AFTERGLOW.
Tun is an amusing story from the American "No Name Series," as it is called, i.e., a series of tales said to be written by eminent American authors, but published anonymously. This one might very well be,—though we have no evidence that it is,—by Mr.. Julian Hawthorne. It is a story of American life in Dresden, and is full of that minute knowledge of Dresden which his book on the Saxon character has displayed; while as regards style, its manner often resembles his closely in its somewhat metaphysical- mistiness. Thus we read that " though " a given young lady's smile had " a certain quiescent power," " it dazzled him [the hero], too, like the morning gleam that roused him from the last night's visions." What exactly is the "quiescent power" of a smile ? Is it the power of expressing quietness? And if it is, why should such a smile not dazzle? Why is dazzlingness in any sense inconsistent with the power of expressing quietness ? The most dazzling colour is white, and yet white is always supposed to be particularly ex- pressive of quietness, being the favourite colour for novices, for example, and also the colour chosen by the Church both for choristers and priests. The author of Afterglow often puzzles us in this way, not merely by somewhat vague and ambiguous. expressions, but sometimes by seeming to assume that they mean something which does not meet the ear. One is puzzled when told that " a look of disdain faded away," and that " a rich quietude superseded it in all her [the heroine's] features." What would a poor quietude, as distinguished from a rich quietude mean ?—and what would a quietude neither poor nor rich, but comfortably well-off, signify ? We suppose the author may mean by a 'rich quietude,' quietude expressive of a full- ness of contented inward life, and not quietude which merely seems to express the negation of active life. But then we• wholly fail to see why Miss Daggett should have expressed,. or even tried to express without experiencing, any fullness of con- tented life on the occasion in question. The expression, in short, is, like many others in the tale, rather ostentatiously enigmatic.. We are puzzled, for instance, when we are told that Miss Daggett, while contemplating a questionable course of action, and suddenly asking herself, "Am I not doing wrong ?" is reassured thus,—" But then her quick heart-beats rhymed her conscience to rest in a moment." How do quick heart-beats rhyme one's conscience to rest, we wonder? Quick heart-beats often accompany and express unrest both of the emotions and the conscience, but we never knew them rhyme the conscience to rest.. Possibly it is meant that the intensity of her desire to act as she was: going to act, brushed aside her scruples. But if that is meant,. why not say so, for it would have expressed simply enough, a very common state of mind ; while, as far as we understand the- expression used, it indicates very obscurely a state of mind not- at all common. The conscience is not set at rest by being over- ruled, and if it were really set at rest by " the quick heart-beats,' something must be intended which we do not enter into at all. And there are other oddities of expression. It is certainly grotesque to record that Miss Daggett's way of receiving the hero, Allen. Bishop, " gave the freckled young man a disproportionate amount of pleasure." Why record his freckles in such a connection as. that? Evidently he was not conscious of them, and there is. nothing to show us that she was either, so that apparently it is the- author who is laughing at his hero for being freckled, at the- moment he is telling us that that hero is so graciously received by the young lady. Such an expression reminds us too forcibly of the criticism of the author, and this, too, in a trivial connection that takes away from the realism of the story without adding to its force.
This ambitious vagueness of expression is the defect of the-
* "No Name" Series,—.4fierglow. Boston: Roberta Brothers.
story, which, nevertheless, is really amusing reading, and is wound- up with a good deal of power. We do not at all see why the author need protest by anticipation against a supposed criticism on one of his sketches,—the stupidly diplomatic American Senator,—as "a mere caricature." It seems to us a natural and sufficiently life- like sketch, though rather slight. Nor do we know why he should anticipate anybody's saying that Miss Daggett was " too violent and inconsistent in her action." Having read these pre- liminary warnings, we were somewhat amused to fmd so perfect a sobriety, so moderate a deviation from the ordinary type of char- acter, in either instance. If it is feared that the literary portrai- ture of such very slight eccentricities as these will be regarded by American critics as extravagantly imagined, how very tame the imagination of American critics must have become. The sketch of Mr. Droop, the American Senator, is exceedingly slight ; and assuredly Dickens, if he had drawn him, would have made him about a hundred times as ridiculous. Certainly the reality might easily far exceed the silly grandiosity of intrigue here depicted in Mr. Droop. And as to Miss Daggett's difficulty between her lovers,—Mr. Trollope, who is the very soul of realism, has fre- quently drawn hesitation of a much more paradoxical kind. The author of Afterglow is by no means wanting in literary sobriety. And the manner in which he paints his hero's divided allegiance is both skilful and sober.
Still we confess we are puzzled with the evident impression which runs through Afterglow, that there is something specially noble about Allen Bishop. To us, his friend Mr. Byrne seems the higher-minded of the two. Except that Allen has the good-taste to be fascinated by a woman who is his superior in nature, against which, however, we must set off the bad-taste which he shows in de- serting her for a more lustrous beauty of a lower type, and that he is in every respect a right-minded sort of youth, who always wants to stand up for those who are ill-used, there is nothing at all remark- able about him. Why he should be, as it were, made into a sort of saint at the end of the story we feel ft quite impossible to make out. Indeed American writers very often puzzle us with what looks like an esoteric standard of excellence and beauty,— something depending on criteria to which we have no access. Allen Bishop is a generous, somewhat sentimental, and vague-minded young man, who is very much inclined to fall in love with any young lady of good looks and gra- cious manners, and who can fight a duel successfully with the German student's weapon,—and that is really all we know of him. There is nothing very exceptional in qualities such as these. Yet we are taught to think of him as a sort of ideal. That is certainly puzzling. We are not quite sure that we do not prefer his rival, Captain Ritthold, of the Prussian cavalry, whose love-making is, by the way, much more powerfullypainted. Gurwood, the English- man, is also very well sketched, and so is Mr. Bishop, senior. On the whole, the characters seem to us striking almost in direct proportion to the outwardness and, so to say, the distance from the author's mind, of the sketch.
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