MISS JEWSBURY'S HALF SISTERS.

As far as outward forms are concerned, Miss Jewsbury's Half Sisters would seem to differ widely from her former novel, Zile. The ele- ments, however, are essentially the same. The principal characters in the Half Sisters, as in its predecessor, are peculiar in their own nature, and operated upon by peculiar circumstances. The fiction is also of the metaphysical kind : the story is not in itself striking, and is slow in movement; the incidents, with a few exceptions, are subordinate to the exhibition of passion, feeling, or mere mental operations in singular cha- racters rather singularly placed. The interest we take in it is not that of action, but of dissection or " demonstration." There is, indeed, more of common life in the novel before us than in Zoe; shown in some very clever sketches of life and character in manufacturing districts, in some scenes with Mr. Simpson and his company of equestrians, and at the provincial theatre that rejoiced under the management of Mr. Monta- gue St. Leger. But these are mostly incidental, and are not intended to excite the deeper interest of the fiction; which rests, as we have said, upon psychological exhibition of character and passion, or at least emotion. The Half-Sisters contains a narrative of two lives, designed, so far as we can trace design, to exhibit the blessings of a resolute will and an active purpose although accompanied by external disadvantages, over a timorous and feeble spirit surrounded by the blessings of fortune but in- capable of using or enjoying them through weakness of character. Under the circumstances assumed by Miss Jewsbury, her conclusions are suffi- ciently coherent ; but the circumstances are so forced and extreme, the characters so rare, and the influences that govern them so exceedingly unlikely, that nothing is enforced by the novel itself, though the lesson is incidentally impressed by the writer.

Bianca, the half sister who is drawn to display the benefits of resolution and action, is born in Italy, of an Italian mother. Her father was an Eng- lish man ; who, being already so inclined, allowed himadf to be.perauaded to break off his connexion with Bianca's mother, without knowing of the prospect of Bianca's birth. The mental powers of the deserted Italian give way ; she cherishes the idea that she will go to England to seek out her lover ; and on the death of her brother she departs with that object, when Bianca is about sixteen. The novel opens with the illness and fa- tuity of the mother, at a country town. Bianca, who is ignorant of the object of the journey, and has nothing but an address to guide her, finds that Mr. Helmsby is dead. Thrown upon the casual kindness of strangers, she is engaged by Mr. Simpson, the manager of an equestrian company ; a kindly but pompons and rather screwing person. After a while, Bianca quits him for the legitimate drama, under the auspices of Mr. Montague St. Leger ; who is the reverse of Mr. Simpson, being a selfish and unprincipled libertine. From his rather coarse arts she escapes by for- tunate circumstances, and her love for Conrad Percy who had assisted her at starting. Conrad loves her in return ; but the match is stopped by the power and arts of old Mr. Percy and the high spirit of Bianca. An engagement, however, takes place; the actress hoping that at the end of the stipulated three years she shall have attained an eminence in her pro- fession that will lessen the disparity of their positions. The eminence is attained ; but Conrad's three years' travelling, conjoined with a weak and worthless nature, have made him repent of his entanglement, though his vanity is flattered by his familiarity with the great actress. After a course of capricious and tyrannical behaviour, which is substantially a repetition of Mirabeau's towards Zile, Bianca releases him from the en- gagement. In the upshot, after a long series of delays and cross pur- poses, the actress marries a lord, whom she had rejected before her repu- diation of Mr. Conrad Percy. The character of the other half sister, Alice, is more common than that of the genius Bianca; so are the circumstances in which she is placed : but her weakness and timidity are exaggerated and pushed in this ease, or perhaps in any case, to an unnatural close. Her taste and refinement of feeling without the power of giving it shape or the courage to carry out her opinions, render her shy and unpopular in her mother's vulgar or money-making provincial society. She, however, falls in with an accomplished, quiet, middle-aged Mr. Bryant, an extensive iron-mas- ter, who has travelled; and finding him very superior to all around her, marries him. The timidity and weakness of Alice continue after mar- riage ; and her husband, absorbed in business, does not pay her so much attention as she requires. Mr. Conrad Percy, after he has broken with Bianca, renews an acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bryant; gains, under circumstances of the blackest treachery and ingratitude, the affections of Alice, who believes herself indifferent to her husband, and she consent, to elope. But her mind gives way in the conflict; attack of disease comes to save her honour at the expense of her life, and a half-finished letter reveals to Bryant the state of the case. The scenes connected with this affair are the most Powerful exhibitions of passion or emotion in the book : for Bianca's love-pangs, though as strongly written, have not so real a basis to rest upon. The following is the interview between Bryant and Conrad. " Bryant sat in his room of business the day after Alice had expired; his head rested upon his arms; a pile of business-letters, with their seals all unbroken, lay beside him. He was plunged in a deep waking stupor of grief. He had been so overwrought with agony, that the last point of sensation had been passel Wretches have been known to fall asleep on the rack in the interval of their tor- tures. A number of thoughts, all more or less irrelevant to the one great thing that possessed him, crawled forth, like rats from their hiding-place, and careered over his desolate mind, exciting no effort on bis part to chase them away. From the window he could perceive a half-finished building. His dull eyes followed the men as they went up and down the ladder, carrying their hods of mortar and bricks: the round of one of the ladders broke near the top as the man was step- ping upon it, and he and his load of bricks fell to the ground. It did not move him: he looked on as though he were reading it in a book. His eyes caught a spot on the carpet where it was mach worn, and he mechanically began to follow the lines and patches, and to count the spots which formed the pattern. The pbrensy of grief had subsided, and left him in a lazy stupor of reverie.

