A SHEAF OF NOVELS.* IF all Colonies supply as rich
material for entertainment as the one depicted in Mr. Hope's clever and enjoyable novel, Ha?! a Hero, nobody will hesitate about endorsing the opinion of one of its personages that "new communities are interesting ; " and however thoroughly one may commiserate poor Lord Eyneford's perplexities, and appreciate the truth of his rueful exclamation—" It's all very well for a man to be civil all round as I am, but his womankind can always give him away," when his wife's good intentions about helping him in his official position of Governor fail signally to overcome her aristocratic prejudices or to induce her to regard the mem- bers of his Ministry as anything but beings of an inferior order ; yet one's sympathy is tempered by a considerable leaven of envy at the thought of the charms which existence must possess in an atmosphere like that of New Lindsey, where energetic vitality seems indigenous, and all conversations * (1.) Ralf a Hero. By Anthony Hope. London : A. D. Innos and Co.— (2.) Dr. Grey's Patient. By Mrs. G. B. Retney. London: Bliss, Sands, and Foster.--(&) The Curb of Honour. By M. Hetham•Edwards. London and Edinburgh : A. and C. Il1aolc.—(4.) An Ancient Ancestor. By Charles 111. Hall, London Skaington.—(5.) The Autobtography of a Spin. By May Edwood. London s W. Thanker and Co.—(6.) Front the Poe Rivers. Ily F, A. Steel. London : Heinemann. bristle with enough humour, epigrammatic point, and caustic but good-natured satire to make dullness impossible. The majority of his worries have their origin in his Premier, Medland, who fills the title-1111o, and in whom the heroic element is so pronounced that one is at first sight almost inclined to demur to the appropriateness of the qualifying " half " on the title-page, and to ask whether he ought not rightly to be called altogether a hero ; on con- sideration, however, one perceives throughout a lowness and lack of exaltation about his motives, which is felt though not expressly specified, and seems sufficiently to explain the deteriorating epithet. Love of power rather than patriotism, for instance, is evidently the main-spring of his services to his country ; and his regret for the scandal in his past life is prompted solely by sorrow for having so offended public opinion as to entail a penalty on himself and his daughter, and shows no trace of true repentance for having set at nought moral laws by running away with another man's wife ; it is the Nemesis that overtakes him from which he shrinks, and not the sin provoking it. Yet in spite of this defect, his character has much that is fine and deserving of admiration ; and the spectacle he affords of greatness, marred by yielding to temptation, excites a pity akin to that felt for Lancelot, "beaten down by little men" and failing to attain to the Grail, from a similar cause. The story is chiefly political, illustrating the inseparable connection between a man's public and private life, and is decidedly amusing and worth reading.
Dr. Grey's Patient professes to be a novel with a purpose, which "will have fulfilled its mission, if it helps to warn in time some who start on life's journey without any conception of its pitfalls ; " but as the only discoverable moral is the unwisdom of blind confidence in utter strangers on the part of a very young and beautiful girl, with a talent for rushing about the country alone, and without always knowing exactly where she is going, one wonders at its having been thought necessary to write a book merely in order to impress a lesson that seems too self-evident to require further demonstra- tion. And we object emphatically to a construction of plot which causes the heroine's worst perils to result from the libertine propensities of an individual who eventually turns out to be her own father, when the substitution of any other man would have served equally well for the purpose of warning, and would have avoided the introduction of a pecu- liarly repulsive element in the thought of the dangers from which she escaped. The statement in the preface, that the story might have been more artistic had it been less true, disarms criticism on the score of improbability ; but there can be no fear of contradiction to the assertion that Glory St. Claire's circumstances were—to put it mildly— extremely unusual. Her impetuosity of character and dis- position for unreflecting obedience to impulse make it unsafe to commend her as a model for universal imitation, yet she is not unlikeable on the whole ; and though we do not think a perusal of her adventures likely to be profitable in the way intended by Mrs. Reaney, or any other way either, possibly some readers may be interested in them.
