earlier novels disfigured by grammatical errors and verbal inaccuracies, of which the more careful of her later books show few traces. She has, after some twenty years of practice, reached what should have been the starting-point; her early novels were exercises in composition which the public was called on to criticize and correct. In addition to this, that which is called the education of the majority of women leaves them not only without information, but without intelligent interest in any subject that does not immediately concern them. The past,

with all its wealth of words and deeds, does not exist for them. They are shut in to the present, or rather, to some small fragment of the present. They are, as women, keenly alive to moral excellence; they have an instinctive perception of, and appreciation for it, they never lose their faith in it; no woman could write such a book as Armadale;' no woman could either believe in or delineate Miss Gwilt. At the same time, their intellectual insight is limited, and this must be the case whilst the intellect is dwarfed as it has been hitherto. It seems impossible for a woman to realize what an intellectual man is, what he does and says. Clever female novelists never let such a man speak at all; they know that they can see only the outside, and that they are ignorant of the machinery which sets the thing going, and the principle of the machinery; and so they discreetly tell you what kind of case it has, but nothing

more.

'Christian's Mistake' is one of the most perfect of Mrs. Craik's stories, but the 'Master of St. Bede's' is a shadow. If he were not a shadow, the reader would find out that he was very unlike the master of a college, and that although a good, kind, quiet man, his mind is a blank. Mrs. Gaskell, again, has always put women in the foreground of her stories, very exquisitely and delicately painted; and with consummate skill she has left the men distant and shadowy like the mountains. The 'Author of John Halifax' shows equal discretion in her later and more perfect stories.

We have said that this lady lacks some of the higher beauties of style, but she possesses the great charm of simplicity and directness. She tells you a simple story, and she wishes you to know and feel that it is simple, and to receive it in all simplicity. The brook winds on, clear and fresh, through the meadows. You can see the pebbles and moss in its bed, and here and there a quiet trout beside a stone; it is all so simple and still that sometimes you are surprised at the life-that is the thought-there is in it.

Any reader who has failed to realize the excellence of a simple

Simple Stories told simply.

39

style should read a chapter of 'Cradock Nowell;' under other circumstances such a penance need not be imposed upon him. Mr. Blackmore's aim appears to be to make his stream of thought and talk so turbid that it shall be impossible to ascertain if it is deep or shallow; to write a garble of Greek and Latin and unintelligible English, which is alike hateful and foreign to all three languages. For example,

'But John, though fully alive to the stigmotype of his 'position, allowed his epidermis to quill toward the operator, and abstracted all his too sensitive parts into a sophistic apory.' He would be a bold man who should venture to predict either that there was or was not anything under this film of pedantic conceit. Mr. Blackmore should either have put the story into English or into the fire. If we turn from such a writer to the 'Author of John Halifax,' we feel that she is not trying to impose upon us, and to make us believe that there is more than meets the eye in what she writes. We repay her by looking carefully for delicate shades of meaning and subtle thoughts, and are rewarded by finding them. In her later works her aim has become very obvious. She tries, as we have said, to tell a simple story simply. She acknowledges that there are great crimes and great criminals in society, many in every age who are overtaken by some extraordinary fate; but she sees that the greater part of mankind lead externally quiet and unexciting lives, and yet these are also life-dramas. They have their great apotheosis, and are consecrated by grief and pain. The child brings his share of joy and love and hope, and the man must see it perish on the cold earth, fade away amidst the daily cares and in the trivial routines of life; must see his hope grow wan and pale and then die. But joy and love and hope shall rise again, glorified even here upon earth; and he, too, shall rise with them, glorified, and able to look beyond the grave to the everlasting in the heavens. It is appointed to each one of us thus to learn to believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. We

have to find each one of us that the world-the temporal and visible-is not enough for an immortal soul, and that the invisible and spiritual can alone satisfy its longings. We learn this lesson, each in a different manner, but sorrow and suffering are the ministers appointed to proclaim it. Taking this view, the lady of whom we write does not seek for any extraordinary incidents to excite and awaken the interest of her readers, for with such a faith she can dare to take a simple, healthy good nature, and show how it is purified and refined by the fire of affliction.

'The

It is interesting to compare the first novel of a writer like Mrs. Craik with the work of her later and maturer years. Ogilvies' was published seventeen years ago. It is a story of wilful passionate first-love, and is written with a fire and enthusiasm wanting in later works; it gives also a promise of dramatic power which has never been fulfilled. We miss, however, the high moral tone of John Halifax,' 'Mistress and Maid,' and Christian's Mistake.' It is not that Eleanor Ogilvie and Philip Wychnor are not as good and true as any of Mrs. Craik's later heroes and heroines, but that her sympathy and that of the reader is centred on Katherine Ogilvie and Paul Lynedon, who are not so good. Katherine Ogilvie is a girl of sixteen, who falls in love,-falls is scarcely the right word, she shuts her eyes and plunges headlong into love. Neither can we say that she falls in love with Paul Lynedon, for Paul Lynedon is unconscious of the state of this young lady's affections, being at the time in love with her cousin Eleanor. There is an overwhelming amount of sentimentalism in the first volume, and an evident conviction in the author's mind that fascinating men like Paul Lynedon ought to marry girls who passionately admire their fine eyes and wavy hair. But there are occasional scenes of remarkable power, and an indication from the first, of the struggle in the author's mind between her sympathy with Katherine's passionate love and the conviction that there is something higher and nobler than passion. Paul Lynedon is intended to be strong and dark, a lady's hero of the Byronic school, but he and all the other men in the book stand too prominently forward; so that the reader not only sees them, but sees through them, discovers that they are gauze and pasteboard. Paul Lynedon is rejected by Eleanor Ogilvie, and then takes the natural course of such men-he goes to Italy. Meanwhile Katherine marries her cousin Hugh, but does not promote, by this step, either his happiness or her own. After a few years, Paul Lynedon returns to England. He had forgotten the plain, dark, affectionate Katherine, but in a novel, he naturally loves at first sight the young and beautiful Mrs. Ogilvie. Just at the right moment the husband, poor Hugh, breaks his neck, and, after a short widowhood, Katherine Ogilvie consents to become Mrs. Lynedon.

