1 ful society. But through the calm and station- which have gone from among us so sudary details of the present we see frequent denly.. Sylvia's Lovers may affect various glimpses of distant romance that has been, tastes very differently. Some readers will or that might have been. Threads of per- never lose the feeling that, with all its sonal story, belonging to the past life or the force and pathos, it is a very unpleasant unfulfilled hopes of the gentle faded old story; and there are critics who lay maiden ladies or widows who give the down a positive canon that radically untone to the intercourse in the parlours of pleasant stories had better be left unwritten. Cranford, impart a deeper truth and a live- However this may be, it is impossible to lier pathos to the picture of their present read Sylvia's Lovers (as it is impossible to monotonous elderly existence. Faint little read Mr. Tennyson's poem upon the more chords of youthful sentiment still lie far or less similar subject of Enoch Arden) down among the overgrowth of a Miss without the greatest admiration for the Matty's daily cares and nervous proprie- powers the book displays. It is as full of ties, ready to thrill to the step or the vivid and changeful passion, of swift and voice of a former lover. The reader is forcible incident, of carefully-woven plot, brought, as it were, at once into the fourth of human character in the full strength of volume of a novel, or rather of many novels youth and manhood acted upon by the abstrung together. The stage of life which sorbing motives of ordinary human life, as forms the usual matter of the ordinary three the special circle of Cranford is remote from volumes has passed by for the principal per- all these things. Though it treats of nothsonages of the picture, and is not come for ing higher than Yorkshire tradesmen and the secondary ones. The moral to which farmers' daughters, it is a thoroughly tragic, the scene points is not as striking or as aw- even if it is not to be called a sensation, ful as that which is written on the front of novel. And it has one special quality analYorick's skull, or on the figures of Holbein's ogous to the genius which adds such charm Dance of Death; but it is one of nearly as to George Sand's lifelike and homely porgeneral applicability, and which should be traits of peasant manners and character in almost as impressive. There must be a pe- the outlying provinces of France. No one riod in every one's story (if it lasts long who has seen Whitby (the Monkshaven of enough) at which the hero or heroine of Sylvia's Lovers) can fail to recognize the everybody's autobiography drops out of the vivid accuracy of the local colouring, propbuzz and summer of active life, and falls erly subordinated as it always is to the into the sere and yellow leaf which is the movement and interest of the story. Mrs. prevailing tint of Cranford. To paint such Gaskell succeeded in grasping with remarka period with truth and delicate minuteness able truth, and reproducing with forcible for the amusement and instruction of all picturesqueness, the natural features of a who care to study the painting, to mark very peculiar and unfamiliar district of Engwith a clear but tender touch the various lish scenery. Little value is to be attached shades of growing elderly habits, gradually to the purely topographical details of a settling into second nature, or creeping on novel, except so far as their introduction is towards morbid eccentricity, yet co-exist- relevant to the incidents and characters of ing and intertwined with youthful purity the tale. A story of the Monkshaven, or any and lovable softness of nature-in short, other English seaport of to-day, brought to place the portrait of Miss Matty in the nearer to the towns of the inland in manatmosphere of Cranford - was a work well ners, costumes, and interests, by the ease worth doing, and a work which could not and velocity of railroad transit, would have been done with more graceful unob- be independent to a great extent of local trusiveness than it has been by Mrs. Gas- scenery. At the beginning of the century, kell. However many other stories it might the inland communications from the Yorkhave been given her to write, she could shire seacoast were lengthy enough to draw hardly have surpassed the perfection of her a sort of natural cordon co-extensive with own art in this instance, and she will not the line of the bleak Yorkshire moors, and easily be surpassed by others. to stamp on the inhabitants of the Whitby dales an individual character, reflecting the habits and circumstances originating in the natural conditions of the district in which they were born and died. The long windswept ravines, reaching up from the sea to the moors, lying in such close parallelism to each other as to escape the eye of a stranger The other tale by Mrs. Gaskell, of which we have spoken above as marking the opposite limit of her powers in story-telling to that occupied by Cranford, has before now been separately reviewed in our pages. We refer to it mainly as illustrating the