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Review.

Havelock: The Broad Stone of Honour. A Tribute of the Tongue and Pen. By EDWIN PAXTON HOOD. London: JOHN SNOW, Paternoster Row. EDWIN PAXTON HOOD is a great name in certain circles just now. Starting in public life as a teetotal lecturer, he has pushed up his way to a metropolitan dissenting pulpit, and is making some sensation as a London preacher. Besides all which, he is an extensive literary man. He is, in fact, a prodigy. Still young, he has managed to get his name on to the title pages of between forty and fifty books of all sorts and sizes, and on almost every conceivable subject. He is one of the too many gabblers of this generation; and he has the modesty to print deliberately all he says in a hurry. He is no orator; but he chatters most profusely; and, as he is always chattering, it will be readily understood that his mind often wanders. Now, if he can get anybody to hear him chatter (and there are, no doubt, fools enough in the world to make congregations for this sort of prophet) we can have no objection; but if he will persist in publishing the unshaped nonsense that comes from his lips, and in challenging the judgment of the critics upon his tributes of "tongue and pen," we, with all the patience we can command, beg him, if he cannot possibly "hold his tongue," at any rate to throw his pen away; for he is not only building up for himself a most massive and voluminous disrepute, but he is bothering other people to no result, save their vexation and his own disgrace. It is all very well to "astonish the Browns" of dissent by quoting Wordsworth, and analysing Shelley, and alluding to Coleridge-creatures who belong to a world which few of them have visited, and of whom they know positively nothing,-and it is possible, in such a school, to get a glowing reputation as a "great literary character" of "very extensive reading;" but when Paxton Hood commits himself to type, he submits his attainments and his tastes to quite a different test, and, we can assure him, comes out of the ordeal with anything but credit. We have put ourselves to the trouble of examining some of his works. His "Wordsworth" is pretentious bosh, neither fact, fiction, nor fancy; a mass of unconnected and unsupported dicta, as inconsistent with one another as they are audacious in themselves. His "Swedenborg" is a little better book, because it is not quite so big; and, as not above thirty people in the world can comprehend Swedenborg, and it is quite certain they would never read what Paxton Hood might say about him, it does'nt much matter whether his book be good or good-for-nothing. His "Earnest Minister" pretends to be a biography of Benjamin Parsons, of Ebley, in Gloucestershire; but instead of being a biography, it is a series of introductory remarks and concluding reflections-the substance which should connect the two together being almost invariably left out. The "small fry" of this man's brain it would be a sin to enumerate. Suffice it to say that Paxton is Poet as well as Philosopher and Prophet. He sings most lustily; but generally in the style of "The days when we went gipsying," only with the "spirit" taken out of everything just to make way for a prejudice in favour of cold-water.

The book before us is got up in a sentimental-genteel fashion; with gilt edges,

The following is the only bit of preface

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"That some of the sentences in this lit le tribute may not seem strange, it will perhaps be necessary to explain that it was delivered first as a Funeral Discourse from the Author's pulpit, repeated on two or three occasions, and published first by request."

Now, when we have quoted "some of the sentences contained in this little tribute," we are quite sure our readers will feel that they are very "strange" and need some explanation; but whether the facts mentioned in their favour will be any vindication of their utter nonsense we will not venture to decide. If this is the sort of stuff which Paxton Hood can deliver in his pulpit, and repeat two or three times, we pity him; and if it is the sort of stuff which his admirers can delight in and request him to publish, we pity them more than we pity him. Mr. Hood is evidently a scorner of all mechanical rules of composition. The Queen's English is nothing to him He soars above all pettifogging considerations of grammar and common-sense. His sentences can do without nominative cases, or without verbs. He uses pronouns with most admirable indiscrimination; and if one does not find room to come out, in the bustle of utterance, never mind; author and reader can get on together very well without it. For instance :

"It is a good fight. Consider the Divine equipment. Divine the war. Divine is the panoply in which he is clothed."

Truly enough, we dare say; but we should like to know by what transition of thought the author jumps from an appeal to an exclamation without any verbal indication thereof; and when he talks about the panoply in which he is clothed, we want to learn of whom he speaks. Again

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"What will not a man dare to do? He will look hell in the face, and will not quail. He will deliberately march beneath a spouting cataract of fire while all the cannons around him belch horribly. What things will a man not do. It is not done for pay, &c."

The "it" here of course refers to the things what a man will not do! Again :

"But his brain was not less laboriously plied than his sword; and from the battlefield where his horse was shot under him, and where, amidst the rattling hail-shot, he so marvellously and providentially escaped-he escaped to study-to unlock the stores of those wealthy languages."

Mr. Hood cannot stop to tell us what languages he refers to. If you can't guess-why you are a fool, whom he cannot pause to enlighten. But, Mr. Hood is not a fool; so can call upon all sorts of unmanageable things to pause and wait on his convenience. For instance, he exclaims, in a fit of inspiration::

"Pause, Time! while I dare to recite, how, returning from Persia, he was instantly sent, as Brigadier-general to command the moveable column, &c.."

