104 NOVELS OF THE MONTH. 



other civilized place. Sir Walter Scott has had many imitators, but 

 in nothing has he been so well followed as in the close copy of 

 " Woodstock," which Horace Smith made in " Brambletyre House." In 

 " Gale Middleton " again, which is now before us, Theodore Hook 

 and Bulwer are followed with much earnestness but less felicity ; we 

 miss the point of the former, and the fervor of the latter. Sir Matthew 

 Middleton, shipowner, alderman, M. P. and baronet, is a chucky 

 character, a la Hook, while his only son and heir, the good Gale, a 

 radical in politics, an enthusiast in chemistry, and a saint in religion, 

 constitutes one of those ambitious displays which it is easy to imagine 

 that the author of the " Disowned " might have conceived, and made 

 a great deal more of. The capital fault of " Gale Middleton " as a 

 hero, is, that instead of acting himself, he is throughout the volume 

 acted upon: he is more a witness than an agent in the great 

 cause of which he is announced to be the chief. Almost the 

 only thing he really does in the three volumes which excites 

 our interest, is to go about every now and then kissing a miniature, 

 which he keeps concealed in his bosom, and which the simple 

 reader naturally imagines to be the image of a fair but frail 

 lady who had made him miserable at the University, but which 

 turns out to be only a beautiful picture of the Holy Family, 

 painted by Carlo Dolci a sad deceit, no doubt, upon all true lovers 

 of the sentimental. Gale, however, has need of pious consolation: 

 as a radical, he is, of course, discontented with all things as they are, 

 and as to religion, being imbued with the cold-hearted creed of the 

 Presbyterians, he can hardly help being melancholy and morose. 

 While doing a deed of charity in the purlieus of Westminster, 

 he is half murdered and half buried alive. The criminals remain 

 undetected, but their agency continues incessant, and poor Gale, after 

 being nearly poisoned at his tea, narrowly escapes death in another 

 midnight encounter with the supposed assassin. At last, an exceed- 

 ingly goodgirl cures him of his predestinaranism, and is on the eve of 

 becoming his wife, when the villain who has so often attempted his 

 life, is discovered in a cousin, who is also a junior partner in his 

 father's house. A gambler and debauchee, this wretch has also forged 

 enormously, and his misdeeds occasion the bankruptcy of Middleton 

 and Co. But, Gale's never-changing goodness does not desert him : by 

 mortgaging a small property he possessed, he buys off the banker, 

 who holds his guilty cousin under arrest as a felon, for one of many 

 forged bills of exchange, sends the fellow comfortably abroad with 

 money, while his own broken-down father is going through the 

 Gazette ; marries, and then becomes President of a Temperance So- 

 ciety ! This complete marring of the catastrophe at the very moment 

 when justice had a true bill to present for a well crammed finale of 

 the dark and dismal will no doubt injure the work at the Circulating 

 Libraries, but the balance of horrors being on the whole decidedly in 

 the author's favour, Mr. Bentley, in all probability, will not have to 

 grumble at the sale. 