" A knock came to the door; which he heard well enough, but did not answer. It was repeated; and the butler entered, to tell his master that he was wanted in the drawingreom. Bryant gave a dull vague stare; and, like one ander mesmeric influence, rose, and followed the servant, who held open the drawingroom door and closed it after him.

" Bryant advanced listlessly. Conrad stood at the window-place with his eyes fixed on the door. For an instant his features seemed galvanized by a spasm, as the man whom he had so much injured came in; but they became immediately still and rigid: all the traces of mental anguish and fiery passion seemed to have been arrested in their working, and left stamped there with the grim emphasis of death.

" Bryant did not raise his eyes, nor perceive him, until he had reached the middle of the room. The men stood face to face, each bearing traces of strong agony, but utterly stilled now, and unable to manifest either life or passion. "Conrad spoke first: his voice came sharp and grating, as if it came from a piece of mechanism.

" Mr. Bryant,' said he, I might have blown out my brains for myself, but that it had become your right to do so. I know that you must be aware of what happened in your absence, and I have no wish to elude your vengeance. Now make an end speedily. I am at your service to meet you when you please.'

" Bryant's eyes gleamed fiercely at Conrad, and he looked like a wild beast in sight of his prey.

'I have only one word to say,' continued Conrad; it may make you think less hardly of her. On me alone your curse should fall. She was pure in heart, and never guessed my passion till I revealed it. She drove me away from her; she might have escaped if I would have let her. I hunted her down; she had no chance. Ask yourself; did you. protect her? When she was straggling, did you stretch out your hand to save her from the toils? She was left to her own strength. Had you taken her away when she entreated you, she had been saved: but your business, your money, your time, your cursed convenience, made you re- fuse her harshly,—blind fool that you were ! She was struggling to be faithful to you—to save your honour; and pa saw it not. She,wits dying with the straggle, and you left her to her fate; to save a miserable contract,' yoaleft her. You left her in my power. The blood of her soul is on your hands as, well as on mine. Oh, when you refused either to remain with her or to take her away, to whom else could she go, but to me who loved her ?' " His voice had gradually risen into an hysterical shrillness; the words he ut- tered came with pain, and gashed his soul as though they had been knives. Bry- ant at first seemed to listen as though he heard not; but the iteration of the words You left her, you left ber„'_ceemed to tootle him to madness: he crushed his hands together till the blood started beneath the pressure of the nails; and then, as if a pent-up torrent had broken loose, bearing down all before it, 'Man, man; he cried, in a voice hardly human in its agony, what gave you the right to torture me! can you say. aught I have not said to myself? Do I not know that she was pure? do not I know her worth? Are yon, a stranger of yesterday, to come and teach me her worth? do I not know all, all—what can you know? You who would have degraded her—who only knew her in her fall! Was not her whole life mine? And you talk of her!—you, you, you—oh God! that such a thing should be able to mention her name—you school me to think less hardly of her!'

