WILDERSMOOR.* WE have no doubt that C. L. Antrobus is

a woman, and a very clever woman, though she is sometimes too clever by half. She has a passion for being paradoxical, and is often

• Wilderonoor. A Nord.

Bentley .Bz IhrAntrobus. 3 vols. London: Itionard

and Son. la85.

paradoxical where the universe itself is not paradoxical, and

is so proud of it that she dresses up her own paradoxes in all the mystery of "enigmas of life." For instance, she paints a woman narrow, spiteful, conventional, and yet intent enough on marrying well to break through all conventions, if thereby she can gain her object; marries her eventually to a dull vicar who never suspects her malignity or her secret unscrupulous- ness or her absolute selfishness ; and then declares, as if it were

one of the great laws of Nature, that "women of Esme's type do undoubtedly make good wives, not good mothers, but certainly good wives. When their first youth is past they are old in thought and feeling, and easily settle down to a routine of new clothes, domestic trivialities, and small duties, for which they

get much praise ; the stagnant pool, though filthy, is quiet, and by-and-by covers itself with soft, green, blooming weed." As if interest in new clothes, domestic trivialities, and small duties,

could ever make a good wife. "Women of Esme Rusholme's type" break the hearts of even such dull clergymen as Mr. Crosier, who certainly had a heart, and had one even in some degree in his work. The paradox that "women of Esme's

type undoubtedly make good wives," is a paradox of our author's own arbitrary invention, and not in the least one of Nature's making. And the manufacture of such paradoxes,

by the half-dozen at least, is the weakness of the very clever woman who wrote this book. She manufactures another

such paradox when she magnifies the duty of never

acquiescing in poverty, but of "chafing and raging against it," so as to save oneself from its "degradation,"—as if the " degradation " of poverty did not chiefly spring out of that passionate exaggeration of its evils which "chafing and raging" against it is certain to cause. The calamity of extreme poverty may deaden the spirit into a miser-

able apathy, like any other great calamity that is not borne in the fashion in which all great calamity ought to be borne ; but no true tragedy, whether it is caused by poverty or by any other cause independent of our own wills, ought to produce apathy at all. It is the function of tragedy to purify "by pity and by fear" not only those

who behold it but those who are struck down by it. Miss or Mrs. Antrobus is too fond of exaggerating the spite- fulness of life, sometimes humorously, sometimes vin-

dictively, and making her characters accommodate them- selves almost with an air of triumph to the temptations which beset them. Thus Dr. Aveland, who is not clearly sketched at all, and who, on the eve of death, seems to think he has nothing to reproach himself with, almost parades his

rage against the poverty by which his wife's life was sacrificed and his own health ruined, though he has to admit that he concealed it from his old friend who had more than enough for both, and would have helped him into prosperity, had he

not concealed it out of sheer pride. Dr. Aveland's character is an ambitious failure. It is not clearly outlined, and it is not

even clearly conceived. But if his ideal of right had had any touch of Christian humility in it, he certainly would

not have professed himself satisfied with himself as he was

going out of the world.

The one great success of this book,—apart from the beautiful sketches of scenery which it contains,—is the character of Mrs. Paton, the clever wife of a rather conventional clergy- man, who confesses to her friend that she should have loved to live a celibate life, but was not at liberty to follow her bent, so she took up with marriage as a pis alter, liked, but did not quite love or profoundly respect, her husband, and endeavoured to conceal from him how utterly divergent were his aims and her own :— I desired a celibate life and was not free to choose it. Could I have followed my natural bent, I should have been content. However, I am conscientiously trying to imitate the Indian devotees who hold up an arm till it stiffens. Their religious ideas command it ; and so do mine. It is my duty to stiffen my mind ; to swathe it with gowns, and servants, and society aims. Perhaps when Cyril is an aged Bishop, and I an aged Bishopess, I may be permitted a little wandering if I still care for it. Pro- bably I shall not. No doubt by that time I shall regard a big dinner as of far greater importance than the ruins of Baalbec.' Frances Aveland looked a moment at her, friend,, then turned her gaze over the moorland; where southward the Pike, clad in pale mist like a Viking in his grey wolfskins, towered over the wide land, keeping watch and guard. In her mind arose the bitter words of a great writer of another land.—anorthern land wherein may be found a singular affinity of thought to that on Wilders- moor :—` But all things die, even our memories; and our good and noble feelings die also, and in their place comes reason.' And when that age of reason sets ; when the eyes at last turn away

