BOOKS.

THE CLAVERINGS.*

Ma. TROLLOPE has treated, in both Can You Forgive Her? and The Belton Estate, the subject of a girl who does not fully know her own mind as to which of two lovers she prefers, and in The Small House at Allington he has given us a picture of a commoner situation,—a man vacillating, not indeed between two loves, but between two women one of whom he loves, and the other of whom dazzles his worldly ambition. But he has never, we think, before treated the subject of a man genuinely in love with two women at the same time, virtually engaged to both, overpowered with the humiliation and shame of having to confess to either that he loves her rival better, and not indeed honestly knowing in his own mind to which of the two women he should really make that confession. No doubt this is an easier subject than that which made the central interest of Can You Forgive Her? and The Belton Estate. Men, very ordinary men, are not unfrequently in this posi- tion, -while it takes peculiar circumstances, and a woman of pecu- liar, if really refined, nature to entertain even a moment's doubt as to which of two men she should prefer, or to change that preference, if both remain true to her. The subject is easier than that which Mr. Trollope had attempted before, but he has, we think, succeeded more than in proportion to its comparative facility. The delineation of Harry Clavering's state of mind

* The Meetings. By Anthony Trollope. 2 vole. London : Smith and Elder.

towards his rival loves, Lady Ongar and Miss Burton, is absolutely perfect, so far as it goes. As is customary with Mr. Trollope, it

does not go very deep. If any one who knows both stories will compare the struggle in Harry Clavering's mind with the exquisite picture of James Erskine's similar struggle in the only story, A Lost Love, which we owe to the genius of the authoress calling

herself by the pseudonym of " Ashford Owen," he will see at once where Mr. Trollope's genius stops, as well as how much it can

accomplish. In the anonymous story we have mentioned, you see pictured with exquisite delicacy the different class of senti- ments excited in the hero's mind by the rival heroines, and also the utterly different species and depth of passion with which each of them regarded him. In The Claverings we may see faintly,

perhaps, though only faintly, the different species of love with which Harry Clavering was regarded by Lady Ongar and Florence Barton, but even that is rather a difference of manner towards him, a difference of character in expressing it, than a difference of inward feeling. But we see nothing, absolutely nothing, of the conflicting sentiments in Harry Clavering's own mind ; we see that something in each of the women attracts him, but we do not see the two currents of feeling in close contrast and comparison, the sort of pang which he would feel in giving up Florence, the different sort of pang which he would feel in giving up Julia. We have to create all that for ourselves, without any help from Mr. Trollope ; the two women are drawn with great clearness, and one of them at least with great force, but if we want to know where the special torture of Harry Claver- ing's position was in each case, we have to fall in love with them as well as we can for ourselves, and discriminate the special sort of affection each was able to inspire. Mr. Trollope does not help us. He does not even represent Harry as feeling that the one woman (Lady Ongar) was superior to him in power and breadth of character, and that, towards her, admiration and a certain delight in the remorse, courage, and boldness of her love,—she had been faithless to him once,--were the predomi- nant elements of attraction. He does not tell us that the other's inferiority of position, and her gentle confiding nature filled him with the protecting pride which a man generally loves best to feel towards the woman of his choice, and made him sensible of that perfect ease in her presence which Harry Claver- ing could scarcely perhaps have felt with such a one as Lady Ongar. Mr. Trollops leaves this deeper element of sentiment in his plot absolutely to the imagination of his readers. He paints for us truly enough how they spoke and acted, but he does not give us much conception of how they felt. Even after he had paints for us truly enough how they spoke and acted, but he does not give us much conception of how they felt. Even after he had made his choice, Harry Clavering must have felt that there was something wanting in Florence which he had loved in Lady Ongar, as he would certainly have Telt about Lady Ongar had he chosen her instead of Florence,—and we think there would be much more—for a novelist who chose to describe sentiment as well as manners —to say of his inward regrets, and perhaps even of their occasional effect on his outward manner to Florence, than Mr. Trollops has told us. These, indeed, are the elements of life of which Mr. Trollope seldom attempts to speak at all.

