RECENT NOVELS.* IT would be difficult to find a grosser

libel on the name " Christian " than that involved in its use on the title-page of Mr. Hall Caine's new novel. For the Reverend John Storm is not only the Christian of the story; he is repre- sented as Christ-like in his life. And that life, when stripped of its trappings, resolves itself into a long and, in the end, ineffectual struggle against his passion for the woman over whom he has undertaken to exercise a sort of spiritual guardianship. Glory Quayle, the daughter of a Manx clergy- man and a French ladies' maid, is a handsome, vivacious, per- fervid Celt who, wearying of her humdrum life with a fatuously benevolent grandfather and two prim maiden aunts, resolves to becomes hospital nurse in London. She undertakes the journey in company with John Storm, a young curate of aristocratic lineage, who speedily forfeits all claim to her respect by his

• (1.) The Christian. By Hall Caine. London : W. Heinemann.—(2) The Mutable Many. By Robert Barr. London : Methuen and Co.—(3.) The Choir Invisible. By James Lane Allen. London : Macmillan and Clo.—(4.) The Altruist. By Oaida. London: T. Fisher Unwin.—(5.) Lazarus. By Lucas Clem. London: Hutchinson and Co.—(6.) Without Issue. By Henry Creswell. London: Hurst and Blackett.—(7.) Audrey Craven. By May Sinclair. London : William Blackwood and Sons.—(8.) The Chevalier d )Sy El. Levett-Yeata. London: Longaians and Co. inconceivable gaucherie and lack of tact. Glory soon loses her post at the hospital owing to her unconventional ways and disregard of rules, and after various vicissitudes as shop. girl, barmaid, programme-seller, music-hall singer, and society entertainer—maintaining all the while a systematic imposture as to her position in a series of feverish and frothy letters to her unsuspecting relatives—she finally "finds herself" as a great actress. Meantime John Storm, in the course of an equally kaleidoscopic career, has been perpetually intervening and interfering at the psychologically wrong moment. At last, on quitting an Anglican brother- hood, he avows his love and they become engaged. But the abandonment of her brilliant career is too much for Glory,. and when John finally proposes that they should carry on the work of Father Damien together, she reluctantly breaks off the engagement. John Storm immediately takes the triple vow of the brotherhood, and shortly emerges as a sort of nineteenth-century Savonarola, denouncing wickedness in high places, and prophesying the end of the world. His resolution, however, breaks down on seeing Glory in company with an aristocratic admirer on Epsom Downs, and he goes to her rooms to kill her. We spare our readers the ignoble and squalid denouement. It must be said, moreover, that the- effectiveness of the book has been considerably discounted by the long interview with the author which appeared on the eve of its publication in one of the leading daily papers. There Mr. Hall Caine described in considerable detail the manner in which he had collected his materials and, to use the schoolboy phrase, had "mugged up" various subjects of which he was ignorant,—turf terminology, &e. To put it. crudely, Mr. Hall Caine avowed that he was writing of matters of which he knew very little at first hand, and in- ternal evidence corroborates this candid but indiscreet avowal. We cheerfully accept on trust the accuracy of his portraits of music-hall artists and agents, costers and baby-farmers, but in dealing with the aristocracy his method is merely that of the penny novelette writ large. And these glaring errors of taste, this oleographic use of local colour, are only equalled by the extraordinary perversity of the author in holding up. to our admiration in the hero of his romance so tactless, priggish, and hysterical a creature as John Storm.

