KINGSLEY'S HYPATIA. s THE heroine of this fiction is the female

philosopher who was mur- dered by the Christian monks and mob of Alexandria with the approbation if not the privity of the patriarch Cyril. To exhibit some of the principal characters of the age, as well as its opin- ions and manners, among Christians, Jews, and Pagan philoso- phers, is of course an object of the author; but he also seems to have a deeper purpose. Under similar circumstances human na- ture is much the same; it is only in modes that the nineteenth cen- tury differs from the fifth. The pharisaic priest perverting the religion of Christ to his own spiritual pride and lust of power, and doing evil to compass what he thinks good—the learned, specula- tive, moral mind, despising common men in the pride of its own acquirements, enthusiastic in its own credences, and as bigoted in its way as the most vulgar bigot—the sensual, self-indulgent, culti- tivated, sceptical man of pleasure and the world, yet capable of endurance and exertion under stimulus or will—the equally sen- sual and self-indulgent practical and unscrupulous politician—are each as much a class now as they were in the age of Honorius and Theodosius, differing only in forms. Mr. Kingsley's character of Miriam the Jewess, hating mankind at large, but madly devoted to " her own tribe and genealogy, and more especially to an unacknow- ledged son, is a familiar personage in books of romance, if not in actual life. The mob bigots—the lesser priests, monks, and rabble, who "hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell"—are in spirit perhaps as intense as ever ; but a different climate, the more varied objects of a much more active life, and the control of public opinion through the combination of many classes, lessen the number of its disciples, and compel its display in another fashion. It is in the display of these fashions or forms that Hypatia does not succeed; and Mr. Kingsley must be classed among the nume- rous scholars and romancists who have failed to revive classical times in a manner at once accurate and lifelike. He falls into the error, as a novelist, of modernizing too much ; the tone of the saloons, the exaggeration of the theatre, and the nnearnest persi- flage of the smart man of society, predominate too strongly. Pro- bably Mr. Kingsley is not well fitted by nature for dealing with remoter times, in which we have little in common so far as regards manners and popular ideas. Notwithstanding that his most popular productions are fictions, his genius is rather reflective and rhetorical than dramatic. He perceives the sen- timents philosophically appropriate to the subject, but the sen- timents are those of the observer, not of the actor. In his novels this defect is not so much felt, because, drawing often from na- ture, he copies truly, though he cannot so truly invent. In dealing with "known images of life," a greater restraint is also imposed upon his pencil ; perhaps the reader overlooks a dra- matic incongruity from the practical interest of the subject. Hi- therto Mr. Kingsley's prose fictions have been occupied with social questions of great importance, which he has urged with zeal and eloquence. The reader has felt that the form of the novel was sub- ordinate to the moral end. The same principle, no doubt, is at work in Hypatia. The true, loving, equalizing spirit of the gospel, is inculcated, in opposition to the bigoted folly of the masses, the theo- logical theories of priests, the cold, unsatisfactory, narrow notions of philosophers, and, as in The Saint's Tragedy, marriage in op- position to enforced celibacy. But the only possible termination consistent with history leaves the moral not impressed by the ac- tion; for the priests and the mob are triumphant at last ; the prin- ciples are embodied in forms so remote as to obscure their immedi- ate application, unless they are modernized as hinted already; and there is some want of purpose and coherence in the action of the story.

However much mankind may differ in stature and feature, the largest part of them is exactly alike—bone and tendon, flesh and blood. Nature marks the differences by traits which however dis- tinct are very slight in proportion to the whole individual. The dramatist must do the same. The individuality of his persons must be marked by traits which are small in proportion to the whole of the sayings and doings. In Hypatia the author often

• Bypath; or New Foes with an Old Face. By Charles Kingsley Junior. Rector of Eversley. Reprinted from " Fraser's Magazine." In two volumes. Published

by Parker and Son.

