The Course of True Love never did run smooth. By CHARLES READE. London: BEntley. THE author of these tales-for the title is common to three stories-seems to have taken a morbid fancy, of late, to baptise his works by certain axiomatic and familiar scraps of vulgar wisdom; titles which, although sufficiently indicating the subjects and their moral tendencies, are not by any means convenient to the frequenters of the lending library; nor likely, under ordinary circumstances, to find much favour with the literary advisers of publishers, who are in general more fastidious respecting the title of a work, than its contents. So quaint a predilection, however, on the part of an established story-teller-though it be one which would certainly entail excommunication on a neophyte-may not be without its own peculiar attractiveness for the public, whose practice is to patronize any eccentricity, which defies their power to put it down; and so, it is far from improbable that, under the encouragement of impunity and acquiescence, "It is never too late to mend," and "The course of true love never did run smooth," may be followed by such homely moralities, as "Where there's a will there's a way" """Tis a long lane that has no turn "-" Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and other saws ancient and modern. The spirit evinced in this particular manifests itself also in the style of the composition-of the first tale, especially, which is written in that peculiarly free and easy form of language commonly known as the slipshod. It is good and terse, however, and, though affectedly and ostentatiously careless, not ungraceful; even though it sometimes contumaciously outrages all that readers have been taught to respect in the way of grammar and punctuation. Such liberties, we need not observe, would not be tolerated by publishers or critics in a first attempt, any more than those political sentiments which some readers would call offensively-but which are to us, refreshingly-democratic. As specimens of the peculiarities of style and opinion to which we allude, we take the following sentences at random : "Why lookest thou ashamed, O, yeoman, bulwark of our isle?—This is why, Adam Eaves farmed two farms." "They could not make him believe that nations are the property of kings, and countries their home farms. They did all they could think of to corrupt him." "There was nothing about where he wished her to live-he did not decide the great little question is America or England the right place for us globules to swell and burst in." We should like to see such sentences as these analysed by the philologists who complain in "The Athenæum" of the revolutionary freedoms of some of our authors. But Mr. Reade writes as one who has conquered public opinion, and can afford to play with it contemptuously. And yet, that all this is purely affected and of malice prepense, is proved by the many soft bright touches of natural sentiment and tenderness that shine out here and there, and the elaborate and highlyfinished pictures of strong passion and deep emotion which he can paint when so inclined. Take, for instance, this one: : "All eyes turned and fastened upon Rachael; and those who saw her at this moment will carry her face and her looks to their graves, so fearful was the anguish of a high spirit ground into dust and shame: her body seemed that moment to be pierced with a hundred poisoned arrows. She rose white to her very lips, and stood in the midst of them quivering like an aspen-leaf; her eyes preternaturally bright and large and she took one uncertain step forwards, as if to fling herself on the weapons of scorn that seemed to hem her in, and she opened her mouth to speak, but her open lips trembled and trembled, and no sound came. And all the hearts round, even the old farmer's, began to freeze and fear at the sight of this wild agony." In such a passage as this, it would be unfair and captious to take exception to such small blemishes as the confusion of "this" and "that," the use of the epithet fearful" for "frightful," the awkward repetition of "and," &c., &c. There are soine traces also of that search after out-of-the-way comparisons and grotesque metaphors, which is considered indispensable to lively writing in these times; and is sometimes dignified by the name of "word-painting;" for instance, the generic description of a great actress, as "a creature with the tongue of an angel, the principles of a weasel, and the passions of a fish,”—whatever these latter may be and again of the violin-playing, of which "the style was rough, and bore a family-likeness to ploughing." Things of this sort are amusing, we know, to the general mass of readers; but they do not accord with the author's theory that "labour and art are the foundation-inspiration the result." The first of these novelletes is an essay on the philosophy of costume, hung on the peg of a love-story. It is in other words a tale of Bloomerism, alias, propria quæ maribus,-in which there are to be found some platitudes, broad and flat enough, and not a little extravagance in the matter of improbability. The heroine, being a spoilt child, an heiress and an orphan, may naturally enough play a fantastic trick or two; but that a young Englishman, crossing the Atlantic on a matrimonial speculation, should take with him the cap and gown of an Oxford B.C.L., that his fiancee should borrow the said cap and gown, in which to deliver a lecture on Bloomerism, in her own drawing-room, to a pianoforte accompaniment, and illustrated by an impromptu masquerade of the dresses of all times and nations, in which "old Major Cato" makes his appearance among the rest-and all for the purpose of demonstrating practically, that pantelettes, (otherwise, propria quæ maribus,) are a more sensible and originally a more feminine habiliment than crinoline-appears to us a considerable tension of artistic probability. The lover of this Bloomerite-the gentleman who so accommodatingly carried his cap and gown to New York, without knowing for what he could possibly want them there is disgusted by the semi-masculine propensities of his lady-love, and returns immediately to Devonshire. But, finding that he cannot forget her, and pining away in his heart-sickness, is recommended by an experienced friend to seek a cure in-above all other remedies-a course of geology! Doubting the efficacy of this prescription, he is about to start again for New York, when the heiress arrives at her mansion in England, the domain of which is next to his : there of course they meet again; but in order to test his sincerity, she appears before him once more in full propria quæ maribus, which might possibly have produced a second estrangement; but that a bridge which he is crossing to meet her, breaks down just at the moment when it is necessary to give the lady an opportunity of proving that she can swim. She plunges in of course, and saves the life of her repentant lover; and the eventual fate of the propria quæ maribus, is condemnation on the ground of its not being suitable