A NOBLE WOMAN.* TnE first volume of this story is

unquestionably good. Mr. Jeaffreson has bestowed upon it some of his best work, and before we came to its close we hoped he had at last worked himself free from many peculiarities of style and thought which have seemed to us considerable blemishes in his earlier books. We were, how- ever, disappointed. The author's ability may pass unquestioned ; he could, we all understand, had it so pleased him, have written three volumes as clever as the first ; it is the more annoying that he has not so pleased. Two veins of thought run through the book unpleasantly intertwined, the one tender, touchingly true, and absolutely pure ; the other cynical and somewhat coarse ; and the incongruous mixture of these two forces will be most felt by those who perceive that the tale is wanting in dramatic power ; there are few pages without the author's direct criticism on the creatures of his brain. Still it is a story which will be read with interest, notwithstanding its artistic defects. TnE first volume of this story is unquestionably good. Mr. Jeaffreson has bestowed upon it some of his best work, and before we came to its close we hoped he had at last worked himself free from many peculiarities of style and thought which have seemed to us considerable blemishes in his earlier books. We were, how- ever, disappointed. The author's ability may pass unquestioned ; he could, we all understand, had it so pleased him, have written three volumes as clever as the first ; it is the more annoying that he has not so pleased. Two veins of thought run through the book unpleasantly intertwined, the one tender, touchingly true, and absolutely pure ; the other cynical and somewhat coarse ; and the incongruous mixture of these two forces will be most felt by those who perceive that the tale is wanting in dramatic power ; there are few pages without the author's direct criticism on the creatures of his brain. Still it is a story which will be read with interest, notwithstanding its artistic defects.

The scenes are principally laid in a country town which possesses the peculiar advantage of bordering upon three counties ; the, opening chapter, in which the peculiarities of character resulting from geographical position are delineated, is in Mr. Jeaffreson's happiest style. After observing that "the rural mind is apt to over-estimate the greatness and dignity of its local magnates," he shows the weighty mental influence brought to bear on one small spot by the fact of its necessary emancipation from local prejudices.

"Now the ordinary folk of the Carlton Cross Border are preserved from this proneness to a debasing idolatry by the number as well as conflicting opinions of their provincial deities. Instead of pinning their faith to one mighty Custos Rotuloram, they are critical about heads of counties, and pay their court alternately to three great lords. The farmer, indignant at what he conceives to be the tyranny of a local justice, has the consolation of knowing the exact limit of the despot's jurisdiction. On this side the river Wandle the leading gentry are yellow, on the other side they are blue—in a political sense. North of the Windrush the clergy encourage prayer-meetings, and gather pence for the Church Missionary Society ; on the southern bank they ride in pink and see no harm in whist. Hence it happens that the inferior people of the Border are saved from the common error of supposing that gentlefolk are all of one mind, and that if a tenant ventures to differ from his squire on a matter of politics or sport he is guilty of a heinous offence against public order and morals."

In this favoured locality lived the two friends whose lives are traced in these pages,—James Stapleton, a masterly sketch (which almost tempts us to wonder why the author, who draws men with such infinitely greater skill than women, did not call his book by another and more appropriate title), and Hercules (familiarly, Herrick) Kingsford. Both men are admirably drawn. The doctor's father and father's forefathers for six generations had been doctors in that same county town ; and his consulting- room is almost a museum of antiquated and exploded instru- ments of the scientific skill of an older day, living not in- harmoniously side by side with the microscope, the galvanic battery, and chemical apparatus of more recent date. His highest ambition was to maintain the honourable name and place won for him by his father, to mitigate human suffering, and win blithe Bessie Clayton, who, to our minds, lives in these pages with far more intense hold upon us than the heroine, for whom we wait through nearly two volumes, and who somewhat disap- points us when she appears at last. Herrick is a photograph certainly not taken under too strong a light, his prototype may be found almost anywhere ; he is the rising representative of a pushing family, all determined that this man should take his place among

• A. Noble Woman. By J. C. Jestfreson. London: Hurst and Bluckott.

4, the landed gentry of the Border,"—the heir of many sacrifices all made for the one object of securing his aggrandizement,—a small- souled, selfish man, with a smooth tongue, for the Kingsfords 4, had a knack of asserting themselves by extolling others. Their

outspoken adulation implied that they had a right to sit in judg- ment on their neighbours." It is all, page after page, most clever writing, but we must be pardoned for suggesting one root defect in it. The two men here described could no more have come into the intense friendship with which the story commences than oil could be made to coalesce with water. Under any other circumstances than those given they might ; but they were "schoolmates." The veneer of hypocrisy in boyhood is very thin, and the radical badness of Herrick's nature is just the kind which must too often have come across honest James Staple- ton's path to allow him, in the nature of things, to be so thoroughly deceived. The man who in after life sacrifices honour, friends, children, remorselessly to his own private selfishness, may deceive everybody else ; but his intimate schoolmates know him for what he is. So, not to kill our respect for James Stapleton, whom we .cordially like, we mentally alter our author's dates, and make this singular friendship commence somewhat later, when there was no room in the doctor's mind for distrust, and the rough work of life had numbed the intuitive perception which stands simple natures in the stead of keener analytical faculties.