"After a moment's pause, he seemed to constrain himself by a violent effort, and continued in a calm, bitter tone.

" Listen to me, sir, and take this to heart all the days of your miserable life, and know what it is that you have done. She thought I did not love her, because I had no words like you. She was the very life within my heart. She was the soul of my life. By nature I was cold and proud. I could not make a demon- stration of my feelings; but I loved her all the more, because it was her way to show much. -Yon are a gentleman. You taunt me with my attention to business. When a man spends his life in doing a thing, he generally gives his attention to it. You do not know what you talk about when you reproach me with my business. I must have given my mind to it, or have been rained and made her a beggar. Perhaps I was too much engrossed. Such things grow on one. I knew not that she was pining for more love, more sympathy, than I had power to show. I knew it not; I guessed it not, God knows. Yon came, sir: you were a man of fashion, a man of gallantry, a man of intrigue. This thing you hare attempted is nothing in the eyes of your own set; it would not live a week in one of your scandalous journals. The device by which you obtained a footing in the family, and blinded my eyes, will cover you with applause; and it will be a jest, a good after-dinner story, for a month; and this will be all the traces it leaves your horizon—it is a very little thing, an episode of three months; and, to furnish food for your ennui, von have consumed the life and soul of a woman on whom God had bestowed Ilia most precious things. You have degraded a man who only sought to do you good. You have uprooted me from the face of the earth. What I shall be in another world God alone knows: you have made me an outcast in this; and yon will make a jest of it. I am become the legitimate object of a jest; I am become—what you have made me.' "Hitherto he had controlled himself; but now a multitude of thoughts were roused: an intense hatred entered into him like a demon, and he felt powerless to give it utterance.

" yea,' he exclaimed, would not slack my hatred: But his words were lost in an inarticulate gurgling. " God knows,' said Conrad, 'I have no wish to escape your vengeance: I came

to offer you my. life; it is all the atonement I can make. Your lot is enviable compered to mine: to revoke the last six months I would willingly never have lived.'

" The ravages that misery had made on the young and handsome features of Conrad struck Bryant even at this desperate moment.

0 'I am not going. to fight you,' said he, more calmly: her name shall not be mined; your death in a duel would cause inquiries, comments in the newspapers. You must live, as I shall have to do. I believe that you are sorry, now that you Gave to pay the penalty of your sin : but go, or the devil within me will he roused van—I should kill you where you stand. Let me see you no longer—go.'

Are you a coward, then, that you refuse to fight me? What more can I do?'

0 'Go—let one never see you more.'

" 'I cannot live, I will not live!' cried Conrad, passionately.

