FOUR NOVELS.°
WHAT is inherited from parents, either in the way of sub- stance or moral qualities, is always a matter of importance to humanity and, of course, the latter kind is the more im- portant of the two, because mental peculiarities remain. with the recipient through life, and are not to be got rid of at will like an inheritance in lands or funds. Heredity of things intangible, however, is lees easily proved than that of things tangible. And in From One Generation to Another, Mr. Merriman puts forward a theory respecting the extent to which children. are liable to be affected by the mother's mood at the time of their birth, which, however interesting to read about, is hardly likely to be generally accepted as correct. The ease he represents is one where intense hatred excited in a woman a few hours before giving birth to a son is supposed to be so exactly transmitted to this son. Arthur, that when, after attaining manhood, he meets the object of his mother's hate, he is at once animated by the same passion, and impelled to lay violent hands on an apparently inoffensive individual (1.) Front One Generalion to Another. By H. S. Merriman. London : The Bow of Fate. By Barsoonalajor Greenhow, tanitaho,n! 1 wd • rian.dalien and 00.--(3.) The Last Touches. By Mrs. W. K. Clifford. London A. and O. Blaek.—(4.) A Woman in Ton Thousand, By Ferrol Vance. London: Hurst and Blrlokett.
whom he had never before seen or heard of. And although we do not pretend to any medical knowlege, and quite recognise that there is as great a necessity for the opinion of experts in a difficult case regarding inheritance of senti- ment as of property, still we cannot bring ourselves to account for Arthur's surprising animosity to Michael as the author does, and should ascribe it,—if it were verified in any real instance, — rather to some form of hysteria than to inherited feeling. His mother's emotion when he was born was of too recent a date to have been more than an accidental mood, which might conceivably have mani- fested its influence by imparting a general surliness of temper, but which we cannot believe likely to cause the outburst of that unreasoning, homicidal fury, utterly inconsistent with Arthur's effeminately amiable disposition, that was suddenly provoked in him at sight of a stranger. Another, and more probable, illustration of heredity is found in the ambitious and avaricious Michael—the man with the long, drooping nose, whose Jewish blood makes him greedy for gain of any sort notwithstanding the voice in his soul telling him 'thou shalt possess, but not enjoy ; " and who wants to be great, rich, and powerful, although he knows he has no definite use for greatness, riches, or power, when acquired. He seems to have latent possibilities of interest that are not developed as fully as they would have been if the author's attention had not been de- voted rather to exemplifying his theory than to making the most of the material supplied by his imagination. And elsewhere, also, there are signs to indicate that Mr. Merriman was, perhaps, somewhat hampered by this theory; for instance, in the matter of the suppression of the truth about Jern, one does not see very clearly what advantage this suppression was, and thinks that Michael incurred needless risk of detection by lying, when honesty would have been more natural, merely in order to force the story to fit its particular object. The book contains cleverish sayings such as the following This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like old Martin's trousers— so patched up with changes that the original pattern has dis- appeared." And though we doubt the soundness of some of its doctrine about heredity, we have no hesitation in recom- mending it as a decidedly good and entertaining novel.
In The Bow of Fate, also, heredity plays a part. To suppose that the daughter of an English officer could allow herself to be inveigled into clandestine dealings in India with the enemies of her father's country at a time when the atrocities of the Mutiny were already in full swing, seems so contrary to nature as to be barely possible. And for this strange spectacle, descent on the mother's side is responsible, bestowing upon myths, legends, mysterious rites, and fearful idolatries of the ancient faith of Raj poet ancestors, so strong a fascination for the credulous Lilian, that she does not see where their pernicious influence is conducting her, until, when she is on the verge of committing-a diabolical crime at the instigation of one of the priests of this faith, her better self recoils and, showing her what the idol before which she quailed really was, gives her courage to defy its power,—producing, in fact, such a revolt of human nature against the dominion of superstition as is apt to occur in parallel cases, whatever sort of religion may be con- cerned. This, however, and Lilian's slight love-story, by no means constitute the principal feature or attraction of a book that we had not a moment's inclination to lay aside till finished, and whose merit lies in its delineation of stirring and terrible scenes of the Mutiny, described so graphically as to suggest the idea of the author's having been himself an actor in them, and with a rarely-to-be-met simplicity and freedom from circumlocution which is very wel come ; whilst at the same time, additional verisimilitude is imparted by the weaving-in of various native grievances, tending to further the mutineer's schemes. Considering the wholesale manner in which the dramatis personas are killed off, it seems an oversight not to have included the objectionable old Brahmin in the general slaughter. And what was the object of bringing in Delmar with mysterious hints of future significance that never come to anything ? It suggests the idea of his having formed part of some unfulfilled design, a design of which Mr. Greenhow forgot to cut out the traces when he changed his mind.
