indifferent--a picture gallery
full of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd characters. The
plot is of no importance; we are not interested in Harry's love affairs,
but in his scrapes, adventures, duels at home and abroad. He fights
people by mistake whom he does not know by sight, he appears on parade
with his face blackened, he wins large piles at _trente et quarante_, he
disposes of coopers of claret and bowls of punch, and the sheep on a
thousand hills provide him with devilled kidneys. The critics and the
authors thought little of the merry medley, but the public enjoyed it,
and defied the reviewers. One paper preferred the book to a wilderness
of "Pickwicks"; and as this opinion was advertised everywhere by
M'Glashan, the publisher, Mr. Dickens was very much annoyed indeed.
Authors are easily annoyed. But Lever writes _ut placeat pueris_, and
there was a tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the "Slogger
Williams" and "Tom Brown" of the period, for the possession of "Harry
Lorrequer." When an author has the boys of England on his side, he can
laugh at the critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was easily vexed,
and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. Next he began
"Charles O'Malley"; and if any man reads this essay who has not read the
"Irish Dragoon," let him begin at once. "O'Malley" is what you can
recommend to a friend. Here is every species of diversion: duels and
steeplechases, practical jokes at college (good practical jokes, not
booby traps and apple-pie beds); here is fighting in the Peninsula. If
any student is in doubt, let him try chapter xiv.--the battle on the
Douro. This is, indeed, excellent military writing, and need not fear
comparison as art with Napier's famous history. Lever has warmed to his
work; his heart is in it; he had the best information from an
eye-witness; and the brief beginning, on the peace of nature before the
strife of men, is admirably poetical.

To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the deep and
rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular transport. "He
dared the deed. What must have been his confidence in the men he
commanded! what must have been his reliance on his own genius!"

You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans charge, till
at last the field is won, and the dust of the French columns retreating
in the distance blows down the road to Spain.

The Great Duke read this pas