CRITICAL NOTICES.

Letters from the Bahama Islands. Written in 1823-4. Philadelphia. Carey & Lea: 18mo. pp. 207.

THIS book is not, as one might from its title be led to imagine, a mere account of the Islands from which the letters purport to be written. It aims at something more, at mingling the incidents of a fictitious tale with the description of the country and its inhabitants. We are sorry for this, since the narrative of the author's residence in the Bahama Islands, which, judging from internal evidence, actually took place, and which would, we doubt not, have furnished matter for a pleasant book, is encumbered, and almost deprived of its interest, by being interwoven with a story, which we cannot think very well contrived nor very skilfully told. The heroine of the tale, who is graced with the well-sounding name of Adela Del Lorraine, is introduced to the reader at the moment of her departure from London for the Bahama Islands, in company with her mother, who has been advised by her physicians to visit the West Indias for her health. A young lady, by the name of Adelaide De Souza, who has somehow or other been placed under the protection of the mother of Adela, accompanies them on the voyage. Among the passengers in the same vessel, is a young man of very solemn aspect and mysterious manners, who smiles but once during the whole passage, and who sings during a storm in such a manner as to keep Adela awake a whole night. After the family have been settled for some time on one of the Bahama Islands, this stranger makes his appearance under the romantic title of the Chevalier Grammont, becomes an inmate of the family, and the lover of Adelaide, and relaxes wonderfully from his gravity. As for Adela, she is of course delighted with her new situation; she is charmed with the serene climate; she is in ecstasies at the rich vegetation and beautiful flowers of the island; she becomes in love with its picturesque rocks and resounding ocean; grows passionately fond of its beautiful moonlight, and learns to despise the multitudes of mosquitoes, sand-flies, centipedes, cockroaches, lizards, and the thousand other agreeable insects and reptiles of the country. She is especially in raptures with the hospitable and sprightly manners of the inhabitants; she goes with them to marooning parties, as they are called, where the gentlemen drink

great quantities of champaigne; she plays at cards and she plays at billiards; she takes sentimental walks by moonlight, and delightful drives after dinner; attends petits soupers and conversaziones, and "charming balls," and writes a great many ecstatic letters about these things to a female friend in America. In the mean time, however, the illness of her mother increases; and Adela becomes somewhat melancholy. At length, in expectation of approaching death, her mother discloses to her certain unhappy events of her past life, which she had hitherto kept secret. She relates the story of her marriage to the father of Adela, a native of France, but educated in America, and of a strange passion conceived for her by the Chevalier de Courtenaye (nobody certainly understands the art of selecting names for the personages of a novel better than our author), a friend of her husband, and a very discreet and exemplary young gentlemen. Her husband discovers the love of De Courtenaye for his wife, upon which he becomes furious, and drives her from his presence. All this while, Mrs. Del Lorraine is ignorant of the passion with which she had inspired De Courtenaye; but at this critical moment he confesses it to her on his knees, in a very explicit manner, declaring, at the same time, that it was perfectly platonic; that it was founded on her virtues; that it had no other object than to be near her, and to contemplate her perfections; and that he had intended never to reveal it. After this very necessary declaration, he takes leave of her for ever. She goes to France with her infant daughter, who is educated there, under the protection of Count Victor Adolphe Del Lorraine, her husband's brother. The Count dying, she goes to England, to live with her brother, Sir Charles Fitz Clarence (another well-chosen and euphonic name), who, upon being told of the conduct of her husband, resolves, like a valorous knight, to seek him out, and to cut off his head; but is, at length, pacified by the entreaties of his unhappy sister, and consents to put up his sword. At length her mental sufferings prey upon her constitution, and she resolves to try the climate of the West Indies. Soon after this disclosure a letter arrives from De Courtenaye in America, mentioning, that he had discovered the retreat of the father of Adela, now recovered from his insanity, but near the end of his life. Adela stays to close the eyes of her mother; she then sets out for America, and arrives just in time to receive her dying father's blessing. She sees him buried in the midst of the solitudes where he had spent the last years of his life, and then returns to the Bahama Islands, to the society of her friend Adelaide, now happily mar

ried to the Chevalier Grammont, who turns out to be a young De Courtenaye, son of the platonic lover of Mrs. Del Lorraine.

It seems to us, that there are several objections to this plot, independent of what some might be harsh enough to call its absurdity, and we regret that the author should have been induced by the desire of writing a novel, to incorporate it with the much better materials in his possession. The author certainly possesses a pretty talent for description, although it is sometimes misapplied. Thus, for example, we cannot greatly admire the scene in which the governor comes into the council-chamber, in his yellow uniform, attended by a "fine flourish of trumpets and the roll of drums," and the clerk comes forward, and, "bowing gracefully and reverentially to the governor," reads, "in a clear and sonorous voice, each act that had been passed by the assembly," to which the governor affixes his name, and then makes a short and handsome speech. But, on the other hand, the description of a West India hurricane, in the night, as it appeared to a West India family, shut up in one of the frail dwellings of that country, is given with a good deal of skill and effect.

Almack's; a Novel. Two Volumes. New York. 1827. J. & J. Harper and Others. 12mo. pp. 295 and 304.