In The Mutable Many Mr. Robert Barr forsakes the lighter vein of comedy with which he has hitherto been generally associated, for the stern realities of the industrial problem.. His new novel is a story of a strike, or rather of two strikes, in which the author holds the balance with laudable impar- tiality between masters and men. For while the latter are beaten in the long run, the sympathy of the readers inclines far more to the individual representatives of labour than to the iron-willed manager Sartwell. The mancenvring on both sides is well described; the meetings of the men, the argu- ments of the speakers, and above all, the character of Gibbons, the labour leader, alert, ready in debate and resourceful in action, are vigorously and effectively brought before the reader, while a romantic complication of the plot is. introduced in the apparently hopeless attachment of Edward Marston, a clever and ambitious workman, and a member of the Union, for the daughter of his manager. The personal relations thus established between Marston and his employer expose him to misconstruction and violence at the hands of his fellow-strikers, but in the- end he wins his lady-love and is appointed assistant-manager by Sartwell. Herein Mr. Barr has succumbed unduly to the demands of poetic justice, for Marston is represented as a. devoted and convinced Trade-Union man, while the manager has. alwaysfought Trade-Unionism tooth and nail. Still, the book is an interesting and conscientious study of half-a-dozen divergent types of middle-class humanity as affected by the conditions of a labour war. Curiously enough the humorous, or would- be humorous, passages strike us as the weakest things in the book. Barney Hope, the son of one of the proprietors of the works, who is accurately described by the author as a "boisterous cad," is a sheer monstrosity, who would have- inspired repulsion, not affection, in a gentle and well-born girl like Lady Mary Fanshawe, while the history of the creation of his fame as an artist is a piece of broad carica- ture quite out of keeping with the general character of the book. But Mr. Barr is greatly given to strong contrasts: the partners in the firm are timorous men with strong- minded wives, and live in continual dread of their autocratic

manager; while Sartwell himself, a hard utilitarian, is married to a fanatical Puritan of a wife. The rugged York- shireman, Braunt, is a picturesque figure, but the friendship

between his consumptive daughter and the consumptive organist strikes a falsetto note. Lastly, we may utter a word of protest against the cheap cynicism of each sentences as this :—" One of the advantages of a free country is that a man may get quite as drunk on beer as he can on champagne, and at a much less cost. The results are wonderfully similar."

In The Choir Invisible Messrs. Macmillan and Co. have in-

troduced us to a new American writer of real distinction of etyle and delicacy of imagination. The scene is laid in Kentucky just a hundred years back, when the Democratic Societies were agitating for the detachment of that State from the Union. The author has spared no pains to bring before us the physical aspect of the country at the time, and is evidently deeply versed in the contemporary records of the period. In spite of this careful setting, however, the book is disappoint- ing and unconvincing as a historical romance owing to the

sublimated modernity of the principal characters. One would not feel the least surprise if John Gray were to quote Browning, or Jessica Falconer to sing a Lied by Schumann

or Brahma. They are nineteenth-century people to the finger-tips, but, let us hasten to add, they are extremely attractive, interesting, and refined people. Gray is a young schoolmaster of Scoto-Irish descent, settled at Lex- ington, and Jessica Falconer the daughter of a wealthy Virginian married in early youth to a gallant officer, who is

utterly incapable—as a soldier of the period would inevitably have been—of appreciating the nobility and refinement of his wife's character. Major Falconer has built a rough log-house in a clearing near Lexington, where John Gray is a frequent visitor. He falls in love with Mrs. Falconer's

niece, a beautiful but soulless girl, who jilts him for a more eligible suitor, and then John Gray suddenly awakens to the fact that there is only one woman in the world for him, and that is the wife of his friend. How, after a few meetings, though no avowal takes place, John seeks safety in prolonged absence; how, by the irony of fate, he drifts into a marriage when Jessica was already free; and how, in her old age, John's son comes to visit her, bringing

with him a letter in which his father reveals the story of his life,—all this is told with an elevation of sentiment, and a delicately poetical turn of phrase which inclines us to the surmise that "James Lane Allen" is of the same sex as "Charles Egbert Cradock." The main situation bears a sort of family resemblance to that in Thackeray's Esmond, but there the resemblance ceases, for, as we have already observed, the in- terest of The Choir Invisible is entirely detached from its period. Of the primitive element inseparable from the rough Kentucky life of 1795 there is not a trace in the actions or conversations of the high-souled schoolmaster, or the sensitive, fastidious heroine. The book, in short, is marked by beauty of con.

