B 0 0 K S.

JULIANA HORATIA EWING.*

To summarise adequately within the narrow limits of a Spectator review the impressions derived from a careful study of Mrs. Ewing's stories, is a task that would have tried the powers of an artist at least as skilled in the art of condensing as she was herself. We have heard her compared to a literary Meissonier, and the parallel is not without point. She chose to work on the smallest of canvasses ; but the colours are laid on so cleanly and with a choice so exquisite, that every stroke tells. To the general public, she is still beat known as the author of Jackanapes, a story which illustrates her faculty for condensation to a re- markable degree, a story which many have tried to read aloud, though few have had the self, control to achieve such a feat. But it is not too much to say that in at least a dozen of her other tales she has reached the same high level, and that the popularity of Jackanapes was largely due to the circumstances of its reissue in book-form. She wrote primarily for children and of children; but she wrote of the child as father to the man, and with such truth and pathos, that one of our most gallant soldiers was not ashamed to own that he had wept over her books. She was never consciously or aggressively "edifying," as so many writers for the young are. Indeed, it might be said of her, as Sir George Grove has happily remarked of Mendelssolm's mother, that "she was one of those rare persons whose influence seems to be in proportion to the absence of any attempt to exert it." We know of one dignitary of the Church who reads and re-reads Mrs. Ewing's stories, and no others. And fresh from our perusal of her writings, we are not surprised at such an attachment. She spoils us for the very best work of her rivals. Such a story • Mrs. Orotr-the.Way's Remembrances; The Brownies, and other Tales; Lob-Lie- 14e-the-Fire, and other Tales; -A Flat-Iron for a Farthing; Six to Sixteen ; Jan of the Windrnifl; A Great Emergency, and other Tales. (Bell and BODS.)—Old- Rushioned Fairy-Tales Brothers of Pity, and other Tales; Jackanapes; The Story of a Short Life. (52.0.8.) ,

as Little Lord Fauntleroy, for example, graceful and attractive in its way, is eminently theatrical and artificial beside such tales as The Story of a Short Life, Six to Sixteen, or A Flat-Iron for a Farthing. Many women have a great play of fancy, but few exhibit in their writings such a strong sense of humour as Mrs. Ewing.

It is a good test of the powers of expression of a writer, whether we remember the thoughts that have struck us in their pages, in their words or our own. Mrs. Ewing emerges triumphantly from the application of such a test. And yet no one could say of her, Materiem superabat opus. Charm of style went hand-in-hand with nobility of sentiment and acute insight. Take, for example, this passage from the close of Six to Sixteen.

On Margery's—the heroine's—fifteenth birthday, she received a summons to go and live with her great-grandparents, and parted with a terrible wrench from her North Country home

It was a strange change from the unconventional Yorkshire lifer with its absorbing interests, to the needless formalities and indecision and enforced idleness of the Vine. The unmarked time slipped quickly by till a lassitude crept over me in which I felt amazed at former ambitions, and a certain facility of sympathy which has been in many respects an evil and in many a good to me, seemed to mould me to the interests of the fading household. And so I lived the life of my great-grand parents, which was as if science made no strides and men no struggles : as if nothing were to be done with the days but to wear them through in all patient goodness, loyal to a long-fallen dynasty" [the old man was a Frenchman and a Legitimist], "regretful of some ancient virtues and courtesies, tender towards past beauties and passions, and patient of succeeding eunsets, till this aged world should crumble to its close."

The choice of words is a little more studied than usual, but what a tender cadence there is in the closing sentences ! And this is no isolated instance of her magic. Such passag,i1 are scattered thick throughout her writings, and it is perhaps' aly because people do not expect to discover such exquisite ;ark- manehip in stories for children, that Mrs. Ewing's claims as an artist have never yet been adequately vindicated. Here is another example of the music of her prose from The Neck, the third of her Old-Fashioned Fairy-Tales : --" Now, when the sun shone, this Neck rose up and sat upon the waves and played upon his harp. And he played so sweetly that the winds stayed to listen to him, and the sun lingered in his setting, and the moon rose before her time." Another favourite passage of ours is the last episode in Timothy's Shoes, when Timothy, the usher,—an attractive person, of the Tom Pinch genus, whose favourite remark on learning of any irregularity was, " Ifumanum est errare, as Dr. Kerchever Arnold truly remarks in one of his exercises "—and another boy are almost lost in the snow, but rescued by Bernardus,' the dog of the story,—there is almost always a dog in Mrs. Ewing's tales, the variety and charm of her canine dramatis personw constituting one of the special attractions of her works :— "' Mrs. Airey,' said the Doctor, as an hour later they sat round the study-fire wrapped in blankets and drinking hot compounds, Mrs. Airey, that is a creature above kennels. From this eventful evening I wish him to sleep under our roof.' And Mrs. Airey began, Bless him !' and then burst into tears. And Bernardus,' who lay with his large eyes upon the fire, rejoiced in the depths of his doggish heart." The Doctor's name in this story, Dixon Airey, proves Mrs. Ewing to have, consciously or unconsciously, followed a practice of which Thackeray was an un- equalled exponent. And signs are not wanting that in style she had come under his influence. The last entry in her commonplace

