The Faith - Doctor. By Edward Eggleston. (Cassell and Co.)— This is
a really admirable novel, all the more admirable in our eyes because it is a relief from the everlasting "sexual problem" with which writers of fiction now torment and disgust us. Of course there is love in it, but it is the lawful love which used to be considered sufficient motive for stories in times past, before our novelists found out that much might be made out of a very little expenditure of ability and pains, if there were only an element of the forbidden. Charles Millard is a young man who, after much effort, has made himself a social success. He is much more than a mere man of fashion. He is industrious, intelligent, of blame- less life. He falls in love, not without much resistance and reluc- tance, with Phillida Callender, a girl of very enthusiastic temperament. She has high religious ideals, and is specially devoted to work among the poor, but of her earnestness is developed a certain gift of faith-healing. How far it is effectual, what are its limitations, need not be said ; the difficulty with Charlie Millard is. how to bear the notion of the woman whom he loves, whom he hopes to make his wife, becoming the object of all the talk that is likely to arise about a faith-healer. This is the main plot of the story, but it has many subordinate interests. There are excellent social sketches, and more than one character drawn with a delicate skill which would do credit to any writer of fiction. Philip Gouverneur, in particular, is admirably described, a dilettante who is capable of something like heroism on occasion. The writing throughout is of very good quality. The Faith-Doctor is worth reading for its style, its wit, and its humour, and not less, we may add, for its pathos. The conclusion is peculiarly effective in this way. "It is one of the crowning good fortunes of life that a woman can contrive to make so much of a little virtue in a man ;" "The oratorical tempera- ment enlarges the image of a sentiment as naturally as a magic- lantern magnifies a picture ; " a propos of a religious drawing-room meeting, "Persons of the highest fashion' were pleased to find a private and suitably decorated wicket-gate leading into a straight and narrow vestibule train, limited, fitted up with all the consola- tions and relieved of most of the discomforts of an old-fashioned religious pilgrimage ; " "The resonant periods of Bossuet would hardly have echoed through the modern centuries if he had not had the magnificent Court of Louis the Great for a sounding- board,"—these are some samples of Mr. Eggleston's manner.
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