RECENT NOVELS.* IT is an easy matter to pick holes
in Mr. Baring-Gonld's method,—to point out, for example, that the language and sentiments of his characters are rarely suitable to their social position or true to the period chosen. It is easy to do all this, but it is difficult to resist the spell of his sombre yet glowing imagination. In his new story, Guavas the Tinner—a tale of the Devonshire Wineries in the time of Elizabeth—he has, as on so many previous occasions, turned his historical knowledge of a local industry to excellent and poetic account, giving ns a vivid and curiously minute picture of the primitive methods of tin- mining and the rude laws of the Stannaries. Guavas Eldad, the hero, as a Cornishman and foreigner, is jealously regarded by the Devonshire tinners, and his rival, Dickon Rawle, entraps him into violating the Staamary laws. The story opens with a grim scene in which Guavas is discovered bound to a post, with his hand transfixed by a knife, unable to defend himself against the attack of his own tame wolf which has tasted its master's blood. He is released by the daughter of the " bargmaster " who had sentenced him, a beautiful witch of a girl, who enslaves him against his better judgment. He repels her enchantments, however, and earns her undying resent- ment by preferring the gentle daughter of a neighbour, who nurses him in his sickness and gives him the clue to a hidden lode of ore worked by her dead father. Mr. Baring-Gould's knowledge of the county and his familiarity with the strange superstitions of the district have seldom been more felici- tously employed than in this strange romance. The episode of the "soul-cake "—in which a stranger coming to the house in which the dead miner is laid out is bidden to "eat his sins" in the form of the cake laid on the corpse's breast—the un- canny fight between the man and the wolf; the imprisonment of Guavas in the haunted mine ; and the horrible scene which describes the engulphing of his rival in Fox-tor mire,—are all treated with singular power and impressiveness. Like every- thing that Mr. Baring-Gould writes, this story is quite out of
• (1.) Guavas the Tinner. By S. Baring-Gould. London : Methuen and Co. --(2.) A Capful e Bails. By David Christie Murray. London: Cheat, and Windus.—(3.) The Career of Claudia. By Frances Mary Peard. London : Bentley and Son.—(4.) Charity Chance. By Walter Raymond. London : Bliss, Sands, and 00.—(5.) Maria Lisa. By Bate Doudlsi Wiayin. London : Gay and Bird.—(5.1 Margaret Moore, Spinster : her Love Story. By A. W. Buckland. London Ward and Downey.—(7.) Ti,. Green Book; or, freedom Under the Snow. By Maxims Jokai. London : Jerrold and Sons.—(8.) Edda Strafford. By Baatriie Risraden. London : William Blackwood and dons.
the beaten track of fiction. One does not pause to think whether it is in the least true to life or not. Most novelists nowadays aim at reproducing the effect of photography. Mr. Baring-Gould is a wizard who transports us into a. region of visions, often lurid and disquieting, but always full of interest and enchantment.
Mr. Christie Murray's novel, like that 'of Mr. Baring- Gould, is also concerned with an industry. But that is their only resemblance, beyond the fact that they are both striking books. A Capful o' Nails is in the main a novel with a purpose, its aim being to denounce the grinding tyranny of the middlemen in the nail-making industry. The scene is laid in the Black Country some forty or fifty years back, and the author, while admitting that many of the abuses described are now removed, declares that the truth even to-day is "stern and mournful" Whether this be so or not, the story as it stands is intensely tragic. The hero is a poor nail- maker, goaded by injustice into adopting the calling of a paid agitator, and doomed in consequence to be envied, misunder- stood, calumniated, and done to death by the very men whose cause he had espoused. Mr. Murray makes the scene of his story live before us with the reek of the brick-kilns and the everlasting tinkle of the nailmakers' anvils, and most of his portraits bear the unmistakable impress of veracity upon them. John Salter is admirably drawn ; even better are the pictures of his devoted wife, and their benefactors, Mr. Allardyce, the chivalrous Quixotic curate, and the two brothers Brat:abler, the one a good-hearted but narrow- minded Philistine, and the other a kindly eccentric— obviously drawn from the life—after Dickens's own heart. The narrative is put in the mouth of the hero's son, a little boy at the time of the events described, and the child's point of view is moat admirably indicated throughout. We have only to add that the pathos of the tale is accentuated by the humorous touches in which it abounds.
