1829.] in the Irish Rebellion. 381 
This, thank God, has not been the case with our family. Clevass is 
still in my brother’s hands, my mother, now an aged woman, lives with 
him, and all the rest of our family have-been for many years married, 
and settled in our own homes. Yet fears and suspicious still remain in 
the hearts of the two opposite parties in the County Wexford, and until 
the present generation, and their children after them, shall have passed 
away, it will never be otherwise ; for those who, like me, have seen their 
houses in ashes, their property destroyed, and their nearest and dearest 
lying dead at their feet, though they may, and should forgive, they never 
can forget. 
Enniscorthy. R. E. S. 
NOVELS BY THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL. 
7 \ 
WE have long been familiar with the name and reputation of the gen- 
tleman who, though anonymous, is the well-known and much admired 
author of the very peculiar class of novels, commencing with Headlong 
Hall, and concluding—though we hope only for the present—with the 
Misfortunes of Elphin. We have long been familiar with his genuine, 
but somewhat elaborate humour, grave and saturnine as Swift, and occa- 
sionally extravagant as Rabelais, though recurring at rarer intervals— 
with his various acquirements—his fulness of ideas, and wealth of lan- 
guage—his agreeable poetic fancy, and above all, with his incomparable 
powers of ridicule and sarcasm. Among the numerous writers of the 
present day, he has long stood out, in our estimation, as one of the most 
sterling ; and, though his works have been ushered into public life in a 
homely, unobtrusive sort of manner, without either puff, paragraph, or 
advertisement, to call attention to their characteristic excellencies, yet 
they have, nevertheless, grown upon the minds of their readers, forced 
their way into general notice, and abundantly proved that they have 
_ within them the undoubted germ of perpetuity. 
Mr. Peacock’s first novel, entitled Headlong Hall, published some- 
where about the year 1815, attracted general attention, by its quaint, 
recondite, and various originality. It had no plot—scarcely any inci- 
dent—little description—absolutely no sentiment—none of those clap- 
traps, by which our more glaring writers of fiction appeal to the public 
sympathies, and conceal their own intellectual sterility ; its chief and 
only merit was its felicitous mode of hitting off some of the pedantic 
absurdities of the day, and discriminating between what was true and 
what was false, in ethics, philosophy, and sentiment. In a word, it was 
a tale penned by a profound and versatile scholar, who despising the 
ordinary resources of novelists, trusted for success to his own untrum- 
peted deserts. All who read it felt that its author was capable of greater 
things ; they perceived in every page quaint gleams of a superior genius, 
which could launch with effects the massive bolts of declamation, and 
play with the keen lightnings of sarcasm. The incidents of this racy 
tale may be summed up in a few words. Squire Headlong, of Head- 
long Hall, in the county of Carnarvon, a genuine hot-headed Cambrian, 
descended from a pedigree of a more ancient date than that of Adam him- 
self, having tired, for a season, of hunting, coursing, racing, dancing, and 
other equally enlightened and characteristic pursuits of country gentle- 
men, resolves, by way of novelty, to turn his attention to literature ; with 
