RECENT NOVELS.* WE think we must ere this have made

the remark that Mr. Marion Crawford is the only living novelist who rivals Mrs. Oliphant in versatility of invention and treatment. If so, our excuse for repeating ourselves must be that his latest story, The Three Fates, is such a striking illustration of this rare endow- ment. Mr. Isaacs was a supernatural romance, Khaled was an Oriental fantasy, A Roman Singer was a poetical comedy, Marzia's Crucifix was a striking study of spiritual experience, greifenstein was a sombre passionate tragedy. Only in Dr.

• (1.) The Three Pates. By F. Marion C. awford. 3 vols. London: Mac- millan and Co.—(2.) In the Boar of the Sea. A Tale of the Cornish Coast. By S. Baring-Gould. 3 vols. London : Methuen and Co.—(3.) This Venetians. By the Author of "Lady Andley's Secret." 3 vols. London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.---(4.1 The Man who we. Good. By Leonard Merrick. 2 vols. London : Matto and Windns.— (5.) No Place of Repentance By Gertrude H. Hayward. -3 vols. London : Hurst and Bisokett.—(6.) Mark Tillotson. By James Baker. S vols. London : Sampson Low and Co.

Claudius have we any hint of the special kind of capability dis- played in this latest novel,—the capability to confer interest upon a simple and, in itself, unarresting story of modern life by the imaginative grasp which lifts a sequence of ordinary events and moods out of the slough of the commonplace, and enables us to see their essential significance. Even in Dr. Claudius, the mere narrative counted for more than it counts for in The Three Fates. The only concessions made to the lover of incident as such, are the abstraction by Mrs. Sher- rington Trimm of the document which transforms George Wood from a dangerous detrimental into an eligible son-in- law, and the sudden and dramatic overthrow of her plans when her enraged brother, Tom Craik, finds his own will in his sister's Japanese cabinet. Elsewhere the story is as quiet as it well could be ; it is a record less of events than of emotions and crises ; and if some readers find it dull when compared with one or other of the author's more highly coloured works, their feeling will be due simply to the fact that the quality of the in- terest is of a new kind, which they are unable fully to appreciate. Mr. Crawford's hero is the novelist, George Winton Wood, and the three fates are the three women who in turn provide his world of sensation and action with a pivot upon which it revolves,—the woman who almost loves him, the woman whom he almost loves, and the third woman whom he loves utterly, and who might have loved him had not she given herself once and for ever to a man whose nature, though not unworthy, was still less entirely the com- plement of her own. Mr. Crawford shows even more than his wonted skill and subtlety in his treatment of that stage of emotion, generally a very brief transition period, which imme- diately precedes the crystallisation of sentiment into passion. Constance Fearing comes so near to loving George Wood, George Wood comes so near to loving Mamie Trimm, as to make one feel that in nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand real cases, the impalpable barrier between love and that something which so closely resembles it must have broken down ; and we can hardly feel sure that Mr. Crawford's pre- sentation is as perfectly convincing as it is undoubtedly able. In the abstract we recognise the truth of Brovrning's words,—

" Oh, the little more, and how much it is;

And the little less, and what worlds away ! "

but when one comes to the concrete instance, it is difficult to realise that the growing nearness which culminates in the closest proximity short of absolute union, can fail to have absolute union for its goal. When there has been no move- ment, we expect none ; but when there has been a steady pro- gress in a given direction, the stopping short at the very point where attraction and momentum are both strongest, seems to demand an external retarding force which Mr. Crawford does not supply. In the case of Constance Fearing, we admit that the force of this criticism is weakened by the fact that what we have called crystallisation does take place when it is too late to be of any avail, or by the theory that the girl's morbid con- science has dulled the feeling of certainty as to her own emotions by the very imperiousness of the demand for it. The other affair stands, however, on a different footing. True, Mr. Crawford hints again and again that George's feeling for Mamie Trimm is something that falls short of love; but it is hardly made plain what that something is, or why it is that it stops short. It is clearly something more than mere physical fascination, something warmer than tender friend- ship ; it has the elements of both sentiment and passion ; and there is the further consideration that Wood is brought into contact with Mamie, and discovers the secret of her love, just at a time when his own heart is specially liable to be caught in the rebound. The story is told with such skill, that effective criticism of this or that detail is impossible ; it is the receptive imagination rather than the analytical intellect which refuses to be satisfied; the feeling that something is wrong is like one of those vague prejudices against our own particular Dr. Fell, which are perhaps all the more influential because we can give no clear account of them. The Three Fates is, however, an exceptionally able book.

