THE CANON'S WARD.* Is Mr. Payn going to reverse the

general order of things with novelists, and do his best work last ? If this novel were his first, we should look very hopefully forward; and if Thicker than Water had been his first, and this were his second, there would be no bounds to our expectations, for the difference between them is greatly in favour of The Canon's Ward. It is the best we have read of his,—a great deal the best. But with all their humour and ingenuity, Mr. Payn's novels are not often such as will be read a second time. The defects of many of his books, a certain unreality and a want of pleasantness in the tone, are not characteristics of this book. The actors in it are, for the most part, really pleasant and agreeable; the scenes are, with important exceptions, natural and homelike ; there is a domestic tone about the book, and family affection has full play. The Canon and his sister are thoroughly lovable, and are very clever sketches, save for the too great similarity of their conversational style. The Canon's sum- plicity, unselfishness, and tenderness are delightful, and are quite consistent with a great sense of humour, a few strong prejudices, an occasional persistency, and a good deal of unbusi- nesslikeness. His passionate devotion to his absent son, too, and the sentiment in which he secretly indulges in his letters to him, are lifelike and touching, though we question whether even such a father would write to his son, "Come home, my Robert, and bring your Alma with you." In the Canon's sister, Mr. Payn has given us a very sweet picture of an elderly lady,who can not only give up her substance, but all her own wishes, for others, and who can do so cheerfully. She is, indeed, that quite possible person—whose existence the cynics deny,—a

TM Canon's Ward. By James Payn. 3 vols. London : Chat* and Windt's.

woman who can find herself in the right without a word or look of triumph, who does not know the phrase, "I told you so." Of the heroine we cannot speak so highly, because, though her faults are those of many young ladies, yet we cannot believe in any one quite so good and sensible in some ways,. being so madly foolish and weak in others. The causes of her fatal concealment are entirely inadequate, and we almost desire to throw away the book in disgust, when we find her—having

so providentially escaped Scylla—sailing deliberately, and with her eyes open, into Charybdis. Of the hero, we can only- say that he out-villains all previous villains. We do not think-

we ever read or heard of an educated University man murdering his own and only daughter ; and that with so insignificant an object as the bringing her fortune more under his control.

Let us give our readers a few of Mr. Payn's good things ; and these are many, though we wish that his humour appeared to be a part of his nature, and not so purely intellectual. His

funny things are rather lugged in for their own sakes, than used as the expression of his own sense of the humorousness of life. When they do express this they are much more heartily amusing ; the little parenthetical notes of irony are- occasionally exceedingly good, as, for instance, when the Canorr says, while warning his son against marrying too young, "Remem- ber, that two young people in the bonds of matrimony, if I may-

borrow the language of the board of directors of my insurance company, have power to add to their number." Amongst Mr. Payn's more cynical jokes are the following. The Canon is speaking of his ward's engagement, and writes to his son that the gentleman has neither birth nor fortune. "I doubt whether he is even legitimate, which, in a woman's eyes, is a sad blot ; they never can understand, till it is too late, the immense advan- tage of having no connections by marriage." "In five years," Mr. Payn tells us, "about one-fifth of the human race leaves this world for good, or, at all events, for good and all." "He

[the hero] will rise in life," writes the Canon to his son ; "but it will not be to the empyrean, as the American gentleman re- plied to his friend when he said it was 'fine over head," there are, however, very few people going that way.'" And his sister

can be as cynical as the Canon. The latter is saying that in a true marriage, even the wife who is grown personally unlovely is sacred to her husband. " She sometimes becomes so sacred' that he never goes near her,' returned Aunt Maria, grimly ; she is a shrine resorted to on special occasions—birthdays and the like—but he seeks his every-day society elsewhere.' The Canon deprecatingly remarks that Milton called his wife "my late espoused saint." Aunt Maria replies suc- cinctly, "The gentleman was blind, and the lady was dead.' And Mr. Mayors, the Cambridge Don, and the heroine converse in the same epigrammatic style. "'Your visit is not a favour we are accustomed to very frequently. You are like an order of merit, Mr. Mayors, of which we are very proud, but which is not put on save on high days and holidays." And then only worn-

on the outside,' observed the Tutor, significantly. Nay, next- the heart,' said Sophy, laughing." And the little invalid,

Stevie, resembles the others in this power of repartee : he does not believe the story of the Fall of Man; he is sure an apple was altogether an inadequate temptation, and decides that it was a peach ; he is sure the Ark would have capsized, and gives way generally to much Cambridge heresy. On other matters, too, he is very amusingly sceptical. When his grandmother says that she is "not melancholy, and always tries to be cheer- ful," after pondering a little, he beseeches her to "try to be melancholy, then." But we do not wish to end our notice with Mr. Payn's jokes and cynicisms, good-humoured though they be, for Mr. Payn has written on the whole a very agreeable as well as clever book. Cambridge is a beautiful place for the scene of at novel, and we wonder—with its natural and architectural beauty, and its wealth of godlike heroes, and, surely, with a sufficiency, at least, of pleasant young ladies—that it is not oftener resorted to by novelists. The opening scene is very happily described, though Mr. Payn cannot, even here, resist a sly cynicism,—" to prayer, or at all events to chapel" :—

