ME HAL AU.*

IN giving the Peon de Chagrin to Raphael do Valentin, the old merchant says, "L'homme s'6puise par deux notes, instinctive- ment accom phis, qui tarissent les sources do son existence. Deux verbes expriment toutes lea formes quo prennent ces deux causes de mart : vouioir et pouvoir. Vouloir nous brine, et pouvoir nous d6truit." And this theory of the selfrdestructive power of will was recalled to our mind in studying the striking por- trait of Elijah Rebow, the hero of the work now under con- sideration, who is in truth a very incarnation of will. Had Elijah, like Balzac's Raphael, possessed the power of obtaining whatever he wished at the price of curtailing his life with each desire, he would certainly not have been deterred by the penalty from further wishing, since he is a man to whom nothing could ever have seemed of such paramount im- portance as the carrying-out of whatever he had pur- posed. His will is the hinge on which everything in the book turns, the constraining force that shapes all events to its own ends. It is represented as well-nigh omnipotent ; as we read of it, we half fancy that the author believes that a human will, if sufficiently unyielding and unscrupulous, may be the natural explanation of supernatural spells and enchantments, since the effects of Elijah's iron determina- tion seem little short of magical. That enormous influence should belong to a man of great wealth, talent, or position would not be very surprising; but this is not Elijah's case, for * lifehalak : a Sharp of Ms Batt Marshes. London : Smith and Elder.

his circumstances are merely those of a well-to-do farmer. His Power is derived in but a small degree from any external source, but rests in himself,—in the fierce, over-mastering, indomitable will, that knows what it wants; realises its own strength; can wait patiently, if need be; sticks at nothing in order to accom- plish its euds ; never contemplates the possibility of being • satisfied with anything less than what it has resolved on obtain- ing; and is perfeetly confident that it cannot fail, but will eventu- ally crush, sweep away, or compel into obedience whatever is in opposition to it One thing which he has made up his mind to do, is to have for his wife the queerly-named heroine, Mehalah ; and he is resolved not only to marry her, but also to bring about an entire union of heart and affection with her, notwithstanding that she hates him, and is in love with and engaged to another man, named George de Witt. But these obstacles in no way discourage Elijah. He is firmly convinced that he and Mehalah are destined for each other, and that at last she will come to recognise that truth as surely as he does.. Rough, strange, and brutal is his wooing of her, with a strain of madness and fanaticism running through it all, and com- pounded out of a mixture of fierce, passionate love, and a sort of sense of being bound to employ any and every means to bring about the destiny by which they have been foreordained as mates for one another. The intensity of the feeling with which be regards her is thus expressed :—" I heard a preacher once say,—What is God? It is that as makes a man, and keeps him alive, and gives him hopes of happiness, or plunges him in hell. Every man has his own God ; for there is some- thing different makes and mars each man. What do I want but you, Glory ? It is you that can make and keep me alive, and you are my happiness or my hell." Yet, in spite of this, he does not hesitate to rob her, persecute her, thwart her, set fire to her house, and cause her all kinds of annoyance and trouble, so as to force her into his power, and make her depend upon him for succour. He has no qualms of conscience or remorse on the score of this behaviour, for he believes it fully justified by his unshakable conviction that there will be nothing but misery for both of Ahem as long as they remain apart, and that only in being united will they find happiness. " You can- not, you shall not, escape me," he tells her. " Soon or late you must find your proper mate, soon or late you must seek your double, soon or. late find your heaven." He is satisfied that no other person can understand her as he can. He says, " You arc a book, and God made me to read you. I can do it. That wants no scholarship, it conies by nature to me. Others can't." He

becomes her landlord, by buying the farm which she and her mother rent, and then goes to see them, and tells them that they belong to him, just as mach as the house, and the saltingss and the marshes, and the fish, and the wild fowl, and all el e that is on the estate. And when the girl

indignantly denies it, he clings to the point tenaciously, returning to it with dogged pertinacity, and irritating her with such threats as the following, which may serve as a specimen of the strange temper of the man who could take pleasure in so addressing a woman whom he loved and iuteuded to marry :—

" ' If you cannot pay the rent, I can take everything from you. I can throw you out of this chair down on those bricks. I can take the crock and all the meat in it. I can take the bed on which you sleep. I can take the clothes off your back.' rurning suddenly round on the girl, he glared, 'I will rip the jersey off her, and wear it till I rot. I witi pull the red cap off her head, and lay it on my heart to keep it warm. None shall say me nay. Tell me, mistress, what are you, what is she, without house and bed and clothing P I will take her gun, I will swamp her boat. I will trample down your garden. I will drive you both down with my dogs upon the saltings at the spring. tide, at the full of moon. You shall not shelter here, on my island, if you will not pay. I tell you, I have bought the Ray. I gave for it eight hundred pounds."

