BOOKS.

JOURNALS OF CAROLINE FOX.* ALTHOUGH the writer of these Journals, were she still among Ant, would have but lately passed her sixtieth year, and the names which enrich the page with interesting and memorable suggestion are those of our contemporaries, yet the perusal -of the volume has had upon us something of the effect of a glimpse into the distant past. Whether this sense of remote- ness be due to the character of the writer or the selection of the editor, we should reckon it among the attractions of the volume before us. It rests the weary part of the mind to read of a woman manifestly accomplished and in every way made the most of by education, who was, as far as appears here, untouched by the desires and perplexities that seem to follow the higher educa- tion of her sex, as shadows appear when the sun emerges from the cloud. While every characteristic utterance here is a revela- tion of woman's capacities, we hear not a word of woman's claims. Female suffrage, we hasten to assure our readers (for we cannot but believe they will share our thankfulness in the discovery), is not so much as hinted at, unless, indeed, we choose to find a -satirical reference to it in a spirited defence of the freedom of utterance granted to Quakeresses, evidently recorded by Miss Fox with much amusement," Shall we silence our women P We -cannot do it. We dare not do it." On education, there is a like refreshing silence. It is possible that there may be some-

thing misleading in this characteristic of the book as an index -to the character of the writer. There is remarkably little self-

revelation in it, and it may be that its keenest interests were -either withheld from pages written evidently for the enjoyment -of a domestic circle, or withdrawn from them before a wider -circle was invited to share in this enjoyment. Many who only know Caroline Fox here would have been glad of more unreserve -as to her own feelings, and some of those who knew her other- wise will feel, perhaps, that the latent fire of an impassioned and -enthusiastic nature is too much hidden here by shrewd remark, lively recollection, and humorous anecdote. Still, judging the book as a book merely, the critic must feel that there is some- thing refreshing in its old-fashioned range of social and domestic interest, and rejoice in the complete absence of a certain set of -cravings which few women with so much power as is shown here will ever lack in the future. It is certainly a picture of part of the writer's life, and it is in itself a welcome change from much that is characteristic of our own time.

We find this quality of the book before us an attraction, but yre are forced to allow that it has its negative side. Even if we -count this as a defect, however, we have few faults to note, and we may dispatch the ungracious part of our task in a few words.

• Memories of Otd Friends; being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caro. 4ine Fox, of Penjerrick, Cornwall, 18354E71.EdiW., by Horace W. Pym. London : Smith and Co.

In the first place, we must protest against the form of the volume These journals should have been a book to carry with one to a summer-house, to have on a sofa, or on a carriage-seat in a drive. Why has their editor decided that they shall be barely readable without a desk ? Surely, it is not only a cruel, but an impolitic, exclusion of the many feeble and infirm, who would have been their most attentive readers, for the placid evenness of the style and temperate lightness of touch are of a kind to make the book a welcome visitor to the aged and the invalid. If, as we cannot doubt, the work reaches a second edition, we would plead with Mr. Pym that the material interests of the weak-wristed and short-sighted may be considered—a change which, we believe, would be as suitable to the character of the writer as to the needs of a numerous class of readers—though we must add that the trace of pretence that there is about the aspect of the book, is the only touch of pretence about it at all. In every other respect, it appears to us that the editor has done his work in a way which might be taken as a model by his successors, and, indeed, the space we have given to a complaint that his binder and printer might have obviated will be enough to testify that we have little else to find fault with. We would have the volume a little reduced in sub- stance, as well as in bulk. Here and there it becomes too much a string of anecdotes, one or two of which are not new to the reader ; one, on page 40, is disagreeable and not kindly, and, though we have never read a book of the sort in which there was less that should be omitted for this reason, we must say the same of every instance (there are not many) in which the name of Edward Irving appears. We have lately taken occasion of a similar slighting mention to set on record our own belief in his lofty purity and single-hearted Christian devotion ; and we need now only stop to point out that Quaker principles would tend to quicken any recoil from whatever was outward and ritualistic in his teaching, though it should have inspired sym- pathy with his profound belief in a direct teaching of man by the Spirit of God. Half-a-dozen lines erased throughout the volume, in addition to the passages we have mentioned, would leave it free from any possible objection on the score of reverence and kindliness. Whatever may be the critical judgment passed on these Journals, we may promise their reader that, with these trifling exceptions, he need not fear the pang inflicted by a harsh or contemptuous mention of those who cannot, by word or deed, prove it to be undeserved. On the other hand, it will be a very great surprise to us, if any one finds want of point in the writing, which yet never inflicts a stab. Hardly a page can be turned without meeting a name that still retains some importance; and though at times, of course, we find little but a name, yet even then the mention is not devoid of interest, and in some cases it affords views of character from which the historian of our time might stop to gather hints for the colouring of his picture. We should have pruned these records more closely; but there is an interest in their very exuberance, and if they do not all add to our knowledge of the persons described in pro- portion to the space they occupy, they all help to fill out the im- pression of the eager and thirsty spirit of the recorder. Before giving such hasty notice as we can afford to one or two of these sketches, the artist herself claims a word of introduction.