considerable width and versatility of the talents likely to prevent its recurrence, but to remedy evils that have now for thirty years been chronic. state of things." The Colonial Stanlard speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Gordon's ability, and of him as "exercising in a suThe imperfect information which we even preme degree the unscrupulousness, cant, now possess confirms, so far as it goes, our and peculiar tact [our colonial contemview of last week, that the insurrection is porary is not classical in its style] required due to no external source, but is, in the last to give unbounded influence upon the instance at least, the result of a long negro." Now would a man of such ability drought, producing excessive poverty, ter- think of coming to England to gain the ribly aggravated by excessive taxation, and assent of Her Majesty and our Parliament co-operating with a very bad administra- to a rebellion which had begun in wholetion of justice to inspire the large negro sale massacres of men and children, and population with a sense of wrong. No ended in reducing to servitude or prostitutdoubt, too, these combustible elements were ing to licentious passions the English ladies kindled into a flame in the last instance by of Jamaica? The thing is absurd. If the publication of the Governor's inquiries there is really, as is said, clear evidence for remedial suggestions, and the general that Mr. Gordon was to come as a delegate refusal of the ruling class of the island to to England, we may be sure that the plan admit that any remedies beyond greater in- of the rebellion was not one of massacre, dustry on the part of the negro labourers but only one of political revolution. Morewere needed or possible. But if this be over, there is another passage in the same the true account of the matter, as we fancy article which compels the same inference. it will prove, the statement of our latest The writer appears to argue from what the news, that the insurrection was one, not insurgents did not do, to the fearfully agsocial or political, but of race, of the pure gravated character of their intentions, as negroes against whites and half-castes, Miss Squeers inferred from her unconsciouscan scarcely be true. Indeed the statement ness of external injuries inflicted by Nichocontained in the summary of news itself, las Nickleby that she must be suffering that men of influence had been travelling from the most fearful internal injuries through the country for some time "ad- hitherto unrevealed. We do not protess to dressing meetings on the subject of negro be able to construe the latter sentences of wrongs, telling them they were oppressed and the following charge against the rebels, but ground down by taxes," and the further it seems clear that its tenor is to infer the statement that "this excited the people, and they determined to seize the land from all the landowners, white and coloured,” which means, we take it, all the rich landowners as contrasted with the small freeholders, -points clearly to a rebellion pri- themselves bears out this plan thoroughly, and marily due to poverty and supposed abuses the coolness and system with which they proin the laws of property, and only associated ceeded prove the force of the organization unwith prejudices of colour (if at all) so far der which they acted. Even whilst their worst as colour marks different strata of wealth passions might have been aroused by the opportuniand proprietary influence. It is true that ty of gratifying personal animosities, and by the the Colonial Standard of Kingston asserts temptation of plunder, they kept in view the condiboldly that the plot contemplated the mur-hibited enough self-restraint to respect the proptions of the programme set out for them, and exder of every white or half-caste man and child, in the island, but the preservation of the women for the service and pleasure of the negroes. Minutely examined, however, the very article which asserts this, contains matter inconsistent with such a design. In the first place it asserts "that Mr. George William Gordon," a black gentleman, a member of the Legislative Assembly, who, though he gave himself up, has been instantly hanged without a civil trial by the tribunal called court-martial," and certain of the chiefs were, after the success of the rebellion, to proceed to England, to obtain the sanction of Her Majesty to the new dreadful character of the rebel designs from the great degree of restraint put by the leaders upon their passions: "The manner in which the rebels conducted feared to provoke. The leaders among them, erty of the Maroons, whose interference they and indeed none, except the rioters who followed their steps, took liquor, although the night before starting for Morant Bay they had deliberately swallowed rum and gunpowder to fortify themselves for the bloody deeds of the morrow." And on these poor wretches, who showed so deep a design by not murdering all the whites they met, the wild Maroons have been let loose and allowed to kill them and dance sublime war dances round them