MRS. RUNDLE CHARLES'S TALES.*

THE recent death of Mrs. Rundle Charles, the well-known author of The Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family, and of many tales of nearly equal popularity, will have been regretted by many whose friendship was not due to personal acquaintance. There are books which speak to their readers as with a living voice, books that admit them to the heart of the writer, and awaken the sympathy inspired by the one touch of Nature. To produce this effect does not always demand a high order of genius. Great genius, indeed, is not necessarily sympathetic. The noblest mountain peaks are apt to make respiration difficult; they may be invisible to dwellers in the valley, and it is a commonplace to say that the finest efforts of imagination appeal only to the "fit audience" with which Milton professed to be content.

On the other hand, literary popularity is by no means always due to meretricious qualities. Many of the books we love best and read the ofteneet are dear to us from their humanity and homely wisdom, from their appreciation of the things that are most lovely in Nature and in life, from a grace of expression and a hopefulness of outlook which charm as well as stimulate. These are prominent characteristics of the many volumes which have given to Mrs. Charles a distinguished place among imaginative writers whose work appears to have been undertaken with a distinctly moral and religions purpose. According to the cant of the day, art has nothing to do with morality, and we may accept the dogma so far as to admit that the greatest works of imagina- tion have been produced with a degree of unconsciousness which is popularly ascribed to inspiration. The poet richly gifted will sing, not to inculcate a lesson, but because he must, because, as Matthew Arnold said of Wordsworth, Nature seems " to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power." But while singing thus unconsciously the poet does homage to morality when, like Dante, Spenser, and Milton, he reveals a spirit in harmony with what is noble. He could not write otherwise, because he could not feel otherwise. Unfortunately in our day the art that refuses to recognise morality betrays too often a special aptitude for what is immoral, and instead of • (I.) Chrontcles of the Schonherg-Cotta Family.—(2.) The Draytons and the Davenants : a Story of the Civil Wars. By the Author of "The flcbOuberg-Cotta Family.'—(S) On Both Sides of the Sea: a Story of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. By the same Anthor.—(4 ) Helena's Household: a Tale of Rome in the First Century. By the same Autbor.—(5.) Winifred Bertram, and the World She Lived In. By the Fame Author. London: Nelson and Sons.—(6.) Thoughts and Characters: Selections from the Writings of the Author of "11e Schonberg-Cotta Family." By a Friend. London : B.P.O.K.

endeavouring to soar seeks for its energising power in the gutter. It would be emperfluousto attempt a retrospective review of books so widely spread as Mrs. Charles's volumes, or even to criticise the few tal.:s of which the titles are given below as representative of her labours. All we shall attempt to do is to point out a few well-marked features of her gift as a writer of religious fiction. This will not be difficult to do, for the traits to which we allude are prominent in every volume we open. Unlike some novelists whose books are eagerly sought after by indiscriminate readers, Mrs. Charles is never slovenly and never feeble. She writes in a simple, idiomatic style that ought to satisfy the most fastidious purist, a style which often rises into eloquence. Scattered through her chapters are passages which show an intense appreciation of natural beauty, and there is often what one would hardly expect from the character of the books, a concise felicity of ex- pression. Sometimes, indeed, we are inclined to think the thoughts that brighten her pages are more attractive than the narrative. The " Selections " from her works made by a friend show a generous appreciation of her gifts as a thinker, and it must be allowed that, viewed simply as a novelist, Mrs. Charles is surpassed by inferior writers. Her learning, which is far from superficial, and her love of his- torical research, are rare and honourable qualities, but they do not always contribute to the delight of the reader. Often in her desire to be accurate she ceases to be imaginative, and instead of revivifying historical characters presents them as nearly as possible in the garb they wore in the flesh. The system has its merits, but it is not the kind of merit which makes Sir Walter Scott's historical romances so lifelike. When his Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth and James L and Louis XI. speak we feel that if they did not say what he says they did they ought to have said it. Mrs. Charles treats her historical .characters differently and less artistically, but it is hard to quarrel with the Martin Luther who makes so impressive a figure in the Schonberg-Cotta chronicles. The portrait is drawn with scrupulous accuracy, it is full of life, and we know not

where to find a picture of the great reformer which is at once so generous and so beautiful. The author is by no means fast bound to the fetters of history. In The Draytons and Davenants, a tale of our Civil War, Milton and Jeremy Taylor are seen in converse, and although we know that these great men never met in actual life, the reader feels that such

kindred yet antagonistic spirits ought to have been brought together. The iconoclast and the devout loyalist and Church- man thought alike on the significant question of toleration, to say nothing of the sympathy that should have existed between the most sublime of poets and the most eloquent of divines.

Mrs. Charles's own large-minded toleration and her breezy enjoyment of all innocent delights are far removed from the Puritanical narrowness that devotes itself to inventing sins. "Indifferent things," says one of her characters, " done with a guilty conscience, lead to guilty things done with an indifferent conscience. In inventing imaginary sins you create real sinners." This is in answer to some remarks on the evil of May-day festivities by a certain Aunt Dorothy :—

" Get a godly minister,' she says, 'to go and preach to the poor sinners in the village, and that will be better than setting up May-poles and broaching beer-barrels.'—' I do tell them when- ever I can, Sister Dorothy,' said Aunt Gretel meekly, • as well as I can. But the best of us cannot always be listening to sermons.' We might listen much longer than we do if we tried,' said Aunt Dorothy, branching off from the subject, • In Scotland, I am told, the Sabbath services last twelve hours.' Aunt Gretel sighed; whether in compassion for the Scottish congregations, or in lamentation over her own shortcomings, she did not explain. `But,' she resumed, 'it does seem that if the good God meant that there should have been no merrymaking in the world be would have arranged that people should have come into the world fall- grown.'—' Probably it would have been better if it could have been so arranged,' said Aunt Dorothy."

