MRS. HENRY WOOD'S NEW NOVEL* NOTHING is more striking than

the great number ot really good navels and able novelists in the present generation. In no other department of literature can it be said that the present ago is truly great. In poetry we cannot pretend to compare with the end of the last century and the early part of this. In critics of the highest intellectual order we have none to rank with Hazlitt and Coleridge. Of playful and graceful humourists of the school of Lamb or even Addison there are none. In philosophy there is but one name of the highest eminence among living Englishmen, and he belongs rather to the generation which has written down its thoughts than to that which is still thinking afresh. In theology we have less to complain of, perhaps, than in any other sphere of thought, for it is not every generation which has had theologians with so wide a reach as Father Newman or so deep an insight as Mr. Maurice. But the only branch of literature which can be said to be, both in its general level and in its highest summits of individual ex- cellence, above that of almost any preceding generation, is that of the noVelist. Besides the greatest artists, from George Elibt, Mr. Thackeray, and Mt. Trollope, downwards, we could probably

name more than a dozen whose truthfulness and skill Would throw the second-rates of any other generation into the shade,— beside whom Miss Burney's Iiiimotir, really gocid though much of it was, seems fitful Or extravagant, and even Miss Edgeworth's bold touch and lively raillery strike us as often wide of the mark, and oftener hard or cold.

Perhaps, one amongst many reasons why thici department of

literature has got so much ahead of all othera is, that the great progress of science, and of a scientific mode of thought, has acted even in the world of pure literature to throw people off the old track of finding 'what was Called "poetical justice" inhuman life, and to promote the study of life as it is,.-Lof that real inward justice Which saddles every man and woman with the metal consequences of their own actions, in combination, nevertheless, with vast out- ward inequalities of fortune and success. That our modern fiction has gained immeasurably from this tendency to paint faithfully, without theory or that arrare pensee called " poetical justice," Must be obvious to every observant eye, and thus only has it gained the service of a generation peculiarly ill-qualified to ex- press itself in any other species of litetature. The enthusiasm, the hot social passions, the deep indiVidual feeling which give rise to lyrical poetry or satire, are not adapted tb the temper of the day. There is a marked indistinctness even in those states of feeling which in their highest tension and clearness give rise to poetry. Ours is eminently an observant, unsettled, intellectual time,—and an observant, unsettled, intellectual temper is just the one which disposes people to paint life as they see it, with the least possible infusion of that personal sentiment and conviction which would turn us from merely delineating life into expressing our thoughts and feelings about it.

Mrs. Henry Wood is a very good representative of our clever

second-class novelists, and this is probably her cleVerest work. She is a lady who, in any previous generation, would probably have been foremost in contriving " poetical justice "for her tales ; and there is nothing more striking in thie story than the anxious fidelity with which she strives to 'avoid it, and to Paint justly the Metal connection between good and bad actions and their results, not the fanciful connection for which the feeble imagination of human sympathy craves. We 114 nothing is more remarkable than this fidelity, because the only marked weakness in Mrs. Wood's book is a slight tendency to the sentimental,—to "effu- sion" of style. She heads her chapters with a certain weak osten- tation of feeling at times, as for example, "The bell that rung out On the evening air." She describes funerals and grief with effusion,

little, a very little more than is pleasant or artistic. She is very fond of making not only women and children, but strong men, speak in a "wailing" voice, which we should have supposed a very rare phenomenon. But we mention all this not to be hard on it, for it is so slight as not to annoy greatly even the most culti- vated taste, but to call attention to the fact that a writer in

• The Shadow o Ashlydpae. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Three vols. London : Richard Bentley.

whom sentiment evidently predominates, who would, if she were to follow only her personal bent, colour with her feeling of life as it ought to be the hard facts of life as it is, yet paints with such anxious and minute faithfulness, not only the compound of good and evil in the characters she undertakes to delineate, but the connection between that good and evil and the events of her narrative. There is absolutely no yielding to sentiment, even in the final rewarding or punishing of the dramatis persons ; though authoresses with as much of it in their constitution as Mrs. Wood are usually fain to indulge much in it. And there is none of that tendency. „to make the bad characters deteriorate with awful rapidity and the good rise into unex- ampled perfection which belongs to the same idealizing school.

We have never read a novel in which the " feeling" of the author was more strictly withheld from interference with the natural laws of human charaCter and action, and this in spite of the obvious existence of a more than ordinary share of such feeling in the author.

