NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
Ma. PHILIP &mum follows the new fashion, or convention, of choosing an eminently unheroic hero. The central figure of his awkwardly named story is not only the son of a bargee, but he starts life on his own account as a moneylender, and for a good many years practises that unromantic calling with all the rigour of the game. By the time the story proper begins Benjamin Lugwell has turned his back on semi- bankrupt borrowers and shed the slough of the usurer to blossom forth into a banker. With a change of status and a new set of clients he has abandoned his old methods. Where he once fawned and bullied he now pursues a course of consistent conciliation. Thus at fifty, a widowe/ with one son, we find him so far mellowed by pros. perity and the desire to stand well with his neigh- bours as to contract a sentimental second marriage with a featherbrained fashionable girl of half his age. His generosity towards his wife is ill requited, for she encourages a philandering tame cat of the name of Carew, who ultimately shows his claws in a most unexpected manner. For Carew, believing his father to have been ruined by Lugwell in his moneylending days, attempts to assassinate him, and is only thwarted by the opportune intervention of the banker's son. The remainder of the narrative is devoted to the recital of further acts of magnanimity on the part of the ex-usurer. who dies in something like the odour of sanctity, after his selfish wife has absconded with her only child. Mr. Leopold Lugwell is an ingenious and elaborate study of the humanising effects of success and social ambition on a nature primarily guided by the instinct of acquisition, but we own to having found it more curious than convincing.
A deep affection for the Venice of to-day, fortified by a patient and intelligent study of the history of her glorious past, has enabled Mrs. Turnbull to give us in The Golden Book of Venice a charming, if some.
• (1.) Mr. Leopold /Avid!: his Birth and Upbringing. By Philip stares. .London: W. Blackwood and Sons. Ne..1—(2.) The Golden Book of Venice. By Hrs. Lawrence Turnbull. New York The Century ColoPani.'— (3.) The Aristocrats. London: John Laze. [6s.j---(4.) The Good Bid Earth. Pacifico. By John BaudaL London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 6s. By Eden Phillpotts. London: Simpkin, warshsu, and Co. Rs.
(6.) The Eternal Choiee. By E. H. Cooper. London : C. A. Pearlier). Ida. 17.) The Curious Career of Bodericlt Campbell. By Jean N. Hnilwraith. Constable and Co. [6s..] —(8.) Mrs. Musgrauo•eund her Husband. lly BirliarJ Xarch. London : John Long. ras. Gd.] -
what idealised, picture of that stirring episode in which Sarpi was the protagonist of intellectual freedom against the pretensions of the Vatican. The figure of Marina, the glass- worker's saintly daughter, who marries a Venetian noble,and in the conflict with Rome is torn in two between loyalty to her creed and allegiance to her husband, is finely conceived and portrayed with much delicacy. The descriptive passages are excellent, and the whole book is marked by much refine- nient of thought and characterisation. What we miss, how- ever, is an adequate presentation of the mixture of culture and ruthlessness, the virtit in the Machiavellian sense, which was s6 marked a feature in Italian life during the period under con- sideration. But no one wlio has visited Venice can fail to appreciate the skill and sympathy with which Mrs. Turnbull as handled her theme.
There is a good deal of cleverness and a good deal of dubious haste in The Aristocrats, which purports to be the account, given in letters, of a certain Lady Helen Pole's visit to the Adiron- dacks in the company of her invalid brother and elder sister. Bertie, the brother, a consumptive Duke, has been ordered to try the pure air of Boulder Lake as a last resource, and a Mr. Rogers, one of Lady• Helen's numerous admirers—she is lovely and twenty-six—lends his camp for the occasion. The humours of this at fresco life furnish the pleasantest moments in the book. There is an amusing episode in which a policeman, who acts as porter on the arrival of the visitors, refuses a shilling with the remark, "You'll find we can help a lady out here for nothing," and finally shakes hands at part- ing. Then there is a "help," who declares that she must leave them, as it makes her flesh crawl to say "Your Grace" and not eat with the family, but admits that she would like to speak to a" Dook "first. Another phase of American society is cleverly drawn in the circle of American authors, whose desire to be aristocratic—hence the title of the book—i.e., "elegantly correct and proper," meets scant favour with Lady Helen; indeed, it must be admitted that both she and her brother are outspoken to the verge of coarseness. We are not, therefore, surprised when, wearying of this rarefied atmosphere of pro- priety, Lady Helen accepts the invitation of another American suitor to visit his sister at Chipmunk Lake. Here various lively episodes, adventures, and flirtations en- liven these letters. A Mrs. Coward seems inclined to annex Lady Helen's chief admirer, and when she rejoins the debilitated Duke, now in much improved health, she finds the same "hideously attractive" lady has taken possession of him. The end of the book is somewhat obscure. The Countess of Edge and Ross, to whom the letters are ad- dressed, is afflicted by an unpleasing husband, but on the last page she telegraphs that he is dead and that she is coming over to join her friend in America. At any rate, we are spared the contest between the Peeress and the American lady for the tuberculous Duke. The Aristocrats, in fine, falls rather between two stools. It is clever without being exhila- rating, and candid without being outrageous, or, let us say, "Elizabethan."
