FIVE NOVELS.*
THE prominent position assigned to the heroes and heroines of fiction is due in some instances to mere circumstances, and in others to inherent qualities ; and an instance of the latter kind is afforded by Nell Haffenden, whose strong, cheery heroine, who loves work for its own sake, and is capableof taking up a purpose and sticking to it, and is unable to exist without a worthy ideal, may be said to belong to those whom Kingsley calls " souls of fire " in contradistinction to " souls of clay." Destitute of home and relations, unselfish, fearless, bright, and essentially the reverse of morbid, on the strength of having £70 and a talent for sculpture she goes forth into the world undauntedly, and makes friends everywhere with a facility that does not seem in the least surprising to the reader, because he thinks her quite as charming as all her acquaintances in the book do. Though the ambition which is her first stimulant to action appears merged for awhile in love, when, having met and lost her heart to the right man, she speaks disparagingly of ambition as "the poor, thin sustenance of loveless lives," she perseveres with her work nevertheless, and subsequently finds therein her best comfort when troubles arise that threaten to sever her from her lover ; and the story inculcates (whether intentionally or not we do not know) the wholesome doctrine that effort— the striving to attain an object—is in itself good, and that plenty to do is a panacea for most human ills. Attractive as Nell is, she is by no means the book's only attraction, for Mrs Tighe Hopkins has the gift of being able to laugh at people's oddities and also do justice to their virtues, and so to describe them as to make her readers do the same—as, e.g., in the portraits of Mr. and Miss Gripp, and the inmates of the Anglo-American boarding-house—and her happy knack of reproducing picturesque eccentricities of character gives her work a similarity to the note-book of an artist who has been sketching whatever queer nooks and corners be has come across in out-of-the-way places. The story professes on the title-page to be " strictly conventional," but we venture to question the applicability of this expression to pages that exhibit so many unusual specimens of humanity; as a rule they are well drawn, but that praise does not include Martin, the farmer-lover, whose portrait can hardly be regarded as a success.
It is so much a matter of course for a novel by Mr. Clark Russell to be nautical to the very core and evince complete mastery of seafaring technicalities, that if it failed to do so we should have serious doubts as to the authenticity of the author's name on the title-page ; but there is no room for the shadow of such doubt in respect of the thrilling, well-told story entitled The Tale of the Ten, which holds the reader's attention satisfactorily from beginning to end. The action takes place entirely at sea, now on board the barque Queen and now on the brig Wellesley ' ; and the subject is the daring scheme of ten men who, in order to get hold of two tons of gold being sent from Sydney to England, embark as passengers in the ship that conveys it, determined to take possession, first of the vessel, and then of the precious freight. Though a spirit of prudence (or humanity P) prompts them to set out with good intentions of avoiding bloodshed, yet these amiable intentions are frustrated before long by circumstances; and at this we are not greatly surprised considering the nature both of the pirates' programme and also of themselves, for, notwithstanding the good birth claimed for some of them, they are, on the whole, as ruffianly a set of scoundrels as one would wish (or not wish) to meet with. Descriptions of ships and the sea and all that appertains thereunto are certainly Mr. Russell's forte ; if he were equally successful in delineating human beings he would be a pearl amongst novelists.