But accepting, as in literature one must always accept, the limitations which a man of genius either imposes on himself, or recognizes as limitations which he must not often attempt to pass,

the art of The Claverings strikes us as of a very high class. There are far fewer unconnected side-pictures than is usual in Mr. Trol-

lope's novels. Indeed, almost every side-picture is calculated to heighten the effect of the principal subject of the story. Harry Clavering's rather weak openness to the influence of any attractive woman with whom he is much thrown, is brought out in strong relief against the ungainly curate's (Mr. Saul's) manly dignity and intensity of purpose. Mr. Trollope has contrasted his rather soft, though in relation to all but feminine affairs perfectly manly, hero, with one who in many respects seems but half a man, and yet is, in relation to the dignity, depth, and constancy of his affection, immeasurably Harry Ciavering's superior ; and the effect of the contrast is a new force both in the mere vividness of the picture and in the clearness and truth- fulness of Mr. Trollope's moral. For there is a moral, and, as we take it, a very high, and in these present days a very rare moral, in Mr. Trollope's tale, which strikes us as one of the healthiest and, without soaring very high, one of the noblest for ordinary men which has been written for many a day. His great moral,—for men at least,—is that the mind, the will, can regulate the affections, as much as any other, part of us,—that " no man need cease to love without a cause ; a man may maintain his love, and nourish it, and keep it warm by honest, manly effort, as he may his probity, or his courage, or his honour." That is a

wholesome and necessary truth in these days of sentimental novels, and it is admirably illustrated in the graphic tale before us. Mr. Trollope is so well known for the artistic force and liveliness of his delineations, that it is only fair sometimes to call attention to the manliness of his morality, and nothing can be manlier than the morality of the following passage "He unconsciously allowed himself to dwell upon the words with which he would seek to excuse his treachery to Florence. He thought how he would tell her,—not to her face with spoken words, for that he could not do,—but with written skill, that he was unworthy of her goodness, that his love for her had fallen off through his own unworthi- ness, and had returned to one who was in all respects less perfect than she, but who in old days, as she well knew, had been his first love. Yes ! he would say all this, and Julia, let her anger be what it might, should know that he had said it. As he planned this, there came to him a little comfort, for he thought there was something grand in such a resolution. Yes ! he would do that, even though he should lose Julia also. Miserable clap-trap ! Ho knew in his heart that all his logic was false, and his arguments baseless. Cease to love Florence Burton ! He had not ceased to love her, nor is the heart of any man made so like a weathercock that it needs must turn itself hither and thither, as the wind directs, and be altogether beyond the man's con- trol. For Harry, with all his faults, and in spite of his present falee- nese, was a man. No man ceases to love without a cause. No man need cease to love without a cause. A man may maintain his love, and nourish it, and keep it warm by honest, manly effort, as he may his probity, his courage, or his honour. It was not that be had ceased to love Florence; but that the glare of the candle had been too bright for him, and be had scorched his wings."

On the woman's side, too, the morality is as sound and as vigorous as on the man's. Neither man nor woman, we suppose, will read this novel without think; g the picture of Julia Brabazon, afterwards Lady Ongar, one of the most powerful and, in spite of her deliberate sale of herself for a title and a fortune, one of the most attractive of all Mr. Trollope's feminine portraits. All about her is marked with a certain power and brilliancy. Her wilful worldliness at the beginning of the book, her horror of mean cares and a poverty-stricken career, her deter- mination to sacrifice love for splendour, are all deliberate, and all carried into action with a certain grandeur of purpose, with a clear understanding of the wrong she is doing and that she is clearly responsible for all the evil effects of doing it. Then her self-dis- gust afterwards at what she has done, her utter failure to enjoy the price of this sale of herself, the proud shame with which she bears the aspersions on her name which are the natural results of having married such a man as Lord Ougar, the misery of her loneliness on her first return to England, the clearly self-avowed purpose with which she determines to make up, —if she may,—to Harry Clavering by her new fortune for having once thrown him over for the sake of money and rank, the proud resentment with which she braves her brother-in-law's (Sir Hugh Clavering's) coldness, the restlessness with which she goes from place to place and is satisfied nowhere, are all painted with a master's hand. We fear that few readers will fail to find that, on the whole, there is more that is fascinating in Lady Ongar, in spite of her great, her unwomanly sin in marrying such a man as Lord Ongar for rank and money, than in Florence Burton ;—a larger nature at least, capable of great sin and great magnanimity also. But in spite of this, Mr. Trollope draws with a sincerity that never fails him the true and natural punishment of her sin,— first of all, and perhaps deepest of all, the disappearance of that true delicacy which could scarcely survive so deliberate a sale of herself as Julia Brabazon's ; then, as its external penalty, the gathering of mean intrigues and meaner intriguers round her, the dirty and rapacious little harpy, Sophie Gordeloup, the selfish and able Count Pateroff, the foolish good-for-nothing Archie Clavering. Archie Clavering's counsellor in his aspira- tions after Lady ()agar's fortune, Captain Boodle, is a picture of the highest humour and skill, and yet it is not in any sense a diversion from the main object of the story, as so many of Mr. Trollope's cleverest sketches in other tales have been. Many will read the coarse humour of the chapter, "Let her know that you're there," as if it were merely coarse humour, but in truth the coarse humour contains the highest moral in the story, showing, as it does, how just a retribution women who act as Julia Brabazon acted, bring on themselves, by being made the subject of such coarse speculation. The dialogue we are going to quote should be read in connection with the few words of previous dialogue in which Sir Hugh advises his brother Archie to ask Lady Ongar to marry him, and repudiates angrily the notion that there is any indelicacy in the proposal, though Lord Ongar had been dead only four months :— "The world still looked askance at Lady Ongar, and Hugh did not wish to take up the armour of a paladin in her favour. If Archie mar- ried her, Archie would be the paladin ; though, indeed, in that case, no paladin would be needed. She has only been a widow, you know, four months,' said Archie, pleading for delay. 'It won't be delicate ; will it ?'—' Delicate r said Sir Hugh. ' I don't know whether there is much of delicacy in it at I don't see why she isn't to be treated like any other woman. If you were to die, you'd think it very odd if any follow came up to Hermy before the season was over.'—' Archie, you are a fool,' said Sir Hugh ; and Archie could see by his brother's brow that Hugh was angry. You say things that for folly and absurdity are beyond belief. If you can't see the peculiarities of Julia's position, I am not going to point them out to you.' "

