TWO REMARKABLE NOVELS.*
Tin two works on which we propose to comment form a whole, although the first, Donovan, was published some time ago, and the second, We Two, is only just out. They are novels with an earnestly, even passionately, enforced. purpose ; they are essentially religions novels; therefore it must be admitted at once that they offend in two respects against our notion of what novels ought to do and to be. Their purpose is, however, so laudable, and their religiousness is so truly essential, and not merely applied; the stories are so completely the forms through which the spirit that is their life expresses itself,—that they cannot be classed among tiresome novels of the goody- goody school, or those objects of Queen Caroline's aversion- " notivelles-sermones." The lives of the actors in these two dramas are lives of which the religions is the chief element, and the spiritual combat, internal and external, is the permanent meaning and daily work. The writer has devoted powers differ- ing as widely from those of the ordinary novelists of the day —meaning, of course, the readable ones—as her subject differs from the customary themes of fiction, to the defence of the Atheist and the Agnostic from the intolerance of believers in Christianity. She is a Christian; her words reveal her as a fervent believer; her readers will discern in her a personal piety, as strongly marked as her unusual capacity for seeing both sides of a question upon which her own mind is entirely made up ; but she eagerly combats the attitude of Christian sects towards Free-thought and Free-thinkers. On the title-page of Donovan are these lines of Mrs. Barrett Browning's- " And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed Around our incompleteness,— Bound our restlessness, His rest."
On that of We Two is Spinoza's saying, "Men are so. made as to resent .nothing more impatiently than to be treated as criminal for opinions which they deem true." The two novels form an expansion of these texts, more skilfully executed in the second than in the first instance. The writer's typical Christians and her typical Atheists are iiot men of straw, but real persons. In Donovan. the author presents to her readers the spectacle of a mismanaged, much-wronged, misunderstood youth, who is highly intelligent, rash of judgment, full of the inexorability of the very young towards all that they regard as inconsistency, driven by the treatment which he receives from his mother and her second husband, his own fraudulent guardian, to a still more angry and contemptuous attitude of mind, and almost to despair by the death of his only sister, for whom he grieves "as one without hope." Donovan Farrant is an Atheist, and as such treated with contumely and regarded with suspicion by the narrow-minded and inconsistent people among whom his lot is cast, and whose Christianity he judges by their conduct. The story of his struggle with the enemy, as he holds the Christian faith to be, is a very interesting one. There is a pretty love-story in Donovan Farrant's life, a pure and perfect bit of romance ; but we doubt whether so dove-like and colourless a nature as that of Gladys would in real life have had the elevat- ing, redeeming, and lasting attraction that it is made to possess for such a man as Farrant. The weak and selfish mother, the
• Donoroan.--Tro Too. By Wm, 1402.. London: Hurst and Blaokett.
sister who dies in her childhood, with a clear vision of that towards which he is destined to strive with terrible anguish of spirit and many hard experiences in material matters, are both more true to nature, and their contending and contrasted influ- ence upon Donovan is far more fully accounted for. There is a great deal of thought in this book ; the author studies the sad problems of life with patience and fairness. She is not angry with her Atheists. There is a very fine touch in the timid but firm answer which she puts into the month of the little sister of Donovan, when he remonstrates with her upon the unreason- ableness of her belief,—" You see, Deno, I can't help knowing that God is, because he is nearer to me even than you." And Donovan's words, when he finds the faith that transforms this life and illumines the life to come, when he has won his wife and laid out the paths they are to tread together, are worthy words :—" How different life is," he says, "from what one used to think it ! Oh, Gladys, if we can but do half we long to do ! What a grand old working-place the world is !" Pro.? bably some of her readers have been disappointed at finding that the conversion of Donovan does not extend to his politics ; but the author is a convinced and advanced Radical. The good Secularist Radical becomes a better Christian Radical, that is all. He is no less ready to make the efforts and the sacrifices demanded of him by the life which he deliberately selects, but he is animated by a higher motive and a surer hope.
We Two has more varied interest and a wider scope. The author is not an exception to the rule of deficiency in humour among lady novelists ; and when she gives us a parody of a well- known song directed against the Atheist leader, or repeats what she believes to be a good joke, she is not a little provoking. The essence of want of humour is, however, unconsciousness of the fact; therefore people who have it not are "past praying for,"—and Miss Lyall's readers are so well-oft when she is serious, that they can afford to bear with her faeetioi even when she thinks it funny-pathetic, as one of Mr. Wilkie Collins's foreigners would say, to make Raeburn call his daughter Erica "little son Eric." We confess to having felt an impulse to shut the book at this sample of silliness ; but we are glad to have resisted that impulse.
The " Two " are Luke Raeburn and his daughter; and this time the spiritual combat results in the conversion of the woman, the course of the struggle being quite different from that of Donovan's. The character of the Atheist leader is drawn with real power, and will doubtless be an entire novelty to many, who may find it difficult to believe that such singleness of mind and purpose, such generosity and self-sacrifice, can exist in a "Secularist?' The story of the father and daughter, into whose life Donovan Farrant comes, is a pathetic and deeply interesting one. It loses none of the effect properly belonging to a novel because it is a history of bigotry, intolerance, and persecution, and also a strong and persuasive plea for that personal love of God and acceptance of Christ which saves men from confounding religion with its unworthy professors. We have seldom read anything finer or more impressive than one chapter in which the conversion of Erica, her awakening to "God's great sunrise," is related, and another that records Raeburn's death. The constant persecution and injustice, the pecuniary rain, and the unremitting calumny dealt out to the Atheist leader, terminate in a frightful scene of violence, in which he is severely injured, and he dies as he has lived, an undoubting Atheist, full of love for mankind and his country, of zeal for the spread of knowledge and the alleviation of suffering; a just man, noble of soul, and pure of life. "What has Christianity done for me ? " he asks the well-meaning clergyman who tries to persuade him to renounce Secularism on his deathbed; "look at my life ; see how I have been treated." But there is no bitterness in his death ; and his daughter is comforted because of the Fatherhood of God :—
" Not on the clasp of consciousness—on Thee my life depends ; Not what I think, but what Thou art, makes sure."
We think the author makes a mistake in piling up the per- secution of Raeburn too high, and in allowing him such very limited contact with Christians in whom the greatest of the Christian graces had. any existence. Charles Oamund, the liberal-minded clergyman, is a fine character, but we think that in real life he would not have been so exceptional an experience to Raeburn. Again, the consciousness of power and the sense of success which Raeburn would certainly have derived from the large and enthusiastic following with which the author endows him, would. have exerted upon his temperament and spirits a greater influence than she has assigned to those causes. There is true perception and nicety of observation in her portrayal of the effect produced by social proscription upon the beautiful nature of Erica.
In conclusion, we recommend all novel-readers who are not incapable of taking interest in anything except the vanities, the vulgarities, and the vices of certain classes of " society " and kinds of "life," to read both these novels, with the care which such strong, uncommon, and thoughtful books demand and deserve.
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