The name of Caroline Fox is new to the world of readers, but dear to a large and varied group, numbering a few who have made permanent contributions to our literature, and to many who have never made any acquaintance with it whatever. It is in both these relations that she is mentioned in the biography of Sterling, by Carlyle, whom she had evidently impressed with a sense of power, distinctness, and grace, and whose mention here of her "swift, neat pen" (p. 188), is the fullest justifica- tion of this volume, if such were needed. His own record (Life of Sterling, Part iii., chapter 2) of her judicious kindness to a poor Cornish miner, opens to us a glimpse of a spirit at home in intercourse with the poor and uneducated, such as sets in a new light the many specimens here given of a very different kind of intercourse. The story of Michael Verran and one other proof of her power to shed beneficent influence on the lives of the lowly and the ignorant, side by side with the abun- dant evidence of an equal power to enter into dignified con- verse with the wealthiest minds among her contemporaries, suggest a many-sided capacity and cultivation which form almost the ideal of a woman's life. It would be an interesting question to consider how far the peculiar combination of sobriety with liveliness manifested here, is due to the education and characteristic ideal of the community to which she belonged. Every phrase of Caroline Fox's writing bears tribute to the influence of discipline, to the spirit most opposed to that idolatry of liberty which characterises our time, and we can fancy that the freshness and vitality of interest here manifest may be the natural result of giving a much smaller place to amusement than that which it mostly takes among us. We see here the working of a mind secure in the fine balance which comes from a true adjustment between the world without and the world within. No one, indeed, could have been born into hap- pier conditions, in this respect. Her father—a man held in the highest respect by men of science, and the warmest affection by those to whom science was a matter of indifference —was one of four brothers, all in their way remarkable, belong- ing to a Quaker family settled for two centuries in the remote corner of our Island where, for the most part, the daughter's half-century of mortal life was spent. His was a character im- pressive in its absolute simplicity, in its strength and directness and in the modesty which made his really valuable discoveries seem things with which he had nothing to do. From the characteristic limitations of the man of science of our day he was absolutely free; yet his achievements were such as science recog- nises, and more vanity or more ambition, perhaps, would have given him no unconspicnous place in her ranks. His "de- flector dipping-needle" (to which reference is made here and there in the Journals), has been used in all Arctic expeditions since its invention ; and in a view held by him of the tempera- ture of mines, he had the honour of a convert no less illus- trious than Humboldt. Lord Talbot de Malahide, as Robert

Fox's daughter tells us (p. 312), complimented him, speaking as President of the British Association at Dublin, in 1857, "on the honesty of his facts, so uncooked for the occasion ; " and there

is something in the compliment which will recall to more than one reader the sturdy, vigorous form and features, which have left on their memory an impression of truthfulness and strength, in a rare combination with gracious kindliness. The description which Caroline Fox goes on to give of Dr. Livingstone, who was present at the same meeting—" a man far more given to do his work than to talk about it "—might well have been applied to her father.