Mr. Eden Phillpotts is faithful to the West Country in his new story, a wholesome and unpretending romance of rural life amid the Devon orchards where the cider springs from the "red earth." The secret of Sibella's gentle parentage and the impasse created by her engagement to a farmer's son form the sentimental interest of the plot of The Good Red Earth, while by way of humorous relief we have the charac- teristic talk of old Thomasin and the oily eloquence of the pedlar-parson, Alpheus Newte. Altogether this pleasant picture of Devonshire life some fifty years back may be cordially recommended on its own merits. To the present reviewer it proved a most admirable corrective to the impres- sions created by the study in emancipated decadence noted above.
In the old-fashioned romance of incident, the hero was primarily impelled by chivalrous motives and achieved affluence only by accident. It is characteristic of the times we live 'in that the prime object of the hero of Pacifico, a spirited tale of contemporary adventure, should be financial. Yet .Quiptry is so mixed up with self-interest in the wild-cat scheme on which he embarks that tlie susceptibilities of the idealist are not likely to suffer ,from the perusal of this 'lively 431_ tatsy._ The scene is laid almost entirely in the imaginary Republic of Santa 'Calestina, an island in the Mediterranean,
where the enterprising concession-hunter finds himself confronted with various embarrassing manifestations of medirevalism. The plot is far too complicated to be even sketched in a short notice, but we may content ourselves with saying that the author shows ingenuity and energy alike in contriving his entanglements and in extricating his hero from their midst. The circumstances in which Captain Charlton is forced to assume the role of brigand-chief, and the results of that choice, are exciting enough to satisfy the most voracious appetite for perilous adventure amid picturesque surroundings.
The Eternal Choice is a curiously mixed specimen of the theological novel. The hero, Reginald Fanshawe, is a young Orford man, the favourite nephew of an enormously wealthy philanthropist of pronounced Evangelical views. Himself a convinced believer, he falls in love with the daughter of an agnosticprofessor, and is confronted with the alternative of sacri- ficing either his lady-love or £90,000 a year. True love carries the day, and in the long run Fanshawe is rewarded for his fidelity by regaining the goodwill of his uncle, and. witnessing the gradual abandonment by his wife of her agnostic attitude. The story is told in the lively, discursive, spasmodic style that Mr. Cooper affects, and the intersection of widely diver- gent strata of modern life—intellectual, fashionable, earnest, and self-indulgent--produces a somewhat chaotic impression, Mr. Cooper is distinctly on the side of the angels, but his logic is not very cogent, nor is his advocacy invariably discreet.
Though Rory Campbell, as he tells us, is a Jacobite with Jacobites, a Whig with Whigs, an Indian with Indians, 'and an American with Americans, yet he is so kindly, humorous, and courageous that we find him a most engaging com- panion wherever he goes. In the Forty-five he and his nephew " Touzle-tap " are members of the Edinburgh Town Guard. They join the Pretender's forces, and after many strange adventures part company for a time, Rory having mounted an English officer's horse, which carries him straight into the lines of the enemy. " Touzle-tap " has a tend resse for a" bonny wee leddy " named Ellice McLean, whose brother pays forfeit with his life for his likeness to the Pretender; but Ellice marries Hector Buchanan, a brother-officer of her lover's, and the war being over, Rory and his nephew set out for America in search of his sister Jean, " Touzle-tap's " mother. The second part of The Curious Career of Roderick Campbell treats of the perils of uncle and nephew amid Red Indians, Canadians, and Frenchmen, Rory turning medicine man—to save his skin—and later on becoming a fur merchant, while "Tousle- tap," falling into the hands of the French, accepts a com- mission in their Army. After the death of Hector Buchanan his widow and children go to live with Rory's sister Jean, the widow of a wealthy Dutchman, and finally the patriarchal devotion of " Touzle-tap," alias Captain G. Forsyth, is rewarded by the hand of his "bonny wee ]eddy." Lovers of the adventurous historical romance will find that Miss McRwraith gives them an excellent run for their money.
Mrs. Musgrave—and her Husband is a powerful and painful story. But it is not a new book, only a new edition, brought out by another publisher, of the volume which appeared half- a-dozen years ago in the "Pioneer Series" of Mr. Heinemann. We mention these facts as there is no indication of them in the present issue.
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