book was a passage from The Netvcomes. Curiously enough, , too, her handwriting bears a decided resemblance to Thackeray's. In some of her stories she obviously modelled her diction upon that of Andersen's fairy-tales, and the tone of Beka Dom recalls Cranford. But in her best work no such reminiscences are to be found. We have spoken of her predilection for dogs, but all

animals come within the range of her ready sympathy, and the skill and humour with which she could identify herself with the animal standpoint is illustrated in half-a-hundred delightful passages. Toots,' the heroine of Toots and Boots, that most.

fascinating little episode of catland, speaks of being on "the tip- claw of expectation." And how admirable is the following observation from the cat's point of view I-

" I prefer men's outsides, too, to women's in some respects. Why all human beings—since they have no coats of their own, and are obliged to buy them—do not buy handsomely marked furs whilst they are about it, is a puzzle to a cat. As to the miserable staff- ladies cover themselves with in the evening, there is about as much comfort or softness in it, as in going to sleep on a duster. Men's coats are nothing to boast of, either to look at or to feel, but they are thicker."

In Father Hedgehog, she has so completely adopted the hedgehog standpoint, that the human interest of the story is comparatively insignificant. The Hedgehog talks in a voice" as soar as a green crab," and his conversation is pointed with such appropriate expletives as, "Upon my whine," and, "What in the hedge !" In this connection we cannot refrain from quoting a remark which shows a wonderful delicacy of perception. She speaks of the dear little birds, "with their cheerful voices and soft waistcoats, and, indeed, every good quality but that of knowing how glad one would be to kiss them."

It is noticeable that Mrs. Ewing brought out the bad qualities of her unattractive characters in the light of their treatment of animals. Such are the Cheap-Jack in Jan of the Windmill, and Benjy in Benjy in. Beastland, who had that "taste for torture, that pleasure in other creatures' pain, which does seem to be born with some boys." In Amelia and the Dwarfs, the heroine receives her first lesson in manners from a bulldog who bit her leg. One reason for Mrs. Ewing's love of fairy-tales was that "no class of child-literature had done so much to inculcate the love of animals." The visit to the dog-fancier in A Great Emergency shows that she was as keenly alive to the difference of character between dog and dog as between man and man :— " One, a very small, very white, and very fluffy toy-dog, was, no doubt, incurably ill-tempered and inhospitable : but a large brindled bulldog, trying politely but vainly to hide his teeth and tongue, wagged what the fancier had left him of a tail, and dribbled with the pleasure of making our acquaintance, after the wont of his benevolent and much-maligned kind." Her appreciation of canine character is once again delightfully shown in The Story of a Short Life. Leonard has refused to drive out unless his puppy, Sweep,' is allowed to come too. At last his father consents, and Leonard darts into the carriage :—

" Little boys can be very careful when they choose, and he trod on no toes and crumpled no finery To those who know dogs, it is needless to say that the puppy showed an even superior discretion. It bore throttling without a struggle. Instinctively conscious of the alternative of being shut up in a stable for the day, and left there to bark its heart out., it shrank patiently into Leonard's grasp, and betrayed no sign of life except in the strained and pleading anxiety which a puppy's eyes so often wear."

Mrs. Ewing's views on the relations of men and animals are nowhere more humorously or admirably expressed than in Benjy in Beastland. Benjy, who "was rather a hero amongst the village boys who stoned frogs by the riverside in the sweet days of early summer," dreams that he is summoned by the Man in the Moon into Beastland, where he meets all manner of strange birds and beasts,—the crow that quarrelling people pluck, the Irish bull, the old cow, the nightmare, the tell-tale- tit, and so on. A spider was just about to instruct him in the -art of making webs, when the tell-tale-tit spreads the story of his misdoings, and he is forthwith haled before the lion, and arraigned on the charge of cruelty to animals in the world below, a bull-frog being told off to watch the case in his behalf. "As the case proceeded, he occasionally said 'Omph!' which sounded thoughtful, and committed him to nothing."

Rough,' Benjy's terrier, is summoned, and deposes "that he hunted cats by the teaching and imperative orders of Benjy and other human beings. That he could not now see a cat without a feeling which he could only describe as madness seizing him, which obliged him to chase and despatch without further delay. He never felt this sensation towards the cat of his own house, in her own kitchen. They were quite friendly, and ate from the same dish. In cross-examination he admitted that he had a natural taste for tearing things, and preferred fur to any other material. But he affirmed that an occasional slipper or other article would have served the purpose, but for his unfor- tunate education, especially if the slipper or other article were hairy or trimmed with fur." The lion, after declaring the hearing of other evidence to be unnecessary, finally gives judgment as follows :—

