THE HOME AT ROSEFIELD.*

BurrEnsinx served up at dinner—that is the only comparison we can find to do precise justice to the flavour of this book upon the critical palate. It reads like a novel from the old Minerva Press, translated into modern phraseology, and flavoured with a little spice of very weak low comedy. We should not bestow ten lines on it but for an impression that there are persons in existence who rather approve this kind of thing—young ladies with undefined and ecstatic views of life, and young men with a penchant for turning, and a half impres- sion that most novels are deleterious. It may be worth while, for their sakes, to waste a few lines in showing why the school to which Mr. Copping chooses in this book to attach himself, is for all its ap- parent innocence, an unhealthy as well as a stupid school. It is in- fected with the two diseases of all others most fatal to a healthy literature—a taste for melodrama, strong situations, thrilling inci- dents, and physical horrors generally, and a habit of sentimentality at once maudlin and highflown. In the older novels these tendencies were generally displayed by the introduction of terrible adventures, during which hero and heroine were imprisoned, hunted, tortured, or haunted, and uttered in the intervals of their agony long speeches about some destiny nobody but themselves could perceive, which bound them to some course nobody wanted them to pursue, but which should "never, never" divert them from some object of no earthly utility. The old machinery has, of course, been worn out, and the tone of the modernized romance is a little more real and lifelike. Instead of ghosts, now-a-days mhel-writers use clairvoyants, the wicked-baron has given place to Lord Steyne, and the "wretched minions of a tyrant lord" have been superseded by French detectives, but the old spirit still exists. There is the same determination to * The How at Rosefield. By Edward Copping. Hurst and Blacken excite interest by mere details ofsuffering the same effort to create- an ideal world where everybody, like Kehama's son, shall declare perpetually that " he is all naked feeling and raw life."

In the present work the interest is intended to concentrate itself round Ruth and Frederick Selwin, an orphan brother and sister, who as mere children, find themselves owners of Rosefleld, and under the care of a maiden aunt, and whose relation to each other nearly fills up the place usually allotted to the love story. That relation, we doubt not, will be pronounced by the young people above described most beautiful. It is, in truth, simply morbid. Frederick is a handsome, gifted, unhealthy being, always on the verge of delirium, an artist, and a cultivated man, so despondent that he cannot keep himself at work for three days at a time, and so weak that he is afraid to urge to his sister his wish to visit London for a little while. His sister is represented, at the beginning of the book, as strong, clever, and decisive, but she is, throughout, sensitive to absurdity about her brother's affection, and at last shows just the same over- strung nature as himself, and at last dies mad. These two talk to each other in this fashion:

"'I'm sorry to see you so downcast,' she said, throwing away her working gloves and sitting by Fred's side. ' Do be happy and cheerful again, there's a good brother; for it makes me very sad to see you wretched.' "And Ruth softly placed her cheek against his shoulder, and coaxingly put an arm round his neck.

" I'm very, very sorry to see you so dejected,' she repeated. " Oh ! I'm not dejected,' he said, almost coldly.

" Yes' indeed you are, or you would not treat me so cruelly;' and here her spirit fairly gave way, and she burst into tears.

" He kissed Ruth's lips as he spoke, and nestled her face upon his bosom, play- ing tenderly with her hair as though to soothe her.

But the poor little maid was so hurt by his previous coldness, that her grief, which up to that moment had been repressed by an artificial gaiety, now rose over all restraint, and gave itself free course.

" You have made me very unhappy,' she said, sobbing as though her heart would break.

" ' No, no. Do not say that, dear Ruth. I did not mean it. Indeed, I did not. I'm very sorry I have been so unkind.' " Yesterday,' said Ruth, who could not now do otherwise than set free all the sorrow that had been imprisoned within her bosom during the last few days- ' yesterday, you scarcely spoke a word to me all day long ; and when you kissed me, and said good night, your manner was so cold that I thought you were angry with me.' And here she sobbed afresh.

