RECENT NOVELS.*

Sucu a title as Dear Faustina, if used by an early Victorian novelist, might have been accepted in its most literal signifi- cation. It would take an extremely gentle reader to adopt a similar attitude in regard to the personage who fills the title role in Miss Broughton's new story of contem- porary manners. Faustina inspires distrust at the outset, and distrust soon deepens into downright repugnance. Briefly summed up, the aim of the writer has been to show how the gospel of humanity can be exploited as a means of achieving personal notoriety by a clever but unscrupulous woman. Fanstina Bateson, who comes of a respectable yeoman family, revolting against the trammels of domes- ticity, and disowned by her people, has joined the ex- treme left wing of the emancipation movement, and by virtue of her voluble tongue and facile pen, her tire- less energy and indomitable self-assertion, has won for herself a prominent position in the ranks of professional philanthropists. Conscious of her own social shortcomings, it is her plan to attach to herself disciples of good family for the furtherance of her schemes, and to utilise their devotion to the fullest extent as long as it lasts. Her latest and most enthusiastic victim, Alethea Vane, is a generous-minded, in- experienced girl, whose mother has signalised her widowhood at its outset by abandoning all her domestic responsibilities, and Fanstina, profiting by the opportunity, by dexterous flattery establishes a complete ascendency over the daughter. Alethea leaves her brothers and sisters, sets up house with Faustina, and the process of disillusionment immediately begins. For in spite of all her efforts to remain loyal Alethea soon realises that her idol is untruthful and insincere, and the appearance on the scene of a more guileless and more aristo- cratic disciple causes the scales to drop from her eyes. Finally Alethea passes from jealousy of her rival to indignation at the base uses to which Faustina proposes to turn her innocence, and a complete rupture is abruptly precipitated. The story is not a pleasant one, but it is developed with considerable skill, and it is pleasant to find that Miss Broughton, while merciless in her exposure of professional Altruism, renders generous homage to the sincerity and self-sacrifice of those who labour to brighten and ameliorate the lot of the poor without hope or desire of personal advancement. The moral of the book— that it is dangerous to plunge into philanthropy without a

• (1.) Dear Faustina. By Rhoda Bronghton. London: Bentleyand

(2.) The Third Violet. By Steplien Crane. London : W. Heinemann.-- (3.) The Ways of Life. By Mrs. Oliphant. London : Smith, Elder. and Co.— (4.) The Last Entry. By ST. Clerk Russell. London : Chatto and Windus.— (S.) Uncle Merano : a Memory of the Empire. By A. Conan Doyle. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.—(6.) IQulma. By Mrs. Cimphell Pread. London (Matto and Windus.—(7.) The Dreams of Dania. By Frederick Langbridga. Leaden : J4131011 Bowden. safe guide—is excellent; and there is a wholesome tone about the denouement, in which the heroine, undaunted by her previous failure, courageously resolves to persevere in the same path.

Inverting the procedure of Virgil, who passed from bucolic strains to the horrentia Maras urine, Mr. Stephen Crane has in The Third Violet turned aside from the battlefield into the realm of the pastoral idyll. Mr. Crane is at no pains to sub- due the strenuous accents of his explosive style to the gentler tones naturally associated with such unheroic themes as lawn- tennis and picnics, and the incongruity between matter and manner is, in consequence, rather glaring. When his " summer folk " leave the train they " burst forth with the enthusiasm of escaping convicts." Elsewhere we read how "a little brook, a brawling, ruffianly little brook, swaggered from aide to side down the glade, swirling in white leaps over the great dark rocks, and shouting challenge to the hillsides." This is carrying the " pathetic fallacy " to extremes ; and life- like as Mr. Crane's pictures are, they have something of the spasmodic jerkiness of the kinetoscope. But though his story lacks restfulness and reserve, it fascinates by its fresh and vivid charm. The comedies of courtship have seldom been more unconventionally portrayed than in the conversations— short and sharp, like a cross-fire of rifles—between Billie Hawker and his lady-love. Hawker is an artist, of humble parentage but remarkable talent, who falls hopelessly in love at first sight with a beautiful New York heiress, and is driven by sheer diffidence to assume a mask of indifference and even rude- ness. But his efforts are as futile as those of the ostrich to avoid concealment, and the tortures he endures at the hands of his homely sisters, his artist friends, and, above all, of a good-hearted but irrepressibly humorous journalist named Hollanden, keep the reader in a constant simmer of amusement tinged with pity. Agreeable relief is lent to the rural scenes by some remarkably spirited and genial pictures of Bohemian life in what may be called the Quartier Latin of New York, and a note of genuine pathos is struck in the unrequited and unselfish devotion of Florinda O'Connor — a very pleasing variant on the Trilby type—to the un- responsive Hawker. Nor should we fail to mention the humblest, but not the least engaging, of the dramatis persona

- Stanley,' Hawker's dog, who is quite one of the most delightful animals we have encountered in recent fiction.