Such treatment, and the way in which he perpetually insists that she belongs to him both by fate and by right of purchase, would have roused opposition in the breast of the very tamest of girls ; and how much more, therefore, in that of such an one as Mehalah, who is high-spirited, brave, resolute, masculine in qualities of both mind and body, and independent Thus there naturally ensues a desperate conflict between their two wills, of which he is fully aware ; and he loves to talk of it to her, and to taunt her with the victory for himself which he feels sure will be its final issue, after this fashion :—" You may writhe and circumvent, but I meet you at every turn, and tread you down whenever you think to elude me. I am mighty over you as a Providence. I am irre- sistible, almighty, as far as you are concerned, your fate incarnate." He surrounds her as with a net He forces her to do thing after thing which she has refused to do, and even burns her and her mother out of house and home, in order to oblige them to take shelter at his house on a palticular night, when he has told her that he will have her under his roof in spite of herself. Having once got her there, he holds her fast as in a prison by means of her love to her sick and helpless old mother, who owes him rent; and at the very moment when Meha- lab at last believes herself to be about to escape, she is stopped and brought back in triumph at the victor's ehariot-wheels,—

i.e., seated beside him in his trap, and paraded as his valentine in the eyes of all the neighbours whom she had been imploring

to assist her in getting away from him. The reader's sympa- thies are entirely with the heroine, and the story is told with such ability that he can hardly help putting himself in her place, and looking round shudderingly for some means of escape from the terrible power that has got her into its clutches, and is tightening its hold closer and closer with every struggle of the victim.

Mehalah herself is rough and uncultured, with wild, gypsy blood in her ; able to dress and act somewhat like a man, and to knock down another woman in a fit of temper ; but yet she is true, large-hearted, full of generous impulses, with a chival- rous and tender compassion for the weak and oppressed, and having "a dim prevision of something better than the sordid round of common cares which made up the life she knew."

She loves only two people, her mother and George de Witt ; the latter, however, she does not really know, as she thinks she does, and what she loves is her ideal of him ; she believes that he will "open to her the gates of the mysterious world into which she has only peeped, solve for her the perplexities of her troubled soul, lead her to the light which will illumine her eager mind." Her state of mind is thus described

The great cretaceous sea was full of dissolved silex, penetrating the waters, seeking to condense and solidify. But there was nothing in the ocean then save twigs of weed and chips of shells, and about them that hardest of all elements drew together and grow to adamant. The soul of Mehalah was some such vague sea, full of uuunderstood, unestimated elements, seeking their several centres for precipitation, and for want of better, condensing about straws. To her, George de Witt was tho ideal of all that was true and manly. She was noble herself, and her ideal was the pmfection of nobility. She was rude indeed, and the image of her worship was rough-hewn, but still with the outline and carriage of ti hero. She could not, she would not suppose that George do Witt was less great than her fancy pictured."' Her ideal, George, is a good young fellow enough, but of far more ordinary clay than herself; and as her strength and. nobility of character are gradually developed and contrasted with his weakness and inferiority, it does seem a question

whether, after all, Elijah was not right in deeming that his unchangeableness and relentless will made him a fitter mate for her than George could be, and that his and her power of constancy and strength of nature gave them a natural affinity and comprehension for one another which must of necessity bind them together.

The characters are vigorously but somewhat coarsely drawn, and give the idea of being evolved from the author's own internal consciousness rather than taken from life. The sentiments they enunciate, too, are often far too high-flown for their position,

and are evidently what the author has chosen to put into their mouths, and not such as they would themselves have uttered,—

which increases the sense of unnaturalness. Another fault to complain of is a sort of straining after cynical remarks upon the female sex, which is laboured, and therefore unpleasing ; that kind of thing, like a joke, should appear to rise spontaneously to the lips, in order to make it successful, and the effect is

greatly marred when there is an audible creaking of pulleys to reveal the effort attending its production. The cynicism in the

present ease suggests the idea that the author is a woman who thinks to prevent her sex from being suspected by throwing mud at it. The whole story is wild, peculiar, exciting, and sometimes painful. But whatever faults it may contain, it is, at all events, full of force, originality, and interest, and will make a considerable impression on the imagination of any reader who gives himself up to it.