THE BLUE RIBBON.* As soon as we found that York,
under the name of Cruxborough, was to be the scene of the story, we indulged in hopes, not altogether realised, that all the ins-and-outs of the old Northern city would be woven into the tale ; we thought how Scott would immortalise every distinctive nook and corner, winding lane, silent, deserted square, mysterious building, overhanging storey, steep stair, dark archway, water-gate on the sluggish Ouse ; how he would have revelled in the old cathedral,—what meetings he would have given us in its deep angles, what ren- contres as the congregation swept in or out, what stepping into the shadows of its monuments, what shelterings behind its massive pillars, what rousings of the conscience by the homilies from its pulpit, what stirrings of feeling by the mighty voice of its organ ; we should have known every chapel, every tomb, every side-door, every vault, and the fate of the hero would have been bound up with every detail of minster and of city and of classic Ouse. Would not the hero have come muffled to the tniuster stair at midnight, and stepped into the boat which waited ready there, while the faithful retainer slipped the rope and let it glide into the silent stream ; would not the heroine have started to recognise, at vespers, a figure she knew, disguised in strange garments and kneeling by the belfry tower ; how often would not glimpses have been caught of their mysterious emissaries disappearing into the deep shadows of the transepts, or in the winding alleys of the city, or in the purlieus of the Jews' quarter. But the delicious old romances are gone, and we may thank heaven that has left us Scott's two dozen or so imperishable tales to delight us more and more at each perusal. Nor is the social aspect of a strictly cathedral city, which we next looked for, much opened to our view. Church local party politics, clerical jealousies, the hen-pecked bishop, the authoritative arch- deacon, the cultivated conciliatory dean, the simple, sensitive precentor, with all the social distinctions, various institutions, and varying interests of an episcopal city, which Trollope's keen observation and good-humoured satire, have taught us to
* The Blue Ribbon. By the Author of" St. °lave's." London: Surat & Blacken
understand, scarcely come at all into our authoress's picture. Nevertheless, though so much fiction-capital seems to be wasted in so slight a notice of the physical and social aspects of a cathedral city, our authoress has invested some of it in her unquestionably interesting story. There is a cathedral-city atmosphere about the whole tale which is pleasant ; there is a short cut through the minster, taken by passengers ; a convoca- tion-room used for choir practice ; an old-fashioned bow-windowed house in a certain bishop's lane, of much importance in our story ; and there are some incidents of two festivals—for York was once a festival city—and impressive reference to the "grand still face" of Christ, under which the guests past in at "the great west entrance." We hear, too, of a genial little choirmaster, and of one kind old canon ; never- theless, we have a disappointed feeling that the incomparable minster and the great archiepiscopal city of the North have not been made the most of. And why is the dear and venerable name of York discarded for " Cruxborough "? Is not a man from the Ridings the typical John Bull, and does not therefore every Englishman love York only less than a veritable Yorkshireman ? But we seem to be grumbling, and in truth, we like the Blue Ribbon very much. Its moral tone is very high, without even a touch of preachiness or sanctimoniousness. Its advocacy of character as ranking above position is beyond all praise, and there is a warm, even if somewhat tearful, indignation in defence of honesty, poverty and refined indigence and shrinking pride which carries us heartily with it. And yet we must say there is also some bitterness, which has a flavour of personal feeling in it, the absence of which would have added to the moral effect of the outburst against the purse-pride of the wealthy mercantile class. And we notice the too common failing of attributing goodness and simplicity to the poor and the aristocratic, and crediting the pro- fessional and middle-class with all the genuine vulgarity and un- feeling insolence which really belong to individuals of every class, but not to any class in particular. We submit that the following passage maligns the respectable middle-class of any town :—
"Gretchen was pool; she had no friends; she needed some one to be good to her. Three most cogent reasons for preventing the respectable people of Cruxborough generally from taking any notice of her. Poor?' —then by all means let her keep in the background. Poor people were a nuisance anywhere, but especially when they thrust forth their cotton-gloved hands for invitations to tea and quiet evenings. No friends ?—then let her go to an Institution, or something of that sort ; there were plenty in the country; or stay, they would give her an order to the secretary of the society for promoting the employment of indigent females—that would be in the highest degree intelligent and effectual. Wanted some one to be kind to her ?—well, yes, of course ; most people wanted one to be kind to them ; but the question was, what could they do in return for that kindness? Had they respectable intro- ductions? Could they make it worth Cruxborough's trouble to show them a little attention ? Could they give back dinner for dinner and supper for supper, and make a genteel appearance in the matter of evening dress? No; well, then, Cruxborough put its hands into its pocket, and kept them there."
