612 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



Pierce Falcon, the Outcast. By EMMA WHITEHEAD. 3 vols. 

 Bentley, London. 



We are to the present day lovers of novels. We have grieved deeply 

 to witness their decay ; and we rejoice at seeing a few scattered gleams, 

 which appear to us to be the forerunners of a higher and better race of 

 them. The influence produced by this species of literature is much more 

 durable, and much more extensive, than many people imagine. A glow- 

 ing picture of fictitious life binds itself firmly upon the mind and ima- 

 gination of young readers, and has powerful influence, whether for good 

 or for evil, upon character. Fortunately, the mass of these productions, 

 which have issued like a Lethean torrent from the press, have been desti- 

 tute of the necessaries for making them popular : they are dead and gone, 

 and no man will sigh a requiem over their departure. It is well remarked 

 by Mr. Bulwer, in the work we have just been noticing " It is remark- 

 able that there is scarcely any very popular author of great imaginative 

 powers, in whose works we do not recognise that common sense which is 

 knowledge of the world, and which is generally supposed by the super- 

 ficial to be in direct opposition to the imaginative faculty. When an 

 author does not possess it eminently, he is never eminently popular, what- 

 ever be his fame. For what is knowledge of mankind, but the knowledge 

 of their feelings, their humours, their caprices, their passions? Touch 

 these, and you gain attention ; develope these, and you have conquered 

 your audience." This remark is strictly true, and accounts sufficiently 

 for the ephemeral existence or rather non-existence of multitudes of mo- 

 dern novels. There is neither knowledge of human nature, nor truth of 

 observation in them ; and from the crowds which come before us, we turn 

 for relief to a boy-thumbed and somewhat dilapidated copy of the 

 " Children of the Abbey " and the "Mysteries of Udolpho." 



We have said above, that we look upon novels as having considerable 

 influence upon character; and this we know to be the fact. For ourselves, 

 we are not yet old enough to have forgotten that noble and virtuous 

 wishes were fanned into activity by novel-reading. We have mingled 

 largely with the world have had our share of its joys and its sorrows; 

 and if these have differed widely from the impressions we received in 

 early life, they have not yet quite spoilt us for enjoying idealities. 

 It is, however, in a moral point of view, that novels are of the chief 

 importance: they form, and ever will form, no small portion of the 

 attractive reading of the young of both sexes, of ladies in particular : 

 and hence we carefully scrutinise the morale of a work before it is placed 

 on our own family shelf, and before it is sent from us, recommended to 

 the public. 



" Pierce Falcon " has many merits, dashed, however, with some con- 

 siderable demerits. The character of Constance Maravel is very deli- 

 cately shaded true to nature, except that the Authoress has endowed 

 her with scarcely enough of womanly tact. The worst part of the work 

 is, decidedly, the unredeemed villany of the Outcast an absolute rascal, 

 without even a shade of generous or chivalrous feeling. And what shall we 

 say of Jessy Maravel? why, that she to some extent redeems her strange 

 coquettish follies by finally renouncing a scoundrel ; but the wonder to us 

 is, how she ever loved him, for there is no one loveable quality developed 

 in his entire portraiture. Huntly the Tutor, an abstracted book-man, 

 and the favoured lover of Mary Freeling, is pretty tolerably brought out. 

 The following is a soliloquy of his on the art and science of love-making 

 '* The Tutor stood still to ponder the question once more." 



*' ' And and I approach her,' he at last began, speaking aloud, as if to 

 persuade himself of his position, 'and I bow,' and he bent in admiring 

 salutation, and I take her 'hand she she is of course all dignity. 



