TOTIIE'S TRIAL.*

THIS is a very pleasant little novelette, not particularly clever, and certainly not particularly natural as to its plot—" not to put too fine a point upon it," very unnatural—but with both a liveli- ness and a refinement of feeling and style, and with a true reli- giousness yet an unaffected gaiety of spirit, that make one enjoy. the book, in spite of its literary slightness and, we may almost say, the absurdity of its incidents. Not that any one of them taken separately is impossible, nor that more than one or two are highly improbable ; but that they are so remarkable in their coincidence, and crowd upon us so rapidly, that we are unable to resist a smile at the authoress's fertility of youthful invention. First, we work up-hill, along a steep gradient of trouble after trouble, cheered on the road, however, by the personal comforts and luxuries with which wealth surrounds us, by the quiet beauty of the country, and the cheerful resignation of our fellow-travellers ; but, arrived at the summit, we quicken our pace, leave the troubles far behind, and whisk past delightful surprises in such quick succession that the brief distance to the terminus appears like a confused dream of joy.

We cannot consent to consider Tottie—we learn towards the end of the book that this is a pet name for Janet—by any means the heroine of the story, nor her trial—a brief engagement to a gambler and a murderer—its central incident. Her Aunt Nelly is clearly the personage, both because her trials are the severest and most permanent, and because she is the earthly providence who showers blessings on all around, and arranges their pose before the curtain falls. It is she who adopts three children in succession ; who surrenders two of them to fathers who unex- pectedly turn up from Australia and India, and the third to her own estimable parish clergyman. It is she upon whose husband a burning house falls ; she who dreams what is going to pass ; who, in her dream, receives the infant from his arms ere he plunges again into the flames never to return alive ; who sees his ghost after she awakens, and knows what has happened ere she faints. It is she who, with the rescued infant, pursues 'Tottie's cruel father and villainous lover to Homburg, Baden, and Vienna to snatch her from their clutches ; who lodges, by a strange acci- dent with the German grandmother of her adopted babe, and leaves him in the grand-maternal arms—unconscious, but of course presentient of their relation to their burden—while she prosecutes her journey. It is she who runs against Tottie at Baden, and having accidentally run against Tottie's lover also— enjoying his long vacation—enlists him in her service, and finally unearths her game in the great Austrian capital. It is she who beards the lion in his den in company with the murderous and cowardly wolf, and who, when a kind providence has upset a carriage and killed the wolf on the spot, nurses the injured lion—relieved from the toils spread for him by the wolf— into physical and moral health, hastened by the timely death of his rich, but low-born second wife. Again, in the other depart- ment of the tale, it is she who comforts the mother and sister,— who, under a feigned name because of the disgrace, by chance come to lodge near her—of the unhappy young man who lies in prison under suspicion of murder because he nobly prefers to sacrifice his innocent family rather than betray his uncle, the aforesaid wicked wolf. It is she who tells them of the uncle's death—with the details of the murder he had committed, signed by himself, in his pocket-book—and of the nephew's consequent release ; and when that nephew comes home and brings with him an unhappy friend from India who has lost his child, it is she who discovers that the friend's child had been lodging close to the friend's mother and sister, and was the very infant given into her charge by her noble and dying husband ; and it is she-who restores him to his father's arms, and receives from Germany the loving grand- mother in whose house at Baden she and the infant had happened • Totties 251al. By Kay Span. London : Strahan and Co.

to lodge. Then, also, it is at her house that her two nieces— her adopted daughters—meet their future husbands, and from her house that the double marriage takes place. It is her own medical man who wants a partner just when her widowed brother wishes to find a country practice ; her own house that wants occupants now that she, a childless widow, is deserted by her three adopted children ; and consequently it is she herself who receives her brother and his large family and takes care of them all. Moreover, it is in her house that everyone shows a tendency to weak action of the heart, that her aged mother has three very ill-timed but unavoidable strokes, and finally breathes her last, with that inconsiderateness so characteristic of fatal illness, just when her daughter ought, if she is to save Tottie from the wolf, to lose not a moment in pursuit.

No doubt, Miss Kay Span—for we take our story to be the work of a young lady—goes in boldly for the marvellous, on the principle that truth is stranger than fiction, and that the stranger, therefore, the fiction, the greater its resemblance to truth. It may be open to question whether this is as true of a cluster of incidents within narrow limits of time and space as of a single one. We will leave Kay Span

to judge, and proceed to point out another slight defect. It is a want of clearness of statement. We cannot find out who people are

till it is too late to have clear ideas. There is a reluctance tb give the surnames, so that the many groups of Christian names occurring in the domestic gossips of Aunt Nally and her friends are confusing. Neither Tottie's Christian nor surname is revealed till her father, who had disappeared, returns, like the would-be Sir Roger Tichborne, after fifteen years, to claim his own, and upset all existing arrangements. Nor do we, till about the same time, learn that Aunt Nelly is Mrs. Fortescue, though we know that she is Mrs. Algernon Somebody. And only once do we hear the family name of herself and her numerous brothers, when the

nurse calls to her that her mother, Mrs. Cunliffe, is dying. Again, it is made clear to us that Mrs. Algernon Fortescue is residing in

the old ancestral home of her brothers ; but this is an insult to our knowledge of the English law of primogeniture. We are bound to conclude that Mr. Algernon Fortescue purchased the property from the assignees of his ruined father-in-law. All these things, however, should be told us by the authoress herself, as the per- sonages of her story cannot reasonably be expected to lug in family surnames and family history—known to them all—for our convenience.