Mr. Baring-Gould has returned to the theme which he treated with such sombre power in Mehalah,—the subjugation of the will of a strong woman by the will of a man who is not inherently stronger, but who compels circumstances to act as his allies, and ensures the breaking-down of his victim's resistance by repeated hammer-strokes of fate. The hero of In the Boar of the Sea is a real character,—that Cornish smuggler, wrecker, and general desperado whose wild career provided Robert Stephen Hawker with a theme for one of the most romantic chapters in his Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. In his conception of the character of Cruel Coppinger, Mr. Baring-Gould has adhered pretty closely to the local tradition, though there is in the counterfeit present- ment a certain thin vein of magnanimity which seems to have been altogether wanting in the original. The love-story is, however, imaginary, and for narrative purposes the author has found it necessary to invent a denouement which, though powerful enough in its way, is less picturesquely effective than the conclusion of Hawker's striking sketch where Coppinger disappears from Cornwall as mysteriously as he came. In The Boar of the Sea is gloomy enough, but it is a shade less depressing than its famous predecessor ; for while Mehalah's misery ends only with her life, Judith is saved at the eleventh hour from the dreaded consummation of her woes, and the close of the third volume leaves us free to imagine for her a happy future, in which Cruel Coppinger is but as the horror of a remembered dream. One great charm of all Mr. Baring- Gould's best books is that they are so intensely alive.

"Better than mortar, bricks, and putty, Is God's house on a blowing day,"

sings Mr. Meredith, in perhaps the one poem of his which will be enjoyed a hundred years hence; and in Mr. Baring- Gould's pages, the blowing day, with its stir and freshness, seems to be always with us, for even when he takes us indoors, we feel the sharp freshness of the outside air, and in our ears is the roar of the sea dashing against the cliffs,—the shriek of the gale sweeping across the moorland. Nor is there any lack of capital humour, mostly provided by Mr. Scan- tlebury, the rascally accountant, and Mr. Menaida, the lawyer-taxidermist, the latter being a character which Dickens would not have been ashamed to own. We expect a good deal from Mr. Baring-Gould, and his new book is in no way disappointing.

The novels of the lady who is best known as Miss Braddon are as popular as ever, and their popularity is not a thing which is difficult to understand. The first demand of the ordinary novel-reader is for a coherent and interesting story, and this Miss Braddon always gives, with the addition of as ranch portraiture and description as is necessary to satisfy the people who would regard it as in some way a disparage- ment to be told that they cared for the story of a novel and for nothing else. Her later books lack the absorbing plot. interest of the works by which she first attained popularity ; but they are much richer in knowledge of the world, and in grip of the external features of ordinary life. Her latest hero, a frank, brave, happy-go-lucky young Englishman, in the course of a scuffle with an intoxicated compatriot in a Venetian café, commits an unpremeditated homicide, but manages to escape from justice, apparently without leaving any clue that can connect him with the deed of blood. Returning to England, he becomes betrothed to Eva Marchant, the charming daughter of a disre- putable father, and the sister of a still more disreputable brother, who has been compelled to exile himself, and who for a year or two has not been heard of. Accident reveals to Jack Vaxisittart that this missing brother is the man whose death he has caused ; and he is more determined than ever to spare no pains to keep his ghastly secret. How it is to leak out is, of course, the narrative problem of the book, and we must not disclose its solution ; but this is the kind of thing that Miss Braddon always manages well. The Venetian singer Fiordelisa, the child of nature who is the innocent cause of all the mischief, is, so far as the author's work is concerned, a new type, and as such bears witness to Miss Braddon's creative fertility. The society people are naturally more conventional, but they are all alive, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Sefton, the villain of the story, who, like most villains of fiction, is a little in the air. Whether The Venetians is a book which any one would read twice, is doubtful, but it may be read once with pleasure and interest.

There was enough cleverness in Violet Moses, that brilliant and cynical study of middle-class Jewish life, to excite interest in its author's future, and to inspire a hope that with a more attractive theme he might produce work distinguished not merely by intellectual ability, but by some measure of emo- tional charm. This hope is partially fulfilled. The Man who was Good cannot be called a cheerful book,—cheerfulness is precluded by the sustained and relentless delineation of the seamy side of life and character ; but we are allowed a glimpse and something more than a glimpse, of heights of aspiration and attainment which in the previous story were hidden by an unbroken fog of vulgar aims and sordid satisfac- tions. The sketch of third-rate histrionic society in the opening chapters has obvious truth and effectiveness, and in the chapters which deal with the accumulated miseries of Mary Bretton—deserted by the man for whom she has sacrificed her all—Mr. Merrick displays his intimate knowledge of those details of life in the terra incognita of our civilisation which provide the stock-in-trade of our modern "realists." All this is very strong, very able, and very depressing, and if there were nothing else, even Violet Moses, in virtue of its atmosphere of physical comfort, would seem bright by comparison ; but with the entrance into the story of Mary's rescuer, Dr. Kincaid, we begin to breathe a clearer, sweeter air than that of the Hebraic drawing-rooms of Maida Vale. Even he, however, is destined to deepen the gloom of the story, for he is "the man who was good ;" and the tragedy of the book is hinted at in the lines quoted on the fly-leaf from "James Lee's Wife : "— " That is the doctrine, simple, obvious, true ; Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain and wholly well for you."