reverses this principle. The dramatis persona) exhibit them- selves—" thrust their persons full into your face." Orestes, Prefect of Alexandria aspiring to be Emperor of Africa, and a ' lover of Hypatia is the pleasant, licentious, unscrupulous man of the world, but at the same time the able man of business, the clearheaded ruler, and the statesman after the fashion of those who call successful tricksters statesmen. The combination is somewhat unnatural, but that might pass if Orestes did not con- stantly talk in order to display his somewhat incongruous quali- ties. Raphael Aben-Ezra—the Jew by education, the libertine by practice, the scholar and gentleman by training, the genius and resolute man by nature, and the sceptic by reasoning till he doubts of scepticism itself, but finally a convert to Christianity, is open to similar criticism. His qualities are too varied and too ex- celling in degree to belong to a single man ; he is rather an ab- straction. But his obtrusion of those qualities is unnatural, and recalls unpleasantly the rhetorical school of fictionists. Miriam the Jewess, the panderess, the pretended sorceress, and the myste- rious unavowed mother of Aben-Ezra, is less objectionable on this ground : it is natural in an impostor to display her- self, but she is too melodramatic. It is the business of Hypa- tia to lecture, and she certainly fulfils her business ; but she too is an abstraction, on that account inspiring little interest, and, like other persons of the novel, incongruous. Faith in heathenism as a creed was extinct in the educated heathen long and long before the fifth century ; though it might be violently upheld as a party system, while Christians might be as violently attacked for their evident follies and crimes. Hypatia is sometimes represented as fanatical in the faith, willing even to marry Orestes to establish Paganism and overthrow the Church ; sometimes as doubting or rationalizing the articles for which she is prepared to sacrifice everything. Philammon, the hero—the youthful monk, trained from his infancy to the monastery, who goes forth to convert the world, fails in the trial, and, after narrowly missing perversion to heathenism or philosophy by Hypatia, becomes a type of the genuine Christian priest—has less of incongruity and self-obtrusion than any other. His sister, Pelagia—the courtesan, bought by Miriam when a little older than himself, trained to infamy, and who seems designed as a reflex of the modern prostitute, whom poverty and opinion doom to disgrace and misery, without even the will to extricate herself—resembles Philammon in being less obtrusive of her idiosyncracy. A small party of Goths, designed to complete the classes of the age and whose rough virtues are intended as a contrast to the weakness and vices of the Egyptians and Greeks, are also too staring in their traits. The more unim- portant characters have the fault less obviously, but most of them have it. Indeed, it seems a necessary part of the author's mode of workmanship.

In the first sentence of his preface, Mr. Kingsley rather warns off the "young and innocent reader" from the fifth century, or from this representation of it. We do not know that the warn- ing was altogether necessary. The author stops very far short of the age and its realities as shown in the strictest histories. The true objection seems to us that some of the scenes are needless. Those between Hypatia, Miriam, and Philammon, do not seem specially to belong to Alexandria in the fifth century, or to any other time or place. They are chiefly to be found in the airy re- gions of the novelist. The consequence of all this is, an effect of heaviness and un- reality in Hypatia as a whole. Parts exhibit great eloquence and power; while moral lessons are often inculcated, though rather by inference than direct impression unless in a forced way. The following is an example. Cyril, as the reader of Gibbon may re- member, had canonized a monk executed for nothing less than an attack upon the life of the Prefect himself. The Prefect, how- ever, from a dread of popular outbreak, pauses before he stops the sermons, clears the church, and puts down the priestly party by main force.

"So Orestes added this fresh item to the long column of accounts which he intended to settle with the Patriarch ; cursed for half an hour in the name of all divinities, saints and martyrs, Christian and Pagan; and wrote off a lamentable history of his wrongs and sufferings to the very Byzantine court against which he was about to rebel, in the comfortable assurance that Cyril had sent, by the same post, a counter-statement, contradicting it in every particular Never mind. . . . . In case he failed in rebelling, it was as well to be able to prove his allegiance up to the latest possible date ; and the more completely the two statements contradicted each other, the longer it would take to sift the truth out of them ; and thus so much time was gained, and so much the more chance, meantime, of a new leaf being turned over in that Sibylline oracle of politicians—the chapter of accidents. And, for the time being, he would make a pathetic appeal to respectability in general, of which Alexandria, wherein some hundred thousand tradesmen and merchants had property to lose, possessed a goodly share. "Respectability responded promptly. to the appeal; and loyal addresses and deputations of condolence flowed 1II from every quarter, expressing the extreme sorrow with which the citizens had beheld the late disturbances of civil order, and the contempt which had been so unfortunately evinced for the constituted authorities ; but taking, nevertheless, the liberty to remark, that while the extreme danger to property which might ensue from the further exasperation of certain classes prevented their taking those ac- tive steps on the side of tranquillity to which their feelings inclined them, the known piety and wisdom of their esteemed Patriarch made it pre- sumptuous in them to offer any opinion on his present conduct, beyond the easxptroeast Loons those setnhtermefinrum loraeiffecttioant he n ldiardesbepeeent uwnrnrfu

Prefect was well known to entertain towards him. They ventured, there-

fore, igstellaineetinenfoCyrnre fore, to express a humble hope, that by some mutual compromise, to define which would be an unwarrantable intrusion on their part, a happy recon- ciliation would be effected, and the stability of law, property, and the Catholic faith, insured All which Orestes heard with blandest smiles, while his heart was black with curses ; and Cyril answered by a very

violent though a very true and practical harangue on the text, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of Heaven.' "So respectability and moderation met with its usual hapless fate, and, soundly cursed by both parties in the vain attempt to please both, wisely left the upper powers to settle their own affairs, and went home to their desks and counters, and did a very brisk business all that week on the strength of the approaching festival."

