The Nature of her Works.

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In the world of letters few authors have so distinct, and at the same time so eminent a position as this lady. Other writers are cleverer, more impassioned, more brilliant, but we turn from their eloquent words to her tales of simple goodness with a sense of rest and relief. Her records do not tell of strong mental conflict, of great wrong or crime; there are no bright lights and no dark shadows in her life scenes; and thus living in stormy and troubled times, rife with conflict and crime, those who are climbing the weary upward road can rest and be thankful,' when she speaks. And for this reason her most ardent admirers are found, not chiefly among those who lead a quiet, uneventful life, and seek in a novel for some relief from the monotony of it, but among the earnest workers and able thinkers of the time, those who are familiar with

'The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;'

for Mrs. Craik's great charm is a repose of manner, a quiet dignity of style, which, while it impresses all readers by its calm purity, appeals more especially to the cultivated and refined. Restful is, perhaps, the term that can best be applied to her writings. She does not look deep down into the inner conflicts, the great moral struggles of our nature from which George Eliot draws back the veil; nor can she reach the pure and lofty air of poetic inspiration in which George MacDonald soars; she does not even give us the broad, pleasant, infinite variety of human character and life which Anthony Trollope depicts, but she takes some quiet corner of the earth, which is planted with roses perhaps, or perhaps brings forth thorns and briars chiefly, and she says, 'See, men and women have lived ' and suffered here. Be patient and steadfast, you who live and 'suffer; endure as they endured, and you also will find rest and peace. Do right, do your duty, and be patient: all must 'be well, for God is over all.'

Very pathetic is this teaching, very powerful too in its earnest, absolute purity and goodness; for this is an author whose pages are unsullied by any taint. Good is good, and evil is evil; she believes in no doubtful border-land, no debateable ground between the two, and thinks that evil is not to be palliated or extenuated. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of a pure moral tone in the literature of fiction; for the influence of fiction on the manners and morals of a nation is almost incalculable, it acts most powerfully either for good or evil. A writer of fiction having first excited the imagination or kindled the enthusiasm of readers, who are for

NO. LXXXVII.

D

the most part young and susceptible, can present them with an image of exalted virtue or of vice made attractive, which shall be all-powerful in its after-effects. It is no mean task to make the timid trust in God, and to help the trustful to hope; to make those who hope strong in faith, and the faithful victorious. A writer of fiction who neglects his high vocation, and accepts only the low one of paid entertainer,-paid to amuse or excite, careless of means or result,-commits a crime against the age in which he lives, and against all future ages. So far as he has any influence, he uses it for evil and not for good. So far as he is able to act upon his generation he will leave it shallower, more flippant, more tolerant of evil, and indifferent to good than he finds it. And yet what is the aim of a great number of authors of the present day? Mainly to amuse indolent and languid people, and to excite in them a glow of feeling. As pain is a coarser and stronger stimulant than pleasure, they use crime and suffering as a goad to quicken the attention of the reader. At the same time many of the writers of tion' novels give the homage which vice pays to virtue, by acknowledging that the outer form of virtue is desirable. Their 'Lady Audleys' and 'Aurora Floyds' assume even to themselves an air of innocence. They are worshippers of the world and the flesh, but beyond this they hesitate to advance.

sensa

It is reserved for Mr. Wilkie Collins alone to glorify and embody the world, the flesh, and the devil. In Armadale,' the Woman in White,' and others, we have an incarnation of every evil. These books do not teach a disbelief in purity and goodness, for the simple reason that they show no purity and goodness in which to disbelieve. So far as they contain any recognition of a high intelligence it is embodied in the detective police. The world is shown to be a world of force and fraud and universal devilry, held fitfully in check by the police in plain clothes. It is notable in works like these that any man or woman who stands in any way apart from, or struggles against, the general moral depravity is represented as either maniac or monomaniac. The character of virtuous man or woman seems, however, to offer less difficulty. Virtue appears to be the negation of character and intellect, and to mean the non-commission of crime. If, in addition to the non-commission of crime, a man or woman acts like a born fool, that is a virtuous man or woman. The gradations of character and intellect are born fool, monomaniac, clever villain,-male or female. The interest of such stories is the interest of vicious natures, unbridled passions, and open licentiousness; at the last come in the detective police, cleverer, more wicked, more unscrupulous than the criminals whom they

Wilkie Collins and George MacDonald.

35

hunt down. The Miss Gwilts' and 'Mother Oldershaws' are not so much an insult to woman as an outrage on humanity, and the 'passion' of old Bashwood is a thing to make one weep with shame and indignation. If it were not for this one article of faith we might well say that such books contain an open avowal of crime, an unblushing advocacy of vice, that they have a polluting and depraving influence not second to that of the worst French novel ever written; but they do show the conviction that nothing in the heavens above or the earth beneath is so omnipotent as the detective police. It does not occur to the reader that Miss Gwilt will repent or relent, but he sees from the first that clever as she is, nay, great as she is, an 'overruling Providence'-the police in plain clothes-will ultimately assert itself. This higher power is treated with reverence and respect, never introduced unless some extraordinary agency is needed, and the universal vicious cleverness cannot keep itself in check.

'Can good men love guilty women, knowing them to be guilty?' we ask in amazement. Oh, yes! what does that signify? these minor points do not affect them. If a man is a fool he may be good and honest: if a woman is nine times worse than a fool, she may be virtuous; but even then there is no security in either case; for goodness, honesty, virtue are accidental ingredients of our nature. But given to any human being as much brains as a bird, and that human being will be vicious; for vice is a component part of intellect.