It is the mean scamp Carew who has ruined Mary Brettan's life and dragged her in the mire ; it is Kincaid who in her direst extremity has grasped her with a hand of help ; but when the man to whom she owes everything pleads for love, she finds that Carew has robbed her not only of joy and hope and self-respect, but of love as well. The concluding chapters of the narrative-tragedy, in which the long sacrifice of Mary's life is consummated, are full of power and pathos ; and both in conception and treatment, The Man who was Good is a remarkably strong and interesting novel.

There are some good things in No Place of Repentance ; but when the reader reaches the rather dismal conclusion of the third volume, he will be tempted to describe the book as much

ado about nothing, or, at any rate, about a comparative trifle. The title leads as to expect that somebody will be guilty of a wrong so great that pardon is impossible, and evidently, in the opinion both of the writer and her heroine, Richard is

Court's offence is of this character ; but, as a matter of fact, his action at the crisis of the story, though doubtless weak, thoughtless, and in a measure culpable, is altogether lacking in the gross moral turpitude which alone could justify the sentence of exile pronounced against him. When Margery Riddell finds herself a stranger in London, friendless, home- less, and almost penniless, she receives help from k Court which terribly compromises her ; and though he treats her with chivalrous respect, and finally asks her to be his wife, the

discovery, the estimation in which she is held by a few people

who have put the worst possible construction upon her relations with the young man who has befriended her, is so overwhelming, that without asking for a word of explanation or defence, she takes it for granted that he has deliberately and wantonly betrayed her trust. It is true that "evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart;" but thoughtlessness and heartlessness are seldom equally culpable, and on Miss Hayward's own showing, Margery's subsequent misfortunes are due quite as much to her own reckless baste as to Richard's indiscretion. The earlier chapters, which deal with Margery's experiences at poor Madame Thionville's pensionnat, are admirable in their quiet truthfulness of treatment ; but the latter half of the novel is ruined by unreality and sentimentalism of conception. The style, too, is in places deplorably slipshod,—witness such sentences as : "The ghost in his ancestral hall had succeeded in frightening an expression of gloom on to his exceedingly comely face ; " and, "He carelessly excelled among his fellows to whatever sport they turned themselves." No Place of Repentance is readable enough to achieve a moderate circulating-library success ; and, unfortunately, such success seems to be the sole aim of the average novelist.

Mr. James Baker's three-volume novel is much less satis- fying than his shorter stories. The descriptions of scenery in Mark Tillotson are very good indeed ; in fact, they are by far the best things in the book; and when one has to say this of a novel the action of which is rich in dramatic possibilities,

the experienced reader knows what is implied. Even the descriptions, however, are less artistic than they might have been, because they seem to be introduced for their own sake the figures and the landscape do not amalgamate in a vital unity of composition, but stand apart as if they had been brought together by some fortuitous after- thought. Mr. Baker tells us that it has been his aim to write a series of "river-stories," and that "this pre- sent book has woven into it the scenery of the Elbe, the most beautiful of all European rivers;" but the phrase "woven into" is by no means accurately descriptive, for the German chapters of the book are attached to the main fabric by a process much more like sewing than weaving. The narrative itself drags terribly, and Mr. Baker might with advantage have taken the advice of an American reviewer who expressed a wish that "the minds, hearts, and souls of the characters" in one of his previous books "might be put into a night-express train, so as to carry on the story." Mr. Baker's elaboration is the kind of thing which renders out- lines duller instead of more distinct, because it is devoted to details which are not significant ; and of his half-dozen principal characters, only two really make their individuality felt. That unscrupulous pair, Luke Waddington and Lola Raphaelli, have plenty of flesh and blood ; but the Tillotsons, the painter Shedden, and the heroine, Edith Treverton, seem to us a very shadowy group. This criticism will probably surprise Mr. Baker, because these people are doubtless distinct enough to him ; but he has chosen a method of portraiture which fails to make them live in the imagination of his readers, and consequently the book is read with a certain languor of attention and interest. This is a pity, for Mark Tillotson is by no means wanting in effective passages, and if the author had told his story in one volume, we believe it might have been successful as a whole.