BOOKS.
RECENT NOVELS.* FOR sheer relaxation there is nothing to beat a really good Irish story, and the reader who fails to enjoy The Nugents of Carri- conna must be a person of very peculiar sensibilities, or rather, of very peculiar want of sensibility. The book is thoroughly bright ; the characters live on the surface of their nature with a frank simplicity which makes us at home with them at once ; and yet though we are at home, it is in such a different world from the one in which we habitually live, that it has not only the charm of homeliness, but the differing yet equally potent charm of strangeness as well. A promising opening is a capital thing in a novel, and Mr. Tighe Hopkins's book opens admirably. Anthony Nugent, of Carriconna, whose acquaint- ance we make at the breakfast-table, is the representative of a long line of Nugents, whose varying talents have been con- sistently devoted to the dispersion rather than the accumu- lation of wealth ; and their endeavours have been so successful, that Anthony's own experience has been an experience of poverty to a description of which the softening epithet "genteel" would be altogether inappropriate. Nor is he the man to redeem the fallen fortunes of his race, for farming happens to be his sole accomplishment, and as a farmer it is his characteristically Irish habit " to consider inherited land as a responsible creature which ought to go on producing in an automatic way, whether it were cared for or not. If anything went wrong with the crops or the cattle, that was their affair, and not his." From the conversation at the breakfast-table, we learn in a deliciously amusing way that the days of Anthony's poverty are ended, for a brother who has died in Australia has left him a fortune, and his first plan for the employment of his new wealth is equal in oddity to his views of the moral responsibility of land and live stock. " Ye'll laugh at me, I know ye will," he says to the lively Lady Kitty ; " but listen now. I'm after planning to put up a great tele- scope on the top here ; and I'll turn astronomer, and study the stars ; and I wouldn't be one bit surprised if I made discoveries that '11 do great good to the world, for ye see I'll come fresh to the work, knowing nothing at all about it. What d' ye say to that now, me Lady Kitty ?" Lady Kitty has a great deal to say, for she enters into the project with enthusiasm ; and as it is clear that Mr. Nugent will need a guide to the mysteries both of the telescope and the stellar world, she suggests that he should advertise for an instructor. " Don't have a man," says this wily young lady ; " he'll steal all your discoveries for himself. You must have one of those clever girls who take degrees at colleges. Advertise for her, and she'll come directly. She'll come in hundreds, I shouldn't wonder." She does come in hundreds ; and the successful candidate, who wins by a fluke, is Mrs. Lytton, a young widow whom the reader knows to be the daughter of Anthony's dead brother Kedagh, disinherited and disowned by him on account of a marriage which he disap- proved. Mrs. Lytton, with her recently purchased astro- nomical text-book and instrument-maker's catalogue, is established at Carriconna without any one suspecting her identity ; and it will be seen that the situation is one which in capable hands might be turned to very good account. The reader is not long in discovering that the hands of Mr. Tighe Hopkins are very capable indeed ; and the story of the ill- fated telescope, which is really the pivot upon which the action of the novel revolves, is not only a most delightful and original story in itself, but it is told with so much force, freshness, and prevailing humour, not without a few touches of really powerful pathos, that its success may be regarded as certain. Miss Mabel Robinson's novel, A Woman of the World, is a story which has both power and beauty, and which is artisti-
• (1.) The Nugents of Carriconna. By Tighe Hopkins. 3 vole. London Ward and Downey.—(2.) A Woman of the World. By F. Mabel Robinson. 3 vole. London : Smith, Elder, and Co.—(3.) The Burnt Million. By James Payn. 3 vols. London : Chatto and Windas.—(4.) The Miner's Bight. By Rolf Boldrewood. 3 vols. London : Macmillan and Co.—(5.) A Scarlet Stn. By Florenoe Marryat. 2 vols. London : Spencer Blackett.—(3.) Lady Dobbs. By Emily Marion Harris. 2 vols. London : Kagan Paul, Trench, TrUbner, and Co.