The great chant' of these Journals, though it can only be expressed in a negative form, is itself most positive,—the quality, whatever it be, which is the antithesis to egotism. It is one of those virtues which lie on the boundary between the moral and intellectual world. Where this quality is, there is the power of seeing what exists. Perhaps we may make our mean- ing clearer by comparing Caroline Fox's Journals with those of another Englishwoman, like her, generous, humorous, dutiful, and quick-witted, but, unlike her, egotistic. Fanny Burney gives us a lively picture of her time, but what she tells us of its principal personages is, after all, what they were to her.

Caroline Fox gives no more space to this aspect of any character she sketches than would have been given to it by a bystander. This is made specially remarkable by the fact that all her most interesting records date from the time of life specially liable to egotism. There is from the first—and the Journals begin in her eighteenth year—a freedom from all questioning about self that is wonderfully rare in the young, and is a wonderful telescope for observation of other minds. The racy and incisive sense of humour which gives its flavour to the volume has an equally real, though less obvious, connection with this nameless quality.

She evidently knew nothing of the fogs of the spirit, though it is not likely that a spirit so trenchant escaped some experi- ence of its storms. Her deep religions faith was the most profound and vital part of her being, yet the main interest of the book is due to her sympathetic intercourse with men who had discarded whatever was traditional in Christianity, if not Christianity itself. An entry for the beginning of 1846 partly supplies the clue (p. 204) :—

"I have assumed to-day a name for my religious principles, Quaker Catholicism,' having direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma, yet recognising the high worth of all other forms of faith ; a system, in the sense of inclusion not exclusion ; an appreciation of the universal and various teachings of the Spirit through the faculties given us, or independent of them." [The italics are our own.]

Another extract from her journal seems to us worth joining with this, as a fuller expression of the purely Quaker element in her creed :—

"Old Samuel Randall has ended his weary pilgrimage ; he de- parted as one 'who was glad of the opportunity.' He was a perfect

Quaker, of the old George-Fox stamp, ponderous, uncompromising, slow, uninfluenced by the views of others, intensely one.sided, simple and childlike in his daily habits, solemn and massive in his ministry;, that large voice seemed retained to cry with ceaseless iteration, The kingdom of God is within you.' Last of the Puritans, fare thee well !" (p. 230.)

A confession of faith, given in the preface, shows how deep a straggle her spirit passed through to attain the anchorage of a direct hold on things divine. Perhaps it shows also how little can be told of such a struggle in any words, even when they come from a pen so vivid and powerful as that to which we owe these Journals.

But their chief interest, as we have said, lies in the pictures of earnest minds among her contemporaries, and the most in- teresting of these is that of the last man we should expect to find in familiar and respectful intercourse with a pious Quakeress.

