• The Crossing. By Winston Churchill. London: Macmillan and Co.
1-6s.1
was the fourth, and the present volume is, in point of time, the second. Its theme is the pressing westward of the settlers during and after the Revolutionary wars, the conquest of Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky, and the pacific invasion of Louisiana in the years before Jefferson's Louisiana purchase. It is a large web of history to shape into a romance, but Mr. Churchill, while recognising the difficulty of the task, seems to regret that he did not carry his narrative later till the first steamboat on the Mississippi brought supplies to Jackson's army in New Orleans. And herein lies the mistake which has prevented a fine piece of work from becoming a great novel. The story is hung upon the career of one David Ritchie, the grandson of a Scottish Earl
and the son of one of the Kentucky pioneers. He goes as a boy with the Kentucky adventurers who, under Clark, conquered Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio ; as a young man he lives through the early days of the Republic and the strife of Jacobins and Federalists; and he finally is carried to New Orleans, marries a French Vicomtesse, and is present at the cession of Louisiana. Mr. Churchill has kept close to fact; most of his chief figures are historical personages; and he has striven to bring into his tale every element of these confused and stirring years. But what is necessary for history may not be necessary for drama, since all history is not equally dramatic. David's life is too full; he ceases to be a real being, and becomes an historical automaton, turning up with magnifi- cent promptitude whenever stirring events are toward. He lives, again, it is true, at the close in a charming love-tale; but in reflecting on the whole after laying down the book we are conscious that there are quite a number of Mr. David Ritchies, and that the only one we really know is a boy who drummed Clark's army to Vincennes, and in later years won the hand of the Vicomtesse Helene. The rest is history, but it is mere surplusage as fiction. We are only too thankful that Mr. Churchill's good angel prevented him reaching the Mississippi steamboat, for in that event we could only have thought of David as a solar myth. The author confesses that he " has a great sense of the incompleteness " of his book ; our objection is that it is far too complete.
And yet with all its faults of construction it is a fine piece of work which Mr. Churchill has accomplished, full of the breath of romance, a thing to refresh the mind which has sojourned among the anaemic novels of the day. The first half is a veritable epic,—the Odyssey of Daniel Boone and bie comrades who led the way on the Wilderness Trail over the mysterious Blue Mountains to the rich land of Kentucky, daring much and suffering much, till the crowd of speculators and merchants came to reap what they had sown, and pushed the pioneers still further on to the North and West, till they met the old civilisations of France and Spain. Here, indeed, is the contrast which romance delights in, the strenuous, hard-bitten American adventurers and the decadent Latin civilisation of the South. Essential romance is in the love of David for the lady of the miniature which he finds so curiously at New Orleans, and carries with him on his wanderings, till by chance he meets the original. But we like him best in his boyhood, the tale of which is surely enough to take captive the fancy of any reasonable child to whom Indian warfare is still a cherished ambition. With something of Jim Hawkins, and more of his namesake, that other Davie of Kidnapped, he is a perfectly natural and convincing creation, even when he drums Clark's weary troopers over the marshes to Vincennes, or shoots devastating Indians through the chinks of a log-house. The finest episode in the book is undoubtedly Clark's Ohio campaigns, and it would be hard to find a more stirring adventure. Mr. Churchill possesses, among his many gifts, a power of making us see the landscape with his own eyes, an effect achieved not by any great subtlety of phrase, but by never letting us forget it. Numberless little touches throughout the narrative create an atmosphere which naturally and un- laboriously attends the drama, whether we are in the tree- country of Kentucky, or in the floods at Vincennes, or in some rich garden of the South. The characters are carefully studied and individualised, which is high praise in a book so full of figures. Nick Temple, who acts as foil to Davy's caution, is a type to be sure, but also an individual ; and the same may be said of all the pioneers, from Boone to Tom McChesney, and of the French traders and habitants. Clark, a genius in his youth, and a schemer and a sot in middle life, is a more complex figure ; but in him, and in the unhappy Mrs. Temple, the author is equally successful. We would also mention the excellent picture of Andrew Jackson, and the adorable Polly Ann. It is a vivid, moving tale, full of the authentic spirit of that adventurous time, and, even where it fails as fiction, it makes admirable history. There is only one criticism to be made. Such a narrative invites prophetical forecasts, and the author has been betrayed now and then into the patriotiC fault of making some of his characters fore- tell the future glories of the 'United States. Such a trick is never effective in good fiction, and Mr. Churchill is far too competent a writer to need to descend to it.
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