The reaction against what a German critic calls the "emancipation novel" is already manifesting itself in a variety of ways. The most savage and ferocious of these counterblasts have been written by women. The method adopted by Miss Peard, however, in The Career of Claudia, is none the less effective for its abstinence from invective. Her attitude is rather one of gentle irony tempered with com- passion. Claudia is a highly educated young lady, dowered with good looks and a competence, an orphan, and immensely impressed with the necessity that is incumbent upon her to adopt a profession and live her life. She has accordingly been trained as a landscape gardener, and elects to come and live with three cousins, old maids, in the country. And being a frank and engaging young person, in spite of her self- absorption and lack of a sense of humour, she is socially in great request, and makes a speedy conquest of a chivalrous, though not very intellectual young country gentleman. Claudia is only annoyed on discovering the state of his feelings. She is quite unable to appreciate his devotion to his invalid father or his other sterling merits, and prefers the society of a very clever, attractive, and profoundly selfish lady-killer, to whom she becomes engaged. Throughout the story Miss Peard has contrived, with rare skill, to illustrate the entire inadequacy of the higher education, though rein- forced by sincerity, earnestness, and courage, to cope with the weapons wielded by men and women of the world. Claudia's extrication from her false position is excellently contrived, and Miss Peard is to be congratulated on having provided an ending to the story which is at once happy and natural. The discomfiture of the egotistic lover is not the least enjoyable feature in this very charming and sympathetic novel.
The real heroine of Charity Chance, Mr. Walter Raymond's graceful idyll of the Western Coast is not the young girl who fills the title-role. Charity Chance has been adopted by a rich old maiden lady, in whose crippled frame is lodged a spirit of rare and exquisite nobility. It is the great wish of her heart that Charity should marry her nephew, and the girl, though far from reciprocating his ardent affection, consents, out of gratitude to her benefactress. At this juncture a friend of her lover's comes to stay with him, a young poet of the most unbridled concert and preciosity. Mr. Raymond is not very clear in indicating how Graham Poltimore, a healthy young Philistine, ever became familiar with such a peculiarly odious prig. The fetish-worship of intellect might account for it ; but it is rather too bad of the author to make Charity, a high-spirited and generous girl, fall in love with this miserable literary mountebank. Her infatuation leads to the inevitable catastrophe. Miss Graham—her benefactress— exasperated by the folly of her protegee, tells her the story of her past,—that she was a workhouse foundling. Charity, overwhelmed by humiliation, informs the poet, who, with characteristic promptitude, departs for London, promising that he will think of her and write to her. So Charity goes away for a while to become a governess, returning after some months to Miss Graham, when the latter has been ruined by the speculations of her brother-in-law. The constancy of her lover is duly rewarded, and the story ends with a chime of marriage-bells. The plot is neither strong nor convincing, but Mr. Raymond has real distinction of style, and the sensitive delicacy of the old crippled lady's nature is por- trayed in a spirit of reverence and chivalry rare in modern analysts of character.
Since the death of Miss Alcott, Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin has reigned without a rival as the most sympathetic and acute American delineator of the joys and sufferings of child-life. Her new story is wholly worthy of her great reputation, and we can hardly give it greater praise. The story of Harm Lisa, a poor little half-witted girl adopted by Mrs. Grubb, an irresponsible humanitarian, and entrusted with the charge of the household neglected by her mistress, is told with admirable tenderness and charm. One would like to think that the portrait of Mrs. Grubb, a female " crank " of the deepest dye, was overdrawn, but the daily records of the doings and speechifying of American clubwomen which appear in the "Woman's World" columns of the American papers, certainly bear out Mrs. Wiggin's merciless indictment. Mrs. Grubb is not a bad or a cruel woman by any means. It was simply that individuals never interested her ; she cared for nothing but humanity. Mrs. Grubb's enthusiasm and her hobbies are described and analysed with that keen sense of the ridiculous which renders Mrs. Wiggin's books such eacellent reading apart from their ethical value. There is genuine fun as well as poignant pathos in this beautiful little story, the closing scene of which is handled with a gracious tenderness that recalls the best work of the late Mrs.. Ewing.