at their pleasure! If we examine strictly the cent., and levies on each poor provisiongrower's cart 18s. annually, while the great planters' carts, if used only on the estate and not traversing the roads, are not taxed at all; which takes 10s. a head for horses, but leaves the planters' draft-stock, oxen, free; which taxes the planters' exports at 3s. a hogshead, and the small settlers' sugar, ginger, coffee, arrow-root, at 2s. a barrel, which provides no education at all worth mention for the poor negro out of a very wasteful expenditure, and which has failed to supply any county courts in which the poor man can get sure and cheap justice, imperfect history we have received of the | certainly it was so within the last few actual atrocities, the evidence seems to us years)-salt provisions, meat, fish, and farto grow stronger that the rioters, though inaceous food, as high as 30 to 40 per guilty of horrible and savage crimes, were not prosecuting a crusade against colour, but only taking brutal revenge on men whom they chose to consider their oppressors; nay, in the very heart of the most rebellious district, there were many cases of strong attachment on the part of negroes to their white superiors, and of great risks incurred to protect them. For example, on Hordley estate the negroes mustered in force to protect the party that had taken refuge there, against the rebels. Again, we are told that a crowd of rebels entered a Mr. Fitzherbert's house and seized him by the throat. Mr. Fitzherbert remonstrated, saying "that he had just come to the island, and done them no harm,”- on which they agreed to release him, only "calling his attention to the warning which their proceedings conveyed," and butchering his book-keeper, not a new comer, before his eyes. In the same way a Mr. Da Costa's life was spared at the entreaty of his wife, on the ground that he was "only a poor clerk, and had nothing to do with the parish." These men, it is clear, were not prosecuting a crusade against the white race, but taking vengeance on persons whom they chose to think their political enemies. Even the massacre at Morant Bay, a sufficiently bloody affair, did not begin till after the mob had been fired on from the court-house and blood so spilt by the besieged, and even then the two physi. cians' lives were spared, and many instances of attempts on the part of the faithful negroes to save individual lives among the upper class are related, while no instances of outrages on women and children are given at all. The details we have at present would seem to show that the rebellion was organized as a political measure, and though carried out by men much more brutal and passionate than those who had planned and hoped to lead it, still without any race-hatred as such, by men who butchered whites and mulattoes rather than negroes, only because they represented the wealth-aristocracy of the island. When we recall the abominable legislation which, during a two years' drought, that pressed on the poor provision-growers of Jamaica as heavily as two years' bad harvest would press on England if there were no large stores of capital to relieve the distress, kept up a general import duty of 12 per cent. ad valorem on all classes of imports, which taxes (as we believe, still, — when we recall all this, there seems to be no difficulty in accounting for this rebellion, and not much, as we hinted last week, in seeing the remedy, if only that remedy be practicable. We believe that the better planters are fully agreed with the friends of the negro labourers, in thinking the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica little better than a nuisance and obstruction, offering the forms of liberty and the reality of the worst kind of oligarchy — a corrupt oligarchy. Thorough investigation we must have, but we have a strong suspicion it will issue in showing that by pressure of some kind, not difficult for the Imperial Government to devise, the present legislative constitution of Jamaica must be swept away, and a far stronger control given to the representative of Her Majesty. In the meantime all England will call for a searching investigation into the bloody measures adopted to suppress the rebellion. From the Economist, 18 Nov. THERE is up to a certain point a striking analogy between the insurrection in Jamaica and the Fenian movement. In each case the persons engaged in the plot were, with one or two exceptions, men of no standing, of little education, and of very slender resources. In each the leaders re lied upon the poverty and misery of certain classes and their rooted distrust of the law to furnish the stimulus to insurrection, and in each they proposed to divide the land as the legitimate spoil of victory. In Jamaica, too, as in Ireland, a few of the leaders entertained plans of murder, and there is some evidence - not much in either case, but still_some that entire classes had been marked out for massacre. Finally, there was in the grievances of each an element of vagueness rarely discovered among men irritated enough to threaten insurrection. It