author could have been silly enough or crotchetty enough to write them. But "Hillingdon Hall" is not one of these. True, it has faults, -both of taste as regards style, and of selection and treatment as regards the materials of which it is composed. But taking these errors at the most unfavourable estimate that can be made of them, the balance in the other scale causes it to kick the beam triumphantly. "Hillingdon Hall" is, in fact, not only one of the most amusing books that have been written during the last twenty years, but it is one from which more may be learned of the actual life and society among which its scenes are laid, and more good may be done upon the vices and follies which its wholesome satire so mercilessly scourges, than can be hoped for from any half score of the best of those broad satirical farces of Foote and O'Keefe, which it most resembles, or by any conceivable number of those vapid "legitimate comedies" of our own day, which it resembles not at all. The reader has only to fancy a retired citizen, the owner of the exquisite old Manor House of Hillingdon Hall, and the fine estate thereunto appertaining, and to suppose him fairly installed in the same, together with his larger half, her maid Betsy, and their "man" Binjimin,-and prepared to carry out, in his new capacity of the cockney squire, all those new lights, touching guano, bone manure, nitrate o' sober" hashes, soot, salt, sand, and every thing in fact," which he has been imbibing from the agricultural column of his Sunday paper any time these seven years last past. One of the incidents is an invite from the Duke and Duchess of Donkeyton, to a dinner at Donkeyton Castle,-politics being able, like love, to level all ranks. It need scarcely be said that in a work of this nature, there is a thread of narrative to hold the pearls together-and a golden thread it is-for it is no other than "glorious John" himself, whose "linked sweetness long drawn out," keeps every thing in its place,-not excepting whole chapters of love passages between the Duke of Donkeyton's dandy son and heir, the Marquis of Bray, and a brace of village flirts, whose respective anglings for a dukedom, aided by their rival mammas, give rise to some capital scenes of a somewhat different character from the uproarious and rollicking fun of the satire, which forms the staple of the book; and among these scenes we may particularly specify a long one at Donkeyton Castle, between its noble owners and one of the said mammas, who goes thither on the forlorn hope of claiming the incipient duke for her silly daughter. The pictures of the high aristocracy which these admirable scenes present to us, are equal to any thing of the kind in the most fashionable of our fashionable novelists. Among other notable events in this remarkable book is a contested election, in which our cockney hero, to his own infinite astonishment, and the dismay aud scandal of all the Donkeytons, is returned member for the county, in opposition to his dear dandy friend the "markis." It cannot fail to give zest to the perusal of this (in its way) capital production, for the reader to know that it is written by a gentleman whose position in society has given him the most ample means of depicting every class of society with which he has busied himself, and of none more so than those scenes at Donkeyton Castle, which contrast so brilliantly with the other portions of the work, and yet are as true to the life as every thing else in the book-indeed, they are more so-for in them there is no tinge of exaggeration, or caricature." L T INDEX TO THE THIRD PART OF 1844. AFRICA in France'; or, the Beard and | Confessions of an Italian Innkeeper, 116 Contrabbandieri, the Last of the, by L. Cook, Eliza, Stanzas to the Memory of Deep, Voices from the, 511 "Devil, Talk of the," by Laman Blan- Diamond necklace, affair of the :-The -Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, &c. Dickens, Mr. Charles, portrait of, 522 Dec.-VOL. LXXII. NO. CCLXXXVIII. Gawyim Honor: a Tale of the Crusades, noticed, 144 Germany, Rambles in, noticed, 284, 286 George III., Mr. Beckford, and Sir Guinea, speech of a, 469 Half-Farthing, the, 469 403 Horsewhipped, on Considering Oneself, Italian Innkeeper, Confessions of an, 116 Italy, a Winter in, by Mrs. Ashton Jester, a Court, 489, 492 437 Love: a novel, by Mrs. Trollope, The Crescent and the Cross; or, Ro- Louis XVIII., anecdote of, 329 Making Presents, by Laman Blanchard, Marryat, Captain, R,N., C.B., his Set- Kitty Dangerous, by the author of Martin, his drawing in sepia of Marcus 66 Peter Priggins," 261 Lady Travellers in Italy and Germany, Land of Promise: a Tale by the Ba- :- (for OCTOBER):- (for NOVEMBER):- Curtius devoting himself, 521 Medical Student, the, 25, 330 453 Miners, the a Story of the Old Com- bination Laws, by the Medical Stu- Mint, recent meeting of the Coinage at Nelson, the Despatches and Letters of Admiral Lord, edited, with Historical Norderney (see Philosophy of Waltz- Outcast, the: a Tale, by the Medical Patmore, Coventry, Poems by, reviewed, 132 Perigord, motto of the ancient counts 90 Staël, Madame de, 193, 485, 488 Philoctetes, and the poisoned arrows of Spanish Criminal Case, a, by C. D., Presents, Making, by Laman Blanchard, Straw Hat, my Old, stanzas, by Eliza Sweden, Reminiscences of Charles John, Sue, Eugene, and Alexander Dumas, Talleyrand Papers, the, Parts VII., Turner, Mr. (R.A.) his drawing of Font- Valençay, Prince Talleyrand's, château Versailles, the château of, 190, 191 END OF THE THIRD PART OF 1844. C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. |