The following, on the letter and the spirit, is from a dialogue between the simple abbot of the Laura, wherein Philammon was brought up, and Arsenius the former courtier and tutor of the ' Emperor who has retired from the world, buying the child Philam- mon as he passed on his way to the Egyptian desert. Arsenius has been lamenting the past, and complaining of visions which he takes for revelations.

"'Nothing, at all events, has been revealed to thee upon thy bed, except that which thou knowest already far better than Satan does,—namely, that thou art a sinner. But for me, my friend, though I doubt not that such things are, it is the day, and not the night, which brings revelations.'

"'flow then ? '

"'Because by day I can see to read that book which is written, like the Law given on Sinai, upon tables of stone, by the finger of God himself.' "Arsenius looked up at him inquiringly. Pambo smiled. "'Thou knowest that, like ninny holy men of old, I am no scholar, and knew not even the Greek tongue, till thou, out of thy brotherly kindness, taughtest it to me. But heat thou never heard what Anthony said to a cer- tain Pagan who reproached him with his ignorance of books ? 'Which is first,' he asked, 'spirit, or letter ?—Spirit, gayest thou ? Then know, the healthy spirit needs no letter. My book is the whole creation, lying open before me, wherein I can read, whensoever I please, the word of God.'

" Dost thou not undervalue learning, my friend ? ' "'lam old among monks, and have seen much of their ways ; and among them my simplicity seems to have seen this—many a man wearying himself with study, and tormenting his soul as to whether he believed rightly this doctrine and that, while he knew not with Solomon that in much learning is much sorrow, and that while he was puzzling at the letter of God's mes- sage the spirit of it was going fast and faster out of him.' " And how didat thou know that of such a man ?'

"'By seeing him become a more and more learned theologian, and more and more zealous for the letter of orthodoxy ; and yet leas and less loving and merciful, less and less full of trust in God, and of hopeful thoughts for him- self and for his brethren, till he seemed to have darkened his whole soul with disputations, which breed only strife, and to have forgotten utterly the mea- sage which is written in that book wherewith the blessed Anthony was con- tent.'

"Of what message dost thou speak ? ' " ' Look,' said the old abbot, stretching his hand toward the Eastern desert, and judge, like a wise man, for thyself!'

" As he spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed down the gorge from crag to crag awakening every crack and slab to vividness and life. The great crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night-mist of the desert, and as he poured his glory. down the glen, the haze rose in threads and plumes, and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks, like the living twinkling eye of the whole scene. Swallows flashed by hundreds out of the cliffs, and began their air-dance for the day ; the jerboa hopped stealthily homeward on his stilts from his stolen meal in the monastery garden ; the brown sand-lizards underneath the stones opened one eyelid each, and having satisfied themselves that it was day, dragged their bloated bodies and whip-like tails out into the most burning patch of gravel which they could find, and, nestling together as a further protection against cold, fell fast asleep again ; the buzzard, who considered himself lord of the valley, awoke with a long querulous bark, and rising aloft in two or three vast rings, to stretch himself after his night's sleep, hung motionless, watching every lark which chirruped on the cliffs; while from the far-off Nile below, the awakening croak of pelicans, the clang of geese, the whistle of the godwit and curlew, came ringing up the windings of the glen ; and last of all the voices of the monks rose, chanting a morning hymn to some wild Eastern air; and a new day had begun in Scetis, like those which went before, and those which were to follow after, week after week, year after year, of toil and prayer as quiet as its sleep.

" What does that teach thee, Aufugus, my friend ? ' "Arsenius was silent.

"'To me it teaches this : that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. That in His presence is life, and fulness of joy for evermore. That He is the giver, who delights in Xis own bounty ; the lover, whose mercy is over all His works—and why not over thee too, 0 thou of little faith ? Look at those thousand birds—and without our Father not one of them shall fall to the ground : and art thou not of more value than many sparrows, thou for whom God sent his Son to die ? . . . . Ali, my friend, we must look out and around to see what God is like. Itis when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make a God after our own image, and fancy that our darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.'"

The story is introduced by a preface of great power, exhibiting a profound acquaintance with the spirit of the fifth century, and a truer judgment of its evils, its merits, and its uses, than the fiction itself. A popular history or review of the history of the early Christians is a desideratum, and Mr. Kingsley seems well fitted for the task.