is very difficult in Ireland to discover the precise complaints of the Fenians further than that they have to pay rent, that they receive too little wages, and that they are governed by men of another race; and in Jamaica also these are the only tangible subjects of complaint. There, however, the analogy ends. The Fenian movement was arrested in time, the negro insurrection was not. It might have been, as it was not intended to break out till Christmas, but Paul Bogle, the "Stephens" of the negro Fenians, was a man of action, and hurled the parish of St. Thomas into a revolt before the rest were ready. The injudicious severity of the Custos or unpaid Prefect of the parish a parish in Jamaica is the equivalent in size of an English county-set the accumulated fuel on fire. He ordered a small body of volunteers to fire from the Court house on a mob of blacks who were threatening vengeance for some arrests, and the fire produced one of those mad bursts of fury which with Asiatics and Africans supply the place of anger among Northerns, and the inmates of the Court House were all put to death with the exception of a doctor. The negroes round the neighboring plantations then rose, and attacked the whites, who fled in a panic, suggested as much by the history of Jamaica as by the visible facts, towards the towns. Many of them, it seems probable, were put to death, though distinctions were drawn, one gentleman escaping because he had been only two months in the island, and many more of the quadroons, who are very obnoxious to the negroes from their social pride. It seems highly probable, from the imperfect information as yet received, that the slaughter was not directed against white men and brown men as races, but against such white men as owned land. and either white or brown men when acting as the landowners' agents, these latter in Jamacia, as in Ireland, being the objects of a bitter local hostility not always without reason. Some atrocities also were probably committed, black men in insurrection not being scrupulous, but it is probable that the stories of mutilation are either inventions or generalizations from a single instance, and it is certain that an order had been circulated to kill no women or children, and that the order was obeyed. The officials on the spot appear to have acted with a good deal of energy and a very great deal of severity, more energy than we should have expected and more severity than we quite like to believe. The few troops in the island, English and Krooman, were instantly under arms, the disaffected parishes were placed under martial law, the troops sent into those parishes, more troops summoned from Barbadoes, Halifax, and Nassau, the merchantmen directed to warn any men-of-war in their neighborhood, and the whites of the district and of Kingston formed into volunteer corps. Every negro caught red-handed, and we greatly fear every negro strongly suspected, was tried by drum-head courtmartial, and the number of executions is variously estimated at from two to four hundred, a prodigious number in so limited a population as that of Eastern Jamaica. The active leader, Paul Bogle, was under trial when the news left, without a chance of escape, and another man, Mr. Gordon, whom the colonists evidently hate as a leader of "revivalists," and a negro member of the Assembly as well as a promoter of insurrection, was already hanged. There must be hereafter an inquiry into the reasons of the severity displayed, and especially into the conduct of Colonel Hobbs; but the rebellion is plainly suppressed, and the only task remaining to Mr. Cardwell is to prevent the recurrence of scenes so discreditable to the British name. He will not, we fear, find it a very easy one. It is always difficult to form an opinion as to the reality of grievances existing in a colony many thousands of miles distant, among a people of a lower civilization, and under circumstances which suggest little analogy in home life. When, however, the race is one over which philanthropists and politicians have for half a century made war, and each morsel of evidence affects the policy of a great country, and each act is discussed with the virulent perverseness excited by race feeling, the difficulty becomes almost insuperable. Nevertheless there are some few facts in Jamaica which can be proved almost to demonstration. First, that the immense majority of the population-thirty-two in every thirty-threeare exceedingly discontented, so discontented, that any change seems to them as if it would be a relief. Secondly, that the island does not advance either in wealth, productiveness, or any department of civilization. Thirdly, that these evils are not inherent either in soil, or race, or relation of employer to employed, as they are not found under the same conditions of soil, race, and and employment in Barbadoes. Fourthly, that the system of government is not one under which the discontent can be removed, or the retrogression in any degree ar rested. If these four points are conceded, | tration of justice to the custodes and justices and they