We shall be surprised if the sketch of John Mill is not felt to possess that high and rare kind of charm belonging to those revelations of character which, in their striking contrast to the aspect already familiar, revive in us the conviction that the capacities of the human spirit are indeed infinite. This charm, finely indicated by a poet still among us, in an expressed desire for a sight of the solitary picture painted by Dante and the solitary poem written by Raphael, though it may be appreciated most keenly by a poet, is felt by all human beings. We all care most for those glimpses which show us the man as he does not habitually reveal himself; and in looking back on a finished intercourse, we shall generally find that, however sweet the melody, the sweetest part has been some unexpected modulation, quickly deserted for the original key. Such an interest we find in this presentment of John Mill. It is evident that in the atmosphere of the Quakers of Falmouth, some dim aspirations, faintly discernible here aud there in his writings, found their appropriate atmosphere, and blossomed into a fullness of beauty that made the landscape a different thing from what it was elsewhere. We have always thought that John Mill was only half understood, if this part of his nature were not allowed for ; but we never suspected how completely it would be thus misunderstood, till we read this volume. No doubt there is, on the other hand, a danger of mistaking sympathy with feeling for feeling itself, and it may often happen that persons are supposed to share in convictions and aspirations which, in truth, they only admire. The spiritual life constantly bestows a power of attraction felt by those who do not share it, but while Caroline Fox may here and there have mistaken this attraction for conviction, many passages here (some from his own pen) make it clear that the Quaker spirit had for John Mill not only the external charm of a phase of human development, interesting to the student of human nature, but that it appealed to something within his own soul. The circumstances of his visit to Cornwall, as well as the presence of those who gave it its charm, were such as to make it a time of peculiar significance in his life. He was brought among the Foxes by the death of a younger brother at Falmouth,' of whom his mention,—" Seldom has the memory of one who died so young been such as to leave a deeper or more beneficial impression on the spectators," contrasts forcibly with the cold- ness of every mention of his family in his autobiography. And on the other hand, his affection for the only brother of Caroline is commemorated, not only in an interesting letter to him (p. 93), which many will regard as the, gem of the book, but in a letter written by her to Mill, in the profound and poignant sorrow of that brother's death. The letter is not given, but the passage quoted raises a vivid anxiety to know how it was received by John Mill, whom it informed "How mercifully he" (Barclay Fox) "had been dealt with, and how true his Goa and Saviour had been to all his promises." (p. 302.) We cannot believe that the reception of that letter was wholly con- temptuous. This intercourse shows that if slow to reveal her own personality, Caroline Fox had a great power of unveiling that of others. "Will you pardon the egotism of this letter ?" he writes to her brother, in the letter we have mentioned. "I really do not think 1 have talked so much about myself in the whole year pre- vious as I have done in the few weeks of my intercourse with your family." What a wonderful tribute to their influence lies in those words "The calendar of odours, given to Miss Caro- line Fox from her grateful friend, J. S. Mill," will invest with a pathetic interest for many a reader the odour of the clematis, noticed here as the only one for late autumn ; and this solitary fragrance may fitly typify an opening here suggested into a

world which, as far as we know, the great logician visited for this once, and then quitted for ever.

The largest space given to any single figure in the diary is that given to one whom Mill truly valued and revered, and whose biography, we learn with interest, he had at one time thought of writing,—John Sterling. The picture of a person whose life has been actually written by Thomas Carlyle and Julius Hare, and might have been written by John Stuart Mill, must have a very lively interest, and yet we must allow that as given here, it has somewhat disappointed us. We have felt in perusing the many pages allotted to his conversation like one who looks on from a little distance, at a merry or an earnest group, and cannot catch more of what is said than just enough to make out the subject of conversation. Perhaps our sympathetic and fluent reporter is in this case decanting cham- pagne. However, if we gain no definite addition to our know- ledge of John Sterling from this volume, the previous im- pression that he was one whose magnetic power is felt by almost all within his reach, is strengthened by the echo of his name along the years covered by this journal. We may cite as examples the exclamation of Wordsworth on hearing of his death (p. 195), though it strikes us as a curiously undis- criminating one ; and the far more appropriate and suitable testimony of John Mill.

We would gladly linger over many of these sketches, besides those we have mentioned, but our space is exhausted, and we must be content with a mere allusion to the interesting glimpses at Wordsworth, with his "virtuous and didactic deportment," and his frank avowal, so far as we know, not repeated elsewhere, of a retrograde movement of thought (" I am now in bondage to habits and prejudices from which I used to be free," p. 159) ; at Dr. Calvert, well known to readers of Carlyle's Life of Sterling, snatching a letter of Nelson's from Lord Spencer, as he was about to throw it into the fire, followed towards the ship in which he returned from Madeira by the laments of the peasants, who had found in him a generous and sympathising friend, maintaining against Carlyle that "man, while dwelling on the earth, has to be instructed in patience, submission, humility," and dreading on his death-bed to be " shipwrecked into life;" and lastly, at the two sons of Coleridge, each with some echo of their father, and their own distinct individuality besides. Perhaps it is well that our space is thus limited. We might other- wise be tempted to intrude farther into the family circle, where there was no lack of notable and characteristic figures, some of whom are still among us. It is with reluctance, but with ac- quiescence, that we leave the veil which the editor has lifted, we think with admirable discretion, to fall again on homes rich in dear and venerable associations, but sacred in their modest pri- vacy,—a privacy commemorated, not compromised, by this par- tial and chastened revelation of the life within.