We have never been at Almack's, neither have most of our readers enjoyed that glorification; though it seems that Mr. John Dunn Hunter did. We know not which of the lady patronesses gave Hunter the freedom of the establishment; but it is currently reported, that there was a scuffle among them for the proprietorship of that pseudo-civilized salvage man proper. It is, however, certain, that John came over some of the nobility and gentry very prettily; and we wish most fervently, that we could get him to give us an article on this subject, in connexion with his other adventures; as it would, perhaps, be as useful and ornamental to our journal, as his Narrative was to himself and his lionizers. We are proud of him, as our countryman, for being one of the sublimest humbugs, since the days of Psalmanazar; and our only quarrel with him arises from his having occasioned the quantities of tears, which were shed by beautiful eyes, when he threatened to strip, and turn as wild an Indian as he said he had been before.

Of this, however, en passant, and par parenthèse, to borrow the mosaic jargon of the book we are professing to notice. Knowing nothing of Almack's, nor of the people that frequent it, we can only speak of this performance as a literary work.

The scandal is, of course, "caviare to us ;" and the satire, if there be any, unconnected with personalities, is of a most harmless kind. There is no one character out of the seventy-seven and a half, which, according to Cocker and our numeration, is the number of people introduced, distinguished by any one of Hogarth's three lines; nor is there a single incident which even poor Charlotte Smith would have thought important enough to have happened to any of her Emmelines or Anna Marias, on a fishing excursion by the border of a pond or ditch; and yet there are two respectable duodecimos, of three hundred pages each, in the American edition, which we have honestly skimmed over. The book is, however, amusing enough. It is very much admired by the ladies; and no doubt gives as fair a view of fashionable society in the modern Babylon, as any work of the kind. If the conversations, of which it almost exclusively consists, are never very witty, they are generally kept up to the level of decent and lively commonplace. What strikes us as the stupidest part of the performance, is the quantity of French, with which it is overloaded, Having informed us, that two or three of the personages in the scene were bitten with the Gallic mania on the continent, it was not indispensably necessary for the author, in order to preserve consistency, to inflict upon us whole pages of ordinary talk enough, done into very good and sufficient French, to be sure, but in no wise idiomatic or more expressive than the literal English would have been. There seems to be no more smartness or sense in this practice, than the author of the "Battle of New Orleans" (a farce or tragedy, we forget which) would have exhibited, if, by way of variegating the interest of his powerful drama, he had made the interlocutors bespatter their colloquies with French, because it is so generally spoken in those quarters, and commenced his performance thus;

Bien bon jour, Général Jackson; comment vous portez-vous ce matin?

Mais très bien, je vous remercie, Monsieur le Général Café'; et comment se porte votre tante?

We cannot believe that "Vivian Grey" and "Almack's are written entirely by the same hand. The former is said, indeed, to have been the joint production of two or three persons. There is a flightiness, imaginativeness, and ambition for effect exhibited in it, from which the present work is entirely free. It contrives, on the contrary, to preserve a very respectable medium, of a most pacific character throughout; and the nerves of the fairest and most fragile reader are safe in its perusal, without salts. We

were, indeed, prepared for something alarming, at the beginning of one of the chapters-a duel, a marriage, or an affair of some kind; but it turned out only in the evacuation of the house, by an old maid and two or three female bores, and the importation of another set of characters.

It may be said, with truth, of this production, that it is exceed→ ingly natural. The men and women talk and act as men and women in similar circumstances generally do; and the incidents are such as occur in every-day life. It is no little success for an author to be at all interesting with such materials; and it seems to be generally conceded that he is so; though, we frankly confess, we could not read all he has set down for us. The management of the Lady Patronesses, and the secrets of their divan, are certainly highly amusing. A continuation is threatened at the end of the book. We hope the author will put a little more spice in it.; for the line of commonplace cannot "hold on till the crack of doom," though dukes, and princes, and lady patronesses are pressed into its service.

Paul Jones; a Romance. By ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. In Three Volumes. 12mo. Philadelphia. Carey & Lea. 1627.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM is known as the author of some very pretty songs; and, if we remember aright, has received high encouragement to prosecute his labors as a novelist. When we took up these three closely printed volumes, we expected, of course, much entertainment. But let no one hereafter, who is in a listless mood, and requires matter either deeply interesting, amusing, or piquant, to lighten his solitude, shut himself up, or sit himself down, with "Paul Jones," in three volumes, for his talisman against ennui or unpleasant reflections; unless, peradventure, he be of that happy temperament which is easily amused, or unless he is naturally delighted with things, which look very much like absurdities.

Treating this performance as a mere fable, an "Arabian Nights" story (and, as to matter-of-fact, the Sultaness could not have spun a finer thread, or longer yarn, as the sailors say, when the silken noose was tickling her own slender windwipe), the dramatic effect, the bringing together of the incidents, with a view to the unities of the plot, or, in a word, the poetic management, by which interest is to be kept alive, is so clumsily preserved, that none but a novice, a desperate novel-devourer, a reviewer, or an unfortunate who had paid for the book, could ever go clean through with it. If any of our readers, who fall not within the four orders