"What the High' is to Oxford men, picturesque, unique, unap- proachable, the Backs '—the river gardens at the backs of their colleges—are to Cambridge men. There is beauty all along the river from St. John's to Corpus ; linked sweetness'—for do not the bridges join the gardens ?—' long drawn out.' It may be a personal partiality, but I venture to think that immediately in front of Trinity College the beauty of the Backs' culminates. There—to my eyes—the stream is broader (it has a feeder' through which a, tiny shallop may be pushed beneath the lime-boughs) ; there—to tuy, ears= the frequent pulse' of oars is more musical than elsewhere the bridges have a more graceful curve. The tender greensward; the fragrant overhanging lime-walk like a cathedral aisle in leaf ; a picture glazed, alas ! with tears, for those with whom, like me, 'tis winter time, while when they flaw it last, long years ago, ''twas May with them from head to heel.' It is The May' now (as the May term is called), and the Backs' are at their best, though not their brightest, for dewy eve is about to fall. The sky-colours above tree and turret are like a herald's garb, the herald of the summer; the bells of old St. Mary are clashing overhead, but mellowed by distance; the tinkle of the college bell is calling the white-robed students, flitting ghostlike through arch and corridor, to prayer, or at all events to chapel. Upon the water lingers yet a fairy fleet, and the light dip of the feathered oar, full on the stream, and sharp beneath the bridge, falls dreamily on the ear. To the actors in such a scene, its glories are less visible than to the eye of memory. We are none of us fully aware of our happiness while it is with us, and Youth is as uncon- scious of it as is the flower of its blossom. It is Age alone which admires—and regrets."

The three old people are decidedly our favourites, and we will conclude with two passages about them. The first is when Mr. Adair's villainy has nearly ruined the Canon and his sister, and the former has confessed his vain confidence in Adair, and its sad result :—

" Her fingers had trembled a little as she had listened to him ; she answered nothing till he had quite done. Then she rose and kissed him on both cheeks. My dear brother,' she said, softly, 'what you have said is very true, except the last few words. I have to thank you, it is true, for very much ; for a life of ease, of too much ease, perhaps—the very breath of heaven has not been suffered to visit my cheek too roughly ; for a brother's unselfish devotion, for affectionate forbearance and solicitude—but not for this. Your goodness and generosity have been imposed upon, it is true ; but that is not your fault, but another's villany. For what has happened I thank Mr. John Adair alone—not you, dear. One can scarcely say ' (here she smiled a smile as sweet as that of the maiden who murmurs 'Yes' to her first love) that we have climbed the hill together, because the ascent has been accomplished (with your money, for I never had any) in a charict with C-springs ; but we have always sat side by side, and now we shall descend it hand in hand. What does it matter, dear, since we shall soon come to our journey's end, whether we travel on foot or not ' As there is a nobility of nature's own, far beyond what can be purchased of minister, or inherited from another, so there is a beauty beyond that of form and feature, or even which youth itself can bestow—the beauty of the soul ; and something of that divine comeliness now shone on Aunt Maria's kindly face, with its halo of silver grey. For the moment it seemed to the Canon that the revelation of such undreamt-of love and faith was full repayment for all his woes and worries. He had always esteemed his sister ; but, as he now confessed to himself, for these many years he had been entertaining an angel unawares."

The second contains the old tutor's pleading with the sister to use his money for the old Canon's good :—

"'Miss Aldred,' be said, 'you and I are old friends, but your brother and I have been so all our lives ; I know all about him, and (though that is reason good why I should love him) it follows that I know his weaknesses. He is a very proud man, not of his many excellences, but in that sort of foolish way in which sensitive people are proud. A way that robs friendship of its advantage, and friends of what should be their highest pleasure. He has lost his money, it seems, without perhaps quite knowing how, and I am very certain without knowing how much. Now, my dear madam, be has heaps of friends who will offer help, no doubt ; but, having become poor, he will be ten times prouder than ever, and will take nothing. You smile as though you would say, "And I agree with him ;" perhaps you may be right in their case, but I am a man who has only one tie in the world, that of friendship ; and I may almost add that I am bound by that tie to almost a single object. Now, you must so con- trive it—and I am sure it can be done—that your brother shall think himself much better off than he really is, and I will be his banker without his knowing it.'"