The two stories which Mrs. Oliphant has published under the title of The Ways of Life are both variations on the same theme. In each we find an elderly man of good position, with

wife and grown-up children, confronted with the prospect of immediate and serious financial disaster. But here all re- semblance ends, for while Mr. Dalyell alienates all our sympathies by the cowardly and unnatural stratagem he adopts in order to save his credit, there is no alloy in the compassion aroused by the sad yet beautiful story of Mr. Sandford, the painter. Unlike many, if not most, of the tragic tales written by modern writers, it is entirely free from the element of gratuitousness. The situation is one which has often had, and will often have, its counter- part in real life amongst those who follow the calling of art and letters, and are suddenly confronted by the consciousness of failing powers or loss of vogue, and can only ensure a provision for their nearest and dearest by dying. With consummate skill, with the tenderest and most delicate sympathy, Mrs. Oliphant has brought home to her readers the tragedy of the brain-worker who can never afford to cease working as long as his work is remunerative, and once he loses his power or popularity is condemned to the intolerable anguish of a living death. The character of Mr. Sandford, and the trustful innocence of his wife and children, are drawn with a multitude of unerring touches. As a work of art we can praise the story without reserve. But no journalist can read it without feeling chilled to the heart by the situation which it depicts.

There are so many good qualities in Mr. Clark Russell's work that it is irksome to proclaim his latest novel unworthy of his powers and his reputation. It opens with abundant promise of romance and adventure, but speedily degenerates into one of the most fantastic and artificial tragedies that we have ever encountered. Mr. Vanderholt, a wealthy merchant of Dutch extraction resident in London, determines in the year of the Queen's accession to take a pleasure trip to the Equator and back with his only daughter, wbo is engaged to

an officer in India. They set sail in a beautiful schooner under apparently prosperous auspices ; but the crew, dissatisfied with their fare and resenting the harshness of the discipline, suddenly mutiny and murder the skipper, the owner, and the mate. By a liberal use of the long arm of coincidence the ship in which Captain Parry, the daughter's fiancé, is return- ing to England, falls in with the derelict schooner—the crew he ving taken to the boats—and a clue being furnished by a diary left on board by the Dutchman's daughter, a search is organised, and the missing heroine is finally discovered oa mother derelict ship with no other companion but a mad boatswain. The inherent improbability of the plot is not redeemed by the manner in which it is handled. There is rirtue in the element of the unexpected so long as it is not gratuitously introduced. But in The Last Entry the bolt from the blue is discharged with singular maladroitness. Everything points to a comedy, and instead of exciting the reader's sympathy, Mr. Clark Russell only provokes resent- ment by suddenly somersaulting into unnecessary and uncon- vincing bloodshed. The conversations of the sailors in the earlier chapters are decidedly entertaining ; but is Mr. Clark Russell correct in attributing the modern Cockney solecism of pronouncing " say " as " s'y " to the East-Enders of 1837 ?

The chief fault in Mr. Conan Doyle's Uncle Bernac is in- dicated with such perfect candour by the author as to cut the ground from under the feet of the carping critic. Speaking for himself, though through the mouth of the narrator, he says that the adventures described " might have been of some interest in themselves had I not introduced the figure of the Emperor, who has eclipsed them all as the sun eclipses the stars." If the author had kept the Emperor in the background Louis de Laval might have had a chance, but directly the Man of Destiny comes on the scene the author succumbs hopelessly to his fascination, and the plot is hung up until Mr. Doyle has given us half-a-dozen different vivid sketches of the Emperor in half-a-dozen different moods and aspects, from the Ossianising mystic to the vulgar libertine. These are so well done, and so happily are the curious mental and physical traits of Napoleon worked in, that we quite regret that Mr. Doyle did not boldly take Bonaparte for his central figure throughout. With his really remarkable faculty for getting up a subject, coupled with his fertility in the devising of incident and the vivacity of his style, Mr. Doyle might well have given us a fine Napoleonic novel. As a story Uncle Bernac does not amount to much, for the reasons already given. The young emigre is an engaging character, and the sinister uncle is well drawn ; but directly we enter the camp at Boulogne the dramatis persona are all swallowed up in the Corsican. Mr. Doyle, in short, has given us an imperfect novel but a very readable book, written in that vivid, virile style which is to us one of his chief attractions.

