424 
detects the young lady in her rags, and 
concealments—is shocked at the treatment 
she meets with—falls desperately in love 
with her, and resolves to effect her rescue, 
and bring her forward into the scenes which 
she is so manifestly capable of adorning. 
Approaching his uncle and aunt for this 
purpose, he meets with nothing but dis- 
couragement, but the young lady herself, 
at last, effectively co-operates, and when 
called upon, stoutly asserts her claims to 
equality with her protectors, and even a 
superiority of rank. By degrees it appears 
she is the daughter of the earl’s sister, who 
had been married to a Spanish Hidalgo—a 
Catholic of course. The earl, to justify his 
desire of keeping her in the back-ground, 
assures his nephew, her birth was illegiti- 
mate, the marriage was sanctioned only by 
Catholic rites. Confiding in the young 
lady’s declarations, he distrusts, and still 
more, when he learns that large estates are 
connected with the subject. ‘These estates 
the earl holds, solely on the ground of her 
illegitimacy. Though still insisting on the 
prudence and propriety of his conduct 
relative to his niece, he is finally forced to 
introduce her into company, where her very 
brilliant accomplishments speedily outshine, 
and even throw into the shade every other— 
even the earl’s eldest daughter, whom he had 
intended to marry to his nephew. But the 
Spanish beauty is irresistible, and the 
nephew, quickly throwing off his uncle’s 
authority, precipitately marries Georgette, 
and institutes a lawsuit for the recovery of 
her estates. The difficulty is to substantiate 
the /egal marriage. Her father was dead, 
and her mother had withdrawn to a con- 
vent, nobody knew whither, but her con- 
fessor. Inquiries are set on foot on all 
sides, and ruinous expence is incurred in 
lawyers. 
In the meanwhile the young people 
thoughtlessly dash into display and dissipa- 
tion, and are soon involved in difficulties ; 
the lawyers too for ever want feeing; and 
retirement to the continent is indispensable. 
Disappointed, harassed, annoyed, debts on 
one side, lawyers on the other, excluded 
from the brilliant society he had so long 
figured in, banished, almost disgraced 
and disowned, he plunges into profligate 
courses; and she takes to the consola- 
tions of religion, and by controlling 
her own haughty spirit, and conciliat- 
ing his wayward one, she more than once 
brings back her offending husband to a 
sense of her wrongs and her merits. On 
one of these returning fits of domestic 
repentance, they set out themselves to dis- 
cover the retreat of her mother; and first 
go to Italy, where inflicting more trials 
upon his excellent wife, he again repents, 
and then they proceed to Spain. Here she 
is well received by her father’s family—they 
even offer to restore her to splendour, if she 
will become Catholic, and renounce her 
husband. ‘This of course she refuses—the 
husband resents—and by virtue of Spanish 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
[ApRIL; 
revenge, gets thrown into the dungeons of 
the Inquisition, from which he is finally, 
but with difficulty, rescued, by his wife’s 
forcing her way into court, and actually 
softening the iron hearts of the inquisitors 
themselves. Quitting these dungeons, and 
hastening to escape from so detestable a 
country, they learn, by the oddest accident 
in the world, where her mother is. She is 
herself the abbess of a conyent—an inter- 
view is accomplished—the important proofs 
of legitimacy are furnished, and they fly 
back to London ; where they find the mag- 
nificent earl brought down and humbled by 
afflictions—the loss of court favour—the 
crim. con. of his daughter, and the death of 
his male children. The sobered tempers 
of his nephew and niece, softened the new 
blow to him, and reconcile him to himself. 
To the nephew fall a marquisite, and ano- 
ther splendid property—and “no longer im- 
petuous, rash, generous [?] and changeable, 
the chastened marquis of thirty-two is as 
superior to the youth of twenty-two, as 
religion and experience, must tend to make 
a man of sense and principle.” 
Restalrig, or the Forfeiture, 2vols. 12mo. ; 
1829.—This must of course be termed an 
historical novel; but it is historical, only so 
far as historical characters are occasionally, 
or rather forcibly, introduced, for they are 
none of them necessary to the structure and 
development of the story, and we should 
therefore undoubtedly have assigned their 
introduction to poverty of inventive power, 
had not the author assured us his object was 
to contribute his mite to the filling up of 
our knowledge relative to the first years of 
James’s English reign. The author has 
before written, it seems, the story of the 
Gowrie conspiracy, from which the present 
tale is made to grow. The hero of the 
piece is Walter Logan, the young Laird of 
Restalrig, who in the previous story had 
rescued, by his activity, the two remaining 
sons of the Countess of Gowrie; and after 
spending six years abroad, returned to Scot- 
land, jast in time to learn that his estates 
had been forfeited by the trial and convic- 
tion of his dead father, actually brought into 
court three years after burial, on a charge of 
being implicated in the Gowrie conspiracy. 
To efface impressions of this matter unfa- 
vourable to James, the charge was got up 
by the grossest subornation. Some unseen 
person, the agent vf Lord Dunvere, who 
was himself the agent of James, seduced the 
confidential man of business of old Restal- 
rig, to forge letters in his late employer’s 
name, and confess himself an associate, 
under the promise of a pardon on the scaf- 
fold. To complete the treachery of the bu- 
siness, the miserable tool was betrayed, and 
the law was suffered to take its course—to 
make all sure. The unseen person. proves 
to be a Lord Algerton, a wretchedly de- 
formed and diminutive person, whose defor- 
mities had bent and crooked his soul into 
still worse obliquities.s He had been sup- 