°ally a great advance upon the author's previous works, good in many ways as they undoubtedly were ; but those who judge while they enjoy will feel that the intellectual effect of the new book is largely marred by a lack of imaginative consic. tency in the portrait of the heroine. What we mean when we say in colloquial language that a change of circumstances will often produce a change of character, is true enough ; but the language in which we express our meaning is lacking in scientific precision. The real truth accurately expressed is, that one set of surroundings will bring to the front certain elements of character which another set of circumstances has kept in the background, but which have been there all the time ; and though Eugenia Canning never becomes "a woman of the world" in the same sense in which the term can be applied to her sometime rival, Mrs. Ambient, she is presented to us at the close of the third volume as leading and enjoying a kind of life which in any circumstances would have been impossible to the girl whom we learn to know so well in the preceding portion of the story. Not only do we feel this inconsistency, but we are sure that Miss Mabel Robinson feels it also, for Eugenia's marriage to Sir Charles Prendergast, which is her first downward step, is left without even an attempted explanation. In one chapter we see her so strong in her loyalty to the shallow-hearted Donald Jamieson, that she is absolutely blind to the love of the man whom she rightly regards as her truest and best friend, and a few pages farther on she is the promised wife of another man, whom she does not pretend to regard with any warmer feeling than mild esteem, and who is a cold-hearted profligate, utterly unworthy of even that tepid emotion. It is, however, needless to dwell upon this lapse from verisimilitude which is the only serious constructive defect in the book ; and the skill with which Miss Mabel Robinson tells her story, here as elsewhere, will divert the attention of many readers from the weakness of the story itself. In spite of the title of the novel, the central figure is not Eugenia Canning, but Will Harrington ; and when he has once entered into the story, Eugenia is mainly interesting in virtue of her relations with him. Harrington is successful throughout. To paint the portrait of a hero of two-and-twenty who is a hard-working medical student and a Wesleyan Methodist Sunday-school teacher ; who goes about, like a nineteenth-century knight-errant, rescuing distressed damsels and children, and helping mas- culine comrades who have made a mess of it to rescue them- selves ; who has nevertheless plenty of flesh and blood, and is not one bit of a prig, but a simple, wholesome young fellow, is not a particularly easy feat ; but Miss Mabel Robinson performs it with noticeable success. We believe in Harrington as we believe in few heroes of his type—the type of which Daniel Deronda is the best-known representative— and we can accept even his Quixotic marriage to the girl whom Prendergast had betrayed and deserted, because we are made to realise how irresistible to a man of his character and temperament must have been poor Kathy Durrant's silent plea for help and protection. There is true pathos in the
book ; indeed, in the sad third volume, readers who object to being harrowed may feel that there is rather too much of it ; but there is a good deal of humour, and brightness as well, and A Woman of the World must be regarded as an excep- tionally able, interesting, and wholesome novel.
In an age of self-conscious fiction—the fiction of ethical, intellectual, and artistic airs and graces (or disgraces)—there is something wonderfully refreshing in the books of a writer like Mr. James Payn, who has never given a lecture or written a magazine article on the subject of his art, but who just takes it for granted that people in general like an interesting story, and therefore, without any fuss, proceeds to tell one. Of course Mr. Payn, like the rest of us, is sometimes in a good mood for work, and sometimes is a mood that is less good; but he is an artificer who has a thorough knowledge of his tools, and who, because he relies upon this constant knowledge rather than upon intermittent " inspiration," exhibits a noteworthy equality of excellence. It would serve no good purpose to place The Burnt Million either above or below By Proxy or A Confidential Agent, for it would be impossible to justify to the intellect any order of precedence, just as it would be impossible to prove that a leg of mutton is superior to a sirloin of beef, or vice versa : one may have a personal pre- ference for either, but the man with a healthy appetite admits that both are good eating. In the same way,
Mr. Payn's stories are good reading, and we enjoy each of them in turn, thankful for the pleasant story of to- day, and not comparing it grumblingly with the pleasant story of yesterday. In his latest book, Mr. Payn, as usual, sets himself to excite our curiosity concerning the ultimate destination of the great fortune left by Mr. Tremenhere, the great money-lender, to his three daughters, Agnes, Philippa, and Grace. This is the main secret, but there are subsidiary secrets connected with Mr. Tremenhere's death, with the identity of the young man Walter Sinclair, who comes from nowhere, and with the nature of the schemes of that very objectionable person, Mr. Roscoe. Now one mystery is to the front, and now another, and while Mr. Payn is too old a hand to let the actual story get on more quickly, he has by him a store of brisk little incidents which he uses judiciously to give the sense of movement. There is not, of course, anything very substantial in the repast provided in the pages of The Burnt Million, but it is at any rate both appetising and wholesome. Whether Walter Sinclair's treatment of the document that makes him a millionaire justifies the title of the novel, is perhaps a moot point ; but its settlement is not of much consequence.