Up to this point 'The Ogilvies' might have been the first work of any sensational writer, but at this point we find an indication of character which is well worthy of notice. The author feels that this story of passion and wrong-doing cannot end to Katherine Ogilvie either happily or peacefully-that it ought not to do so. Perhaps in real life Katherine's Nemesis

might not have come as heart-disease, but it must have come in some form, and the scene here described has great dramatic force.

Paul made her sit by the open window, while he leaned over her, pulling the roses from ontside the casement and throwing them leaf by leaf into her lap. While he did so, she took courage to tell him of the letter to her mother. He murmured a little at the full confession, but when he read it he only blessed her the more for her tenderness towards himself.

"May I grow worthy of such love, my Katherine," he said, for the moment deeply touched; "but we must not be sad, dearest. Come, sign your name-your new name. Are you content to bear it?" continued he, with a smile.

Her answer was another, radiant with intense love and perfect joy. Paul looked over her while she laid the paper on the rose-strewed window-sill, and wrote the words, "Katherine Lynedon."

She said them over to herself once or twice with a loving intonation, and then turned her face on her bridegroom's arm, weeping.

"Do not chide me, Paul; I am so happy, so happy. Now I begin to hope the past may be forgiven us-that we may have a future yet."

"We may? We will!" was Lyuedon's answer.

It was the

While he spoke, through the hush of that glad May-noon came a sound-dull, solemn ! Another, and yet another! funeral bell tolling from the near church tower.

Katherine lifted up her face, white and ghastly. "Paul, do you hear that?" and her voice was shrill with terror. "It is our marriage-peal—we have no other; we ought not to have. I knew it was too late!"

Nay, my own love," answered Paul, becoming alarmed at her look. He drew her nearer to him, but she seemed neither to hear his voice nor feel his clasp. The bell sounded again. "Hark! hark !" Katherine cried. "Paul, do you remember the room where we knelt, you and I; and he joined our hands, and said the words'Earth to earth-ashes to ashes?' It will come true; I know it will, and it is right it should."

Lynedon took his bride in his arms, and endeavoured to calm her. He half succeeded, for she looked up in his face with a faint smile. "Thank you! I know you love me, my own Paul, my—”

Suddenly her voice ceased. With a convulsive movement she put her hand to her heart, and her head sank on her husband's breast. That instant the awful summons came. Without a word, or sigh, or moan, the spirit passed!

We have scarcely alluded to Eleanor Ogilvie and Philip Wychnor, the good people of the book. They are, in fact, very uninteresting. No doubt, from the first, Mrs. Craik has desired to show that there is something nobler than high birth,

more attractive than beauty, more powerful than intellect; she has always felt this, but has not always possessed the power of depicting moral worth in a pleasing form. There is a want of artistic power and insight in many of her books. She chooses in Olive' a deformed girl for a heroine, finding great difficulty in making this a pleasing or even a prominent figure in a work of art, she has to soften down the deformity; and so she gives you to understand that though Olive was deformed, no one noticed it. This is a mistake: the introduction of deformity in a work of art can only be justified if it teaches a higher lesson than beauty; it may do so; but clearly we must recognise it for what it is; and it must not deceive us by trying to appear beauty while it is deformity.

Again, in A Life for a Life,' we have the story of a man who is a prey to remorse on account of a murder which he had committed, and who feels that his crime must be expiated by punishment. But Mrs. Craik shrinks from the murderer, and cannot make him a hero; and therefore she is careful to inform you that this was not a premeditated murder, but a mere accidental blow. Now a man may regret an accident his whole life long; but, so long as he is sane, he cannot feel remorse for it, however disastrous its consequences; and the expiation of imprisonment would be a work of supererogation.

Even in the story of John Halifax' we have the same artistic and intellectual blunder-the characteristic irresolution of this writer. If we could erase half a dozen sentences from this book, it would stand as one of the most beautiful stories in the English language, conveying one of the highest moral truths. If it teaches anything it is the nobility of man as man. The ragged boy, with his open, honest face, as he asks the respectable Quaker for work, is no beggar; the lad who drives the cart of dangling skins is not inferior to Phineas Fletcher, who watches for him from his father's windows, and longs for his companionship in the garden and the fields; and the tanner-the honest and good man who marries Ursula March, a lady born-is her equal. Mrs. Craik might have shown that men, in the sight of God, are equal, and that therefore all good men must be equals upon earth. But no, she shrinks from the full expression of so startling a theory, and therefore gives John Halifax a little Greek Testament, in which is written 'Guy Halifax, Gentleman,' and we must conclude that all his moral excellence and intellectual worth were derived from ladies and gentlemen who had been his remote ancestors, but with whom he had never been in personal contact at all, since at twelve years old he was a ragged orphan, unable to read and write. It is impossible to