The love story is beautifully told. Bessie Clayton, the reputed niece and heiress of the greatest Radical in the town, the rich old Cornelius Kilderbee, is the prize towards which the eyes of both the young men have turned. Herrick, in compliance with the whole scheme for his personal aggrandizement, waives old family feuds, the difference of party and (as he estimates it) .difference of rank, and woos the girl for the sake of her goodly portion ; and James, who has worshipped her with a love which has grown only stronger through long years of struggle, difficulty, .and waiting, finds himself outwitted by his friend.

To our great relief, there is no after repentance on Bessie's part ; to her life's close she believes in her husband thoroughly,—quite .a refreshing episode in modern fiction. James marries a cousin, whose one recommendation, in his case a strong one, is that she loves him ; and then for some while the story drags, till its interest revives in the history of the children of the two marriages. Geraldine is the heroine, the noble woman of the story. She

inherits all old Kilderbee's money, is exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally good, at least, so we are to understand, but for the credit of womanhood we must observe we believe her case the most common of all, simply resolving itself into a contempt for money wherever higher interests are at stake. She and Samuel Stapleton are in love with each other, are in reality, except for the absence of a few formal words, bound to each other absolutely. She is required to sacrifice herself to save her father and brother from ruin, and to marry a man to whom she is utterly indifferent, but of whose real character she is ignorant. She promises, but meanwhile it may not be forgotten by so doing she sacrifices her lover as well as her-

self. Many a sweet, gentle-natured woman, with a highly sensitive organization, would have done the same thing. A noble woman

would have discovered some other way to obtain her object than by perjuring herself and wrecking the happiness of another. Of course, all comes right in the end ; but Mr. Jeaffreson had it in his own hands to have made such a much nobler solution of her diffi- culty that we feel annoyed he should have missed the mark. It is a curious book ; much of it reminds us of the slight jar we ex- perience in listening to soliloquies uttered on the stage,—we could not know them if they were not uttered, but, perhaps, we wish we could. Just so, Mr. Jeaffreson makes several of his characters say aloud that which in real life they might have felt, but would never have embodied in outward expression. Thus, Bertie Godsall might have felt mad rage against the woman she believed to have deceived her, but that while maintaining and continuing to main- tain the outward semblance of civil intercourse she should have given utterance to the following tirade is simply inconceivable :—

"But your golden chains were not strong enough to bind your pri- soner, who had foolishly donned your fetters. He broke away from you, treating you with the contempt that you deserve—treating you as cruelly as you treated Lemuel Stapleton. He tossed you aside, as soon as he had taken time to consider all the consequences of marriage with a woman who for the sake of gold could sin against every instinct of woman's nature. He tossed you aside in contempt, and has begged me, though I am no heiress, though I am but the portionless child of an almost bankrupt father, to accept the position into which you vainly tried to buy your way. You have good reason to congratulate me. For as you have just now reminded me with characteristic malignity, I do Love the man whom you vainly tried to marry for the sake of the wealth, the station, the power that will now be mine."

After this we scarcely expect to read,— "Even so truthful a woman as Hercules Kingsford's daughter, by her regard for social appearances, no less than by a sense of duty to her father, his wife, and Felix Vincent, was induced to play a hypocritical part in her demeanour to the mistress of Copal Park, whither she accom- panied her father and Lady Archer to the balls and dinner parties with which Bertie repaid the hospitalities of the Border quality."

Lady Archer, Herrick Kingsford's second wife, may be true draw- ing; but the lines are coarse, and the subject most unpleasant. The not very young widow of an officer who has treated her with great brutality, she plots with her brother's aid to marry Kings- ford, and govern him and his estate for their sole benefit, and she succeeds, contriving even to escape from the final ruin which overtakes her husband. James Stapleton's mother, the eccentric little old lady, who, with all her devotion to her son, can never realize that he is really the head of the practice she believes to be her own, with her impetuous determination to get her own way, and her graceful breaking down when she does not, is well sketched ; so also is the narrative of Cornet Kilderbee, some of whose favourite aphorisms are worth remembering.

The book will be read ; will, very probably, be, in the popular sense of the word, a success, as Mr. Jeaffreson's works generally are; and we are by no means prepared to endorse the words of a well known writer who has said, "Fiction has no right to exist unless it be more beautiful than reality," believing always that the real possesses more beauty than it is given to any one man to realize in a lifetime ; and beauty is not absolutely wanting here, though much that a touch might have converted into some of its higher phases has been washed out by the under-current of cyni- cism which runs through the book.