian service that to India she ac- 

 cordingly went, and on the voyage formed 

 a mutual attachment with a young officer 

 of the king's troops that on her landing at 

 Madras, she was met by Colonel Hawes, 

 at first- very kindly welcomed, and forth- 

 with introduced to the president's banquets, 

 but on her refusing to marry a member of 

 council, to whom the Colonel had pledged 

 her, and who in return had engaged to pro- 

 cure for him an important military com- 

 mand, is for a time very harshly treated 

 that, eventually, the said Colonel, a man 

 risen from the ranks, and. though a good 

 fellow enough, vulgar, ignorant, and obsti- 

 nate, quarrels with the said member of 

 council, and is then reconciled to her at- 

 tachment to the young officer, her fellow 

 passenger though he at present is too poor 

 to marry that in the meanwhile another 

 lover starts up, a very fiend, in the shape 

 of a Portuguese, who plots against her peace, 

 and resolves to have' her by fair means or 



foul that though more than once baffled, 

 he at last succeeds in entrapping her, and 

 carrying her off to the fortress of Dowlata- 

 bad, where, in league with a native chief, 

 he is in actual resistance to the British 

 power that while there, under confinement 

 and the dread of violence, she discovers, 

 most miraculously, her own father, who is 

 himself a prisoner in the clutches of this 

 dragon of a Portuguese, who is, moreover, 

 a relative of the heroine's mother, though 

 himself knowing nothing about the young 

 lady's connexion that at last, when all 

 hope seems gone, she escapes in a manner 

 most wonderful and unromantic, headed 

 up in a stale and stinking ale-cask, let down 

 a descent of some hundred yards, and then 

 rolled and rolled, we know not how far, till 

 the very thought of it makes our own 

 viscera turn and tumble that on her 

 escape, she communicates to the proper 

 authorities the condition of her unhappy 

 parent, and the fortress is in consequence 

 besieged, and at last surrendered, and her 

 father rescued the Portuguese, during the 

 siege, while plotting to betray the native 

 chief, to save his own neck, being himself 

 anticipated by the chief, plunged down a 

 precipice, and dashed to pieces and 

 that, finally, the young lady's father, the 

 very rebel, whose escape through the rock 

 Major Carrol had witnessed, proves to be 

 the proprietor of 3,000 a year, and our 

 heroine his sole heiress ; and her own admit- 

 ted and approved lover also learns, just in 

 the nick of time, that his uncle is dead, and 

 has left him 5,000 a year, and of course 

 all parties are happy, with more money 

 than they know what to do with. The 

 varied fortunes of the father are foreign to 

 the story ; he was an Irish rebel a victim 

 of Toone's schemes a lawyer apparently 

 the son of a steward, but in reality the son 

 of the master of that steward, changed at 

 nurse, &c. &c. 



Enough, and more than enough, of the 

 story. The writer's professed object must 

 be considered as commencing with the voy- 

 age, the account of which is upon the 

 whole amusing and probable enough 

 something, we may venture to say, very 

 like real events. The passengers consist of 

 several ladies, some elderly, and well ac- 

 quainted with India, and returning with 

 daughters, and grand-daughters, and pro- 

 teges to the Indian market all of them 

 vulgar and unlicked, except our charming 

 heroine and some few officers, of different 

 ranks, belonging to the king's troops, and 

 most of them something like gentlemen. 

 The parties do not harmonize very well, 

 .but split into factions, termed by the crew 

 larboard and starboard, and frequent em- 

 barrassments, and intermeddlings with each 

 others affairs ensue, and plenty of tattling 

 and calumny flying in all .directions. The 

 monotony of the voyage is broken by occa- 

 sional balls and visitings to other ships of 

 the convoy, and the 'several parties follow 