Nevertheless it is a pleasant book,—all the pleasanter that we are betrayed into so many smiles at the happy satisfaction of all our desires just at their intenaest moments. The family love of the numerous brothers and sisters ; the way in which they rut& to one another's assistance, and seek, with such confidence of find- ing it, one another's sympathy ; the gentle tact of the deli- cate sister Annie, disciplined by the cares of a large family ; the generosity and common-sense and courage of the more lively Nelly, arguing with Tottie's cruel father, soothing and cheering the poor child, or influencing and improving the sullen,.

discontented, self-occupied Joanna, till she is softened into an, active, cheerful, useful woman ; and the patient, forgiving, loving grandmother, so tranquilly bearing her helplessness, and waiting for her release. But although this is the bright spirit of the book, it is difficult to find a single passage particularly illustrative of it. There is an almost complete absence of dialogue, the very brief tale being, as we have indicated with sufficient plainness, so crowded with a rapid succession of events. The chapter describ- ing the night of the fire, the dream and the apparition, is both. graphic and touching, but cannot be broken into for quotation ; and we will therefore give a passage which includes, perhaps, the most lively conversation to be found, and one which, at the same

time, best illustrates the characters of the speakers, and introduces- a greater number of the dramatis personx than any other. The

disagreeable Joanna has just arrived, invited by the kind-hearted and hospitable Aunt Nelly, at the suggestion of Aunt Annie, and with the hearty consent of Uncle Algernon, because she had been left alone by the relations with whom she resided, and to whom she never returns. They are at dinner the first evening. The- book is in the autobiographical form, and the writer is Aunt.

Nelly

'How does Eva get on with her painting?' I asked Joanna, at dinner.. —' Pretty well.'—' She excels in it, I have heard.'—' Yes, I suppose she, does ; but I don't care for her style.'—' What style is it?'—' Figures.'— ' She sent a picture to the Exhibition last year, which was spoken of highly, we heard.'—` Yes, there was a great fuss made about it:—The subject seemed distasteful, so I tried another. You ride a good deal, do you not ?'—'Yes; I am obliged to.'—' Don't you enjoy galloping over those moors ? I think a moorland ride is so delicious,—the pure smells,. the fresh breezy air, the feeling of freedom.'—'I hate the moors.'—' You like our lanes and hedgerows better? They are more pleasing to the

eye, certainly, and one is glad of the shade in summer; spring and autumn are the times for the moors. But one has such variety in the country,—it is inexhaustible.'—'I think country life is the most weari- some thing.'—Annie gave a comic glance at me, as much as to say, Isn't she hopeless?' and Algernon struck You are not going to try and persuade us that you prefer London to Westmoreland? I could not sit by and hear such treason.'—' I don't like London, either,' said Ioanna.—' What do you prefer, then ? Surely not the horrors attendant upon a residence in a little country town? the small people, the small gossip, the perpetual inquisition under which one lives ?'—' There is that everywhere.'—' Yes, to some extent. Not so much so in the country, though, where people live more apart. And it always seems to me that one may live as retired a life in London as one chooses.'—' Have you pleasant neighbours ? ' I asked.—' None that I care for. My cousins visit about a good deal ; but I don't,—I dislike You are fond of reading? '= Not particularly.'—' Of course you have a book- club ? It is an institution in the country.'—' Yes ; but one can never get the books regularly, and when they do come, there is nothing that one wants.'—' Ah ! we have long since taken refuge in Mudie.'—' A new box came this morning,' said Annie. You must look through the books,

and see what you can find to amuse you.' joanna was really diverting. She could not endure Tennyson's 'non- sense ;' she did not believe half that travellers wrote ; essays and meta- physics were only intended for men, and it was affectation in women to pore over them; Miss Yonge's books were all alike ; biographies were dull ; magazines were the most aggravating things ; and as for novels, she disapproved of them. What did she like ?—' Have you any pets at the Grange ?' I asked, in despair.—' Animals, do you mean ? My cousins have pets of all sorts. I can't bear them. I think they are a perfect nuisance.' My poor unconscious, innocent Angora, winking and blink- ing there on the rug ! Annie came to the rescue. Do sing to us, Joanna. I know you sing.'—' I never sing now.' She turned away, and opened a book of photographs.—' I have not seen one of you, Joanna dear,' said Annie.—' I have never been takon,' was the answer.—' You stand alone, then, in these days of "Give me your carte-de-visite."'— 'No one has ever asked me for mine,' said Joanna, somewhat bitterly.— ' Then let me be the first to do so,' I said. 'My hook is not complete without you. We will drive to Drayton to-morrow, if it is fine,—there is a very good photographer there.' For the first time Joanna looked pleased. I left her talking with Annie, who would draw her out if any one could, and went to sit with my mother, my dear, patient mother. It was quite a refreshment to go into her room, and see that sweet serene face, always wearing the same undisturbed peace, and hear that gentle weak voice, never fretful or querulous ; to find her always restful and happy, thankful for every little thing that was done for her, and only troubled at the thought of troubling others. If anything could cure a discontented spirit, surely such a sight should, I thought, as I sat by the bed, with my dear mother's hand in mine, in the dim firelight, which she liked so wen."