That love solves many an enigma which has no other solu- tion is one of Mrs. Charles's firmest articles of faith. She is one of the most hopeful of writers, and, from her view of life, reasonably hopeful. She sees no cause for any one living for a day in "Doubting Castle," no cause for living in any atamephere save that of joy. She believes that truth comes to man by fragments, and that not to any one is it given to know the whole. " The harmony is made, not by each trying to learn the whole, but by each keeping faithfully to the part given him to learn and sing, though that part be only a

broken note, here and there." And when one of her heroines says, "It seems to me wherever there is thought there must be difference ; wherever there is life there must be variety," we know that it is Mrs. Charles herself speaking. And again, writing of the true part for women to take in the Church, although the words are uttered by a man, we are sure that they express the strongest feelings of the author. It is laid down that it is the duty of woman— "To see that Morals and Theology, Charity and Truth, are never divorced. To win us back to the Beatitudes when we are straying into the curses. To lead us back to Persona when we are groping into abstractions. For books full of dogma— Orthodox, Arminian, Supra.lapsarian, or otherwise—to give us a home, a living world, full of the Father, the Son, and the Com- forter; of angels and brothers To keep the windows open through our definitions into God's infinity. To translate our ingenious, definite, unchangeable scholastic terms into the simple, infinite, ever-changing—because ever-living—words of daily and eternal life ; so that holiness shall never come to mean a mystic quality quite different from goodness ; or righteousness a mere legal qualification quite different from justice ; or humility a supernatural attainment quite different from being humble; or charity something very far from simply being gentle and generous and self-denying and forbearing ; and • brethren' an ecclesiastical noun of multitude totally unconnected with ' brother.' " The charity that hopeth all things and believeth all things is conspicuous in these tales, and there is in them the son/ of goodness, a quality clearly to be distinguished from the " goodiness" which deforms so many religious stories. Differences of opinion, of custom, of ceremony, are not in any way despised, but they are treated as subordinate to the charity which strives to harmonise discords and to see into the life of things. In Winifred Bertram, a gracefully told tale, which is distinguished from most of Mrs. Charles's in its freedom from historical associations, we read very clearly the

author's endeavour to distinguish between what is conven- tional in life and what is real, between the work done because it is considered proper to be done, and the work suc- cessfully achieved because it is prompted by love. Take the following illustration :-

"' Difficulty in visiting the poor, Cecil ; what do you mean ? said Lady Katharine, as they were returning from a walk round the village where she bad an inquiry, or a suggestion, or it word of sympathy for every one, from the • toddling wee thing' to the grey-haired grandfather, set to take care of it. ' Difficulty in visiting the poor ! No more than in visiting any one else ; less, indeed, for we have not half the ridiculous crusts of conven- tionalism to break through with them that we have with other people. In going to see the people in our village, I see mother and children, sick and suffering people, old and young. We speak of births and deaths and household cares, just the things that are really interesting to us. In calling on my neighbours,. we speak of the weather, the Queen's speech, what people are talking about in Parliament or in Convocation ; anything in the world that does not interest us, does not came close to us. Of course I am more at home in visiting the poor. The conversation is real, the interests are natural, the links between us are real and natural. What can you mean by finding it difficult ? "

Mrs. Charles does not create strong characters or strong situations ; her plots are not exciting; but if we can put down her books at any time without a keen regret, we always take them up again with pleasure. Win'jrcd Bertram, for example, is a quiet story, and the characters, although the best of them

are loveable, can scarcely be called original ; but a second perusal has confirmed the pleasurable impression gained from the first, and this is due, we think, partly to the skill with which the several portions of the narrative are welded to- gether, and partly to what may be called the healthy atmo- sphere of the tale. The reader finds himself in good company, and feels all the better for such companionship.

The author's range has been a wide one. She has written stories of the first century and of the s econd , of the eighteenth and of the nineteenth, of the Reformation and of our Civil Ware, of "England's Darling" and of Wycliffe, and it has been truly said that in her writings she has touched almost every country of Christendom. " Most words written or spoken," she observes, "are perhaps more spoken to one generation than men like to think. If the next genera- tion read them, it is not so much as living words to move themselves, but as lifeless effigies of what moved their fathers."

This is not wholly true, but it is true in a measure of all but the immortal works which time has never injured, and it may be hoped never wilL

It is sufficient happiness for a writer to know that what she has done has given pleasure, and something far nobler than pleasure, to a very large number of readers, and this was Mrs. Charles's reward for a life of conscientious labour. Writing as ever in the Great Task-Master's eye, she put her heart into her work, as well as a highly cultivated intellect, and it is no small praise to say that the influence she has wielded has not been in any degree due to superficial qualities. The best part of many authors is to be seen in their books. Those, we may be allowed to add, who knew the author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family, will have seen even more in that beautiful and harmonious life than they are able to read in her abundant literary labours.