7 AUGUST 1886, Page 22

TWO OF MR. WESTALL'S NOVELS.',

Mu. WESTALL has chosen as his field that portion of the ground of novel-writing which may be called the innocent sensational. The two books he has recently brought out, and whose titles will be found below, both come under this head. The first is an example of the novel founded on possible though sensational incidents, whose scene is laid in modern life, whose characters are well-differentiated types of human nature, and in which Manchester and Dresden form the background. The second is an example of the sensational novel founded on impossible assumptions, in which real facts are cleverly blended with abso- lute impossibilities, while the characters are partly drawn from the plain prose of the nineteenth century, and partly from the supposed survival of a forgotten race and a civilisation which has been long buried, as it were, under the volcanic mud of a pseudo-Christian and Spanish eruption.

The scene of Two Pinches of Snuff is, as we have said, laid in modern life. There is a side-plot in the book which is by no means sensational, and is very prettily worked oat. The soft, blooming German girl, who is all through a good deal more in love with the hero than he is with her, brings into the story a pretty interior of German life. It seems rather the fashion in some quarters to draw the young lady who gives her love away before she is asked for it. It is a human trait which has great pathos in it, but it is a trait which men seem fonder of writing about than women. The heroine in this case is certainly meek enough in taking with thankfulness another woman's leavings, and we hope she will be a warning to her sex. We should judge that she is a type oftener found in Germany than either in England or America, where we fancy that a sweet independence is beginning to be counted quite as womanly, if not more so, than the sweet dependence which our grandfathers, and perhaps our fathers, loved. Mr. Westall makes up for this by introducing us to another woman of an essentially modern type. Leah Starkova, a Russian Nihilist, is the very antithesis to Helene Roth, the sentimental middle-class German, and sacrifices her love of the individual to the love of her country, or, at any rate, to the love of what she believes to be her country's cause. Her independence, both of thought and action, is something belonging entirely to the latter part of this century, and is probably rarely found out- side the circle of those who have actually sacrificed the social conventionalities of their contemporaries to something they hold to be of vastly greater importance than any personal consideration.

Bat the main plot of Two Pinches of Snuff is concerned with crime. To track out crime revives the primmval hunting instinct in a new form. The criminal is pitted against the detective. The former is wonderfully clever, the latter is cleverer still ; and the novelist, at any rate, can always take care that circumstances shall at last be too much for the criminal. Mr. Westall's book cannot escape being called sensational, but it is not the common sensation novel. The criminal of Two Pinches of Snuff has nothing in common with the idealised burglar of the early part of this century, with his strange lingo and his high-flown notions of honour and affection in all points except where business is concerned ; nor with the realistic, squalid, and loathsome criminal of a more recent school. The criminal of Two Pinches of Snuff is a very strange criminal indeed. Dr. Roydon is a clergyman and a doctor of medicine. True, the clerical element rarely obtrudes, and his ultimate con- viction was fortunately no disaster to the Church. Bat on his professional skill as a surgeon hangs one of the main incidents of the story, and he proves that, though for years unpractised, his hand has not lost its cunning. Dr. Roydon is a forger and a murderer, and yet he is a most amiable and intelligent man, and in every respect a gentleman. He has one fatal passion, a passion for books. This, although he is very fairly well-off, leads him to want money, and, to be capable of doing anything to get it. To do so, he forges his uncle's name, and murders a man whom ' • Two Pinata Snmff. By William Wettall. London : Ward and Downey. 1886.—The Phantom City : a Volcanic Rama:too. By William Weatall. London : Cassell and Co. 1896. both before and after the murder, he recognises as his benefactor. The two pinches of snuff which give the title to the book are given to distract the attention of the victim. They do not contain anything particularly deleterious, but they are so irritating to the nose as for several moments to render the victim incapable of any but strictly personal and painful sensations. In the first case, the snuff enables the doctor to walk off with the money before the cleverest cashier in Manchester has discovered that the cheque be has presented is a forgery ; for the signature was painted, not written. In the other, the pinch of snuff leads Herr Roth, the German banker, to turn his head politely in a violent fit of sneezing, while the doctor seizes the opportunity of cracking his skull, and makes off with the "swag" in the form of German Municipal Bonds. The interest of the story is very much enhanced by the ingenious idea of making the doctor actually cure the man he has attempted to murder. The doctor was so completely disguised at the time of the robbery, that he had no fear of the banker recognising him. The blow on the head had reduced him to unconsciousness for several weeks, and the doctor became convinced that the only chance of a cure was to perform the operation of trephining. This was very much against the opinion of the pompons Herr Hofrath Dr. Kranken- heiler, who therefore retires from the case, and leaves the murderer to perform the operation, which is a complete success in restoring his victim to consciousness, though he unfortunately dies after all, whether from the effects of the original blow or of the subsequent operation does not transpire, and does not make any difference in the legal character of the crime.

The Phantom City is a tale which lies half-way between one of Jules Verne's and one of Mr. R. L. Stevenson's. It appears that a certain Dr. Canyon has heard while in the West Indies that there still exists in the heart of Central America, isolated from civilisation by impassable mountains and tribes of fierce Indians, a people of the old Toltec civilisation, who were driven from Mexico by the Aztec invasion just as the Aztecs afterwards succumbed to the Spaniards. After immense difficulties and incredible escapes in flood, field, and air, which the reader must follow for himself, the Doctor arrives in a balloon at the Phantom City. Owing to the extraordinary way in which he came, he is treated with great respect by the "Lord of Light," the king of the country, though he incurs the un- dying enmity of the priesthood, partly by being an accomplice in a practical joke on the High Priest, in which the Doctor's magneto-electric machine plays a prominent part. It need hardly be said that the Phantom City is somewhat of a Utopia, and the Toltecs are certainly to be congratu- lated on the progress they have made since there has been any authentic record of them. They do not, if the Doctor is to be believed, understand what it is to steal, and the fact that the landlords only take their rent after the tenant has pro- vided for all his own requirements ought to be brought under the notice of Mr. Parnell as a useful suggestion for his next campaign. Human sacrifices were, we are sorry to say, still in vogue on the Doctor's arrival, and the reactionary party in the State seemed to imagine that their continuance or revival would be a cure for every ill, from typhoid-fever to the eruption of a volcano. This, again, is evidently a well-meant hint to our emotional friends who long to cure all social ills by heroic measures, though we would remark that in this case reactionary measures had a very real connection with a revival of priestly domination. However, in spite of this little failing, which the Doctor had some hand in curing, the Phantom City was a very pleasant place to live in, and nothing could equal the beneficence of its most liberal and enlightened despot. How the Doctor ever got back again we must leave the reader to find out. Suffice it to say that his exit could hardly have been more pleasantly made than it was, or with a more delightful companion. He promises a scientific treatise for the learned societies ; and the profusion of medical terms with which he interlards his present account of what he saw, gives good augury of an epoch-making work.

Seriously, Mr. Westall's books are both very pleasant reading, though there is nothing deep in them. For ourselves, we prefer his treatment of real life, which gives him more opportunity for character-drawing, at which art, though he does not display any far-reaching insight into human nature, he is very skilful in his way ; but either of these books is a good companion for a leisure hour.