"'She shall not be made the subject of slanderous gossip; she shall have peace in the grave where you have laid her. You talk of death! What have you done to earn such a blessing ? ' 'Bryant, you may safely fight me. What cowardice, what folly is this—we must fight!' "'Have not I to live also?' rejoined the other, sternly. He pointed silently to the door. Conrad quailed beneath the deep, scornful misery that looked from his era. He felt constrained to obey: but when he reached the door he stopped, and with a sudden impulse, turning round, he flung himself on the floor at Bryant's feet, exclaiming, in quick broken tones, Be merciful, and kill me; or if you will have me live, I will swear to do so: but as life is your sentence, for the love of Heaven be merciful; let me look on her once more. I will swear to go hence to redeem the future. I will live—live. You understand—I will be your galley- slave, and live my life out to the end. But think what it is you lay on me. I have no claim to what I ask; but as one prays to God in deepest need, I implore you to let me look on her once more. As God shall bear you—and surely you have sinned against Him—as you hope to be heard by Him, let me see her. I am kneeling to you ; let me see her. As you are a man, look on my misery; let me see her, and I will swear to live!'

His agony of entreaty could not utter itself in words: but that tone of intense supplication, addressed by one human being to another, was almost fearful. In the midst of his own wrongs and hatred, Bryant could not help feeling a sort of pity at the sight of the young man's desolation. Death had taken away all little- ness from his sorrow: he was moved; and, placing his hand on Conrad's shoulder, he said in a husky voice, Come with me.'

" They passed up the large staircase, and stood before the chamber of death. Bryant took out a key, unlocked the door, and they entered together. r, There, on the bed surrounded with heavy crimson draperies, lay the white cold form of Alice, utterly insensible to the misery of the two beings whom she had loved best in life. There was something frightful in the changeless calm of that which still bore the semblance of passionate humanity. Conrad uttered a sharp cry at the sight of her, and fell in strong convulsions over the footboard of the bed.

" In the midst of his own sorrow' Bryant felt a flash of triumph to think that in death she was all his own; and that Conrad, the intruder, the usurper, stood there an alien, without the power to take a last look except by his permission.

" It was beyend his strength to remove Conrad, but with the assistance of the butler he was taken to another chamber. He went not near him himself, but, with proud Arab-like hospitality, ordered medical assistance and every needful attention for him, and then locked himself in the room where the dead lay. There, sitting beside the bed, one hand clasping that of Alice, he watched all night, feel- ing that she was all his own once more." •

Notwithstanding the power displayed in this and some other scenes, the merits of The Half Sisters are technical, the defects popular : the book is more likely to receive critical perusal and praise than popular reading. The first great merits are force of composition, with clearness and strength of delineation. Whatever be the subject of the writer—whe- ther the images of a description, the traits of a person, the emotions of the mind, or the author's observations or speculations—all is distinctly con- ceived, and as distinctly presented. Miss Jewsbury also exhibits great skill in the analysis of character : there is perhaps leas ability in main- taining the consistency of her dramatis persona: than was shown in Zoe.

On the other band, the very closeness of the style gives a ponderosity if not a heaviness to the composition, which will _be retarding to mere novel-readers. As little will they care for the metaphysical or philosophi- cal remarks which are freely scattered through the pages or put into the months of some of the persons ; and Miss Jewsbury's strong point—her power of accounting for mental changes and other idiosyncraeies- is not attractive to the multitude ; nor, indeed, is it altogether appro- priate to fiction, which should by means of structure and inci- dent enable the 'characters to account for themselves. But the great fault of The Half Sisters, popular as well as critical, is moral. In particular things there is an improvement upon Zoe; but we have little of sympathy with the characters, and take not much concern in their fortunes. The English mind cannot turn an " equestrianess" and actress into the heroine of a love-romance. Alice's weakness and self- created misery are overdone, and are also unlikely. The character of a man is soon appreciated by those who live constantly with him : love is felt where it exists, and can be shown without speechifying. In the early part, Conrad is little more than a goodnatured but rather vain youth ; afterwards his selfishness and profligacy inspire no other interest in the reader than a desire to see Lim punished ; which is done by getting him under the influence of a sectarian preacher and making him tarn Methodist. The artistical character of Bianca, her struggles as a provincial actress, and her love for her art, have the most interest ; but it ceases with her -London success ; and the marriage with the lord spins out the work and flattens the conclusion.