NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* TEE authoress of I, Thou, and
the Other One ought really to have taken for her motto the famous couplet
Let agriculture, arts, and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility."
For although the novel is on its ethical side an apotheosis of Reform principles—the action culminates in the year 1832— it contrives simultaneously to promote sentiments of respect and admiration for the ducal order that cannot fail to con- ciliate the most uncompromising supporter of hereditary.
legislators. Piers Lord Exham, eldest son and heir of the portly Duke of Richmoor, though politically unsound at the outset of his career, is personally irresistible. It is true that in his early youth he had accentuated his likeness to Lord Byron by adopting the "open collar, loose tie, and other peculiarities of that poetic nobleman." But by the age of twenty-six he was "emphatically individual." And how fascinating was that individuality can be gathered from the following portrait :- "Grave and high-bred, he had also much of the melancholy mythical [sic] air of an English nobleman, conscious of long ante- cedents, and dwelling in the seclusion of shaded parks and great houses steeped in the human aura of centuries. His hair was very black, and worn rather long, and his complexion a pale bronze ; but this lack of red colouring added to the fascination of his dark eyes, which were remarkable for that deep glow always meaning mental or moral power of some kind. They were often half shut— and then—who could tell what was passing behind them 1" It is painful to learn that this gorgeous creature, though deeply enamoured of the adorable Kate Atheling, only daughter of Squire Atheling, a patriarchal Yorlcshireman of herculean build, should have succumbed to the baleful witchery of Miss Annabel Vyner, an orphan heiress of massive propor- tions and unscrupulous egotism.. In the end Piers is happily reunited to his Kate, and lives to proclaim on public platforms the blessings of that Reform movement he had so obstinately resisted in his salad days. Less ecstatic, perhaps, than Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's fervid eulogies of the ducal order, this novel is a more subtle act of homage to that exalted tribe. To read it with sympathy is to abandon all hope of mending, much less ending, the House of Lords. It should certainly be placed on the Index of all Radical clubs throughout the United Kingdom.
A Lass of Lennox is the latest variation on the theme which was given out so poignantly in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The Reverend Alexander MacGrigor is a young minister of humble origin, but considerable intellectual attainments, who. returns after a brilliant academic career to his native town, and while impelled by ambition to choose a wife from the social stratum into which he has raised himself by his ability, maintains clandestine and compromising relations with Jessie Anderson, the humble playmate of his boyhood. MacGrigor's position is complicated by the fact that Jessie's father, a: • (1.) I, Thou, and the Other One. By Amelia Barr. London : Fisher Unwin. fes.]—(2.) A Lass of Lennox. By James Strang. London: Chapman and Haw (69.1—(.) John Thaddeus Mackay; a Study in Sects By.Clunies.W1111ams. London : T. Burleigh. (ee.]—(4.) Morgan Hailsham. By F. C. Constable.' London : Grant Richards. [es.]—(5.) 'PosUe Farm. By George Ford. London : W. Blackwood and Sons. [611.]—(6.) Castle amorous. By Archibald Birt. London : Longman and Co. [ss.] —(7.) Nootka. By Granville Gordon. London : Sands and Co. [6e.]—(8.) In the Shadow of the Crown. By M. Bidder. London : Constable and Co. [es.]--(9.) Henry Massinger. By Mrs. Robert Jocelyn. London : F. V. White.. 1644--00.) Mistress Content Cradoc.k, By Annie Eliot Trumbull. London: Harry R. Allenson. I5s.]—(11,) Fire ,and Tom By 0. B. Milton. London : Hutchinson and CO, (6g.]—(12.) The LanoNe at Large. By J. Storer Clouston. London : W. Blackwood and Sons. Os.] notorious poacher, has fled the country under the suspicion of having committed a murder. Finally, the minister marries the shrewish daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer, while Jessie, to shield her shame, becomes the wife of Jack Stevenson, the rejected suitor of the minister's wife. Stevenson's generous misalliance precipitates the catastrophe, since the minister is called on to baptise his own child—the paternity of which Stevenson has claimed out of pity for his wife—and dies suddenly in church during the ceremony. It cannot be said that the painful nature of the theme is redeemed by any nobility of treatment. Certain aspects of middle-class life in a provincial Scotch town are drawn, no doubt, faithfully enough, but the story is sordidly prosaic in its essentials, and the cowardice, cynicism, and sensuality of the minister are so convincingly set forth in the first half of the book, that it is difficult to feel any compassion for him in the hour of his humiliation.
