THE PARISH OF HILBY.* Tins is not a pretentious book,
and after reading on its title- page that it is merely " a simple story of a quiet place," no one will expect to find therein startling incidents, passion torn to rags, scenes of great power, or anything of the sensational kind. But though it does not make great promises, at all events it performs as much as it had undertaken, after a thorough and enjoyable fashion which is not always to be met with in more ambitious works. It deals exclusively with a small country neighbourhood and its inhabitants, indulges in no squires or smart folks, and introduces no nearer approach to the aristocracy than a parson and his family, who are believed to be descended from a baronet about two generations off. The hero, Massey, is an honest, good sort of young tenant-farmer, rather more gentle- manly than the generality of his class, and with such a strongly developed predilection for the society of girls, that the reader is amazed to find that he has actually managed to attain the age of thirty without getting married. Having gone to esta- blish himself in a farm which he has taken, in a hitherto unknown locality, he proceeds immediately to "get foolish about" (as Mr. Howells' Shakers term falling in love) the only two unmarried girls in the place simultaneously. One of these girls is the parson's sister, a shade above him socially, and thoroughly worthy of being loved ; while the other is a shade his inferior in position, daughter to a tenant-farmer, and an affected, silly, vulgar little thing. The former he speedily longs With his whole soul to marry, the latter he never desires to do more than flirt with ; and his behaviour in regard to these two women is the part of the story with which we are most inclined to find fault. A man who is filled by a really great and passionate love for a woman who fully deserves to be so loved, is very unlikely- to find pleasure in continuing at the same time to carry on a vigorous flirtation with a shallow-minded, pushing, ill-mannered, rustic coquette ; and yet this is what the author represents her hero as doing. He ought to have felt—and we believe that such a man as Massey would have felt—that to kiss, caress, and trifle with the ill-bred village flirt was an insult to the lady whom he really cared for; and to a man of his stamp, it would have been a sheer impossibility to insult the object of his love. Therefore the fault in him rings harsh and untrue, like an unresolved discord in music, and is more offensive than it would otherwise have been, because it is out of keeping with the rest of his character. It is a pity, for he is brave, manly, generous, amiable, and in other ways a lovable young man enough ; but the liking which he inspires is considerably lessened by his behaviour in his love-affairs, and when he gets into a mess over them, one feels that he richly deserved his troubles. For a further account of how he comported himself, and what fortune attended him, we refer our readers to the book itself, with the confident expectation of thereby earning the gratitude of all who do not despise a good and carefully-drawn picture of tranquil country life, drawn by a person who is evidently at home in her subject, and knows what sort of people tenant-farmers and labourers are, and how they are likely to speak, think, and act.
All the characters are life-like, but perhaps the chef ceuvre of them is Pollie, the forward, pretty, vain, worldly, flirtatious, farmer's daughter, who has a great ambition to be fine, and who is "conscious that it was in her to live up to dress-clothes every evening of her life ;" in which
• The Pariah of RUby. By Mrs. F. J. Mann. London: Elliot Stook.
opinion, however, the reader differs from her wholly, per- ceiving that Nature had rendered her eminently well adapted to the societyof the class to which she belonged by birth, and that she must inevitably have been thoroughly miserable and out of her element in the atmosphere of any more refined state of life. Having two lovers, she appears also to have two selves, which are continually at war together as to which of the suitors is to be the favoured one. Her own genuine self cordially approves of, appreciates, and prefers the sweetheart who is least genteel and most funny, and whose jokes and style of courtship are alike atrociously vulgar, and exactly suited to her taste and under- standing. But then there is in her another self as well, which finds an irresistible charm in the superior appearance and manners of the more gentlemanly lover, and to him she seems unable to help giving what small portion of heart (if any) she possesses, even though almost against her own will. The con- test between these two selves, as now the former predominates, and now the latter, is well delineated ; and there is nothing forced or untrue to nature in Pollie's conduct, nothing analogous to what we have complained of in Massey's. Mrs. Mann has the excellent gift of being able to put herself into the place of the individuals she writes about, looking at things from the point of view they would be likely to take, and sympathising with their sentiments; and this gift imparts real human nature to her work, and enables her to render faithfully delicate gradations of disposition and feeling which are not very easy to put into words, though it is by no means unusual for people to have a vague impression of their existence. From beginning to end of the book there is not an atom of slovenly work to be found ; and though its pages are not marked by any special power or originality, we have, never- theless, found it to be very pleasant reading.
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