and convenient for ladies under all physical circumstances. No. 2 is a story in the Peg Woffington vein-a tale of lamp-light infatuation, and day-light disenchantment. Though very powerfully told, and a vast improvement upon No. 1, it is still an old and often recited story. We have read the story years ago as part of the history of Mrs. Bracegirdle, one of the characters in this tale; and we have seen it acted in London, the sexes being inverted. It is the history of a young man, green from the country, and captivated almost to insanity by an actress, who, at the request of his father, excites his disgust by a piece of acting in her own house; exorcising his romance by an affectation of coarseness and vulgarity at the same time that she is, upon principle, destroying her own happiness. No. 3, is by far the best, in plot and style, of the whole set. A very complicated net-work it is, of cross-purposes, entangled and unravelled with great power and much genuine and healthy sentiment, and ending not exactly as the habitual story-reader would be likely to expect. To give any outline of such a plot would far exceed our limits; and our readers had better wander through its mazes by themselves. On the whole, and after a fair equation of merits and defects, Mr. Reade is an able, high-principled, and good-natured writer. So far as deep philosophy, extensive learning, and exquisite polish of style are merits, he is, with all other novelists of the day, infinitely inferior to Bulwer Lytton; next to him we should be disposed to place Wilkie Collins or Mr. Reade, after these perhaps Kingsley; but all these-however heretical our taste may appearwe consider much superior, in all the qualities that impart vitality to light literature, to MM. Dickens and Thackeray. GAME III.-Played between Herr Harwittz, when last on a visit here, and a Member of the Bristol Club. Mr. Harwittz gives P and two. (Remove Black's K BP.) (1) QBP to B fourth appears a better move. BLACK. 16. QR Pto R 4th (2) K to Kt sq (2) Black has very skilfully gained the attack, but now appears to relax. QBP to B third would seem a much stronger mode of play. (3) Losing valuable time." (4) A hasty move, which at once loses the game. Kt to B 6 B to Kt 5 WHITE. SOLUTION OF PROBLEM No. 2. BLACK. K to Q 4 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE. DECEMBER, 1857. My First Romance. CHAPTER I. Ir has often occurred to me, latterly, that it may be a fair and not uninteresting question for metaphysicians, whether, after a series of complete and all-reversing changes in external circumstances, a human being does really continue to be the same individual; or, whether, as feelings and dispositions undergo, in such a case, a substitution and renovation similar to those of our material particles, it is the perpetuation of a name only that gives the semblance of a personal identity. When I look back, myself, through the many-coloured vista of years, to scenes in which I have been an actor-once vivid, agitating, and absorbing; now dimly fading into the perspective of time-I feel as if I were unconsciously transported into another phase of being than that in which I was once so free and happy; doubting, as I survey the strange entourage of my existence, if I be really and still the same. The time of the romantic adventure which I am now about to relate, and which happened in the peaceful era of H.M. William the Fourth, was, beyond all question [the happiest period of my life. I was in College I had outgrown the restraint and compulsory labour of the schoolboy: I had not yet entered upon the serious cares and uncompromising duties of mature years: I was free as an Arab, and impelled to work by no necessity more definite than the promptings of ambition; and my several recreations, indulgences, and extravagances were restricted by no check of superior prudence, or higher authority than my own judgment and my own inclination. After all, it is a merciful arrangement that, whether we revert to the joys or the sorrows of past years, there is in either case, a pleasure in memory. Having attained some academic distinction, I was something of a lion and consequently a favourite, at home and, it was after spending a long vacation at that hallowed sanctuary, in the South of Ireland, that as N : I was on my way back to my residence in the old Dublin University, the first incidents of the following narrative occurred. As the weather was sultry, and no Irish railways then in existence, I entrusted myself, in company with some half-dozen coevals and class-fellows, to a steampacket plying between Cork and Dublin; and, on a clear summer's morning, we paddled away down between the banks of one of the most picturesque rivers upon earth, High above the water, on both sides alternately, now upon a gentle slope, now on a steep and rocky browrises a wild, irregular, and varying scenery of woods, gardens, castles, and mansions. From the massive and time-tinted grandeur of the Tudor, or the monastic and slender Gothic pile, down to the fantastic bathing cottage, all is tasteful and appropriate. There, no ponderous blocks of superfluous stone, no horrent palisades of inhospitable iron, offend the aesthetic eye. As the stream winds along, each successive bend brings out into view some new and startling picture; some embowered mansion, with its carpet of green velvet creeping down to the water's edge; some sunny vista of distant plain or mountain in calm repose; or some grey and sun-bleached castle, standing erect, like the skeleton of a giant, upon its precipitous foundation. Then, the great basin, enclosed by a colossal wall of green and brown mountains, opens suddenly to the eye; and on its northern side, the town of Cove, rising street above street on the receding hill, and basking in the full blaze of the sun which sometimes shines there with a power all but tropical; sheltered from every chilly land breeze, and feeling only the soft south, and the equable breath of the great ocean. But, if I go on topographising, I shall forget my story. As we cleared the mouth of the harbour, freighted with some thirty passengers, of whom but two were ladies— apparently a mother and daughter-the water began to roll and swell, under a westerly breeze, so rudely that, as the day wore on, our fellowtravellers, growing helpless and ghastly, disappeared one by one from the deck, with the exception of my immediate acquaintances, who, like myself, being more accustomed to the sea, enjoyed the independence of the pied marin, and an imperturbable stomach. While they lounged about the deck and amused themselves with a variety of small waggeries, I stood leaning over the leeward taffrail, brooding morbidly over the tender reminiscences of a fortnight's flirtation with a rustic belle from whom I had yesterday torn myself away, and beguiling the loneliness of my heart, with the universal anodyne of mental uneasiness—a cigar. "By the way," observed one of my brother-students, "they have given me one of those cursed slippery sofas to lie upon, or rather, to be |