The request is very modest, if not very sensible. Unquestionably Paxton Hood, being such a great reader, must have heard that "Time and Tide wait for no man"-no not even an orator. On this occasion, it seems that Mr. Hood's appeal was vain, for, he begins the very next sentence by saying, "This is no place, no time, &c." So, having called on Time to pause whilst he dared to recite, and finding that Time would not oblige him, he abandoned his purpose, and put a stop to his recitation. Here is another rich specimen of mental confusion and literary debauchery :

"What tragedies are recalled to our memories! Would that we could blot them for ever

from our memory. Husbands who shot their wives, their children, and themselves, as the only escape from those wild monsters. Children of Moloch, worshippers of Juggernaut, and Sheva, and Mariataly. It was no ordinary war, it was a sacramental execution."

Why "our" powers of recollection should be pluaral in one sentence, and singular in the next, we cannot imagine. If you recal anything, it is to your memories; if you blot out anything, it is from your memory. Then what are the trajedies thus played with? As far as we can make out, they are the husbands who shot, &c.; but, though the shooting were trajical enough, we would not blot out these husbands from our memory. Certain wild monsters flit now across the page; but as they are only defined by the pronoun these" we will let them pass! Then comes another nominative case between two full stops, unsupported by pronoun or verb. And, then, worse than all, a sentence beginning with the pronoun "It." "It was not ordinary war?" What wasn't-the worshippers of Juggernaut ?"

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As we have said, Mr. Hood is Poet as well as Preacher. And there are sundry streaks of fancy in this volume which support his pretensions. We will quote just one or two; hoping for goodness sake that time will pause whilst we do so, that it may not be wasted. "Great men," says Mr. Hood, "strike the clock in the belfry of the ages." What sort of a belfry, and what sort of a clock are here alluded to we cannot divine, but we don't envy the clapper! Speaking of spiritual conflicts, Mr. Hood exclaims in an agony of indignation, "How tough must be the struggle!" Mr. Hood describes the temple at Rangoon, with becoming Christian bitterness, and appropriate artistic refinement, as filled with the images and "cross-legged infernals of that country."

But enough of this trash. If we could quote one redeeming sentence we would; but we really cannot find one. It is a shame that the name and memory of Havelock should be dishonoured by such a memorial as this. Never had poet-preacher a nobler opportunity than when Havelock died. For he was saint as well as soldier; and never allowed the sanctities of the man to be lost in the splendours of the hero. But the pulpit has only exposed its own weakness in attempting to deal with him. Mr. Brock's sermon was bad enough; this is ten times worse; and we feel that we have discharged a simple duty in exposing its disgusting carelessness as a composition, and its humiliating poverty as a monumental oration.

Poetry.

A RETROSPECT.

WAKE me not from that dream again,
Altho' I know 'tis idle-vain—

It still brings back the past.

The past! oh, bid it come once more

Back to my memory, I implore,

'Tis fading from me fast.

Tones from the past, a voice long hushed;
Full o'er my soul the tide hath rushed

Of joy, 'tis almost pain.

'Tis gone, the present stern appears;
Not as that past, but stained by tears;
Why did I wake again.

M. A. C.

Chess.

PROBLEM No. 7.-White to move and mate in four moves.

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THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1858.

My First Romance.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

"My brother George,' said Mrs. De Vere, "went into the army at a very early age. I don't think he was quite seventeen when he got his commission and went abroad. He was present in two or three of the earlier battles in the Peninsula, and about the end of the third year, being dangerously wounded, he was sent home on sick leave. Having landed at one of the ports in the South of England-Portsmouth, I believe he went up with some other invalids to Bath, which was in the zenith of its glory at that time. Of course, as you may suppose, the idleness, the gaiety, and the soft inland climate of such a place were all very tempting to a young man after three years' campaigning; and at that time, there was so much enthusiasm about the war, that officers returning from the scene of action were most interesting and distingués guests everywhere. It was, while lounging about there, that he first had the misfortune to see the young lady whom he afterwards married. She was very young-so young, indeed, that she was at school-and happened to attract his notice during one of those long solemn processions in which young ladies under that surveillance are permitted to take the air. To do her justice, she certainly was beautiful, and he was tempted to place himself in her way again. In the course of time, looks and smiles were exchanged; and at last, he went so far as almost to lay siege to the house where she was imprisoned. For this presumption he was rewarded only by an occasional telegraphic smile, and a letter from the lady principal, remonstrating with him against the scandal which his very improper conduct was likely to bring upon her very respectable establishment, and threatening to forward a complaint to the commander-in-chief. Under these circumstances, of course, he avoided the house, but ascertaining the

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