c 
1828.] 
[ 633 J 
MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 
Tales of the Great St. Bernard, 3 vols, 
12mo ; 1828.—This series of tales is the 
production of Mr. Croly, a gentleman, we 
need not add, after his brilliant and suc- 
cessful tale of Jewish story, of great and 
admitted talents. The volumes before us 
present the same energy and distinctness of 
conception which distinguished the Sala- 
thiel_the same copiousness and truth of 
description—the same fertility and splen- 
dour of language—the same facility of illus- 
tration—the same happy knack of throwing 
in a quaintness of phrase that surprises and 
delights—the same vigour and vivacity that 
bounds along with a subject with the con- 
sciousness of inexhaustible power, but at 
the same time with a fulness that some- 
times overpowers, and a breadth of colour- 
ing that occasionally approaches to cari- 
cature. 
The machinery of the series is this—a 
number of travellers, of different nations, 
are surprised and detained by snow-storms 
on Great St. Bernard, and while sharing the 
hospitality of the monks, relieve the ennui 
of their position by a succession of narratives, 
relative to the characters and manners of 
their several countries. The first is told by 
an Englishman, who has piqued curiosity by 
declaring himself an absentee, not from 
taste, but absolute compulsion—too lucky, 
too important, and too rich to be able to 
live at home, and going abroad to be no- 
body, to be good for nothing, and to be 
happy. He had been bred to the bar, but 
though getting early into something like 
practice, he grew disgusted, and especially 
with the tricks of the profession, and with- 
drew to an estate of £500 a-year—drawn 
thither, moreover, by the charms of the 
curate’s daughter. In a woodbine cottage, 
in a state of unusual connubial tranquillity, 
making no shew nor pretending to any— 
with a son and two daughters, brought up 
in a style only not of the coarser character— 
absorbed in the quiet pursuits of literature, 
he lived an easy and contented and indolent 
life for nearly twenty years—troubled only, oc- 
casionally, by the annoyances which his wife 
and family sometimes experienced from the 
magnificent and mortifying superiorities of 
an opulent neighbour—a sugar-baker, mak- 
ing some £50,000 a-year. 
Just as his family were growing up into- 
men and women, an old uncle, with whom 
he had had no sort of intercourse for years, 
and from whom he expected nothing, died 
and left him £10,000 a-year ; and though 
he himself would have taken the matter 
quietly enough, the family were bitten with 
the mania of eclipsing the sugar-baker. 
All sorts of absurdities ensue—jealousies are 
excited, and enemies are made on all sides 5 
their fine servants laugh at them—till the 
climax is completed by a masqued ball, into 
which the whole county make an irruption, 
M.M. New Series.—Vot. VI. No. 36. 
the force of. gratitude. 
and conspire in a general devastation and 
smashing of the accumulated splendour. 
Plucking up a little resolution, the good 
man takes his family to Bath, to separate 
them for a while from the scene of disgrace, 
and reduce the scale of his establishment $ 
but here, again, the importunities of his 
family, and his own facility betray him 
quickly into fresh mortifications and expo- 
sures. With new resolutions to be master 
of his own concerns, he has scarcely com- 
menced operations, when another unele 
dies, still richer than the former; and he 
now becomesa baronet with £30,000 a-year. 
Instead of removing to the county where 
this vast property lay, he is persuaded to 
return to the old neighbourhood, and, in 
spite of all expostulation and resolve, the 
family again enter the lists of rivalry with 
the sugar-baker, backed by the advantages 
of title and hereditary estates. 
But the fates are against him.. Thirty 
thousand a-year make him too conspicuous 
an object to live as he chooses—every body 
forms designs upon him, public or private— 
he is forced into the oftice of sheriffi—and 
drawn, in defiance of all his caution and 
resistance, into a contested election for the 
county—spends twenty or thirty thousand, 
and half as much more to establish his elec= 
tion before a committee, and thus gets in- 
volved in all sorts of county business, and 
plagued and solicited and harassed at every 
turn. In the meanwhile his family are 
breaking out into a thousand absurdities— 
among others, a’ French lady is intreduced 
to polish their persons and manners: she 
has a brother and cousin—the lady runs 
away with the son, and the gentlemen are 
on the point of starting with the daughters, 
when, luckily, the plot is detected, and the 
ladies rescued. Just at this period parlia- 
ment is dissolved ; he feels himself released, 
makes one desperate effort—breaks from all 
restraint, and finds himself at Great St. 
Bernard. 
The Wallachian’s. tale is illustrative of 
A young Greek 
girl—a foundling—is brought up by a Wal- 
lachian noble, as his daughter. Vor years 
he had lived upon his estates, unobserved, 
or at least undisturbed ; but by degrees the 
fruits of his industry—the indefatigable eul- 
tivation of his ‘property—beceme conspi- 
cuous, and he was compelled to take office 
in the court of the héspodar. By the in- 
trigues of the seraglio, he is finally heguiled 
from home, seized and carried to Constan« 
tinople, and thrown into prison his estates 
the meanwhile exposed, of course, to devas- 
tations. The young and charming Greek, 
though brought up in softness and indal- 
gence, and now deprived suddenly of all 
personal accommodations, resolves to at- 
tempt his reseue; and the difficulties she 
encounters, baffles, and surmounts, form the 
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