And as if to illustrate this entire absence of all delicacy in the situation, the conference between Archie Clavering, and his adviser, Captain Boodle, immediately follows :—

" ' They say she's been a little queer, don't they ?' said the friendly counsellor [Captain Boodle].—' Of course people talk, you know.'—' Talk, yes ; they're talking a doosed sight, I should say. There's no mistake about the money, I suppose ?'—' Oh ! none,' said Archie, shaking his head

vigorously. 'Hugh managed all that for her, so I know She don't lose any of it because she enters herself for running again, does she ?'-

'Not a shilling. That's the beauty of Was you over sweet on her before ?'—' What ! before Ongar took her ? 0 laws, no ! She hadn't a rap, you know ; and know how to spend money as well as any girl in London.'—' It's all to begin, then, Clavvy ; all the up-hill work to be done ?' —` Well, yes ; I don't know about up-hill, Doodles. What do you moan by up-hill?—' I mean that seven thousand a year ain't usually to be picked up merely by trotting easy along thb fiat. And this sort of work is very up-hill generally, I take it;—unless, you know, a fellow has a fancy for it. If a fellow is really sweet on a girl, he likes it, I suppose.' =She's a doosed handsome woman, you know, Doodles.'—' I don't know anything about it, except that I suppose Ongar wouldn't have taken her if she hadn't stood well on her pasterns, and had some breed- ing about her. I never thought much of her sister—your brother's wife, you know,—that is in the way of looks. No doubt she runs straight, and that's a great thing. Sho wont go the wrong side of the post.'- ' As for running straight, let me alone for that.'—' Well, now, Marry, I'll tell you what my ideas are. When a man's trying a young filly, his hands can't be too light. A touch too much will bring her on her haunches, or throw her out of her step. She should hardly foal the iron in her mouth. That's the sort of work which requires a man to know well what he's about. But when I've got to do with a trained mare, I always choose that she shall know that I'm there ! Do you understand me ?'— Yes ; I understand you, Doodles.'—' I always choose that she shall know that I'm thero !' And Captain Boodle, as he repeated those manly words with a firm voice, put out his hands as though ho were handling the horse's rein. ' Their mouths are never so fine then, and they gene- rally want to be brought up to the bit, d'ye see—up to the bit. When a mare has been trained to her work, and knows what she's at in her running, she's all the better for feeling a fellow's hands as she's going. She likes it rather. It gives her confidence and makes her know where she is. And look here, Clay, vy, when she comes to her fences, give her her head ; but steady her first, and make her know that you're there. Demme, whatever you do, let her know that you're there ! There is nothing like it. She'll think all the more of the fellow that's piloting her. And look here, Clavvy ; ride her with spurs. Always rides trained mare with spurs. Let her know that they're on ; and if sho tries to get her head, give 'em her. Yes, by George give 'em her !' And Captain Boodle in his energy twisted himself in his chair, and brought his heel round, so that it could be seen by Archie."

We have heard this called coarse, true and powerful as it is. And coarse indeed it is, but the coarseness of the highest morality. What can be more realistic, or more wise in its realism, than to teach women such as Julia Brabazon to what they really lay themselves open, when they act as she acted?

The Claverings has, as we believe, a higher moral, and a more perfect artistic unity of the kind we have indicated, than any of Mr. Trollope's previous tales. There is scarcely a touch in it which does not contribute to the main effect, both artistic and moral, of the story, and not a character introduced, however slightly sketched, which does not produce its own unique and specific effect on the reader's imagination.