IN A MOMENT OF PASSION.* TIM aspirations of most novelists
are satisfied by narrating the lives and adventures of only a small number of imaginary individuals at a time ; but " Christel's " ambition soars higher. In the work before us, whole families are introduced with a large-heartedness suggestive of some of Miss Yonge's tales (whose influence may, we think, be traced in other respects also); and, not content with what is to be found by keeping strictly to the high-road of the story, the author makes more than one excursion down side-paths in order to rout out and present to the reader little bits of extraneous history. The consequence is that she has on her hands the description of nearly forty people, with numerous love-affairs, a parrot, and seven or eight more or less harrowing deaths. And as it is manifestly difficult—not to say impossible—to do justice to these many individualities and their various emotions in the limited space of three volumes, we venture to hint the advisability of the author's not taxing her powers quite so severely in any future literary under- taking.
In considering a story whose web is woven out of so many threads, it would take too long to specify them all; and we shall merely observe that one of the main strands is devoted to the destiny of an amiable, beautiful, young, and unmarried lady- squire who is her own mistress, in possession of £10,000 a year, and separated from the man of her heart by a secret known to no one but herself ; that the tale deals not only with the fortunes of her, her family, friends, and neighbours, but also with those of their friends too; that amongst these numerous dramatis persona, the families of clergymen and doctors play a leading part ; and that the manner of life depicted is that of quiet, English country gentle-folk. Sufficient prominence is given to religion to justify the novel's being defined as a religious one ; but it differs from the majority of works of that kind inasmuch as it is entirely on- doctrinal; and though the internal evidence affords strong presumption of the author's being a member of the English Church, there is nothing to indicate any preference for either of its three great divisions,—High, Low, or Broad. The book is, we imagine, chiefly intended for young girls, by whom it appears more likely to be appreciated than by any other class of reader. For as far as grown-up men and women are concerned, the food provided is somewhat mild to please their palates ; besides, they may perchance become im- patient of the surprising lack of human frailty amongst the exemplary characters, some of whom are really very little better than lovely dummies whereon to exhibit the charms of domestic affection, virtue, and goodness. And as for a juvenile male
• In a Wonted of Passion. By " ChristeL" London: F. V. White and Co.
reading the story ! well—its whole conception of existence (in- cluding the masculine element), is so much inclined to be senti- mental and essentially feminine, that the possibility of a boy's caring for it is an idea to which our wildest flight of imagination is incapable of attaining. But, of course, these considerations will not necessarily militate against its popularity amongst readers whose sex is female, who are, as a rule (which is, however, by no means an invariable one), endowed with a natural pre- disposition towards sentimentality, and whose youthful inex- perience of life, and enthusiastic belief in ideals, are apt to make them less incredulous than older people as to the possibility of paragons. Whether or not the work will be acceptable to this class is a point upon which a critic who belongs to the general public obviously cannot pronounce a very confident opinion. But as most of the people represented are kindly and pleasant, and as " Christel " has imagination, does not moralise over- much, and supplies enough story and incident to keep up the attention, it does not seem unlikely that she may succeed in pleasing the audience for whom we believe her to be writing. One point to which we take serious exception is her treating a marriage between first cousins as if it were a perfectly matter- of-course and harmless proceeding ; the evils which may be entailed upon offspring by these marriages render them so undesirable—even if not actually wrong—that we object to any book likely to be read by impressionable young people in which such marriages are encouraged. In other respects, however, a girl's interest in this story will not hurt her. For though there may be an occasional touch of undue assumption of knowledge regarding things divine—as, for instance, when it is said that two dead children are" probably roaming hand-in-hand about the gardens of Paradise "—yet the book is, on the whole, free from the taint of objectionable irreverence and unwholesome morbid- ness which too often infects religions fiction. And the complete and healthy acquiescence in God's will which is inculcated throughout is a moral that everybody might take to heart with advantage. By-the-bye, the statement that In a Moment of Passion can be put into a girl's hands safely ought to be qualified by the remark that it would at the same time be prudent to caution her against taking it as a model of good English, or literary style ; for in these matters, though not offending worse than many other novels do, it is not immaculate. For one thing, an abrupt change is frequently made from the past to the present tense in the midst of a descriptive passage, where there is no discoverable reason for such a change ; and as such a change always produces an interruption in the flow of a reader's ideas, a writer should carefully eschew it, except in those cases in which it assists him by a definite gain of increased clearness, vigour, or facility in conveying the thought that is in his own mind. Then, too, "beaming over with merriment" does not seem to us as good as the usual expression, "brimming ;" and though it may not be absolutely incorrect to talk of shutting the eyes " from " a fact, yet the preposition "to " is employed more generally, and—perhaps for that reason—is more satisfactory to the ear. The word "quietened," which occurs, is not derived from any verb that is to be found in the ordinary dictionaries. And, finally, when scraps of foreign language are introduced, it is well to attend so far to genders as not to let a woman be called mio caro, or addressed as ma cheri.
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