It is no easy matter to say how far the wild, untutored firsherwaid who gives her name to /a did, or did not, regard as a binding marriage the vows pronounced by her and Paul, as they stood barefoot in a stream of water, in the presence of an old woman. But if she did so regard it, she must surely have seen also that it was binding on both parties alike, and that consequently she had no right afterwards to act as if it were not, merely because the social disparity of position between them, whereof she was from the first aware,
• (1.) Noll Haffenden. By Tighe Hopkins. London : Ward and Downey.— (2.) The Tale of the Ten. By W. ClArk Russell. London : Ghetto and Windas. —(3.) la. By " Q." London Cassell and Co. — (4 ) My Laughing Phaesopkes. By Eden Phillpotts. London : A. D. lanes and Ce.—(5 ) Tv e■ What. By G. 14,rway. London Hurst and Blackett. was brought forcibly home to her by an accidentally overheard conversation. Besides, consideration for her child (if no other reason had existed) ought to have prevented her from refusing to accede to her phlegmatic lover's request when he desired to legalise the informal union that had taken place six years previously. And altogether we think that Ia's admirable self-devotion, courage, and power of loving will hardly save her from being relegated (as antici- pated by the author in the preface) " to the outer court and penumbra of moat readers' affections." What- ever her view of the Noon Water ceremony may have been, Paul, at any rate, knew that it was a farce, and sinned with his eyes open ; and whilst making every allowance for the extremely difficult position of a young preacher finding himself the object of the stormy love of a girl who thinks nothing of kidnapping him in a boat to extort his promise to wed her, it is yet impossible to approve of his manner of behaviour, or to avoid qualms lest he were that worst of shams, a minister of religion who does not really believe in his own doctrine. In the course of the story the possible importance of a shoal of fish to a fishing village is made apparent so vividly that, notwithstanding our sincere sympathy with the famine and pestilence-stricken inhabitants of Ardevora, we are yet inclined to wonder whether these Second Advent saints did not take more interest in the coming of the pilchards for which they longed so earnestly than in any other kind of advent.
We commend to the notice of any one wanting a good laugh, My Laughing Philosopher, whose varied character- sketches amply prove Mr. Eden Phillpotts to be endowed with those two excellent gifts of humour and imagination which are as necessary for caricaturing human nature in its mental and moral as in its physical aspects. If space allowed, we would give specimens of the author's style by quoting the allegory of the spiders, snails, and daddy-longlegs ; Pugsley's adventures in Fiji ; Peters' conversion to domestic joys ; Mawdle's museum of curiosities ; Montgomery, Poglad, &c. But as it is, we must content ourselves with extracting the subjoined description of the moral man-trap invented by the man who wishes to stop burglaries, and who has a modest con- viction that "as sure as I get seriously thinking about any- thing, so surely does an invention of some kind result from it " .- "First, there's an indiarubber appliance in the style of a rat- trap—quite painless and merciful, but so designed that the devil himself couldn't get out of it if once caught. This is arranged to secure an adult just below the knee-joint, and in connection with it I have a cistern of cold water, which, when the trap goes off, begins running like a shower-bath just over the burglar's head—of course, out of reach. With your gift of imagination you will easily conceive the effect of this on even the hardest and most depraved nature. But that is not all. When the concern goes off, a little mechanical contrivance liberates a hammer, which strikes a knob which lights an electric lamp of about two hundred candle-power. The rays from this fall upon a card which is arranged exartly in front of the victim's eyes ; and on the card I have printed a couple of texts from Scripture. It was rather difficult to choose just the right quotations but I think I have managed to do so. You will find that the Psalms simply teem with apposite reflections for housebreakers caught in the act and some of the Minor Prophets appear to make direct allusions to them also."
It is sad to have to add that the only victim of this ingenious contrivance is the inventor's wife, who is not soothed by the texts, and spends the next day in consulting a solicitor on the subject of procuring an immediate separation from her too-inventive husband.
Praiseworthy mediocrity is the class to assign to Tregarthen., which is a chatty, discursive sort of tale, lacking in concise- ness, and capable of improvement by being cut down to half its present length, but wholesome and mildly pleasant. Lady Sarah, the great lady of a country neighbourhood, who "kept everybody at a distance and then fretted secretly from a sense that nobody loved her," being ambitions for her only son to make a grand match, will not hear of his marry- ing a charming girl whose want of money is her only defect. But however positively her ladyship may re- fuse consent, we are perfectly tranquil as to the issue, for the book is not adapted to cause a moment's anxiety as to the ultimate dissipation of any clouds that may be permitted to become visible on the horizon; and we are always as certain of her being finally conquered by Mabel's virtues as we are that the claims threatening to deprive Sir Theophilue of his title and estates will come to nothing as soon as Lady Sarah's pride has been a little chastened by the alarm created by the claim. Washiness is no insuperable bar to readableness in the eyes of some people who do not regard power and originality as a sine gud non in fiction, or object to making acquaintance with characters of a hackneyed type, provided they are tolerably agreeable; and therefore Tre- garthen may quite possibly give satisfaction in some quarters, though we cannot say that the present writer derived much entertainment from it.
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