Miss Gwilt, Mother Oldershaw, and the Doctor are by far the cleverest people in Armadale;' and yet to say that the reader is uncertain which of them will murder the other, is very feebly to describe his realisation of their capacity for crime. Still there is one thing for which even Mr. Wilkie Collins deserves the gratitude of the public;-he has never written about children.

With what relief do we turn to the pages of one of the purest of our novelists, of one who does honestly believe in God and in his government of the world! And yet, perhaps, George MacDonald would offer a more perfect contrast to Mr. Collins than even Mrs. Craik. John Halifax is a good man, Hilary Leaf is a good and true woman; but we miss in both books the fervent glow of faith and love which shines through the pages of 'Alec Forbes of Howglen.' It seems as impossible for George MacDonald to portray vice as for Mr. Wilkie Collins to delineate virtue. He points upwards to the high ideal of our humanity, to the Christ who is our God and also our fellow-man; to God the Father, the Father of us all. He tells us that however low

we may fall the love of God can touch our hearts, and raise us and call out the true man ;-the man made in the image of God. And this, with beauty as a poet and eloquence as a man of genius, George MacDonald shows us. We rise from his books

with higher aspirations and nobler aims, with more reverence for humanity and more faith in God. He has also the power of idealising, of seeing the ideal; and therefore, in the delineation of character, he works from within outwards. When, in 'Alec Forbes' he tells how the child Annie is taken to the forge, he looks down into the heart of the smith and sees the tenderness and reverence for the 'woman-child' which such a pure, pale snowdrop can call out.

So Annie was left with the smith, of whom she was not the least afraid, now that she had heard him speak. With his leathern apron, caught up in both hands, he swept a space on the front of the elevated hearth of the forge, clear of cinders and dust, and then, having wiped his hands on the same apron, lifted the girl as tenderly as if she had been a baby, and set her down on this spot, about a yard from the fire, on a level with it; and there she sat, in front of the smith, looking at the fire and the smith, and the work he was about, in turns. He asked her a great many questions about herself and the Bruces, and her former life at home; and every question he asked, he put in a yet kindlier voice. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of blowing, and lean forward with his arm on the handle of the bellows, and look full in the child's face till she had done answering him, with eyes that shone in the fire-light as if the tears would have gathered, but could not for the heat.

"Ay! ay!" he would say, when she had answered him, and resume his blowing, slowly and dreamily. For this terrible smith's heart was just like his fire. He was a dreadful fellow for fighting and quarrelling, when he got a drop too much, which was rather too often, if the truth must be told; but to this little woman-child his ways were as soft and tender as a woman's; he could burn or warm.

"An' sae ye likit bein' at the ferm (farm) best?" he said.

"Ay. But ye see my father deid (died)

"I ken that, my bairn. The Lord haud a grip o' ye!"

It was not often that Peter Whaup indulged in a pious ejaculation. But this was a genuine one, and may be worth recording for the sake of Annie's answer.

"I'm thinkin' he hauds a grip o' us a', Mr. Whaup."

And then she told him the story about the rats and the cat; for hardly a day passed just at this time, without her not merely recalling it, but reflecting upon it. And the smith drew the back of his hand across both his eyes when she had done, and then pressed them both hard with the thumb and fore-finger of his right hand, as if they ached, while his other arm went blowing away as if nothing was the matter but

plenty of wind for the forge-fire. Then he pulled out the red-hot gad, or iron bar, which he seemed to have forgotten ever since Annie came in, and, standing with his back to her to protect her from the sparks, put it on his anvil, and began to lay on it as if in a fury; while the sparks flew from his blows as if in mortal terror of the angry man that was pelting at the luminous glory laid thus submissive before him. In fact, Peter was attempting to hammer out more things than one upon that study of his; for in Scotland they call a smith's anvil a study, so that he ranks with other artists in that respect. Then, as if anxious to hear the child speak yet again, he said, putting the iron once more in the fire, and proceeding to rouse the wrath of the coals: "Ye kent Jeames Dow, then?"

"Ay: weel that. I kent Dooie as weel as Broonie."

"Wha was Broonie?"

"Ow! naebody but my ain coo." (cow)

"An' Jeames was kin' (kind) to ye?"

To this question no reply followed: but Peter, who stood looking at her, saw her lips and the muscles of her face quivering an answer, which if uttered at all would come only in sobs and tears.

But the sound of approaching steps and voices restored her equanimity, and a listening look gradually displaced the emotion on her countenance. Over the half-door of the shop appeared two men, each bearing on his shoulder the socks (shares) of two ploughs, to be sharpened or set. The instant she saw them, she tumbled off her perch, and before they had got the door opened was half way to it, crying, "Dooie! Dooie!" Another instant and she was lifted high in Dowie's arms.-Alec Forbes of Howglen, vol. i., p. 184.

It is impossible to read this account without being struck by its beauty as a picture. The artist looks not merely at the forge and the man and the child, and gives an accurate photograph of their appearance, but he looks into their hearts, and so can let us see not only how they are, but why they are; can give the subjective and idealistic treatment at the same time that he is a master of the realistic. In addition to the beauty of the picture, we cannot fail to admire the beauty of the execution, for language is to George MacDonald the luminous medium of thought.

Mrs. Craik, as we have said, stands invariably on the side of truth and goodness. These we never miss, but her books somewhat lack the great charm of beauty, of poetic richness of style. It is one of the chief misfortunes of almost every female novelist that her own education, as a woman, has been wretchedly defective. Her first novel stands ordinarily as an exercise in composition, and enables her to write English grammatically. Perhaps we ought rather to say, that it helps her to understand her own language. We find, for example, all Mrs. Oliphant's