BOOKS.

ALEC FORBES OF HOWGLEN.*

Tins is Mr. Macdonald's best book,—equal in many parts to the first volume of David Elginbrod, and sustained, which David Elginbrod was not, nearly at the same level from beginning to end. We do not mean that there are not weak touches in the three volumes, but the deficiencies are not in the character of the story or of the principal actors. It is—if we may venture to criticize what is no doubt very closely wrapped up with the creative and poetic power of the book—it is the Wordsworthian side of Mr. Macdonald that is apt to spin itself out beyond the legiti- mate limits, and to render us a little impatient with the nature- elements of the story, though among the most beautiful it con- tains. Wordsworth himself is fatiguing when he has expended that intensity of solitary passion which is at the heart of his finest poems and prolongs the expression of such a mood after it has de- parted from him, with that sort of conscientious drawl that gained him so many silly satirists who were unable to enter into the secret of his power. Mr. Macdonald is occasionally guilty of the same sort of sin of harping on the beauty of his impressions after his voice has refused to utter "the thoughts that arise in him." And occasionally, too, in consequence of the same pertinacity—Scotch pertinacity it might be called in Mr. Macdonald, and Cumbrian pertinacity (which is very much the same in kind) in Wordsworth— he twangs away at an exhausted string of moral sentiment, which produces on the reader anything but the feeling he intends. Thus descriptions, occasionally very beautiful, of the changes in the Scotch seasons, are sometimes prolonged beyond the true tether of the feeling, and in consequence deal in.cloying metaphor, such as '.Spring, the girl, had changed into Summer, the woman," a sentence which to our minds means less, and expresses less truly what it means, than the simpler language, "Spring had changed into Sum- mer." And again, there are passages (though but few) in which we should be almost inclined to accuse Mr. Macdonald of senti- mentalism, atleast in the manner, if not the substance, of his thought, —and we mean by sentimentalism a wish to dwell on the sweetness of certain forms of emotion as an epicure dwells on the delicacy of certain forms of food. For instance, the following sentence is open, we think, like a few other passages in the book, to such a charge :—" Nothing was wanting to the gladness and kindness of Mrs. Forbes but the indescribable aroma of motherhood, which she was not divine-woman enough to generate save towards the offspring of her own body." We know of course what Mr. Macdonald means, but the form in which he expresses it strikes us as wanting in self-restraint, and as bearing to moral feeling the same relation which voluptuousness bears to sensuous feeling. With the exception of these few and slight faults, which we have taken exception to at once in order to reserve to the last the broad impression of truth and beauty which is left upon us by the story, there is to our minds nothing to criticize. It is true that the story is not very rapid in its movement or exciting in its structure, but no one who once gets beyond the first chapter is likely to lay it down. It has not only the hold of real life upon the sympathies of the reader, but the hold of true beauty, and the hold of organic growth. It is impossible not to be strongly fascinated by the principal characters, and it is ha- possible not to see that they are really growing from year to year as the book goes on, and not merely spoken of as growing by the author. These are merits which few novels possess, aud they are only the greater that they interest one so much as quite to extinguish the wish for a more stirring tale. - Mr. Macdonald's artistic method is not that at which the cleverer novelists of the day aim. The fashionable school may be said to be the pre-Raphaelite school of novelists, by which we do not mean the realistic school, but the school which systematically prefers the minute detail of dose vision to less detailed and more distant, and yet, often for that very reason, more informing and characteristic effects. Among the pre-Raphaelite painters you always see a preference for blades of grass as big as you would see them with a powerful telescope from a distance of fifty yards, and the magnifying glass they bring to bear upon specks of dust often produces an equally exaggerated effect. Miss Yonge and very inferior artists who strain after pre- Raphaelitism in novels do the same thing. They show an ex- cessive delight in minute complete effects, which are often quite too minute and too complete to be true in suggestion. Mr. Mac- donald is not of this school. We know of many writers who out- line and fill in" their characters more closely, and who pro- duce therefore more immediately telling effects in delineating them. Mr. Macdonald seldom outlines strictly, and never fills in very fully, and yet his pictures are thoroughly real, and com- bine admirably true beauty with honest expression. They affect you as characters seen—not from a distance, but with too medita- tive a mind towards their principal expression to admit of their being fixed in every minute feature. An artist who renders truly the essential expression of a face will scarcely ever please the family of the person painted, who have got accustomed to the details of expression till the details have half-obliterated the true effect. And so a true painter of character who allows his mind to dwell on the chief effect, will forget to spoil it by putting in all the incidental scratches and specks, which are artistically unmeaning, but real enough though they be artistic faults. Mr. Macdonald's pictures have nothing of the over-minute about them, not even so much of the minute as is consistent with and desirable in another sort of picture. But yet he is a true realist,—one who sees what is little in rela- tion to what is great, and never paints without a specific moral effect in his mind which he communicates to his readers. The chief character in the present story, who, however, does not give her name to it, Annie Anderson, is the sweetest quiet picture we have recently met with, and would not do discredit to a great master. The character, rather than the picture of the character, is in some respects unfinished. Towards the edges, it is, as it were, dissolved in mist. Thus many a woman's face, no less than her character, often appears to resemble rather a white summer cloud than a sharply defined photograph. Annie Anderson is meant to be a character of that rare type which begins and ends in childlike beauty, nestling, as it were, in the loveli- ness of nature and the goodness of man, but never struggling against what is threatening and forbidding in either. Mr. Macdonald succeeds in making it perfectly real and avoiding any sort of idealism. Both in childhood and in youth Annie Anderson is the homeliest, though one of the sweetest of pictures, and from the moment she is introduced cuddling her favourite cow there is no danger at all of mistaking her for one of the common- place ideals of romance. But it is not in one picture, or even in two or three, that the soft beauty of the tale consists. It is full of little studies of rare originality and delicacy. For example, to take a very slight specimen, here is the picture of a death-bed quite casually introduced, not that of a leading character at all. It is the death-bed of a great uncle of the heroine, a good old Scotch farmer :— " The old man put his hand feebly from under the bed-clothes. 'I'm glaidl to see ye, dawtio,' he said, still without opening his oyes. '1 aye wantit to see mair o' ye, for ye're jist sic a bairn as I wad has likit to mysol', gin it had pleased the Lord. Ye're a deuce, God-foarin' lassie, and He'll tak care o' his ain.'—lfore his mind began to wander again.—' Margot,' he said, 'is my eon steekit, for I think I see angels ?' —‘ Ay are they—close eneuch.'—'Weel, that's verra weel. I'll has a Bleep noo.'—He was silent for sonic time. Then he reverted to tho fancy that Annie was the first of the angels come to carry away his soul, and murmured brokenly,—' When ye tak' it up, be carefie hoo ye han'le 't, baith for it's some weyk, and for it's no ower clean, and micht bland the bonnie white ban's o' sic God-servers as yersels. I ken mysel there's ae spot ewer the hert o' 't, whilk cam o' an ill word I gied a bairn for stealin' a neep. But they did steal a hantle that year. And there's anither spot upo' the richt han', whilk cam o' ower gudo a bargain I made wi' auld John Thamson at Glass fair. And it wad never come oot wi' a' the soap and water—Hoots, I'm haverinl It's upo' the hau' o' my soul, whaur soap and water can never come. Lord, dight it clean, and I'll gin him 't a' back whan I see him in thy kingdom. And I'll beg his pardon forbye. But I didna chait him alhegither. I only tusk mair nor I wad has gi'en for the colt mysel'. And min' ye dinna tat me fa', gaein' thron the lift.'"