are really beyond argument, it fol- of the peace, the former of whom are aplows that unless some insuperable obstacle pointed for life, but unpaid, while the latexists, a new and better form of local gov-ter have interests strongly opposed to those ernment ought to be devised. of the population among whom they have to It is not necessary, we imagine, to waste carry out the law. It seems clear, alike space in proving the first point. Black per- from its constitution, from the contempt in sons without bayonets do not hurl themselves which it is held, from the accounts of wavelupon white persons with bayonets without lers, and from the reluctance of the best some cause and very serious cause of discon- whites to enter it, that this Assembly is not tent, nor does a free population discuss an efficient governing body, but there is no schemes of murder and rapine without some other. If the island were independent anothreason real or imaginary. It may be ima- er would be created in a month by a revoginary like the grievance of the Sepoys or lution, but English authority is too strong exaggerated like the irritation of the Fe- for that, and the population look for redress nians, but still it demands treatment, just as to the Crown, which cannot legally intermuch as hypochondria in the individual pa- fere. Even an Act of Parliament must have tient, though in its manifestations unreal, the sanction of the local Assembly before it demands treatment. The second fact is ad- is law, and no taxes can be raised without mitted, or rather urged, by all planters, all its authority. No change of Government travellers, and the negroes themselves, and can, therefore, be made except by the Asis demonstrable by statistics. The third is sembly, which is incompetent to make any known to all who know the West Indies, such as are required, and affairs therefore and it is only the fourth upon which a few must, if strict legality is preserved, go on words are required. The governing power from bad to worse. The case, however, in Jamaica resides, and for two hundred would seem to be one of those in which the years has resided, in an elective Assembly, strict legal rules ought not to be observed. created under a Royal Charter, and as in- The great planters and the negroes alike dependent as any Canadian or Australian disliking the Assembly, it may be quite Parliament. The members of this Assem- possible to persuade the members a great bly are forty-seven in number, and are number of whom are placeholders to vote elected by all classes alike if possessed of a the suspension of the Constitution for a pefreehold of 61 a year. This franchise would riod of five years, leaving the Queen's Repnot include a great number, the negroes sel-resentative during that period to make the dom owning land, but lest it should include best laws he can. He is sure, having no intoo many, the Assembly, soon after eman-terests in any other direction, to be at all cipation, passed a law compelling every vo- events fair, and will probably, if a man of ter to register himself every year, and pay energy, devise some endurable system of a registration fee of ten shillings. This rule, land tenure, parcel out waste land justly, which would check English voters, has al- and construct necessary roads. He is nearmost stopped negro voting till the Assembly ly sure also to be popular, for the better is almost entirely in the hands of persons whites are tired of the Assembly, while the who vote for the sake of retaining power. negroes believe so entirely in the Queen's The majority are whites, with a few colored Government, that these very insurgents promembers, and we believe two negroes, one posed, after dividing all the lands, to send a of whom has just been hanged by Colonel delegation to London to obtain Her MajesHobbs, and their capacity may be best esti- ty's sanction to the arrangement. Instead mated from Mr. Trollope's masterly sketch of looking to a local Assembly, he would of their proceedings. In capacity the As- look to the Colonial Office, and, being inesmbly is about equal to put it at its high-dependent, take some pride in the prosperiest-to a country vestry in a remote dis- ty of the island and the content of its trict, while in character it is much lower, population. Should the Assembly finally its proceedings being characterized by sel- refuse, then it will be questionable whether fishness, and it is greatly to be feared by ve- the time would not have arrived for extra nality. The greater planters will not enter legal measures, whether the Colonial Minit, the negroes detest it, and it has since ister, for example, might not be justified in emancipation raised the tariff to an enor- informing the Assembly that he deems a mous height, rendered the colony almost in- temporary dictatorship necessary, and that solvent, and completely neglected education, if it is not established he must increase the public works, and the administration of jus- garrison of the island, and impose the cost tice. In particular it has left the adminis- of the troops upon the island revenue, as |