" Oh, Ruth ! Ruth I how could you wrong me by such a thought? I am never angry with you: 'tis always with myself." .

That scene is not even artistically correct, the effect being that of mere coquetry, while the sentiment expressed is utterly unreal. Family affection has none of that morbid sensitiveness, whatever love may produce, and a brother and sister who trusted one another are as little likely to get up an exhibition of that sort as to quarrel because one of them wishes to see London. While still meditating on this cruel project, a foreign cousin arrives, with whom Ruth falls in love, and who talks to her in the style of Wilson Croker :

" No, indeed,' replied George earnestly; 'modern French fiction claims but little of my affection or regard. I am not fond of the morbid or the ultra- marvellous; of hysterical pathos or sentimental sensuality. Then, too, I detest —that is really the word—I detest fiction spread out according to a pattern as intricate as mosaic work or a Chinese puzzle. I like simple incident simply told, and avoid, by my very nature, all that is stilted, pretentious, and unnatural."

He carries Frederick to Paris, whence the latter writes to his sister at least once a day. By-and-by the letters cease for a whole fort- night, producing this effect on Ruth :

"Ruth, during. several nights, had utterly lost her rest. When she should have slept, her mind was tossed about on a wild sea of apprehension strewn with. wreck and danger. It was only as the dawn began to rise that she sank by utter fatigue into a troubled and unrefreshing sleep. When she rose, her eyes seemed to weigh heavily upon her very brain, and she walked as though suffering had already robbed her tread of all elasticity and youthfulness. Her face, usually so round and rosy, looked thin and elongated, from the pallor which had suddenly imparted to its features a new expression."

Frederick is ill, and page after page is devoted to working up in- terest in an attack of nervous fever, so severe that it produces, among other things, the " Fever Gaze," a sort of mesmeric stare which knocks a trained nurse down on the floor in a trance. Frederick, however, recovers, only to fall in love with his cousin Hester, a young lady whose character reads like a joint production of Mr. Sala and Miss Yonge. At first she is of the "beautiful fiend" type, loves Dr. Lanfrey, a French physician, and tells him in Ruth's hearing—Ruth lying half dead after pages of nervous fever—that she only encourages Frederick in order to use his wild love-letters for her forthcoming novel! Frederick, however, commits suicide by rowing himself, during a match with his rival, over some falls ; Ruth has nervous fever again ; and Hester is a reformed character. The survivors return to Rosefleld, and all seems going happily, when Ruth's health breaks down again.

"For the moment it seemed as though these soothing words had calmed George's fears, and that he would act upon the suggestion they contained. He even advanced to the table and took up the volume he had previously pushed from him; but at that moment the strange laugh he had before heard again became audible; and as he listened to it the book dropped from his hand, and a cold shudder passed over his frame.

" Tell me, Hester, what does that mean?' he asked.

" Hester made a gesture imploring her brother to calm himself; she even uttered a few words of entreaty, but then her speech failed her, and she threw herself into George's arms.

" Poor Ruth is very, very ill," she said at length, her words broken by sobs. " She had no need to say more. While yet George was trembling under the influence of the announcement he had just heard, the door of the sick-chamber opened, and the voice of Aunt Susan was heard above calling out in alarm: Hester, Hester, come up-stairs at once.'

" Hester flew from the room, leaving George bewildered and almost stitpified by fear and doubt. In another moment he knew the worst. The door of the sick-chamber was still open, and now the laughter and the loud talking fell dis- tinctly on his ear, and revealed to him the terrible truth.

" Ruth was delirious, and was calling aloud for Fred !"

Ruth gets better, and all is settled for. the marriage, when Hester has a horrible dream, and as its effect dies away, George hears a scream, and sending his sister to inquire, waits the result.

