Alas, Alas !
" ALL gone. Alas! Alas! " wrote Mrs. Percy Wyndham when h Wiltshire house, " Clouds," was burnt to the ground. Miss Olivier contemplating the leisured but active ladies of the last century an the country houses they lived in, echoes the lament. Enough, w• may imagine her declaring, enough of oppressed governesses an harried matrons ; enough of misunderstood daughters, forced t pour tea for the curate when they would rather be reading Plato their bedrooms. This is only one side, and a vastly over-examine side, of the picture. Let us turn (we may conceive her continuing to those women of character, intelligence, and some private mean who made themselves perfectly rounded lives : to Miss 2vioberlv who taught herself Hebrew, possessed second sight, and becam first principal of St. Hugh's ; to Mrs. Alfred Morrison, who ke bees in Carlton House Terrace, gave her friends simultaneou presents of eighteenth century furniture and darned flannel under sleeves, and scattered uncut topazes about her drawing-room tables to Miss Townsend, who fulfilled the desires of a long life by sketch ing Salisbury Close ; to Mrs. Wyndham herself, binding h commonplace-books in Florentine paper, organising school treat and paper games, pouring out interest, affection and enthusiasm all with whom she came in touch. These (we can hear Miss Olivie cry) these are the true Victorians : women whose minds were no mass-produced, whose leisure permitted the uninterrupted pursui of admirable ends, whose houses were beneficent centres from whit goodness, friendship and civilisation radiated to the world withou How (she concludes) can we doubt their contiibution to the cubit we claim to defend but in fact so diligently destroy?
Those who persist in examining the past in terms of oppressor and oppressed will not buy Miss Olivier's book ; nor, if they take out of the lending library by accident, will they be convinced by i They will find its argument repeated often enough to irritate, Iv without the force to compel. Even those to whom the theme congenial will wish that the author had suppressed a tiresome pr face (largely devoted to the Ladies of Llangollen, who scarcely themselves in easy proximity to the circle of Bishop Moberly Miss Yonge) and that she had tightened up the loose and vagr threads of her narration. The effect of the book is hasty, effusiv highly-coloured ; qualities not perhaps out of keeping with the 11 warm tones of the Victorian country house, but liable to bec' strained when applied to such highly disciplined 'Characters as At Moberly and Miss Townsend. No: to defend the Christianity Keble, the advantages of Wealth and privilege, and the immen benefits of eccentricity, at a time when all arc considered almost improper as socialism in the day of Morris, needs either a heavi• battery or one more skilfully dispoSed. Miss Olivier's book please the survivors of the society she describes but it will nei convert its opponents nor much strengthen the convictions of
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