1831.] Monthly Review of Literature. 327 



through stone walls. Mr. Newman loill intrude, or rather obtrude, and our 

 good-nature, as every body finds it occasionally, is more than a match for both 

 our prudence and our principle. Madame Rosalia, in short, has got within our 

 sanctum, and must be read, and must be be-critiqued too. Yet what is to be 

 said of the performance? It is but the shadow of a shade. It is like some 

 things we have seen, and good things too. It reminds us of an object placed 

 betvsreen two reflectors, where every succeeding image becomes more dim and 

 vague, till resemblance is with difficulty detected in the confusion and obscurity. 

 Madame sees nothing but these reflected images, and, unluckily, only the re- 

 moter ones. She is obviously one of the thousands who read till they imagine 

 they can write — or listen to sermons till they think they can preach, though 

 they have plainly no "call." There is the genuine and the pseudo novelist — 

 the first is the man who has seen life in its realities, and exhibits it in its varieties ; 

 while the other, man or woman, has done nothing but read novels, good and bad. 

 Alike they communicate what they are each familiar with ; but the difi^erence is, 

 one reflects truth and nature, the other repeats nothing but the dim images, strip- 

 ped, by distance, of all life and vivacity, and almost of all resemblance. This is 

 distressingly the case with Madame, or Mademoiselle Rosalia St. Clair. The 

 " Soldier Boy" is a narrative — not a story — it biographizes from the cradle to the 

 grave. We can fancy the process. When Milton finished Paradise Lost, a 

 friend asked him what he had to say on Paradise Regained, and a new poem was 

 the result. Madame Rosalia took home her " Sailor Boy ;" and asking for 

 another job, " Give us," says Mr. Newman, like a man of business as he is, 

 " the Soldier Boy." To work the lady goes ; and as one war is the same as 

 another to a person who knows nothing of either, she takes the American, and 

 without ceremony plunges herself and her protege into the thick of it. Battle 

 after battle follows in glorious confusion. The young hero gets wounded at 

 every skirmish — often desperately ; but wounds on paper are readily cured in 

 defiance of all surgery. He rescues a lady from the violence of a Hessian officer 

 — marries her — gets entrapped by the revenge of the Hessian into the hands of 

 the Indians — escapes a scalping — returns to his wife — gets wounded again, and 

 leave of absence in consequence — loses his wife in child-bed — saves the child — 

 returns to England, and survives thirteen years. The orphan boy, at seventeen, 

 obtains a commission — and he goes to war too — but, luckily, this Last of the 

 Lyals falls in the early part of the Peninsular war, "fighting valiantly under the 

 gallant Grseme" — that is, some ten or a dozen years before the said Peninsular 

 war began — for he must have been born in 1780, 



A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden, &c., by George Lind- 

 LEY, C M.H.S. (?) AND Edited by John Lindley, F.R.S., &c. 



Mr. Lindley's Guide professes to present a complete account of the fruit-trees 

 and vegetables cultivated in the gardens of Great Britain, as the result of a per- 

 sonal experience of more than forty years. The book — itself a practical one — 

 is edited by Mr. John Lindley, his son, known as a lecturer on botany, and pre- 

 faced with an introduction, the object of which is not precisely to remedy the 

 complaint that gardening books abound in rules, but have a plentiful lack of 

 reasons — but to sketch the method by which a person possessing a competent 

 knowledge of the physiology of plants, and some practical acquaintance with 

 the culture of them, might readily supply the deficiency complained of. It is 

 but an outline of the principles on which the common operations of the fruit 

 garden depend, but enough is said to summon attention to the "rationalia of 

 what may seem extremely simple and well-understood practices, but which are, 

 undoubtedly, neither so perfect, nor generally so skilfully performed, as to be 

 incapable of amendment." 



Classical Lirrary. Vols. XVII., XVIIL, XIX., XX. 



Of these volumes, the first two contain Horace and Ph:edrus ; the nineteenth, 

 Juvenal and I'ersius ; and the twentieth, the commencement of Thucydides. 

 The Horace is Francis's translation, which notoriously wants point and vigour. 