"Then another pause came, and George .began to feel relieved in the belief that Ruth slept, and that Hester was retiring even more softly than she had advanced, in order not to arouse the slumberer. Still, however, he remained motionless on the landing-place, listening for even the lightest sound with a strained attention that made his brain seem to throb. " Stiadenly be heard Hester hurriedly quit the bedside and spring to the door. Then, ere be could divine the cause of this abrupt movement, she called aloud, in a voice full of wild excitement and alarm,

George, George, come here at once 1' "He needed no second summons. Already his nerves were so completely un- strung that the first sound of her voice had vibrated through him, and caused him to start forward. In an instant, therefore, he was by her side. "Heater was trembling so violently that she could not speak, and for a moment had to lean against him for support. " What is it? what is the matter?' exclaimed George, terrified by the scared look of his sister, and by her uncontrollable agitation.

" ' It is nothing, it is nothing," replied Hester, recovering herself. I could not hear her breathe ; and, being already so unnerved, the shock—startled me, and I called to you—without—without intending it. The words were uttered almost before I knew I had spoken. I shall be more composed now.' " She returned into the room, gently drew back the window curtains, and let in the early, morning light into the chamber. The sight she saw then never afterwards left her memory.

" The soft grey light fell full upon Ruth, but it lit up the features of a corpse."

That is the very style of the old Minerva Press, only fever is the in- strument instead of the dagger, and George, instead of finding his beloved covered with "belo-oo-d" from a wound, finds her with a broken blood-vessel. The semi-delirium in which Frederick lives, the morbid affection of his sister, the fever scenes five times repeated, the tone of exaggeration which runs through every dialogue and every incident, is in the true sensation style, made to look scientific by medical details. Its only effect, if it has any, is to increase the tendency so common with some minds to suffer emotion to run to seed, and make every holy and healthy affection a nuisance to all who witness its wayward expression. We have said a flavour of comedy is added to the well-known materials, and the comedy, of course, in such a tale, is of the lowest kind. The comic personages are an old gardener and a young groom, the gardener a man always talking about and to a vicious donkey, and the groom raying, of all things on earth, about French history. We select the best speeches of both. The old gardener is going to France with his mistress, and addresses his son :

" Bill, I'm going, as you know, on a long forrin journey into France. I only knowed one man as ever did likewise, Bob Williams the coachman ; and he never turned up agin alive arterwards. He went to Paris with his master a matter of forty years ago, when I was a younker, and nobody never knowed what become on him from that time to this. P'rhaps he died there;p'rhaps he's still livin' there ; p'rhaps he's gone somewhere else. At all events he ain't come back yet, and most likely never will. Maybe I shall never come back no more nor him. There! don't go off a blubberin' as if I was a'ready scalped and tommyhawked! The worst ain't come to the worst yet, and when it do it won't be so bad. p'rhaps, as it might be. Hows'mever, as I said, I'm going away, and when I'm off, why nat- terally I shan't be here no longer, and you'll have nobody to look arter yer.'" The groom is talking at a servant-maid : " The fact is, the French are a vain, ignorant, conceited, restless, bouncible, bragging, unsatisfied, discontented lot, and don't know what they want—and it's always been the same. Go back as far as the League, or even to the Fronde, and you'll find it so. (Mr. Watt's chronology becomes at times somewhat confused, it will be seen, when the more remote events of French history are in question.) Why, when Mazarin, Condd, Rats, and all those heavy historical swells, were going in against each other, didn't the people oscillate lust on one side and then on the other, just like a penjalum ? You never know at last who they're for, and who they ain't for, and it's my belief they didn't know themselves.' "

There is some comedy in the gardener's speech, for pure nonsense is sometimes comic; but what shall we say of the groom, except that if mortal groom ever had talked in that style, he would have been quizzed by the stable-helpers till life became a burden to him. Mr. Copping seems to imagine, like some parodists, that bad grammar is in itself comic, as if a peasant reading a Tines leader were necessarily funny. • It is not, however, fqr this that we condemn The Home at Rosefteld, but for the morbid exaggeration of false sentiment which not even clear unaffected writing can render natural, or, to healthy minds, even endurable.