Through a Needle's Eye. By Hesba Stratton. 3 vols. (Kogan
Paul and Co.)—The situation in which the interest of this story centres is finely conceived. The temptation to acquire wealth in a wrongful way comes upon a man who is honourable, and even pious, with a force that seems overpowering. It is wealth that he has been long led to expect, which he has both the will and the means to employ well, which in his hands will be safe from the certain ruin to which it would otherwise be destined ; and it comes to hint by a mistake which is not his own, in which he persuades himself that he can see an act of Providence,—tho writer finely says that he does not venture to call it to himself an act of God. All this is admirably worked out, as is the sequel of the story, the Nemesis which follows on the unrighteous act,—a Nemesis which is admirably imagined, because it suggests a meaning in some of those consequences of evil which seem to us so perplexing, when the children suffer for the sins of their fathers. Pansy's story is thoughtfully and tenderly worked out, and made to harmonise with the purpose of the whole story, in a way that deserves no small praise. Miss Diana, too, is an excellently-drawn character, and so, on quits another plane of being, is Leah. Miss Hesba Stretton seems to us to have been in this book quite equal to her high reputation for thoughtfulness and truth of writing.
Previous page
