SIX NOVELS.* IN William Romilly, the prominent figure of The
Story of Hannah, is given a striking, original, and thoughtful study of a person whose genuine, deep-seated love and tenderness are masked during most of his life by an austerity that shuts him out as though by a wall from affections and sympathies whereby his whole existence would have been sweetened, and which would gladly have been poured out to him if not checked by the awe that he inspired. When successive calamities have torn off the mask, then the man's true self is allowed to appear, and, to quote from the book, "in the stern heart of William Romilly there had at last broken the perfect flower of love, and its perfume filled all the latter years of life." That this flower was latent in him is felt throughout, and if a thought of the many years during which the perfume was lost both to himself and others should engender sadness, this emotion will possibly be tempered by thinking also that, perhaps, after all, the period of waiting may have been a period of maturing, without which the per- fect aroma could never have been attained. The book is decidedly worth reading, and contains numerous minor sketches, some humorous, some pathetic, but all fresh and excellent. Amongst them we would draw attention
• (1.) The Story of Hannah. By W. J. Dawson. London : Hodder and Stoughton.—(2.) An Australian Bush Ttaek. By J. D. Hennessey. London : Sampson Low and Co.—(3.) The Strange Story of My Life. By J. 9: Winter. London : F. V. White and Co.—(4) Raeenstone. By C. R. Coleridge and Helen Shipton. London : A. D. Noes and Co.—(5.) Captain Jacobus. By L. Cope Corntord. London : Methuen and Co.—(6.) The Sealskin Cloak. By Bolt Boldrewood. London : Macmillan and Co.
especially to those of the minister's children and of various members of his congregation, and to the rapid, vivid outlines delineating the swindling manager of a bankrupt society.
An old native's disclosure to a colonist named Stoneham
of the hiding-place of a mysteriously inscribed boomerang and a letter written by Captain Cook in 1770, constitutes the foundation of An Australian Bush Track, which is a lively tale somewhat a la Rider Haggard, containing no lack of incident and local colouring, and relating how the chance of
gaining untold wealth in gold and diamonds by following directions given on the boomerang, induces three white men to set out in search of the unknown land of Zoo-zoo. One is impelled to the enterprise chiefly by his commercial in- stincts ; a second by desire for revenge ; and the third goes because the others are going, and he has just then nothing better to do, it being the author's opinion that " an Englishman will go through the whole racket of a hazardous adventure on the strength of some other fellow going, and his having nothing else particular on hand." Simultaneously with themselves Stoneham, the original recipient of the secret, starts also on the same errand ; and what with his hostility and that of the natives, and the perils of crossing a waterless waste of sand, the travellers have some very thrilling and novel experiences—including the discovery of a subterranean river, whose banks are lined with pockets of gold and diamonds—and the finding themselves confronted on the return journey by a vast lake, where they had previously left an arid desert of sand. This last emergency reveals the true inwardness of an episode introduced at an earlier period; for, but for Dorna's adventurous flight from home, she could not possibly have appeared on the scene with a yacht at the exact moment required to rescue the explorers from their desperate plight. The stormy nature of this heroine's whole career will easily be inferred when we say that it is quite in keeping with the following account of her betrothal :
"At the very moment he was pleading his snit so eloquently, a shower of spears fell near them, one transfixing Hartley's horse, which suddenly reared, throwing its rider, and then staggered and fell, a few yards off, seemingly dying. As Hartley rose to his teat and grasped his rifle, a black leaped in front of him to brain him with a waddy ; but Dorna was too quick for him, and shot him clean through the wrist with her revolver as he held the waddy above Hartley's head. Quick !' she called ow to Hartley, firing several shots among the startled blacks. ' My horse will carry both of us.' You foolish man, of course I love you,' she said, laughing through her tears of apprehension at his narrow escape. In a minute—before the blacks had time to rally and make another onslaught—the two of them were gone. I believe that Mrs. Hartley tells her friends that blacks are always troublesome creatures, and that but for them she never would have married."
As this dashing young lady is genuinely likeable, we trust no one will be prejudiced in her disfavour by finding her announce on one occasion that she would sooner die than shoot ber father ; for though daughters—generally speaking —are credited with sufficient dutifulness to render such an assurance superfluous, there might, not inexcusably, have existed a doubt in the case of a parent like Stoneham, who had from earliest childhood been in the habit of murdering somebody at least once in every three years, and who was in all respects an out-and-out ruffian.
