NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
Miss T,rr:r TAR HAbilyroN, as Court physician to the Ameer of Afghanistan, enjoyed unique opportunities, and has turned them to excellent and perfectly legitimate account in her interesting story. A Vizier's Daughter gives anything but a rose-coloured view of Afghanistan or the Afghans, nor is there any indication of a desire to apotheosise the Ameer, who figures prominently amongst the dramatis personz. Miss Hamilton's view of the "Iron Ameer" is that he is not only abler and more sagacious than his advisers, but that he is more magnanimous. In a word, considering his antecedents, his surroundings, and the welter of intrigue in which he moves, he is far less ruthless and cruel than might be expected. The Ameer, however, is far from being the hero of the story. The nearest approach to that post is made by the Vizier of the un- happy Hazaras, the rude mountaineers who, for all their un- couthness, bear—in the author's view—the same relation to the people of Cabal as Scottish farmers to London loafers. Ghulam Hossain is a patriot, a good husband, and a kind father ; in short, a very decent fellow. But the really heroic role is that sustained by his daughter, Gul Begum, a young Amazon of the hills, whose brief yet tragic career is traced in these pages. Gul Begum, the cleverest and the most well-favoured of the Hazara maidens, having been demanded in marriage by Ferad Shah, the brutal commander of the troops sent by the Ameer to punish the Hazaras, is smuggled off to the house of Mahomed Jan, a neighbouring villager, s (1.) d Vizier's Daughter: a Tale of the Hazara War. By Lillias Hamilton, M.D. London : John Murray. [is.]—(2.) d Daughter of the Melds. By Katharine Tynan. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [6a]—(3.) Love of Comrades. By Frank Mathew. London : John.Lane. [3s. 6cl.]—(4) Modern Broods. By Charlotte H. Yonge. London : Maemlllap and Co. [6s.]—(15.) On the Wing of Occasions. By Joel Chandler Harris. London : John Murray. [6s.1—(6.) God's Lad. By Paul Cushing. London : C. A. Pearson. [Ss.]
where she is passed off as his wife. After enduring many insults and harsh treatment from her protector, she returns home, to be taken prisoner and borne off to Cahill, where she is sold as a slave, and ultimately engaged in the household of the Ameer's Chief Secretary. On the death of the latter's wife, Gul Begum makes herself indispensable as nurse, amanuensis, cook,—in short, as factotum; and when the Secretary, fearing his inability to extricate himself from the web of calumny woven round him by his enemies, decides to fly to India, Gul Begum plans and carries out his escape, accompanying him in the disguise of a boy, guiding him through the country she knows so well, and finally laying down her life for the man who never appre- ciated her until it was too late. The great artistic defect of this interesting and faithful study of Afghan life is its lack of light and shade, but Miss Hamilton forestalls this objection in her preface by the remark that there is no such thing as joy, peace, comfort, or rest in the dominions of the Ameer.
Miss Tynan has added in A Daughter of the Fields another portrait to her gallery of Irish graces. Meg O'Donoghue, though of " ould ancient stock," delicately nurtured, and educated at an aristocratic convent school in France, finds herself confronted on her return to Ireland with an awkward dilemma. The married life of her parents has been clouded by her father's weakness for drink, and on his premature death her mother, an indomitable little maitresse femme, had abandoned all social amenities and concentrated her energies on working the farm. Meg returns to find her mother hardened and bronzed by drudgery and toil, but only anxious that her daughter should live a life of indolent ease. The gentry are only too anxious to claim Meg as one of them- selves, but Meg, being a young person of spirit, and realising the false position in which she would be placed by deserting her mother, resolves to cast in her lot with the squireens, farmers, horse-dealers, and other associates of her mother. The resolve is rendered all the easier by her mother's illness. Meg assumes the reins, in a very short time masters the details of crops and stock, and bids fair to become a most accom- plished farmeress. She likes the life, and would have been happy but for the attentions of the squireens and the jealousies of their sisters. Matters are complicated by her relations with her landlord, Captain Fitzmaurice, who saves her from drowning, and by the arrival on the scene of a vivacious and mischievous French girl, a schoolmate at the convent. Fitz- maurice, who is engaged to his cousin, falls in love with Meg. and Meg inspires an unrequited passion in the breast of an " underbred fine-spoken" aquireen. Happily for the gentle reader Miss Tynan is the most devoted friend of all true lovers, and the various couples pair off without exception in accordance with the demands of sentiment and poetic justice. Devotees of the dolorous will view Miss Tynan's whole-souled concession to the heresy of the happy ending with something like con- sternation. For ourselves, we confess to having followed the progress of her matrimonial manoeuvres with much pleasure.
