FICTION.
PATRICIA.*
WHEN a reviewer is able to say, as he can conscientiously say of Mrs. Hamilton's new story, that it is witty, vivacious, entertaining, and perfectly harmless, there does not seem to be much room for farther comment, beyond recommending novel readers to put it on their list. At the same time, no reviewer with a grain of the critical faculty can let so per- plexing and curious a product pass from his hands without noting some of the strange inconsistencies and unrealities by which it is disfigured. For, to put it plainly, we have seldom met a book so resolutely on the side of the angels as regards orthodox religion and sound domestio morals which contrived to represent the rank-and-file of the angelic host in a less attractive light The difficulty of investing virtue with the quality of picturesqueness, of reconciling saintship with a sense of humour, has existed from the beginning of novel-writing, and has driven many of the greatest romancers to assigning the beaus riles to villains and adventuresses. It is an open question whether Becky Sharp will not outlive Colonel Newcome, and Peeksniff Tom Pinch. Mrs. Hamilton has got out of the difficulty in a way which can only be described as making the best of both worlds. Her heroine, who has spent her youth in brilliant literary and Bohemian surroundings, while preserving an aristocratic elegance of manner and indulging an exquisite taste in dress, harbours unconventional and unorthodox views, which she never fails to ventilate to the discomfiture of her dowdy, ill-dressed cousins. On her father's death, having 2300 a year of her own, she makes her home with her uncle, a homely, prosy, matter-of-fact country parson. The aunt and her two daughters run the pariah with great energy: of the meaning of charm and daintiness and the amenities of home life they have not the slightest conception, and Mrs. Hamilton gives us a remorseless picture of the dingy and squalid homeliness of the vicarage. Why Patricia, who, as she would have put it, was always "'bored stiff" by her relations, should have of her own free will committed such an act of social suicide as to exchange the fleshpots of Bohemia for the dull routine of rural life, is a thing that no reviewer can understand. But the change serves Mrs. Hamilton's purpose admirably, which is to bring out as clearly as possible the wit and audacity and eloquence of the irresistible Patricia against
• background of angular piety and stodgy conventionality. She shocks her uncle and cousins by her disconcerting frankness and unabashed criticisms, but their dismay is
• Patricia. By Edith Henrietta Powlex Man. km. Hobert Hamilton), London G. P. Putnam's seas. Le&I tempered by admiration of her frocks, and the easy terms on which she associates with Godolphin, alias ...Golly," the sou and heir of Lord Muirfield—a cheerful but unite. tellectual youth who had been one of her London dancing partners. Their attempts to enlist her services as a district visitor are not altogether successful, but in all other respects Patricia marches from success to success. " Golly's " all too patent attentions arouse the misgivings of his mother, but in a succession of verbal duels Patricia invariably worsts the excellent but patronizing Peeress, even to the extent of impairing her usually perfect complacency. Patricia, however, was not in the least in love with the ingenuous Godolphin, though she was flattered by his admiration. She recognized that intellectually he moved on a far lower plane, and could never aspire to be her equal. Her true affinity appears in the person of another Peer, Lord Wellingborough, a man of force, character, ample possessions—and a clergyman. He falls in love with Patricia at first sight and she with him, but the inevitable union is delayed by a transient estrange- ment, brought about by Lord Wellingborough's outspoken comments on her views of life. But in the end Patricia triumphs all along the line. She marries her Peer-parson, and finds religion while retaining her flippancy. Personally the present reviewer owns to a considerable sympathy with Maggio Vaughan, the elder and the more uncompromising of the cousins, in her unuttered comment on Patricia's engage- meat :— ••• It's hard,' said Maggie to herself. 'very bard ! Agnes and I never get a lover at all—even a nobody; and here's Patricia behaving as badly as she knows how, and getting one good thing on the top of another! It's not as if she deserved them oven. But no girl deserves two lords.'" Patricia is highly amusing, but there is a good deal of the minx in her composition, and the plain person resents her getting all the cakes and ale, including, by the way, .25,000 in royalties for her Life of her father I By way of a crowning felicity, we may note that when she is expecting her first child her husband reassures her with the welcome information that she need feel no misgivings as to its sex, since the succes- sion to the title is secured in the female line. In fine, if a motto were needed for this book, we can think of nothing 'setter than the following perversion of Charles Kingsley's line "Be good, sweet maid, but, better still, be clever."
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