There is an excellent balance between form and matter in Miss Buckland's homely romance of a hundred years ago, the simple, unstudied style being exactly attuned to the character of the young country gentlewoman who acts as the narrator. It is a simple tale of a girl's infatuation for a smooth-spoken, handsome scoundrel, who in the issue marries her younger sister and wrecks the happiness of the entire family. Captain Leslie is, indeed, as unprincipled a villain as we have encountered in the realm of fiction for some time past, but his villainy is well matched by the Virtue and devotion of Margaret's other suitor, the• susceptible but chivalrous old parson. The scene is mainly hda in the country, and preserves an air of rural simplicity ,through- out, except for the lively Sketches of a visit to Bath at the time when the great Herschel still divided his allegiance between Urania and Melpomene. The story suffers from being carried over too long a period, and tragical incidents are multiplied with depressing frequency towards the close. None the less it is an interesting as well as wholesome picture of domestic life in England at the end of the last century.
In its panoramic width of outlook, its inexhaustible fertility of invention and barbaric splendour of colouring, Minnie Jokai's great novel challenges comparison with Tolstoi's War and Peace—a work which treats of nearly the same period—and does not suffer from the comparison. The method adopted is much the same ; there is no continuity of narrative, but a succession of brilliant tableaux, in which •the social and political aspects of Russian life under the Czar Alexander L are successively exhibited. The Green Book may best be described as a semi-historical romance, which hai for its aim the presentment, in all its conflicting and 'varying forms, of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the early decades of the present century. Out of a host of striking person- alities—many of them historical—half a dozen emerge into Bpecial prominence. Such are Zeneida Bmarinen, the Finnish prima donna, at once the favourite of, the Czar and the heart and soul- of the revolutionary movement, a modern Cleopatra, not nntinged 'with generous and heroic instincts; Prince
Ghedimin, her lover, an honourable and valorous aristocrat, torn asunder by the conflicting claims of duty and sentiment; Krizsanowski, the noble-hearted Pole; Galban, the supple, unscrupulous Court spy ; Pushkin, the unstable, brilliant poet; and the Czar Alexander himself. To read this remark- able book is like witnessing a magnificent Oriental pageant. As a study of the Slavonic temperament it is of enthralling interest, while as a mere manifestation of literary ability it takes rank with the great novels of the century. It only re- mains to be added that Mrs. Waugh's translation is vigorous and fluent.
Miss Harraden has turned her recent visit to California to ex- cellent literary account in her new volume, Hilda Strafford, the conditions of life in that region, social and climatic, furnishing her with an admirably appropriate milieu for the tragic romance which occupies the greater part of her book. Robert Strafford, a young Englishman driven by delicacy to seek health over- seas, has taken a ranche in California, and after a couple of years his betrothed cornea out to marry him. He is himself nervous as to the result of an experiment which involves a con eiderable sacrifice on the part of a clever, handsome girl, and his misgivings are only too surely fulfilled. Hilda is a mixed character, high-spirited and courageous, but lacking in sympathy and tenderness. For a while all goes well, but her loyalty to her husband is not proof against the inroads of nostalgia, and in a fit of uncontrollable impatience she upbraids him for condemning her to a life of exile. Robert dies suddenly, broken-hearted by the blow, and the climax of the story is reached in the situation that arises between his widow and his best friend. The latter is at once indignant with Hilda, filled with sympathy for her remorse, and fascinated by her energetic and commanding nature. It is a delicate situation, handled with admirable skill and judgment. In the end Ben Overleigh's loyalty to his dead friend triumphs, and Hilda returns to England. "The Remittance Man," the short story which completes the volume, is a charming sketch of the estrangement and reconciliation of two young English settlers. The book is in the minor key throughout, but there is nothing gratuitous about Miss Harraden's melancholy. It springs naturally and sincerely from the delineation of a character in which the sense of exile is never dormant.;
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