PICTURES OF COTTAGE LIFE.*

TRACTS—like their distributors, for the most part—are good and honest, but ugly to look at, and preachy and dull to listen to. As for the ugliness, the distributor—if candour obliges her to own the hard impeachment—will, like the man who squinted, deprecate censure, on the ground that it is her misfortune, not her fault ; but we feel inclined to reply, in the words of the squinting gentleman's companion, " No it ain't,—it's yer abominable ignorance." For if the distributor knew, or, knowing, cared to realize what a pleasant thing, in the poverty-stricken cottage, is a pretty, bright, and cheerful dress, even if there cannot be a pretty face, she would scarcely, of set purpose, don her oldest gown and dingiest bonnet and shawl in order, apparently, to match as nearly as she can the greasy and blackened brown-paper cover of the truly detestable tract. We have heard on good authority that the poor people like the tracts, but for our own part, we cannot conceive of any feel- ing softer than that of unutterable disgust and revengeful hatred arising in the heart of the poor cottager at the sight of that well- known hideous brown cover, emerging from the equally well- known and almost equally abhorred reticule of the dingy dis- tributor, who is herself besides, of necessity, often tiresome and always monotonous.

• .FYclurre of Cottage Life. By Margaret E. Poole. London: Macmillan and Co. This line of thought has been suggested by Miss Poole's delight- ful little book. Not that she says anything about tracts or distributors, but that we felt forcibly how direct to the heart of

the riper her stories would go. They are exclusively about the poor, and the contrast between this book and the things we so generously offer for their intellectual food, struck us as painfully unfavourable to the genus " tract." If ladies or gentlemen with cheerful faces and in bright clothes would take the poor such pleasant readable healthy books as these, how eagerly would they be received in families where books are read at all ! The cottager would respect such books and protect them with loving care, instead of thrusting them into the well-known dresser-drawer with the damp dish- cloths and the rusty forks, from which they are weekly hunted out and produced, unread, with apologies, morsels of fat, and innumer- able creases. Why should the return of prodigals, the reclamation of drunkards, and the adventures of serious servant-girls be the only subjects discussed and treated-of in the literature prepared for the working-man? And why should little scraps of questionable theology be surreptitiously smuggled into them, as the leaven that is to render innocuous the light-minded dissipation of such inci- dents as they contain ? It is acknowledged that these passages are invariably skipped, and they do but serve to make the story, such as it is, shorter as to the interesting part, and duller as to the whole. Tracts are known to be written with a purpose, and this

in itself makes them distasteful ; and they are for the most part written by professional tract-manufacturers, and this insures a want of variety and power. Inexpensive books, short tales, and interesting papers exist in abundance, full of instruction, and per- fect as to moral tone, for the reprinting of which we should think

permission might easily be obtained.

Every story in the book before us is such a one. They are all perfect of their kind, unless it is the last, which bears slight but

unmistakable signs of being more made up and less of a simple chronicle from the annals of the poor than the others. Miss

Poole reminds us of Mrs. Gaskell, without so much originating

power, but also without Mrs. Gaskell's tendency to sentimentality. She apparently records, with neither addition nor embellishment,

but with a perfect and sensitive sympathy, and in the purest and simplest style, some events in the lives of the West-Country peasantry ; and when she tells us that "plot and characters are alike fictitious," we can only admire the more the accurate obser-

vation and delicate appreciation of character and motive which have enabled her to write these "tales that might be true." "For Better, for Worse" is the story of the book, and it would be diffi-

cult to overrate the truth and beauty of the delineation of the character of the awkward, humble girl, so full of admiration for her more accomplished lover and of diffidence in her own powers, changing by slow degrees into the sad and patient woman, and later into the chastened but grateful wife. But what we feel of this story, we feel almost as unreservedly of all the others. The incidents are so exactly those of that rank of life ; selected with no attempt to go out of the ordinary course of the experience of the poor. The knowledge of their ways and peculiarities and habits of thought is so accurate, and the insight into their special difficulties and into the faults and virtues peculiar to their station so deep, that, added to the native refinement of the authoress, and her pure English and yet complete mastery of the dialect of the district in which she lays her scenes, it would not be possible to find any tales of the sort more beautiful and affecting.