And all the minor workmanship is equally good. Of the more im- portant characters all are more or less of the sort we have described, genuine pictures, but if not unfinished, painted from too medita- tive a point of view for the lively finish of minute art. Thomas Crann, the stonemason, is the successor, as it were, of David Elgin- brod,—the religious Scotehman of the book,—but with much more of the severe Puritan and of narrowness of creed than his predecessor. Still his character is not the less solemn or real on that account, and it is one for which the reader forms a strong affection. Perhaps the most beautiful thing which the book contains is, however, the picture of the schoolmaster, Mr. Malison, and his half-ignorant cruelty, of its terrible results, and of the bond between him and his childish victim which springs out of them. His attempt to preach extempore, and the shame and pain to which his failure, expose him, are in a small way really tragic, and the ultimate fate to which he and the little cripple whom he so tenderly cherishes succumb, is told with true power and pathos. Perhaps Alec Forbes himself is the least true picture, or the least of a picture at all, in the story. There is nothing in him except the high spirits of a generous boy at first, and the rashness of an impetuous young man afterwards. His friend and tutor Mr. Cupples is far more in- teresting and far more ably drawn than himself. Not only is the story well sprinkled with poetry in prose, but a few ballads of real beauty, we imagine original, are distributed through it. The following is not perhaps quite the most beautiful, but the most beautiful that is short enough for extract : —

" TULE AND TIDE.

"As I was walkin' on the strand, I spied an auld man sit On ane auld rock ; and aye the waves

Cam washin' to its fit.

And aye his lips gaed mutterin', • And his ee was dull and blae. As I cam near, he luik'd at me, But this was a' his say : 'Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie balm, And they played thegither upo' the shore: Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, And pairtit the twa wi' an eerie roar.'

" What can the sold man mean,' quo' I, Sittin' upo' the anld rock?

The tide creeps up wi' moan and cry,

And a hiss 'maist like a mock.

The words he mutters inaun be the en'

0' a weary dreary sang—

A deid thing floatin' in his brain, That the tide will not tat gang.'

Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns,

And they played thegither upo' tha shore: Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, And pairtit the twa wi' an eerie roar.'

"What pairtit them, auld man?' I said ; Did the tide come up ower strang?

'Twas a braw deith for them that gaed, Their troubles warna lang.

Or was ane ta'en, and the ither left- ..kne to sing, ane to greet?

It 's sair, richt sair, to be bereft, But the tide is at yer feet.

Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns, And they played thegither up& the shore : Up cam the tide 'tween the mime and the sterns, And pairtit the twa wi' an eerie roar.'

"'Maybe,' quo' I, "t was Time's gray sea, Whase droonin' 's waur to bide ; But Death 's a diver, seekin' ye Aneath its chokin' tide.

And ye '11 luik in ane anither's eo Triumphin' ower gray Time.' But never a word ho answered ma, But ower wi' his dreary chime— 'Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns,

And they played thegither upo' the shore : Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, And pairtit the twa wi' an eerie roar.'

"Maybe, auld man,' said I, "t was Change That crap atween the twa?

Hech ! that 's a droonin' awfu' strange, Ane waur than ane arid a'.'

He spak me mair. I luik't and saw That the anld lips cudna gang.

The tide unseen took him awa- Left me to end his sang- ' Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairna, And they played thegither upo' the shore : Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, And tnik them wham- pairtin' shall be no more.'"

Alec Forbes of Howylen deserves to outlive very long the season in which it has appeared. It is really a Scotch pastoral,. without any of the foolish idealism of ordinary pastorals, but full of the broad sunny nature and deep humanity of the imaginative Scotch litera- ture.