from the Vision of the Delectable Mountains to the very tangible and ever-ready muck-rake, great is the rejoicing among the affectionate relatives of the reasonable one—for of such is the Kingdom of Hell. Would Nina settle finally into the swathed mummy, the capable fashionable housewife P Her varying moods, her restlessness that—like the ferment in the wine—tended to better things, all vanished utterly ; together with the light mocking gaiety, the quick sympathy and generous admiration of others that made up the personality of Nina Paton ? There is no angel more beneficent, no spectre more terrible, than change."

That is the close of by far the best dialogue in the book, one so brilliant on Mrs. Paton's side,—Frances Aveland is a bit of a prig,—that one is led to expect a great deal more from Wildersmoor than one actually finds in it. Our author has a great talent for sketching the manners of the Lancashire

peasantry, and makes her village society live in her readers' minds. And she can paint the restless attitude of a clever and sympathetic woman's mind with singular power. But that is the only character that she paints from the inside. Her conventional and selfish woman is a failure. She hates her too much to paint her fairly. She is always "letting fly" at her, as Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop let fly at the wooden figure on which he vented all his malignity. And in the last touch of black paint which she puts on, she spoils even the root conception of the character by obliterat- ing its conventionality, and making her evil-minded heroine run against the decencies of the world,—an afterthought, as we imagine, not contemplated in the opening of the story, and put in out of the malevolence which the picture had gradually nourished in the mind of the artist. Esme Rusholme would never have been so unconventional as to hazard her reputation by visiting such a man as Ralph Fleming in his bachelor's shooting-box, without any better chaperon than a wild and harum-scarum bachelor cousin of Ralph Fleming's own set.

Demureness is meant at first to be of Eames essence. At the last moment it is dismissed altogether.

Our author's disgust for the conventional type of character is shown again in her picture of the scapegrace whom she elevates into the good genius of her story. We cannot believe in Jack Ulyett. A man with so much in him that was

generous and noble, could never have done so much that was mean and disgraceful simply. to'save,his own life from wreck.

Of course, scapegraces have often something good at the bottom, but the bottom of Jack Ulyett is too good for the top, which is all duckweed. The very idea of the story is to make the worthless ne'er-do-weel outshine the man• who is everybody's pattern; and in this the author certainly succeeds, though at the cost of all lifelikeness. Quentin Fleming would never have concealed his fatal quarrel with his cousin, and never have consented to live on such hypocritical terms with his uncle, when that uncle was offering rewards for the detection of the murderer. Still less would Dr. Aveland and his daughter have accepted the situation as they do, and have consented to, or rather advised, the concealment of what had happened, so as to make of Quentin's life a living lie. The author's eager- ness to make much of a scapegrace, and to elevate him above the till then generous and upright man, has made Wildersmoor an incredible story. Nor are the long conversations for the most part good. After the brilliant one from which we have quoted, in which Mrs. Paton explains her own keen and restless character, the conversations fall off very much, and are often aimless and almost tedious. The Christianity which the chief thinker of the story, Dr. Aveland, professes is of the most external and superficial character. It is not that of the heart, but of at best a most ambitious and speculative mind. The old woman who is represented as poisoning, or in- tending to poison, from the most disinterested motives, is a sort of secondary heroine to our author, a supernumerary element of sensation, who is employed to heighten the interest of the plot without being really needed or used at all. Perhaps her only real function is to exhibit the author's catholicity of feeling towards unscrupulous crime wherever there is nothing mean or shabby in its accessories.

Altogether, in spite of its beautiful studies of Lancashire scenery, its admirable sketches of village life, and its one

brilliantly painted character, Wildersmoor is a disappointing story. It has far more promise than fulfilment. None of the

men are well painted, unless it be old Elkanah Fleming, who is a very slight sketch. Only one of the *omen is painted to the life. The ethics of the story are rather ambitions and decidedly pagan, in spite of professions of Christianity. But it is a work of imagination for all that. And works of imagination are not numerous enough to render it possible for the critic to pass by any one of them without calling attention to its merits.