eeption, reticence of treatment, and it has an atmosphere all its own, though indeed that atmosphere is at times almost

too rarefied for the average reader to breathe with comfort. Thus in the very first conversation between John Gray and Jessica, the latter says, "I am as dry as one of the gourds of Confucius." Against these little academicisms, however, may be set many passages in which a fine thought receives adequate, and even poetical, expression. Such, for instance,

is the picture of Jessica in her old age. She was one of the women, says the writer-

" To whom the joy and the sorrow come alike with quietness. For them there is neither the cry of sudden delight nor the cry of sudden anguish. Gazing deep into their eyes, we are reminded of the light of dim churches; hearing their voices, we dream of some minstrel whose murmurs reach us imperfectly through his fortress wall ; beholding the sweetness of their faces, we are touched as by the appeal of the mute flowers ; merely meeting them in the street, we recall the long-vanished image of the Divine Goodness. They are the women who have missed happi- ness and who know it, but having failed of affection, give them- selves to duty."

Ouida as a censor morum is a rather puzzling guide. Only the other day in The .71fassarenee she was lashing the aristocracy for their greed of the good things of life. Now in The Altruist we find her castigating the well-born and well-meaning author of an attempt to break down the barriers of the caste system. Wilfrid Bertram, it is almost unnecessary to remark, is the younger son of a Peer, who runs a Socialist paper, subsists on vegetables, and professes Altruist, Collectivist, Fourierist, Engelist, and Tolstoi-ist principles. He also keeps a valet and consorts with a number of aristocratic and fashionable people who, with abundant provocation, regard him as a fanatical prig. A cousin leaves him a large fortune, but Wilfrid resolves to decline the inheritance, and, by way of carrying out his principles to their logical conclusion, he decides to marry the daughter of a washerwoman. A series of grotesque disillusionments shatter his faith in Socialist ideals. His protiges fail him one by one. His Hyde Park orator is imprisoned for drunkenness ; his editor shows the cloven hoof; his valet robs him right and left, and defends his action on Socialist principles ; the washerwoman tells him home truths, and her daughter boldly declares her preference for the young man round the corner. This, it should be stated, was after Bertram had told her "what I feel for you is not love but respect, esteem, the sweetness of fulfilled duty, the means of proving to the world the sincerity of my sociology." Now and again we get a refreshing flash of the old Onida, but in the main The Altruist is an acid little satire, the effect of which is vitiated from end to end by the extravagance of its portraiture and the inaccuracy of its details.

Novels and plays based more or less closely on the life of our Lord are much in vogue at the present moment, a. typical instance being furnished by Lucas Cleeve's Lazaraa. The book is well intentioned and reverent in tone, if not always in expression—we read, for example, on p. 59, in a passage describing the thoughts of Caiaphas "What a slap in the face it would be to Pontius Pilate should he be forced to condemn the Nazarene to death ! "—but it labours under one fatal drawback,—the constant contrast between the fluent, undistinguished diction of the author and the passages from the Gospels copiously interspersed in the dia- logue. The New Testament narrative is followed pretty closely in its essentials, the most noticeable addition being the unrequited attachment of the daughter of Caiaphas for Lazarna, but at every turn we are confronted by some gratuitous gloss or realistic expansion. Thus we are told that when some of the Jews took stones and.hurled them at Christ, the Nazarene continued to address them "fearlessly, and with an indifference that brought a shout of admiration from the Roman soldiers standing round in waiting for Caiaphas's message to arrest him." Again, on p. 303 the author writes : "Round a blazing fire in the big hall leading into the court- yard sat the servants of Annas ; for part of the daily scheme of Annas's career of hypocrisy was to be generous to his retainers." The embroidery on the narrative of the Last Supper affords an even more conspicuous example of the author's lack of reticence, while the words of Jesus on p. 259 are followed by the succeeding comment : "Clear, distinct, like drops of twinkling water, fell the words, piercing as nails, leaving no doubt, no want of emphasis behind them, enhanced by all the mystery of an unseen voice ; but they fell as water falls on rocks, but to splash up again and glance off." In spite of a good deal of this inane rhapsodising and the mawkishness of its sentiment, the book is a decided improvement on Mr. Wilson Barrett's The Sign of the Cross.