The next work to be considered does not,_ like the last, announce itself as having a purpose. But that The Curb of Honour has a purpose is none the less plainly apparent, and the lesson inculcated is in this case a far more needed one; for a vast amount of human misery would be saved if every- body recognised the importance of the kind of self-denial practised by Rollo Rugden, the hero; and many hapless mortals, condemned from the cradle to pain and sickliness, have cause to wish that their progenitors had been capable of his sublime unselfishness and willing to renounce the joys of pater- nity rather than bring into the world children foredoomed to physical suffering and ill-health by the laws of here- dity. His is the central figure, influencing the destinies of all the others by his strong individuality, and having a sort of magnetic power of attraction (inseparable from self- mastery in a noble nature that is true to itself) which makes him beloved by all who come in contact with him, and gives a curiously pathetic effect to the impression of loneliness he conveys. It is some time before the curb binding him is revealed ; readers perceive only that he is held in check by a self-imposed fetter of some kind and that he is not the person to be so restrained without reason, and then, when his motive is at last fully understood, his conduct is admired and approved of unreservedly. Of course a tinge of sadness is in. evitable in a tale on such a theme, and Miss Betham-Edwards shows no little skill in having contrived so to treat her subject as to steer clear of tragedy, and impart a gleam of brightness to the conclusion, For when Rollo finally adopts the heroic course of espousing the queer old maid, Laments, in order to take from the girl whom he loves, and who loves him, all hopes of ever becoming his wife, one by no means regards his future prospects as unmitigatedly gloomy, and feels he might easily do worse than marry a woman who is staunch and true to the core ; who secretly adores him, though outwardly she snaps at him ; who, if sour as long as things are sunshiny, forgets to be waspish directly they go wrong, and grows positively engaging" when catastrophes become imminent ; and whose skin-deep acidity seems more of a refreshing flavour to life's monotony than anything else. Indeed, in many respects Rollo and Lamenta are a remarkably well- matched pair, with their similar keenness of wit, and disposi- tion to indulge in biting jests, and conceal feeling under a cynical, cross-grained exterior that is partly real and partly assumed ; and some idea of both may be derived from the subjoined extract from the closing page, when he has just been weeping over the sorrow that he knows his marriage will cause to his beloved Eldred :— "When he had wept his fill, the old saturnine mood came to his relief. He now chuckled over a cruel jest, to-day become soberest reality. 'Were I bound for the pillory or the stake,' he had once said to his future wife, I should desire no more engaging com- panion than yourself. With a halter round your neck, bare- footed, taper in hand, you would be adorable.'—' Eldred, Eldred,' he murmured, I have saved you as best I could. There was no other way.'" How Eldred bears the blow is not mentioned, but the hand- some young Ange is evidently meant to be regarded as a not impossible consoler at some future date. There is a good deal of sketchiness in the delineation of the various personages, and the book's charm would be enhanced, in oar opinion, if there were not quite so much filling-in left to the reader's own imagination.
Mr. Hall says that he claims to be neither antiquary, his- torian, nor philologist, but only a story-teller. Yet his work, An Ancient Ancestor, can hardly be held to make good this claim ; for out of such material for romance as a pirate captain spending ten years in the Isle of Arran disguised as a schoolmaster (did he not find it terribly monotonous after his previous mode of life, by-the-bye ?), in order to watch over treasure buried in a grave which was believed to be haunted, was regarded by the islanders with superstitious awe, and had subterranean passages leading to it, a story- teller worthy of the name ought surely to concoct some- thing more thrilling and exciting than a mere commonplace melange of love-affairs, a yachting cruise, and much descrip- tion of scenery. The tale, which is spun out to fill three volumes, seems to us more likely to provoke criticism for jejuneness and verbosity than to accomplish the author's object of aWakening fresh interest in controversy relating to the Ossianic manuscripts.
The mode of existence of English people transplanted to our Colonial possessions in India, Africa, Australia, Sio., sup- plies a fresh and interesting field for fiction to which many modern writers have had recourse ; and amongst their number is Miss Edwood, whose last work, The Autobiography of a Spin, purports to be a story of Anglo-Indian life. The word "spin" is certainly not hero used in the dictionary sense, and it might have been well to give an explanation of its meaning; but as this has not been done, we cannot pronounce positively on the matter, and can only say that it appears to be an abbreviation be it observed, is probably by of "spinster "—which term, this time no longer applicable toa heroine who takes leave of the reader at the age of twenty-nine, and with every indication of contemplating a speedy entrance into the matrimonial con- dition. Though she introduces herself by saying bluntly, "I am Juanita Desmond, commonly called Naughty,' to which some one used to add, 'but how nice ! ' " we are in- clined to question the applicability of either adjective to a person who strikes us as being merely a selfish, heartless flirt of the ordinary type, not capable of exciting liking enough to justify the term "nice," nor yet of arousing a sufficient sense of reprehension to justify "naughty." There is not much in the short volume recording her experiences, but it is readable.
Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring are con- spicuous in Mrs. Steel's Front the Five Rivers, and the short stories of which the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady who knows what she is writing about. But cholera, typhoid, and snakes furnish tragical terminations to a deplorably depressing extent ; and one cannot help wishing she had chosen to display her talents in an atmosphere where an apparently purposeless sombreness was less prevalent. " Gunesh C hand" and "In a Citron Garden" are the two tales which we like best in the book.
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