The tale itself is very clever•, and keeps up the constant interest of the reader through three of the thickest volumes which the custom of modern novels permits. It has a slight supernatural or preternatural tinge which gives its name to the book, and which Mrs. Wood tells us is not a fictitious, but real incident of some family history known to her. However this may be, it is managed with much art, so as neither to injure the probability of the story nor to appear an awkward extraneous element in it. In her treatment of the supernatural, as well as her general principles of treating fiction, Mrs. Wood admirably represents the temper of the day. She lets it just enter into her plot without being an element essential to it, and without committing herself to any theory about it,—which is, we take it, the exact attitude of the more cultivated opinion of the present day in relation to such marvels as these. It gives the romantic touch to the story which Sir Walter Scott so often used with even greater effect,—but it is not explained away at the end as Sir• Walter Scott's preternatural touches generally, and very inartistically, were. Still the Shadow . of ilshlydyat is by no means the main interest of the novel, but only a very slight and, we think, artistic accessory of the interest.

The talent of the book is shown in the careful balance between the interest of the characters and the interest of the story,—and the skill with which the less marked characters are made perhaps even more living than the strongly outlined characters. There are authors, like the author of a book reviewed in these columns last week, " The Wife's Evidence," who sketch most impressively, but scarcely fill in at all. Mrs. Wood may be said to fill in almost without sketching, i.e., without strongly outlining any of her best drawings. Detail on detail, stroke on stroke, make a character seem real which has never been really described, and would not, even were it described, seem a striking or remarkable portrait. Mrs. Wood does not draw pictures which at the first glance you say "must be like somebody." But she makes very unremarkable characters live in our fancies by a multitude of small effects. The boldest sketch in this book,— and in parts very clever,—is, we think, by no means the best ; perhaps, as a whole, one of the least successful. The audacious, good-natured, fast, unscrupulous, loose Charlotte Paiu, of the latter part of the book is scarcely the same as the equally loose and audacious, but also sly and malicious, Charlotte Pain of the earlier portion. Maria, who is only tender, loving, and shrinking, is a far more impressive picture. Again, of the two brothers, Thomas and George Godolphin,—the easiest portrait, as almost any one would have said, that is, the most distinctly outlined,— is "graceless George." But yet the elder, quieter brother, with nothing particular except high feeling and high principle about him, is certainly made the more graphic and real to us, and excites less uncertainty as to the consistency of the picture at the close.

Mrs. Wood shows a great fertility in good dialogue, and her children and servants are admirable sketches. We will give a short specimen of this power which will not let our readers un-

necessarily into the story. It is after " graceless George's" bank- ruptcy and the "faithful servant" of the book (Margery) has just returned from a short absence :— "Margery continued her way up-stairs, grunting as she did so. To believe that Harriet, or anybody else, herself excepted, could do 'quite well' by Meta, was a stretch of credulity utterly inadmissible to Mar- gery's biassed mind. In the nursery sat Harriet, a damsel in a smart cap with flying pink ribbons.—'What, is it you!' was her salutation to Margery. 'We thought you had taken up your abode yonder for good.'— 'Did you?' said Margery. 'What else did you think?'—'And your • Explorations in the laterior of the Labrador Peninsula.. By Henry Told° Hind, sister, poor dear!' continued Harriet, passing by the retort and speaking 1 F.H.G.5., Laudon • Longmans. 1869.

in a sympathizing tone, for she generally found it to her interest to keep friends with Margery. 'Is she got well?'—' As well as she ever will get, I suppose,' was 31argery's crusty answer.—She sat down, untied her bonnet and threw it off, and unpinned her shawl. Harriet snuffed the candle and resumed her work, which appeared to bo the sewing of tapes on a pinafore of Meta's.= Has she tore 'em off again?' asked Margery, her eyes following the progress of the needle.—' She'a always tearing them off,' responded Harriet, biting the end of her thread.—`And how's things going on here ?' demanded Margery, her voice assuming a confidential tone, as she drew her chair nearer to Harriet's.—' The bank's not opened again, I find, for I asked so much at the station.'—' Things couldn't be worse,' said Harriet. 'It's all a smash together. The house is bankrupt.'—' Lord help us!' ejaculated Margery. Harriet let her work fall on the table, and leaned her head to- wards Margery's, her voice dropping to a whisper.—' I say ! We have got a man in here !'—' In here ! breathlessly rejoined Margery.—Harriet nodded. Since last Tuesday. There's one stopping here, and there's another at Ashlydyat. Margery, I declare to you when they were going through the house, them creatures, I felt that sick that I could have heaved my insidorright out. If I had dared, I'd have upset a bucket of boiling water over the lot as they came up the stairs."

Altogether, the Shadow of Ashlydyat shows plenty of talent,— and of sentiment under self-control. The picture of the smaller and more personal miseries entailed on sensitive and honourable minds by the fraud of one closely connected with them has seldom been more powerfully, naturally, and minutely drawn. There is nothing adventitious or " worked-up " about the picture. Without harrowing the reader unnecessarily,—indeed with many alleviating circumstances,—the results of the fraud on which the story hinges wind up powerfully a tale of which- the interest has never flagged.