NOVELS.
THE LOST HALO.*
THE philosophy of this novel—for we may assume that any writer who makes his story a commentary on life is a philosopher—is noticeable for its despondency. There is an extensive comparison between renunciation and acquisition. Alfred Allington, the frail, ecstatic Nonconformist minister, stands for renunciation, and this ought in itself to seem heroic, but, as Mr. White handles it, it does not; Delia, his sister, a worldly wise young woman who is frankly "on the make," convinced that her face is her fortune and must be used for all it is worth, ought to be odious, but she is not,— on the contrary, she is extremely attractive. Possibly Mr. White has done his philosophy an injustice ; if not, he is content to watch the world with a cynical sadness which is not, however, violent enough to provoke us much one way or the other; we cannot call him either eulogist or calumniator ; and we are left simply depressed. It is rather as though one should be such an out-and-out believer in the influences of heredity as to think that nothing can be done to resist them. We all know what a lively social unit a man who professes that view generally is ! Mr. White is fond of the word " environment "; really he allows it to explain too much, and would do well to avoid its benumbing doctrine. In spite of this blighting atmosphere, there is a great deal in the story which is well observed and very neatly expressed. It is the general effect which stifles numerous particular merits.
Alfred Allington is a virtuoso whose combination of lyrical temperament and evangelical professions leads him into pre- posterous contradictions. He is virtually a pantheist accord- ing to one of his sermons ; in another he announces himself a celibate by conviction. He is emotional, and might credibly be the leader of a great revivalist movement, but when the hot fit passed the reality of the spiritual forces would perhaps have less meaning for him than for any of his hearers. He is an anchorite, a mortifier of the flesh, a stern and bitter moralist in one phase, and in another a latitudinarian, a casuist, and a materialist. He is driven hither and thither by the caprices of his conscience. His conduct is a mixture of fanaticism and champagne,—which he drinks for its effects as Asiatics eat hashish. He denounces his sister for snobbish- ness and deceit ; but when she asks his support in her com- paratively venial plot of being secretly engaged to her desirable young man, he insists on a secret marriage, because it is the substance of which an engagement is only the shadow. No sooner are they secretly married than
• The Lost Halo. By Percy White. London; Methuen and Co. Os.]
he is a Jeremiah prophesying woe,—" Confess ! confess 1" And as they will not confess, he does it for them.
Delia's paganism appears a thing of impressive stability and reasonableness beside the religious temperament which yields such incredible changes as her brother's from brooding austerity to self-indulgence, and from self-indulgence to a disloyal pietism. If Mr. White permitted himself any show of feeling, we should expect him to break the rules of his ar•t and burst out with a homily on the nothingness of eloquence, facility, and asceticism compared with character. But as he does not, be goes on adding observation to observation from the lives be has so industriously observed long after the mind of the reader has received so many impressions of a like kind that it is incapable of receiving more. There is no assurance that there is any finality to the vacillations when Allington goes off obediently to America in the wake of some autocratic inventor of a new code of religious conduct. We are inclined to agree with the prosperous Radical man of business who had " discovered" the Chrysostom in the boy, and was always proud of his penetration ;—
"f Of course he was a fanatic, but, all the same, we haven't done with master Alf yet,' said the head of the family across the dinner- table. I don't mind saying, in spite of what's happened, that I'm not ashamed o' the part I played in makin' him. And as for that talk about drink, that's part o' the illusion. His blood's thin, his physique poor, an' his conscience frightened at its own spiritual shadow. I understand him I do—because I've got imagination. Mark my words, we haven't done with him yet, and I'm glad that I for one did my duty by him.' "
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