In Mr. Normandale, sen., the central figure, though not the hero, of Without Issue, Mr. Henry Creswell has given 1111 a curious and interesting picture of the demoralising effects of the process known as "waiting for dead men's shoes." Though his elder brother was disinherited by his father, only a life interest in the estate has been left to himself, with a reversion in the event of the elder brother's heir predeceasing his uncle. This same elder brother and his son have long been missing, and Normandale, brooding over his disappointed hopes, develops into a miserly recluse, consumed by an unnatural desire for positive information of the death of his brother and nephew. Finally, when that information is forthcoming, it turns out that the missing brother had married again, and eventually his eon by the second wife succeeds to the pro- perty. This is the main motive of the book, for the love episode between young Normandale and Miss Heriot is of the slenderest interest, but it is complicated by the unscrupulous ambition of a certain Dr. Dorchester-Gibbs, who calls in the aid of science to get rid of a possible rival in the affecitions of the daughter of his patron and benefactor. The book suffers from its dual nature, being half "mystery," half character- analysis. We cannot help thinking that if it had been alto-

gether developed on the former lines, the results would have been far more satisfactory. You cannot combine the methods of Gaborian and Henry James with any prospect of success.

Miss May Sinclair is so well equipped for success in the domain of fiction—she writes with such confidence, ease, point, and even wit, her dialogue is so alert and her character- isation so subtle—that one cannot help wishing she had chosen a more genial theme. One resents the devotion of gifts capable of really exhilarating results to so sorry a task as the dissection of a vain woman's petty and shallow soul, although the operation is performed with masterly skill, and even sympathy. For tl,ere are moments when Audrey's helpless- ness, when pitted against stronger natures and robuster intellects than her own, begets—as they are intended to—a sense of compassion in the reader. Moreover, she was cruelly ill-used by the fashionable novelist, who turned his flirtation into "copy ; " and her ultimate marriage with a chinless county- gentleman who made a small fortune out of model goose-farm- ing must have partaken somewhat of the nature of a Nemesis. Audrey's aim in life—she was an orphan heiress of twenty- five—is accurately described as the search for a revelation. "She had no idea of the precise form it was to take, but had never wavered in her belief that it was there, waiting for her, as it were, round a dark corner." She had both beauty and charm, but was at the same time selfish, insincere, and even mendacious. The story is concerned with her flirtations, engagements, and relations with several men,—a rough, im- pulsive child of Nature, a brilliant young artist, a cynical literary man, and a High Church clergyman. Audrey's butterfly wings are somewhat severely scorched in one of these episodes, but in the main the mischief she works is far greater than the harm which befalls her. She makes com- plete havoc of the happiness of the child of Nature, besides robbing a good woman of his love, nearly wrecks the career of the artist, and drives the clergyman into the Church of Rome. If Audrey Craven be a first work, as we gather from the title-page, it is an achievement which augurs most prosperously for the further fruits of Miss Sinclair's pen.

Mr. Levett-Yeats proves himself in The Chevalier d'Auriae, as in his earlier work, The Honour of Savelli, an expert wielder of the magic wand of adventurous romance. His hero is again a stout-armed soldier of fortune, intrepid, yet indiscreet, whose sudden attachment to a beautiful widow, a ward of the Court of Henry of Navarre, leads him into a veritable labyrinth of adventures and perils, with the King himself for a rival. The only fault we have to find with this stirring and wholesome story is that the uninterrupted succession of exciting incidents is apt to grow fatiguing. The interpola- tion of a few placid episodes would have lent welcome relief to the dazzling flash and flicker of cold steel. The historical personages introduced are spiritedly sketched, especially the King, whose statecraft in dealing with the Chevalier's in- formation about the plot is one of the beet touches in the book. Altogether, when one bears in mind, as the author tells us in his modest preface, that the story was written in the rare moments of leisure that an Indian official can afford, with few books to refer to, it is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration from the versatility and imaginative force of the writer.