`Si qua fata aspera rumpas '
IT is always dangerous to " set wide the doors that bar the secret bridal-chambers of the heart " and let in the day. Per- sonal joys and private griefs are not always to be shared with the whole world. But there are times when it is well to run the risk ; and no books are more precious than those which have run it safely. This book is one of these : few will be able to read it without gratitude to the author, who is no longer here to receive the thanks.
The first part, " Milly," is an autobiography. In this Lady Acland tells the story of her first ten years of life : a story of April sunshine and showers, of loving parents who, through no fault of their own, did not quite understand their child, and of a , nurse who, with the very best intentions, harmed where she would heal ; but at the same time a story of happy and careless hours. It seems as if the life was so near absolute perfection that the child felt over-deeply the disappointment of just failing to reach it. A single word of explanation would have put all right ; but the tragedy lies precisely here, that it is not possible, the nature of the child being what it is, for the word to be spoken. Nevertheless, tragic though in its way the story is, one feels that the sadness is only a transient shadow across a general happiness.
The second part of the book, " Ellen," has no such shadow. Ellen was one of those children one meets now and then, who seem born to bring light and gladness to everyone they see.; happy themselves and diffusing happiness. They are not always little plaster saints ; and Ellen had her tiny tantrums, which made her all the more human and charming. She had also her childish wisdom, which put to naught the counsel of the sages ; her illuminating little aphorisms come out to amuse and often to awe ; her optimism when she announces that a treat " couldn't be better and yet it is " ; her invented words, like " a dorling " for her dog Bumble—that is, " a darling that you just simply adore."
Too often, like young Marcellus, these souls are shown but for a moment to the world, and then removed ; and Ellen was one of these. She was only eleven years old when she was suddenly withdrawn, fortunately without pain ; and to all who had known her : " Around, the city loomed, void, waste, and wild, Wanting the presence of one little child."
Of that agony Lady Acland says little ; we arc left to imagine it, and too many can picture it only too easily.
We are tempted again and again, in contemplating these inheritors of unfulfilled happiness, to ask " to what purpose is this waste ? " But the truth is that few lives, though pro- longed to the full span, have such power as some of these thus cut short, the memory of which remains to cheer the darker hours. Like Bede's sparrow, they seem no sooner to have entered the hall than they are gone ; but they bring ,a message of hope from the outer world. To those—and they are many—who have suffered a like loss and have made a like gain this story of a little girl's life will come with the mingled appeal of pleasure and sorrow.
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