CHRISTMAS BOOKS—MR. WRIT'S CASH-BOX: THE PATHWAY OF THE FAWN. * BHT

for Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mrs. T. K. Hervey, the season would have gone by without a literary. memorial. Michael Angelo Titmarsh is otherwise engaged ; Boz ms tired, perhaps exhausted, and is engaged too ; Mr. Beane, who was wont to try his hand on Christmas books, is silent ; the obscuri vier give no sign ; even " Mr. Wray's Cash-box," though clever and pleasant, with touches of nice observation on life and persons, is somewhat defi- cient in novelty and appropriateness. The time of year does not change, but the times do, and we change with them.

To those who look only to externals, it may seem odd to say that Mr. B'ray's Cash-box is a kind of imitation of Dickens,—per- sons, classes, incidents, and scene or locality, being all so different : nevertheless, such is really the case. First and foremost, there are odd out-of-the-waY but amiable people, who would excite little in- terest in real life, and who owe such sympathy as they inspire in fiction to the halo thrown over them by the author, and to his per- sonal pledge, as it were, that they are people in whom we ought to be interested. Then there is a little too much of the compliments of the season,—a prominence, a profusion of " good feeling,"— which in Dickens ran into the very cant of goodness, but which Mr. Collins stops short of. The dramatis personae of the writers generally have a smack of the stage or of the Jack Sheppard school of fiction; but Mr. Collins has more perhaps of the actual,—that is, the persons have been less assimilated to the notions of their creator.

Mr. Wray's Cash-box is founded on the story of a mason employed about the church of Stratford-on-Avon having surrep- titiously taken a cast from the bust of Shakspere, and eloped with it when he was threatened by the authorities of the parish; but which cast was subsequently published when the taker learned that their threats went for nothing. For the mason, Mr. Collins substitutes an amiable old player of the John Kemble school, who so studied the manner of the great master that he seems an " alter idem, lenge intervene ". but Kean and time have put him out of fashion even as a subordinate ; and when the story opens, Reuben Wray has lost his engagements, such as they were, and dwin- dled to an itinerant teacher of elocution, and manager pro tern. to provincial amateurs doing a little private theatricals. He is accompanied by his granddaughter, Annie,—an incarnation of simplicity, good looks, and goodness ; and by a theatrical carpenter, attached to Annie and devoted to her grandfather — who has been nicknamed Julius Caesar, because he once enacted that part when the strolling company to which he was at- tached had no other choice. Round these move, for friendship or enmity, various inhabitants of Tidbury-on-the-Marsh : the parson, who does not appear, being the greatest foe of Reuben Wray ; Mr. Colebatch, the old squire, an ancient lover of the drama and author of a damned tragedy, acting as Reuben's protector, and indeed as the machinery of the piece. The great incidents of the story, and which lead to the happy denouement, turn upon a mysterious cash- box, that inspires a branch banker with respect, and a country ruffian with cupidity, leading him to perpetrate a burglary in con- nexion with a town cracksman; but instead of cash, the box turns out to contain only the secretly-obtained cast of the " divine Shak- spere ." The subordinate characters are not remarkable : the squire

• Mr. Wray's Cash-box ; or the Mask and the Mystery. A Christmas Sketch . By W. Wilkie Collins, Author of " Antonina," &c. Published by Bentley. The Pathway of the Fawn ; a Tale of the New Year. By Mrs. T. K. Hervey. and Julius Caesar belong to the genus conventional ; the country blackguard Grimes, and the town artist" Chummy Dick," are good conceptions, well executed, though they are hardly in place in a Christmas iale. Mr. Wray and his granddaughter are the two most laboured and finished characters. Annie is that combination of amiability, kindheartedness, and virtue in woman, that writers love to picture without much regard to the influence of circum- stances. Reuben himself is a rare but a natural production. Dis- qualified by nature from rising to eminence, he has the feelings and enthusiasm of a true artist; these have sustained him through a life of penury and trouble, and sustain him still. His continual study of Shakspere has given him an infusion of poetical feeling, though mixed with pedantry ; and this study, with the close imi- tation of his patron, has imparted something of propriety and dig- nity to his mind and manners. "Age has given him a stoop, which he tries to conceal, but cannot. His cheeks are hollow ; his face is seamed with wrinkles, the work not only of time but of trial too. Still, there is vitality of mind, courage of heart about the old man, even yet. His look has not lost all its animation, nor his smile its warmth. There is the true Kemble walk, and the true Kemble carriage of the head for you, if you like !—there is the second-hand tragic grandeur and propriety, which the unfortunate Julius Cesar daily contemplates, yet cannot even faintly copy! Look at his dress, again threadbare as it is, (pitched, I am afraid, in some places,) there is not a speck of dust on it, and. what little hair is left on his bald head is as carefully brushed as if he rejoiced in the love-locks of Absalom himself. No! though misfortune and disappointment, and grief, and heavy-handed penury have all been assailing him ruthlessly enough for more than half a century, they have not got the brilve old fellow down yet. At seventy years of age, he is still on his legs in the prize-ring of life ; badly punished all over, (as the pugilists say,) but determined to win the fight to the last."