Love of Comrades is a very pleasing specimen of Mr. Frank Mathew's powers as a cultivator of the field of historical romance. The scene is laid in Ireland in the year 1640, and the story is concerned with the transmission of a secret despatch to Strafford. The first bearer, an Eton lad, having been slain at the gates of his father's house, his sister, Margery Talbot, a young Amazon skilled in the use of the rapier, dons male attire and sets forth on horseback to fulfil his mission. The assassins, mistaking her for their victim, pursue her with un- relenting hostility, but Margery, after a condensed Odyssey of peril during which she slays one of the assassins, is thrown over a precipice, and actually hanged by the neck till she is half-dead, wins her way through to Dublin, delivers her message, and ultimately marries one of the emissaries of the opposing faction. The wild improbabilities of the narrative, however, are redeemed by that fresh and unstudied charm of manner familiar to the readers of Mr. Mathew's earlier stories.
Miss Yonge's new story, Modern Broods,reaolves itself into a critical yet not unsympathetic estimate of the young person of to-day. A gentle middle-aged spinster comes into a small for. time,which she devotes to making a home for her young half- sisters. They are not exactly ill-conditioned young people, but it cannot be said that they treat their benefactress with an excess either of courtesy or of gratitude. The effect of the story qua story is marred by the immense number of
minor characters who come and go without aiding its pro- gress, and the style of the narrative and dialogue is hardly as finished as one might expect from so practised a writer as Miss Yonge. Some passages have caused the present reviewer a good deal of perplexity, as, for example, that which describes a little girl who displayed "enough white teeth to make Magdalen forebode that they would need much attention if they were not to be a desight [sic] like Agatha's."
On the Wing of Occasions introduces our good friend the creator of "Uncle Remus" in a somewhat unfamiliar aspect so far as his English admirers are concerned, the five stories of which this volume is made up being all concerned with the romance of the great war of North and South. Let us, there- fore, hasten to add that the quality of these tales is super- latively good. The opening episode, which describes the escape of Colonel Fontaine Flournoy, a Southern spy, from New York, thanks to the marvellous resource of an Anglo- Irishman named McCarthy, is a brilliant essay in the art of sustained suspense. Hardly less effective in the sentimental vein is the narrative entitled "The Troubles of Martin Coy," with its dramatic and wholly unexpected conclusion. We have only to add that Mr. Harris, while assigning the beaux miles throughout to the Southerners, displays a freedom from acrimony worthy of the great President, of whom he never speaks save in terms of generous respect. Nowhere in fiction have we encountered a more admirable portrait of the "patient, kindly man, with the bright smile and sad eyes, with Melancholy at one elbow and Mirth at the other," than in the delightful piece of comedy called "The Kidnapping of President Lincoln," in which two Georgians, who have under- taken the task of carrying off the President, and have actually got him in their power, abandon the scheme out of sheer admiration for Lincoln's greatness and magnanimity. We cordially recommend our readers to lose no time in making the acquaintance of Mr. Sanders, the Georgian humourist, a teller of anecdotes after Lincoln's own heart, John Omahundro, the Texan scout, the gallant Colonel Flournoy, and, above all, the incomparable McCarthy. On the strength of this volume alone, Mr. Harris deserves to be ranked among the tribe of literary benefactors,—the authors, that is, who cheer and refresh their readers and inspire them with feelings of gratitude and even affection.
God's Lad is another story in which the travestissement of the heroine plays an important part. Miss Muriel Balfe, an English girl—musical by right of her name—not content with achieving immense popularity under her professional pseu- donym of "the Falbe," also achieves distinction in male attire under the second alias of Dick Balle, "the dandiest, pluckiest, most thorough-bred little lad "in the California of '49. Readers who cling to verisimilitude will find it rather hard to accept some of the situations, but those who merely seek entertain- ment will find good store of it in this fantastic yet genial melodrama.
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