There is less of consecutive plot-interest in Mr. Rolf Boldre- wood's second story, The Miner's Right, than there was in its predecessor, Robbery Under Arms. Indeed, it may be said to have no actual plot at all, its very slight framework of a love- affair serving merely to enclose and keep together a number of incidents and adventures of early days in the Australian goldfields. The probability is, that a great portion of its contents consists of transcripts from actual experience ; and even when invention supplements or supersedes memory, the plentiful local colour preserves the appearance of reality. Mr. Boldrewood enables us to realise with special vividness those rapid alternations of hope and depression which are such essential features in the life of the gold-seeker, and which tend to produce moral and social conditions, rare in communities where existence is of a more humdrum type. The fact is, that in such a life as the life depicted here, both certain virtues and certain vices have a chance of exploiting themselves such as they seldom get in more familiar and commonplace con- ditions; and the material at the command of a writer like Mr. Boldrewood, who really knows his facts, and can speak almost as one native and to the manner born, is therefore richer in possibilities of effective contrast than is that of the ordinary novelist. Men who in London or Birmingham or Liverpool would be simply good fellows, have in such a life an oppor- tunity of becoming heroes ; and on the other hand, the baser qualities of human nature are likely to display themselves with an unashamed nakedness. Perhaps the story of the trial, which occupies the early part of the third volume, shows Mr. Boldrewood at his best, as a master of graphic and effective description ; but there is so much brightness and vigour everywhere, that it is difficult to lay one's finger upon any special passage and assign a preference. The Miner's Right certainly forsakes the lines of the ordinary novel, and may therefore be depreciated by some ordinary novel-readers ; but it will be heartily enjoyed by any one with a taste for a brisk and stirring record of adventure.
Miss Florence Marryat has sufficient command of the art of telling a story in a bright, readable way, to make her more judicious readers regret her habit of choosing stories which are not worth telling. The story told in A Scarlet Sin—a ridiculous title, by-the-way—may certainly be thus described. The household of Sir Alan Chichester, a particularly dull specimen of the country gentleman, is neither very large nor very lively, consisting only of his wife, who is a chronic invalid, and of his sister, who has a chronic bad temper. There are no children, nor ever have been, and Sir Alan has come to regard Lady Chichester's omission to supply him with an heir as a personal grievance, which he has a right to resent. He is not, however, guilty of any overt unkindness ; indeed, his early affection has never wholly died out, and when the old medical man, Dr. Joliffe, tells him it is absolutely necessary for Lady Chichester's health that she should have the presence of a young and bright companion, his consent to the proposed plan, if not specially gracious, is at any rate ready. Of course, when the experienced novel-reader has taken in the outlines of this ground-plan, he knows exactly the kind of structure which is to be reared upon it. The chosen companion, Cora Murray, alias Carlotta Mapleson, is just the unscrupulous adventuress for whom the stage is ready, and the weak rather than wicked Sir Alan shows himself clay in the hands of a potter whose skill is really in excess of the necessities of the situation. There is a good deal of unpleasant philandering between the baronet and the companion, and when the latter thinks that she hks got her prey well within her toils, she disposes of the inconvenient Lady Chichester by withholding the stimulant which would have restored her from a dangerous fainting-fit that has followed hard upon her confinement. This, we suppose, must be the " scarlet sin " of the title, but it is, happily, ineffective. The love which Sir Alan felt for his wife in the early days of their marriage has all returned, and though he knows nothing of the crime which has been com- mitted, he recoils from the woman who has tempted him from his fidelity, and Cora Murray disappears from the story, presumably to seek other victims elsewhere. The tale is, it will be seen, exceedingly slight, and decidedly unedifying ; but the cross-grained yet right-hearted Miss Chichester is a really lifelike character.
There is a good deal of fine-writing—which is, of course, as a rule, the reverse of good writing—in Lady Dobbs, and it is in many other ways a decidedly ambitious book ; but it also a book which makes it abundantly manifest that the writer's ambition runs a long way ahead of her capacity for harmonious and realistic presentation of character and incident. The narrative structure of the book is simple and unambitious enough, being merely the story of a frivolous girlhood and a loveless marriage, followed by a long-drawn-out flirtation, in which the woman is the more active participant : it is in the way the story is managed that Miss Harris's weakness is shown. There is hardly anything in the novel which can be called really successful; but the portrait of the heroine, on which it is evident that great pains have been expended, is the most conspicuous failure. Helen Donnington is intended to be a beautiful, selfish, and ignorant girl, with great powers of fascination, and, in spite of her apparent shallowness, a latent capacity for profound emotion ; but while we are made to realise very fully all Helen's selfishness, shallowness, and ignorance— though the extent of this last is almost incredible—we never even approach the realisation of that charm about which the author is always telling us, but which she is altogether powerless to make us feel. However attractive may be the Lady Dobbs of the author's imagination, the Lady Dobbs of her written book is a person who is often disagreeable and always stupid ; and when we are told how Count Eminesco and Amy Went- worth, and all the other people, masculine and feminine, were completely subjugated by her charm, we simply " wonder with a foolish face of " bewilderment. About the sub- sidiary figures, who are very few in number, there is nothing to be said. The book exists for the sake of the woman who provides it with a title, and Lady Dobbs is altogether lacking in vitality.
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