PASTORALS OF FRANCE.*

Mn. WEDMORE has judged it expedient to explain his reasons for the abandonment of the beaten track of modern English novelists —that of the portraiture of the life of Society—and for the adoption of the quiet, yet striking way of his own, which he pursues in this book, in a brief preface, which contains some true sayings. His " Pastorals " need no apology ; they offer a treat of a kind rarely placed within the reach of the novel-reader, but his explanation of their raison d'être is worth attention ; it throws a light, struck out by the difficulties under which contemporary writers are labouring, upon the unsatisfactory work with which readers have in these days to be content.

It is Mr. Wedmore's belief that the present is nova favourable time for the novelist whose theme is the life of Society, that such writers require a period of social repose, when nothing rises to check the stream of accepted beliefs, and "he who wants to be in some measure historian and analyst of society knows on what he may count, and is in sympathy with the moralities to which he appeals, because the right and wrong bruited about him are the right and wrong—the good and evil—of his own mind." No doubt it was to this moral stability, order, and uniformity, that the great English novelists of the past owed much of their power, facility, and success. The state of society which they portrayed, if it had much evil, had very little doubt in it, and on certain classes of subjects finality had long been recognised. This placed the workmen and those who were to profit by their work in positions, both relatively and positively, widely different from any which they can occupy in the present day, and all but the mere tellers of rootless stories, which, as illustrations of anything would be equally worthless in any age, must be conscious of this difference, and hampered by the, difficulties which it brings with it. The conditions under which "he who wants to be in some measure historian and analyst of society," sets about the realising of his desire at present, may safely be believed to match the sketch of them which we find in Mr. Wedmore's preface ; in which he comments on the absence in this our day of social repose and hearty and unanimous faith in an order of things held for the time to be true and final :— • Pastorate of France. By Frederick Wedmore. London : Bentley and son.

"At a time," he says, "when the under-currents of English thought and life have passed by into places unsuspected by the stationary eyes that have watched the surface, one cannot but conjecture that to many novelists perfect sincerity in their work has become hard of attainment, for while the novelist may think one thing, the Society he depicts may think another ; or while both may ho thinking alike, it may still be ex- pected of him that he shall shape his work in polite and gentle accordance with traditions both have inherited and both have oast aside. There are writers who have tried to overcome the difficulty ; writers, too, for whom it never existed,—novelists of a sunny hour, day-labourers of Romance. There are writers, again—and in the conditions under which they work, I see no cause why they should not be numerous—who, in at least momentary uncertainty and momentary discouragement, turn by pre- ference to such rural or outland life as by reason of its remoteness can hardly be deemed contemporary. Such life, by the standard it still faithfully recognises, belongs at least as much to the Past as to the Prosent,—only Time and the Battlement of things disturbed can show whether also it may belong to the Future."

Society, fast, furious, and unspeakably foolish, breaking every thing to pieces to see what it is made of, parting with its peace in order to convince itself of its cleverness, offers little to inspire

writers, or charm readers of any pretensions to taste ; and it is with a sense of rest and refreshment, such as we are sure the writing of them must have afforded to Mr. Wedmore, that his

readers will peruse these Pastorals of France, in which, to use his own words, he " leaves the problems of our complicated life to deal, in remote places, with the tenderness of the old and the fancies of the simple."

In their tenderness, their simplicity, their truthfulness to the slow and remote life which they picture, in the quaint accuracy of their slight touches, in the atmosphere of them, these " Pasto- rals" are almost perfect. We are not quite pleased that Mr. Wedmore has called them "Pastorals "—there is a little affecta- tion about the name, the kind of affectation which is becoming the fashion, giving to foolish verses such titles as "villanelle," " re- tornelle," "ballade," and "rondo "—but the taint of affectation steps with the title-page of the book. Only one of the three stories of which this volume—quite an article of luxury in the way of paper and printing—is composed, has any complication at all in it. "The Four Bells of Chartres " is a very highly-finished study, so done as to preserve an appearance of simplicity, while close examination shows the minute care which has been bestowed upon it. The three sketches are sad, with all their quaintness and colour ; the third is the saddest of the three. In the first a simple chord is struck, it is added to in the second by a deeper utterance of the quiet and hopeless sorrow, the helpless bondage of the remote human life it portrays ; a man's silently borne disappoint- ment, his tacitly abandoned dream is the theme of the first ; a girl's

heartbreak and life burthen, imposed by the heavy hand of old custom, is the theme of the second ; the fuller story of love, inn- Bien, marriage, disappointment, and death, with the pathetic image of the disinterested love of kinship, powerless to save, a spectator of all the ruin, and left to lament in the waste place

where home had been, forms the theme of the third. They come to the reader like the gathering chimes of the four belle of Chartres, themselves, Anne, Elizabeth, Fulbert, and Pyat, each with his own "service," and ringing tog( ther on grandest occaaions the Great Bourdon. Certain experiences, certain in- cidents of human life which are common to all humanity, and un- affected by the restlessness of the age, are the materials of which the author constructs his stories ; their scenes are places in which existence is a slow and sluggish affair, a thing of old traditions, of rooted customs, of unchanging local colour, sober-tinted, with a lasting beauty ; such places as Pernic, Croisic, and the upland country on the edge of La Beauce. Something in Mr. Wedmore's sketches of the face of nature, and the ways of the peasants, reminds one of Jules le Breton's pictures ; perhaps it is the strangely effective combination of grandeur and monotony, in the freedom and ex- pansiveness of the one, and the narrow scope, slow apprehension, and patient routine of the other. "A Last Love at Pornic " (a little spoiled by the reader's intrusive recollection of the 'un- fortunate nobleman" who could not remember the particulars of Sir Roger Tichborne's tumble there), includes some admirable touches of French character, as true as they are carefully slight. The story is told in a sentence. Mr. Rutterby, an elderly bachelor, with a large fortune, artistic tastes, and a fine collection of pictures, goes on a visit to his old friend, Monsieur de Malmy, at Pornic. There he falls in love with Ondelette, his friend's beautiful young daughter, whose marriage is under con- sideration by her father. Monsieur de Malmy has a son, hie

