DAVID COPPERFIELD, BY CHARLES DICKENS—Part 2. [From a Sheffield Paper.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 446, 10 November 1849, Page 4

DAVID COPPERFIELD, BY CHARLES DICKENS— Part 2. [From a Sheffield Paper.

This new history hy our favourite Boz bids fair to excel the best of his former productions. The characters introduced ar3 as usual drawn to the life, and in wit, humour, and truth the history abounds. David's presentiments as to the tyranny of his father-in-law, are likely to be more than realized, and Murdstone has sjcured a good assistant, in the shape of a sister, who, like himself, is possessed of an enormous quantity of firmness. The following extract will give our readers a little insight into the position now held by Mrs. Murdstone. It is the

ARRIVAL OS MISS MURDSTONE. After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Pegotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house.

a coach drove up to the garden-gate, and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour-door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, wbispererl me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly aud secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly ; and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we game near to where he was standing in the gardeu, where she let mine go, and drew her's through his arm. It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy looking lady she was ; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice ; and with very heavy eyebrows nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wiongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took "her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had .never, at that time, seen such a metallic 3ady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. She was brought into the parlour with many 'tokens of welcome, and there formally recognised my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said : " Is that your boy, sister-in-law ?" My mother acknowledged me. ■*• Generally speaking," said Miss Murdstone, "Idon'tlikebo^s. How d'ye do, boy?" Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and I hoped she was the same — with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words : "Wants manner!" Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favoui of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking glass in formidable array. As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to " help" my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store closet all day, putting things to righls, and making havoc in old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing that I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him. Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggoty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open ; but I could not concur in this idea ; for 1 tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn't be done. On the very next morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother come down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said : " Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You're much too pretty and thoughtless" — m y mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character — " to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you'll be so good as to give me your keys, my dear, 111 attend to all this sort of thing in future." From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had. My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of a protest. One night Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she might have been consulted. • " Clara !" said Mr. Murdstone sternly. " Clara ! I wonder at you." " Oh, it's very well to say you wonder, Edward !" cried my mother, " and it's very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn't like it yourself." Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at the time,

I if I had been called upoD, I nevertheless did | clearly comprehend in ray own way, that it was, another name for tyranny ; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in both of them. The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone, was firm ; nobody else in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone ; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody wts to bent be to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth. 41 It's very hard," said my mother, " that in my own house — " '• My own house," repeated Mr. Murdstone. " Clara !" •*' Our own house, I mean," faltered my mother, evidently frightened — " I hope you must know what I mean, Edward — its very hard that in your own house I may not have a word to say about domestic affairs. lam sure I managed very well before you were married. There's evidence," said my mouther, sobbing; "ask Peggotty if I didn't do very well when I wasn't interfered with !" s "Edward," said Miss Murdstone, '"let there be an end of this. Igo to-morrow." "Jane Murdstone," said her brother, "be silent, How dare you to insinuate that you don't know my character better than your words imply ?" "I am sure," my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and-witb many tears, "I don't want anybody to go. I don't ask as much. lam not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. lam very much obliged to any one who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form sometimes. I thought you were pleased once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward — I am sure you said so — but you seem to hate me (or it now, you are so severe." "Edward," said Miss Murdstone, again, "let there be an end of this. I go to-mor-row." "Jane Murdstone," thundered Mr. Murdstone. "Will you be silent? How dare you?" Miss Murdstone made a jail delivery of her pocket handkerchief, and held it before her eyes. •'Clara," he continued, looking at my mother, "you surprise me ! You astound me ! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. Bus when Jane Murdstone is kind, enough to come. to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper's, and when she meets with a base return — " " Oh, pray, pray, Edward," cried my mother, "dont accuse me of being ungrateful. lam sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was, before. I have my faults but not that. O don't, my dear?" "When Jane Murdstone meets, I say," he went on, after waiting until my mother was silent, "with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled and altered." "Don't, my love, say that?" implored my mother, very piteously. "Oh don't, Edward! I can't bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am affectionate. I wouldn't say it, if I wasn't certain that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she'll tell you I'm affectionate." "There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara," said Mr. Murdstone in reply, "that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath." " Pray let us be friends," said my mother, "I could'nt live under coldness or unkindness. lam so sorry. I have a great many defects, I know, and it's very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don't object to anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you, thought of leaving — " My mother was too much overcome to go on. "Jane Murdstone," said Mr Murdstone to to his sister, "any harsh words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken place to night. I was betrayed into it by another. Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both try to forget it. And as this," he added, after the magnanimous words, " is not a fit scene for the boy — David, go to bed !"