The tender passion is a theme whereof the novel-reading public appears never to grow weary, and to the various phases of it Mrs. Clifford has evidently devoted serious
consideration. The result of these observations is now given to the world in eight out of the nine short stories comprised in her one-volume book, entitled The Last Touches. It seems written from the point of view of a good-natured, rather cynical, spectator, who looks on with amusement and sympathy (leavened by an admixture of gentle contempt) at what she feels to be folly, but tolerates as in- evitable; and the skill with which she conveys her impressions and contrives unexpected denouements to her tales, makes them works of art, and lends freshness even to the well-worn subject of which she treats. In each story there are, to all intents and purposes, but two figures, one male and one female ; and these have, as a rule, a curious tendency to esteem love as a sort of aside in life, which must on no account be allowed to interfere with a practical arrangement like marriage,—so that loving one person and marrying another becomes pretty much a foregone conclusion with them, and they are usually ready deliberately to sever themselves from the one adored object, without whom existence will be a blank, with an equanimity that scarcely fulfils the requirements of popular expectation regarding the conduct proper to true lovers. A notable and very agreeable exception to this pre- vailing idea is, however, afforded by the unswerving con- stancy of a charwoman's son, who eventually becomes the son-in-law of the person whose shoes he once blacked ; and the pretty story of " Thomas " may almost claim to be called an idyll. One of the most artistic tales is, perhaps, "The Last Touches," which is an exquisite, highly finished sketch of cajolery by a graceful coquette who, deceives the reader as completely as she did her victim, and whose wiles are as unsuspected by the one as the other, until the last moment when her trick succeeds, and secures her the falsely beautiful portrait she had determined to obtain. "The Interlude " describes an amusing sort of tit- for-tat in unfair love-making, by showing two people tampering with one another's affections most unjustifiably, and getting as good as they gave ; but the satisfaction one certainly feels at the conclusion is not unlikely to be tempered by a passing thought of pity for their respective fiancés, as one wonders how the two marriages turned out after all. Very laughable and novel is the idea of "A Ridiculous Tragedy "—(which title, by-the-way, is a misnomer as regards the noun, though quite appropriate as regards the adjective)—but we abstain from mentioning what this idea is, for fear of spoiling the pleasure of reading about it. And as the same fear interferes with going at length into any stories so slight as those con- tained in this book, we conclude by saying that we thought "The Last Touches," "Thomas," and "A Ridiculous Tragedy" especially delightful; and that even if one or two of the others may be more commonplace and less excellent, yet there is none without some merit to make it worth reading.
Would it not have been an improvement to stimulate sym- pathy by contrast P was the thought with which we laid aside A Woman in Ten Thousand, wherein is no object to excite hearty dislike, and whose characters, as a whole, are so, endowed with genuine virtues and attractiveness, as to make one almost wish for a little wickedness as a relief. So equally charming are the two heroines, that their rivalry of interests is really distressing. For whilst one thinks Honor far too good to have been doomed to an unrequited attachment, and is disappointed at her not being finally rewarded with the hand of the somewhat milk-and-waterish young man on whom she had set her affections, yet one cannot find kin one's heart to grudge him to Dolores, since she chose to take him, and sincerely hopes that matrimony under his auspices may enable her to get over the disgust for that state of life pro- duced by her first experience with a previous husband. Even the one approach to a scamp contained in the three volumes is of no pronounced type of worthlessness, and behaves towards his diphtheria-stricken child in a manner to cover a multitude of sins. We should imagine the book to be the first novel of a lady (we take Ferrol Vance's sex for granted) who is likely to do better with her next if she relies more on what is to be evolved from her own. inner consciousness, than on material accumulated by previous writers of fiction. And though there is no great novelty in either the incidents, story, or characters, yet there is enough action to be interesting ; and the component parts are so pleasantly strung together and handled, as to prevent the lack of originality from being very conspicuous.
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