mother's idol, who is extravagant and good for nothing ; his sister Will therefore have but a small dot. Mr. Rutterby thinks of pro- posing to Ondelette, who likes him, but finds there is a pretendant whom she also likes—a young man—so Mr. Rutterby quietly

goes awhy home, and the reader is afforded the merest hint of his intention to leave his fortune to his Last love " and' her husband. Here is the slightest thread on which it would be possible to hang a story. Mr. Wedmore has hung a string of pearls upon it. What an admirable trait of character, for instance, is that exhibited by M. do Malmy, who entertains only a tepid friendship for his own wife, but really loves and appreciates his daughter ; yet never hesitates about " arranging" a marriage for her, and calmly discusses with himself whether there is any like- lihood of Rutterby's offering himself as a son-in-law,—all this without the faintest consciousness that the girl's happiness is vitally concerned :—

" You find her very beautiful, my Ondelette ? said Do Malmy, when he saw that Rutterby was no more minded than himself to read the English newspaper which they had brought out lest talk should Bag. Philip Rutterby did not often express admiration in strong words, and when he said quietly, ' I should think Ondelette a genius of happiness,' the phrase meant much with him. 'I have not judged it convenient to mention to her that I have just received a proposal of marriage. The young man himself takes the initiative by writing me a letter, which I have received this morning. He is called Jules G6rard, a young man of some little talent—son.i-prget of Saumur. Only twenty-eight years of age. I suppose he wishes to marry himself into a premature reputa- tion for steadiness.'—' What does Ondelette think of him ?'—'0ndeletto, dear friend, thinks well of him, of course, for I have not educated Ondelette to think ill of anybody. My child is as naive as your Shake- speare's Miranda. She is your true friend, Ondelette, when you have talked to her quietly for a quarter of an hour.'—' I have not done

so,' remarked Rutterby. And this young man, does he know her

Mon Dieu! if my child is your friend in a quarter of an hour, it is because you can know her in that time. Ondelette is excellent.'—' There should be fine uses for so flue an instru- ment,' said Philip Rutterby, broodingly.—' But I cannot regard a sous-prefecture as a suitable provision,' De Maim. observed.— ' She does not love him, then ?'—' Romantic fellow You forget of whom you speak. She is Fronch—nza fille—et Lien amt. Of course she does not love him. Well, well, Rutterby, dear friend, we cannot

settle it out here this afternoon. Let us go in. I will consider at leisure Monsieur G6rard's pretensions.'—' And what will 31mlame de Malmy think of them ?' asked Ruttorby, rising.—' She will think them

unjustified. But what of that ? It is I who must decide, without pre- judice or influence. I have never yet taken counsel of women,— especially middle-aged women. Oh fenones, lea femme& ne vont pas grand' ,chose.'" "Yvonne of Croisic " is a beautiful little story, as sad as the "lonely country, leading nowhere," wherein Yvonne dwelt ; the country to which inland France is "abroad," and Piriac, "be- yond the farthest point, five hours' sail," so far that the dwellers there are foreigners, and a girl of Croisic may not marry a man of Piriac, because she cannot leave her own people and her father's house. Mr. Wedmore draws a strangely beautiful picture of the place and the people, the lonely country which made lonely lives for those who dwelt in it. " It bred in than," he says, "a certain self-reliance and large quietude, hardly found in the inhabitants of cities or of crowded garden lands, a large, restful, fearless quietude, as of those accustomed to be much alone with peaceful farm-work, and the beasts, and the wide field-crops, and the wider sky." The Breton population, Mr. Wedmore says, is born civilised, "school-boards might teach it geography, but not refinement," and so there is nothing unnatural in the contrast between the lowly peasant life of Yvonne, and the lofti- ness and delicacy of her feelings. Rohan, her lover, the fisherman from Piriac, to whom she must not listen because she is Creisi- caise, is a fine fellow, and nobly drawn. A subject worthy of the powers of a true artist would be the parting of the girl and her lover, in the scene thus sketched :— " Here was the groat rough crucifix, lifted high where the lanes mot and widened towards the coast. Here was the bare field, given place to barer, wind-blown shore. Hero was the water, blue beneath them, tumbling in upon the strewn boulders, and the black line of seaweed on

the beach. The Point of Croisie,' the peninsula's end, and to right and left, as well as in front of them, the sparkling evening sea, and an immense sky, orange-rod at the sees far edge, but fading above them into clear, thin tones of bluish, silvery grey Bohan, while she spoke, had looked oat rather hopelessly on the last of the sunset, but the beauty of it had not been lost on him or on the girt. The poor never talk of scenery, but the finer spirits among them sometimes sit and watch it, with all its changing lights, reverently, with placid hands crossed or folded, as in act of devotion. Of it they have nothing to say, but it somehow speaks to them—things half-understood, strange snatches of suggestion of wider life and thought—as they wait, with their eyes fixed, in their grave loneliness."

Mr. Wedmore's Pastorals ofFrance is a book to be read with great and to be re-read with increased pleasure. He is perfectly right in his view of the collapse of the novel of society, and it would be well if the unbeaten tracks were now tried, Here, however, we come to the difficulty se aptly put by Punch, ever se many years ago, when some one proposed to "turn out Lord John,"—" All right ; but who's to do it?"