NOVELS.
A TALE OF THE HEBRIDES.* IT sometimes happens that a master of style seems to be mastered by style. Mr. Neil Munro is not quite exempt from the danger. We observe traces of a habit which beset Charles Dickens in his later days, the repeated notice of some trick of manner or peculiarity of look. How often do we hear after our introduction to " Young Corodale " of his Spanish beard and the sinister mouth which it hid ! And then we have such a phrase as, " The moon, enormous, stared upon the Isles." But after awhile Mr. Munro seems to shake himself free from this influence, and the style, while always ornate and emphatic, loses its exaggeration. The scene of the story is laid in the southern part of the Long Island, those strange con- fusions of land and sea, moor and loch, which are known by the local names of Barra, Benbecula, and South ITist. It is a tale of treasure-seeking and of love. We must own that the treasure part of it is not much to our liking; there is a certain obscurity about it; it demands more trouble from the reader than he cares to give before he can realise what it was and how it is mixed up with the fate of the people in whom he is interested. It is only fair, however, to say that the chapters in which the catastrophe of its finding and losing is described reach a high point of dramatic in- tensity. When the tide sweeps back the boat with its awful burden into the sight of the guilty watcher for its return, we have as weird a picture as can well be imagined. It is a relief to turn to the delightful love story, which is the main attrac- tion of the book, told, as it is, with a delicacy and grace which belong to the Gaelic character when it is at its best. The prominent figures in the drama are Father Ludovick and his sister Anna, and the two brothers, Duncan and Col, of Coro- dale. Anna has but just come back from her schooling time in France ; she had gone thither as a child ; she comes back a
woman to take charge of her brother the priest's house. He is a striking figure; a man of a large heart, who has made the great renunciation which his Church demands of those who serve her, and does not repent the making of it, but yet is not a little moulded by it. He is thrown back upon himself, and one of the subtle effects so wrought in him is his relation to outward Nature, his insight into its working, his abandonment to its influence :—
"He was one that had curious gifts, and felt the influence of the elements quickly,—felt them not in warmth or chill, but in premonitions and inward impulses that answered to the tiniest rainfall of the spring, even when he slept, and made him glad in his dreams for all the flowers, and rejoice with the thirsty mountain grasses. He had communion with the sea and wind; could tell when they must rise and shout, or when their hour of rest was come for them—not a trivial gift of fisher-lore, but the knowledge of the smaller gods. 'I am Dorms to-day, my dear ! he was used to tell his sister when she came seeking for him, with a hat and plaid, knowing him of old, and finding him all uplifted, breathing deep in hours of storm upon their island, tramping the sands of the beach, or bareheaded, with flying curls upon his temples, and an abandoned neck, standing on the farthest pro- montory crying Gaelic verses to the day."
As for Anna, we cannot do better than show her with the " Brideag " :— " Anna sat with the side of her face to him, knitting, and while she made the needles flash she rocked a wicker cradle with her foot and sang. 0 Bride !' she sang- ' 0 Bride, Brideag, come with the wand
To this wintry land ; And breathe with the breath of the Spring so bland, Bride, Bride, the little Bride !'
She was dressed like one that had been at an assembly, in a deep- tucked gown of white, short-waisted in a recent fashion, a green sash round it, a fillet of green staying the tumult of her bur, where nestled a spray of the primrose that blooms on the isles when the rest of the world is barren. He stood astounded at her occupation, at her beauty, and felt some sudden flush of soul that never before had been in his experience ' I declare, Miss Anna,' said Duncan, that I could not find you better engaged.
• Children of Tempest a Tait of the Outer Isles. By Neil Mauro. Leaden W. Blackwoca and Sons. [is.] The baby and you must pardon me for spoiling the song.'—'The baby ! ' cried Anna, and seeing he was in earnest, laughed outright. `Bonny on the baby ! come and see our Brideag !' She tilted over the wicker cradle and let him see it held only a sheaf of corn, ornamented with flowers, and shells, and ribbons. Have you been so long in France,' she asked, still laughing at his confusion on this discovery, that you have forgotten the little Bride ?'"
This, we should say, is not the first meeting of the two. That has come about in a very different fashion. Ludovick and his
sister have made a journey to the burying of their old uncle Dermosary, and on their way back, when they and their com- pany have to pass over the sands, one of those dangerous crossings which must be made between tide and tide, she is lost. Duncan, bidden to the funeral, has come late by a happy chance, and finds her on the island to which she has just been able to struggle. We should certainly spoil the admir- able scene that follows if we were to attempt to break it into` portions, and the whole is beyond our limits of space. But it assuredly is one of the happiest efforts in fiction that we have seen for a long time. 'Hist is not an ideal scene for love-
making. It is too " fiat and frank," as Mr. Munro puts it. "You might walk," he explains, "for a day on that peering
open isle and never come upon a nook where you might kiss the willingest so long as it was daylight." And our author, it must be allowed, manages the affair with consummate tact. There is a singular charm about Children of Tempest.
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