THE FRENCH CONVULSlVES. * 



Tins is a very cleverly executed work, and, though bearing the 

 name of one of the stronger, is now known to be the production of 

 one of the gentler sex. Certain it is, that it is a performance which the 

 author of " Matilda, or Yes and No," might not be ashamed to acknow- 

 ledge. The ground- work of this novel is substantially old and hack- 

 neyed. It has formed the subject of several thousand romances and 

 novels of fashionable life. The embarrassing situations arising out of 

 the conflict of the affections and feelings of our nature with the laws 

 of society that would regulate and control them, have been pathetically 

 set forth with every colouring of sentiment, from Helen of Troy 

 down to the Corinne of Madame de Stael. 



We are still travelling over the same ground, though the characters 

 of our companions may vary, and the incidents of the way be differ- 

 ent and differently related. In the work before us, the materials may 

 at first sight be taken to be of the commonest description : A West 

 Indian planter, with his wife and friend, are almost the only charac- 

 ters that figure in it ! but they are so naturally and skilfully deve- 

 loped, so successfully laboured and wrought into the incidents and 

 circumstances of the tale, that they seize upon the attention and 

 awaken a strong feeling of interest. If we are disposed to receive 

 cleverness of execution as a compensation for the want of a moral 

 tendency ; or if we are to suppose, as in the case of the heroes of 

 the Greek drama, that her personages are urged on by inevitable 

 destiny, and not by the force of wit, passions, and a depraved will, 

 we may appreciate the character of our author's heroine and sympa- 

 thize in her afflictions. Certain it is, that there is no want of sym- 

 pathy between the author and her heroine, and, consequently, she 

 has written what all who are capable of entering into the same feel- 

 ings must recognize as truth. 



Indiana was the daughter of an opulent West Indian, who made a 

 considerable figure in the Parisian circles, during the temporary as- 

 cendency of Josephine. On the fate of Napoleon he retired to his 

 estate in the Isle of Bourbon, where Indiana, a little time previous to 

 his death, became the wife of Colonel Delrnare, a soldier of fortune, 

 bred up in the camp of Napoleon, and passionately attached to that 

 general and his system. Nothing could be more ill assorted than this 

 union. To say nothing of the age of the colonel, which more than 

 trebled that of his young bride, there was nothing congenial in their 

 tastes or dispositions. Indiana, brought up by a father of a whimsical 

 and violent temper, had never known the happiness which is to be 

 found in the affection of others. She had long endured the morose tem- 

 per of her father, who, soured by political passions and baffled schemes 

 of ambition, had become the severest task-master and the most trouble- 

 some neighbour of his settlement. But while contemplating the con- 

 tinual picture of the miseries of slavery in bearing up against the ennui 

 of solitude and dependence, she had acquired a degree of patience 



* Indiana, a Novel. By Sarnies. Paris, 1832. 