The last, as we have said, alone admits of improvement. The losing of the diamond ring is a little sensational, and the super- stition and cowardice of the thief scarcely natural in a man so travelled and experienced as James Davis. Moreover, the authoress makes a slip in putting the Somersetshire dialect into the mouth of the heroine,—a true cockney only lately arrived from London. But this is " straining out the gnat ;" for, from the old baronet downwards in the social scale, the characters are wonder- fully life-like. We have so many favourites in these stories that we must neglect all but one, and we have not space to direct attention to a tithe of the passages abounding in truth, beauty, and tenderness. Instead, we will revert to the story "For Better, for Worse," and give a somewhat lengthened extract, to do fuller justice to Miss Poole's style, and to illustrate the sort of subjects she chooses for her stories. The husband has come back in the night, after many years, and when some of his sons are almost men. His wife finds him first, when she comes down in the early morning to prepare breakfast for her sons:—

" There was nothing in her tone to betray that the return of their father was not a perfectly natural and ordinary event. Giving orders in that steady voice she looked completely mistress of herself, and of the situation, whilst her husband's eyes were once more studying the ground,

and her sons stood in blank amazement, Bill taking in the fact of his father's presence with the look of one that has received a terrible shook, Lot casting glances of inquiry at his brother in hopes of finding out what he ought to say or do. Mary quietly went on, 'Don't speak to your father now, boys. He do feel ill. Make haste and get your breakfasties, an' be off.' Mach relieved to find he was not expected to do anything, Lot hastened to obey. Not so Bill. He stood stock still, his eyes fixed on his mother. She touched his arm, and beckoned him

into the tiny pantry at the back of the house. she said in a tone of admonition, 'tie your father.' Bill glanced back at the disreputable- looking figure, and shivered. You be his son, Bill. Whatever, you be his son.'—' An' so I will do summat to help him, Mother. But he didn' ought to ha' come here, to sponge on your earnin's. We'll give him what do lie in our power, Mother, but he mustn't bide here. That be too much.' A quiver passed over Mary's face. The law do give him a right to,' said she.—'Hang the law! But if that be the case (which I donnot believe), it don't make no differ. I'll take 'ee away from this here, an' he shan't know where we be gone to. It don't matter a brass farthing whether I be here or at Westhampton : I've got a pair of arms to work for 'ee wherever we be to.'—' Oh, Bill, darlin', you be a dear son to I, but you don't understand nought about this,' Mary answered. Let alone the law, he be my husband still, dear lad, and your father, an' I. took him for better for worse, don't 'ee know ? An' I couldn" bear to turn un out, if 'twas ever so. Don't 'ee see how ill he be ?" =So long as he was well he stopped away.'—Mary put her hand on her son's lips. ' Don't say no more now, dear lad,' said she ; ' go to thy work, an' turn it over in thy mind, an' I think thou It come to look at it different. You see, dear lad, it have took 'ee all on a sudden, but I've looked forward to it, an' thought what I'd do in it, a many year. I have, dear lad. He wasn't never one to stand up alone against trouble, Bill, dear, an' I knowed trouble 'ould fall upon him sooner or late ; but I never thought on him bein' brought so low as he do seem to be, an' I thought if he were drove up an' hadn' no place else to go to, the day might be when he'd come home, an' so I wouldn' never leave this house, dear—that's why you never couldn' persuade me—an' the door have never been bolted by night since the night he went away, for I knowed he'd come by night if he did came at all, an' I vowed in myself he should find no bolted door to turn nn back . . . . an' the door o' my heart do stand open too.' The last words were spoken so low that they were scarcely audible, but Bill caught them. He kissed his mother, and went to his work in silence as she bade him, feeling half-choked with a rush of contending emotions. He was more tired with mental conflict than with bodily labour when the day was over, and he so much dreaded meeting his father, that he half resolved to spend the entire evening at a public-house. That would vex mother, to be sure, but she will have no thoughts for him now, he grumbled to himself She only said, 'My dear lad,' and took Bill's hand in hers ; but at that touch, and the confiding tenderness of her eyes, Bill felt a great throb of thank- fulness that he had not yielded to the impulse to avoid him. Away went the jealous suggestion that mother would not care now what he did, and in its stead there arose a determination to stand by her through thick and thin, do what she might."