This question of caste, this division of class, is prominent amongst the subjects indirectly treated in the story, but we confess we think the manner of treatment a hate one-sided—that there is in actual life a real difficulty which cannot be over-looked in introducing a mechanic, however noble and clever, with the manners and carriage of a mechanic, into a drawing-room, even if behave laid aside his- grimy blouse and washed his horny hands. And there are unques- tionablypractic,a1 di fficulties in the intercourse between the prosper- ous professional and the struggling small shop-keeping class which it would pose the most willing and loving and philanthropic contriver to overcome. Another subject which our author attacks with skill, and in which she shows a high and pure sentiment, is that of a lofty ambition,—and here we have scarcely a word of objection ; that a man who feels great power in him should sacrifice the highest re- sults of it, or any high result of it, in order to gratify an impatient and self-indulgent desire for an early marriage, cannot be right ; but we think that there is a growing and much more dangerous tendency in young men, now-a-days, selfishly to wait till ease and luxury are attained, before " encumbering " themselves with a. wife, and thus never to know the meaning and relation of "help- mate," and to lose altogether the encouraging companion- ship in toil and success, and the discipline of united self- denial, which not only draw man and wife so closely together in early life, but yield them such a rich abundance of holy memories- in later years. With this premiss, let us quote a small part of a beautiful passage that describes this struggle between present desire and a high ambition :— "As sometimes on shelving coasts a little brook runs down through cleft and chasm to the sea, mingling its babble with the great everlast- ing murmur of the waves, so in Roger's life two voices had lately been speaking to him, and the chattering brook of easy self-indulgence, be- cause so close to him, had had tho better part. It had been so easy to listen to that, so easy to forget the other. Now, sitting there in the old Minster, all around and about him the presence of its gloom and grandeur, that other voice began to speak. Far off he heard the solemn sound of the groat waves of duty, rolling and breaking in upon the shores of his life. Ho listened, and the chatter of the little brook now seemed so vain, so shallow. A great longing arose within him to do the right—to be led by the highest in himself, not the lowest. To be true to Gretchen, but so true that his love for her should lift them both to a better standing-place ; that they should rise together, not for ever sun themselves on the lazy level of low content. He would work, he would wait, he would be patient. He would win all that was possible to him in the great world of art and science, and make pleasure the handmaid of right, not its tyrant."
But Roger is not our ideal of a man ; he is hard and unforgiving, as well as patient and pure ; and our authoress seems to think it is a proper pride that he should refuse all overtures from those who had passed him and his mother by in their adversity. Nor is his sister more to our liking ; they have much the same faults and virtues ; her persistent desire that the lawyer who had de- frauded her should be punished, twenty years after the deed, and when it could do no good to anyone and would ruin himself and Li s family, is not very Christian, and, we think, scarcely consistent with her gentle, patient nature. Their Yorkshire eervant-girl and washerwoman are admirable. Our authoress is a master of the Yorkshire dialect, but Mrs. Bratchett is sometimes painfully like Arthur Sketchley's Mrs. Brown in her habit of wandering on vaguely from subject to subject, connecting them, too, by the .same relative pronoun 4' which." Nevertheless, she is a very clever picture, and one to be remembered, with her comfortable self-appreciation, her security about her salvation, her delight in going to "the means "—that is, we suppose, chapel, for the means of grace—and her true womanly kindness and generosity, restrained only by a genuine Yorkshire canniness. Here is a bit of Mrs. Bratchet's mind
about a poor Italian woman who had disappeared in debt to her :—
"‘ Did she leave no message ?'—' No, Miss Jean—leastways, none as I ever heard tell on ; and not very likely either, with that fifteen-and- sixpence of mine a-burning through her pockets, as I hope and trust it will, which isn't unchristen, Miss Jean, I don't think, and me the friend to her I was. And DanTs wife '11 bear me witness to it, as it's many and many a time I've sent her home there with a bit o' cold meat lapped up in a cloth, or a drop o' gin, if she'd a pain in her inside, which she was a woman as often had it, and wi' nought but hunger neither ; and en- joyed poor health in a general way, which wasn't to wonder at, for she was that sort that never did credit to her keep, let you give her what 3,ou would, and a bad digeshun, too, I warrant. Them furriners mostly has.' And Mrs. Bratchet smoothed her shawl comfortably down over her own digestive apparatus, which had been working on now for more than sixty years, in sublime unconsciousness of its existence, just
content with doing its duty, like those happy people who have no history."
But we might quote pages upon pages of this good Yorkshire- woman's loquacity, for she could talk, as she expresses it herself, "while my dying day, if I'm spared." She is a very genuine personage, and her only fault is—as it is that of everyone else in the book—that she is too long-winded. There are exceedingly clever dialogues between the rival citizenesses, Mrs. Millinger and Mrs. Balmain, and their fashionable daughters, in which each does her very best to wound her neighbour's self-love without infringing the rules of good-breeding; but our authoress does not quite know when to stop; the thrusts and parryings are so clever, that she cannot deny herself the pleasure of carrying on the duel after her readers have had enough of it. The same is true, again, of Mr. Ballinger's hypocritical and sententious bombast, admirable as it is in its way ; and even the sweet, and tender, and graceful Gretchen—a very lovely and natural picture of an exquisite Ger- man singing-girl--expresses, at rather too great length, her simple hopes, and fears, and gratitude, and love. Patch, the poor Italian woman, is the only unreal character, introduced too evidently as the main-spring of the plot, and even for that purpose unnecessarily melodramatic; her wrongs, her lyings-in-wait, her denunciations, her feats, her death, are all alike out of character with the quiet, natural tone of the rest of the story. But we can swallow Patch cheerfully, for the sake of the rest ; indeed, if there were nothing in the three volumes but the scenes with the children in the first, it would be worth getting them for those. The authoress of St. Ole re's is evidently a thorough child-lover, and has a very exceptionally clear insight into their characters and thoughts, and very keen powers of noting and describing the expression of them. But this is not a story of children, and her books about and for children deserve a notice quite to themselves.
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