The clash of the Old World and the New, as illustrated in the life of a Colonial Governor's Court, is the theme of Mrs. Campbell Praed's vigorous and picturesque novel. Niilma, the heroine of the story, is the beautiful, unsophisticated daughter of a self-made colonial, who has risen from being a carrier to fill the post of Inspector of Mines, and by virtue of his official position is brought into social contact with the Governor's circle. There Niilma makes the acquaintance of Outram Kenward, the new Chief Justice, a distinguished English barrister who has abandoned his practice at home owing to his guilty attachment to the Governor's niece, the wife of his secretary, Lord Arthur Keefe. Kenward, wearying of an attachment which has grown one-sided, gradually succumbs to the artless charm of Nhlma, and it is only by an unworthy stratagem, prompted by her jealousy, that Margot Keefe induces Nhlma to repel the advances of Kenward, and bestow her hand, in a moment of wounded pride, on an elderly colonial admirer. The charac- ters of the two women, the one a brilliant, impulsive child of Nature, the other a clever, exotic, fascinating woman of the world, are contrasted with admirable effect, and it is im. possible to withhold a certain measure of compassion from the unhappy Margot, the victim of a hasty mariage de conversance with a jealous boor. As Mrs. Campbell Praed's earlier novels provoked adverse criticism by their audacity, it is only right to say that in her latest book she has handled a risky theme with discretion and reserve, and provided a solution which should satisfy the most punctilious sticklers for propriety. Apart from its sentimental interest, NOma contains some

exceedingly lively sketches of the humours of Australian society. The pompous. weary Governor and his suite, the ambitious colonial matrons and their unpolished, gritty husbands, are evidently drawn from the life. The mixture of weakness and loyalty in Kenward's character and the general attractiveness of the man, again, are indicated with no little skill. But the error of describing him on one page as about thirty-five, and on another as nearly fifty, should be corrected in the next edition.

We are already familiar with Mr. Langbridge in the role of a dexterous and graceful writer of verse, and are glad to

welcome in The Dreams of Dania qualities which augur well

Tor his success in the domain of prose fiction. There is a distinct individuality about his style, which abounds in

whimsical turns of expression and quaint staccato effects, while his somewhat roseate outlook on humanity is tempered by a vein of genial satire. There are several excellent morals

to the story, not the least salutary being the warning which the author administers to literary aspirants who mistake the desire to write for the power to convince. Dania Fitzmaurice, the only daughter of a saintly old Irish clergyman, and en- gaged to an altogether eligible and devoted young land-agent, resents her lover's just but severe criticisms on her literary efforts, fortified by the insincere flattery of an editor -who has accepted one of her effusions out of purely in- terested motives. At this juncture the young agent is called away by the illness of his mother, and the editor, a handsome, unscrupulous, but attractive man, learning that Dania is destined to become an heiress, hastens down to the village where she lives, and, earning her gratitude by offering timely assistance against a couple of aggressive tramps, supplants the absent lover in her affections. In the issue the rich uncle, suspecting the editor's mercenary motives, unmasks him by the rather melodramatic device of circulating a false rumour of his own financial failure ; and Dania is re- united to the faithful agent—who has in the interim won her admiration by a brilliant work of fiction published under an assumed name—and reconciled to her father, estranged by her infatuation for the editor. It must be admitted that the plot is exceedingly artificial, that the mechanism of the story is conventional, and that the sentiment borders perilously on gush. The angelic sweetness of the old rector is

overdone, and the scenes in his sick-room miss the note of genuine pathos by their long-drawn weepiness. But with all deductions The Dreams of Dania is a very pretty, and at times a highly entertaining, story. The vagaries of Bridget Heffernan, the rector's bibulous protegje, the portrait of the .old doctor, and the scene at the Irish railway-station, where the train is kept waiting indefinitely for the arrival of the "widow O'Grady's pig, exhibit Mr. Langbridge's sense of humour in the happiest light.