To be a waif, again and again cut loose from apparently secure moorings and cast forth to toss helplessly on life's stormy ocean, may at first sight be deemed a pitiable lot ; yet that term is certainly not appropriate to the fate of the heroine of The Strange Story of My Life, because she is so exceptionally fortunate in the successive havens into which she drifts, that sbe is more likely—notwithstanding her mis- fortunes—to excite envy than compassion. When her first happy home with a father in India is broken up suddenly by his death, it is replaced is the nick of time by another with a husband; when dislodged violently from this one, a chance current brings her to fresh anchorage as the adopted daughter of a charming widowed Austrian Princess who lives in Monte Cristo-like splendour and magnificence, and whose only son devotes himself to the wanderer with a tender patience and fidelity reminding one of Jacob serving for Rachel; and when finally taken leave of she has been trans- ferred to yet a fourth home in England, and there settled down for good and all in absolute happiness. As she is a good little thing no one will object to her remarkable good fortune or to the devoted admirers of both sexes whom she everywhere meets with,—indeed, we should be quite sorry were it otherwise; but her guileless belief in the death of an officer on active service merely on the strength of seeing the statement in a newspaper, and without seeking con- firmation at the War Office, would be rather provoking if one did not make large allowance for her youth and inexperience. Unregenerate readers who think a book's flavour improved by some spice of human imperfection may possibly experience a toujours perdris sensation at the super- lative goodness and general excellence of all the characters. But in spite of that the story is quite readable, flowing easily and pleasantly from the pen of a practised writer, and con- veying a warning against the unwisdom of accepting as infallibly true everything that appears in newspapers, which may safely be recommended for application to many other matters besides reports of deaths.
Theodora, the heroine of Ravenstone, is evidently intended as an embodiment of that rara avis, a Duchess and dairymaid combined ; and the manner in which the joint authors have executed this conception suggests the idea that one of them took charge of the aristocratic and the other of the plebeian part, and that they now and then forgot the desirability of making their different bits of workmanship fit together neatly. Pastoral romance is the most appropriate definition we can think of for that portion of the book which relates the winning of Theodora's heart by a young gentleman supposed to be far above her in rank. An accident having thrown him, ill and helpless, on the hospitality of strangers in a farm- house, he there falls in love with the farmer's niece, who helps to nurse him when not otherwise engaged in milking cows, feeding pigs and poultry, &c., and who listens to this being from a superior world with the readiness usually expected to be shown by maidens to whom the gods come down in the likeness of men. On one occasion, being excited beyond the bounds of prudence by assisting her in a successful chase after truant goslings, he steals a kiss and goes perilously near making a formal offer of his hand and heart. But whatever view he may have taken of a ?rigs- alliance in that moment of wild excitement, in calmer moods he regards it as a thing impossible, and accordingly departs (as soon as his health is restored) with an expression of kindly hope that she will " have no recollections." Then ensues a sudden transformation of their relative positions by the open- ing of an old despatch-box, proving that she is Lady Theodora Sinclair, and in the event of their marriage the condescension would be on her side, not his ; and finally everything ends happily after a period of suspense, which is obviously neces- sary to punish his faithlessness to the paramount claims of true love, bat would yet be more acceptable to the reader if it did not entail some suffering also on the innocent Theodora. The sort of roughness and incongruity discernible in her portrait is apparent also in that of her brother, a peasant- turned-Prince, who sets his affections on a well-bred young lady, and experiences much the same kind of treatment in love as does his sister, being cold-shouldered as a farm-labourer and welcomed as an Earl. Our sympathies, however, go out more to him and Theodora than to their respective sweet- hearts, who have too much of the prig and nonentity about them to be keenly interesting.
No plot, briskness and brusqueness, commendably little sentiment, surprising adventures, and much highway robbery and galloping hither and thither, are the chief impressions left on the mind by a perusal of Captain Jacobus, whose author evidently enjoys going slap-dash at the story he wants to tell, and, when he means to bring in any particular personage or incident, does not care to bother himself over much about such a trifling matter as verisimilitude. Cromwell, Charles II., and Penruddock's plot against the Commonwealth are amongst the historical features introduced; and in order, we imagine, to render any mistake as to the story's date quite impossible, the conversations are besprinkled plentifully with the uncouth abbreviations "y' are" and "y' have" for "ye are" and "ye have." Life and property are treated with sublime indiffer- ence throughout, and the tale appears on the whole to be a promising first effort from a writer whose forte is rather for portraying adventure than character, and whose work will doubtless improve as he outgrows his present stage of crudity.
The heroine's métier in The Sealskin Cloak is so plainly to be saint and martyr, that if baulked of this role she would really have had good cause to grumble, and fate can hardly be called unkind for providing her with exceptionally favour- able opportunities for fulfilling her vocation, The tender-
hearted reader, however, need not fear being harrowed unmercifully by the spectacle of her woes, owing to the numerous alleviations that she meets with,—more especially when acting as governess to the spoilt daughter of a colonial Crcesus to whom money is not the smallest object, and who unhesitatingly indulges his child's every whim, whether for slaves, gazelles, Arab steeds, or anything else. The heroic and high-flown sentiments enunciated by this damsel on some occasions are in rather startling contrast to her flippancy on others; and it is a decided shock to hear her remark, after striking a dying Arab enemy senseless, "You're out of it for the present, my friend. For two pins I'd give you another ; but as you're down I'll forgive you." The story's pivot and characters are alike improbable ; a good deal of the language is tiresomely stilted and grandiloquent ; quite half of the volume is occupied with a lengthy trip up the Nile, intro- ducing much information of a guide-book sort ; and the few scenes laid in Australia are so decidedly the best part of the book, that we regret Mr. Boldrewood's not having confined his pen to the land wherein he first won renown.
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