John Thaddeus Mackay, Mr. Charles Williams's interesting and curious "study in sects," suffers, like the novel just noticed, from the unattractiveness of the central figure, who is also a Nonconformist minister. The story opens with an extremely pungent description of the excesses of Black Protestantism in a North of Ireland town. John Thaddeus Mackay is a young Presbyterian Licentiate of moderate abilities and unprepossessing exterior, who, after failing to get a " call " and plunging for a while into the political arena as an ardent apostle of tenant-right, accepts the offer of the Presbyterian Board of Missions to report ou their operations abroad. He marries a coarse- fibred adventuress, who deserts him at the earliest oppor- tunity, and, having conscientiously resigned his commission, drifts about the world in search of a religion, an ingenuous, impressionable, invertebrate creature, who at best inspires pity, but never respect. During his pilgrimage Mackay is brought in contact with representatives of a variety of sects and creeds. Before leaving Ireland he is nursed, after an accident, in a Roman Catholic family, and comes off second best in a discussion with a genial priest. On his honeymoon he becomes acquainted in London with "every phase of Broad Churchism and Puseyism," and associates in his subsequent travels with an Anglican clergyman, a Methodist minister, a "Howley Father," a Parsee, a free-thinking engineer from New- castle deeply read in the Koran, and a Latter-day Saint. In India he is exposed to the influence of theosophy, becomes a Deacon in Anglican Orders, and on the death of his eloping wife marries an Irishwoman of a Roman Catholic family converted to Anglicanism, and obtains a chaplaincy in Scinde, where they are both carried off by cholera. The book is a strange mixture of theological discussions and realistic delineation of the seamy side of Bohemian life. It emphasises the value of tolerance certainly, but not much capital can be made out of the ulti- mate subsidence of the hero in the haven of Anglicanism in view of his limited intellect. The publication of what is apparently a private letter of the late Cardinal Newman on p. 302, with a footnote stating that its " reproduction is inter- dicted," seems to us to bo in decidedly dubious taste.
The opening of Morgan Hailsham gives such an idyllic picture of a household in the country that we cannot altogether reconcile ourselves to the sordid intrigue which supplies the mainspring of the plot. Richard Tremayne, young bachelor of literary tastes living with three charming sisters, cherishes an unrequited affection for Gwendoline Oughterson, who at the opening of the story has just become engaged to the son of a Peer. Oughterson pile, a middle-aged widower, dies suddenly, and his mistress claims to have been his lawfully wedded wife before he married Gwendoline's mother. Whereupon Richard Tremayne, abandoning his literary ambition, devotes ihimselftlin the spirit of a modern knight-errant to foil and expose what his instinct tells him to be a conspiracy based on fraud and forgery. In the long-run he is rewarded for his unselfish devotion, but the company of the conspirators is neither edifying nor entertain- ing. The attempt to graft melodrama on idyll is, in our opinion, a mistake. Mr. Constable's nice people are so infinitely more interesting than his villains that he should pay serious heed to John Bright's advice to Mr. Justin McCarthy.
'Postle Farm is in many ways so clever a novel of Devon- shire life that we are all the more puzzled to fathom the drift of its melodramatic prologue. The obvious presumption is that the mysterious man who rows out on the river at dead of night with a burden, and returns empty-handed, has disposed of a corpse. But, according to the text of the book, the only person disposed of is the heroine, who is farmed out in the village under a false name. Can it be she who is the burden I Possibly the author changed his mind after writing the prologue. We have only to add that Cathie, the heroine, though powerfully drawn, is almost supernaturally clever and self-willed, and that the book will prove good reading to those who do not dread dialect —Castle Czvargas, though a romance of 1666, is not concerned with the Restora- tion, but with the adventures of two brothers, Daubeney and Francis Nutcombe, at Castle Czvargas, somewhere in Germany. The Castle is of the usual romantic type on a hill overlooking a lake, and feminine interest is provided by a young lady named Wilhelmina, who is imprisoned along with the brothers by the wicked Count Czvargas. A nobleman whose name begins with three consonants is ex hypotleesi capable of any atrocity. In the end the prisoners all escape and endure countless adventures by flood and fell.—Nootka is another story of adventure, but of modern times. The scene is laid chiefly in the unexplored region of Vancouver Island, where the hero finds a colony of semi-civilised Indians ruled over by a shipwrecked Englishman, his companions and daughters. The Indians are in revolt, and there is an effective rescue-scene, after which Wellesley remains as chief of the little settlement. The descriptions, notably those of the dense forest-lands, are well done.—The author of In the Shadow of the Crown takes us as far back as the time of Edward II., choosing for his hero Edward's and Isabella's second son, Prince John of Eltham, and devoting a good deal of space to Mortimer and Isabella and the secret murder of the King. Spite of these horrors, the novel is brightly written and amusing, and will help the reader to polish up his know- ledge of the Plantagenets in a very agreeable way.—Mrs. Jocelyn, who is careful to inform the world in a parenthesis that she is " the Honble.," informs her readers in a preface that the character who bears the title-r0le in Henry MassiZzger is modelled on that of her grandfather, and that the wonder- ful cures he effected by some cryptic force—which may or may not have been mesmerism—are solid fact, and in no case exaggerated. The rest of the book is a mere setting for the central figure, and, if the reader's powers of belief are not too sorely taxed by the faith-healing episodes, is not unamusing.—Mistress Content Cradock is a tale of the early days of the colonists in Massa- chusetts. It has a strong Puritan atmosphere, which lends quaintness to the recital, but the general effect is decidedly grey and uninspiring.—In Fire and Tow, a clever and interesting picture of a modern emancipated woman is spoilt by the tyranny of the unhappy ending. The culminating catastrophe in which the heroine, after rescuing her lover, is blown up along with him by a dynamite explosion is grotesquely gratuitous.—The Lunatic at Large belongs to the category of " absurdities " so much in vogue at present. A young doctor, engaged to travel on the Continent with a patient suffering from mental aberration, locks him up under a false name, and passes off a sane friend as his charge. The patient escapes from the lunatic asylum, baffles his pursuers by the display of astonishing cunning, and after a series of astounding adventures, exposes the doctor and his accomplice, and regains his sanity. There is a good deal of nightmarish cleverness in the working out of this strange plot, but none of the characters inspire the reader with a desire to meet them in real life.
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