" Gentlebeasts, birds, and fishes. I have given this subject my most serious consideration, and I trust that my decision will not give offence. Our friend Madame Tabby declares that the prisoner should be punished with a like cruelty to that which he inflicted. Friend Donkey is ready to ride or drive him with all the kicking, beating, and pulling which soured his own temper and stunted his faculties in their early development. I frankly roar that I am not in favour of this. My friends, let us not degrade ourselves to the level of men. We know what they are. Too often stupid in their kindness, vindictive in their anger, and not seldom wantonly cruel. Is this our character as a class ? Do we even commonly retaliate ? Gentlebeasts, we cannot treat this boy as he has treated us: but he is unworthy of our society, and I condemn him to be expelled. Some of our dog-friends have taken refuge here with tin. a

kettles at their tails. Let one of these be fastened to Benjy, and let him be chased from Beastland."

There is a charming picture in Jan of the Windmill of little Amabel, who was "the victim of that weakness for falling in love with every fussy, intelligent, or pitiable beast she met with," being discovered in the paddock grooming the old white horse with Lady Lonisa's tortoise-shell dressing-comb. This faculty for devising delightfully humorous situations runs through all Mrs.

Ewing's stories. And they are never strained or out of keeping

with the context. What could be more natural, for example, than the wish of the boy who borrowed all his sister's toys to immo- late them in a " pretend " earthquake ? Her humour is often tinged with a fine scorn, as in the picture of Miss Letitia, in Christmas Crackers, "who looked at birds with an eye to hats,

and at flowers with reference to evening parties An enthusiastic horticulturist once sent Miss Letitia a cut specimen of a new flower. It was a lovely spray from a lately imported shrub. A botanist would have pressed it, an artist must have taken its portrait, a poet might have written a sonnet in praise of its beauty. Miss Letitia twisted a piece of wire round its stem, and fastened it on to her

black lace bonnet. It came on the day of a review, when Miss Letitia had to appear in a carriage, and it was quite a success. As she said to the widow,--' It was so natural that no one could

doubt its being Parisian.'" After Lollo,' the Grey Goose is the most important infra- human personage in Jackanapes. Her limited memory is thus described :—

" The Grey Goose avoided dates, but this was partly

because her brain, though intelligent, was not mathematical, and computation was beyond her. She never got further than last Michaelmas," the Michaelmas before that,' and the hiichaelmas before the Michaelmas before that.' After this her head, which was small, became confused, and she said, 'Ga, Oa!' and changed the subject."

Her notion of Bony is delicious : "The Grey Goose thought he was a fox, and that all the men of England were going out in

red coats to hunt him."

Mrs. Ewing's powers of description were of no common order.

In a single sentence she could give a vivid picture, often by the employment of some picturesque simile in which her love of Nature is strikingly seen. Thus, we read how "the gipsy girl stood still like a young poplar-tree in the dead calm before thunder." Elsewhere she speaks of "the daughter of the house, a girl with a face like a summer's day, and hair like a ripe cornfield, rippling in the sun." In Mrs. Ocer-the-Way's Remembrances,

occurs this happy and fanciful image. In the winter the church bells "sounded so near through the frosty air that Ida could

almost have fancied that the church was coming round through the snowy streets to pick up the congregation."

It is the misfortune of a -newspaper reviewer, whenever he

can waive the function of criticism and indulge in unalloyed praise, to have to pull up just as he is warming to his subject.

To those who know, and therefore love, Mrs. Ewing's books, all we have said will sound inadequate, or at best bare justice. To those who do not know her, our praise, depending on such scanty illustrations as are possible in such a notice, will not improbably seem exaggerated. There are a great many points which we have perforce left untouched. Her genius for entering into the games and pursuits of children—illustrated best of all in The Land of Lost Toys and Our Field, in which the commingling of fancy and pathos is quite wonderful ; her sympathy for high-spirited boyhood ; her wholesome views on education ; her admiration for the courtesies and amenities of military life ; her remarks on the danger of cynical "chaff," and the value of having convictions ; her spirited condemnations of girlish sentimentality on the one hand, and of mannishness on the other,—all these things we can only give the headings of, so to speak, regretfully sacrificing the passages collected in illustration of them. And then there remain her clever adaptations of Turkish stories ; her verses, graceful and tender ; and the autobiographical touches—often uncon-

scious—scattered throughout her pages, all revealing a nature cast in the rarest mould, loving and holding fast to all things of good report, and with a noble disdain for sordid and ungenerous aims. Noblesse oblige is the key-note of many of her tales. Frail and acquainted with bodily suffering herself,

she wrote in the spirit of the well-known line :—

" Hand ignara mali miseris soccurrere disco."

Her niche in the Pantheon of the Immortals may not be a large or a prominent one, but it is secure. Better still, she contributed—to borrow her own words—to that "heritage of

heroic example and noble obligation, not reckoned in the Wealth of Nations, but essential to a nation's life." Her personal influence and bright example were such that it could indeed be said of her,—" They that bring many to righteousness shall shine as the stars."