The following sketch of the robbery, if not appropriate to Christ- mas festivity, is vigorous and truthful; better in itself, indeed, than many of the other parts.

"Just as that cry for help passed the old man's lips, the two robbers, mask- ed and armed, appeared in the room ; and the next instant, Chummy Dick's gag was fast over his mouth.

"He had the cash-box clasped tight to his breast. Mad with terror' his eyes eared like a dead man's, while he struggled in the powerful arms that held him.

"Grimes, unused to such scenes, was so petrified by astonishment at find- ing the old man out of bed and the room lit up, that he stood with his pistol extended, staring helplessly through the eye-holes of his mask. Not so with his experienced leader. Chummy Dick's ears and eyes were as quick as his hands—the first informed him that Reuben's cry .for help (skilfully as he had stifled it with the gag) had aroused some one in the house • the second instantly detected the cash-box, as Mr. Wray clasped it to his breast.

"'Put up your pop-gun, you precious yokel, you!' whispered the house- breaker fiercely. Look alive, and pull it out of his arms. Damn you! do it quick ! they're awake, up-stairs !' "I i t was not easy to 'do it quick.' Weak as he was, Reuben actually held his treasure with the convulsive strength of despair against the athletic ruffian who was struggling to get it away. Furious at the resistance, Grimes exerted his whole force, and tore the box so savagely from the old man's grasp, that the mask of Shakspere flew several feet away, through the open lid, before it fell, shattered into fragments on the floor. "For an instant, Grimes stood aghast at the sight of what the contents of the cash-box really were. Then, frantic with the savage passions produced by the discovery, he rushed up to the fragments, and, with a horrible oath, stamped his heavy boot upon them, as if the very plaster could feel his ven- geance. 'I'll kill him, if I swing for it !' cried the villain, turning on Mr. Wray the next moment, and raising his horse-pistol by the barrel over the old man's head.

"But, exactly at the same time, brave as his heroic namesake, 'Julius Caesar' burst into the room. In the heat of the moment, he struck at Grimes with his wounded hand. Dealt even under that disadvantage, the blow was heavy enough to hurl the fellow right across the room, till he dropped down against the opposite walL But the triumph of the stout carpenter was a short one. Hardly a second after his adversary had fallen, he himself lay stunned on the floor by the pistol-butt of Chummy Dick.

" Even the nerve of the London housebreaker deserted him at the first discovery of the astounding self-deception of which he and his companion had been the victims. He only recovered his characteristic coolness and self-possession when the carpenter attacked Grimes. Then, true to his sys- tem of never making unnecessary noise or wasting unnecessary powder, he hit Julius Caesar' just behind the ear, with unerring dexterity. The blow made no sound, and seemed to be inflicted by a mere turn of the wrist ; but it was decisive—he had thoroughly stunned his man. " And now, the piercing screams of the landlady, from the bedroom floor, poured .quicker and quicker into the street., through the opened window. They were mingled with the fainter cries of Annie whom the good woman forcibly detained from going into danger down shin. The female servant (the only other inmate of the house) rivalled her mistress in shrieking madly and incessantly for help, from the window of the garret above. " The whole street will be up in a crack!' cried Chummy Dick, swear- ing. at every third word he uttered, and hauling the partially-recovered into an erect position again. There's no swag to be got here. Step out 'quick, young yokel, or you'll be nabbed !'

" He pushed Grimes into the back drawingroom; hustled him over the window-sill on to the wash-house roof, leaving him to find his own way how he could to the ground ; and then followed, with Mr. Wray's watch and purse, and a brooch of Annie's that had been left on the chimney-piece, all gathered into his capacious greatcoat-pocket in a moment. They were not

worth much as spoils ; but the dexterity with which they were taken in- stantly with one hand while he had Grimes to hold with the other, and the strength, coolness, and skill he displayed in managing the retreat, were worthy even of the reputation of Chummy Dick."

The Pathway of the Fawn is less a tale of the season in its sttlistance than its formal or mechanical adjuncts. The book is of a handsome exterior, and the time of its opening and

closing incidents is New Year's Eve. Beyond these, the story has not much to do with the festivejoyousness or oponheartedness of the season. The scene of the tale is the Rhine Land : the story turns upon a selfish noble, who defrauds his sister and her children of their share of the family inheritance, by the scheme of making his daughter pass for a son,—a scheme not very probable, since the deception could not be thoroughly car- ried out : the object of the story is to reform the father by making his daughter leave her home and touch his conscience by a series of

sculptures recalling the memory of his wrongdoing. Mrs. Hervey has done what she could for such materials ; narrating the tale in a graceful way, and pouring into it a vein of seasonable feeling, somewhat tinged by German manner, but that is proper to the scene.