Novels

Originally published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (William Blackwood & Sons) vol.102 #623 (Sep 1867).

English novels have for a long time—from the days of Sir Walter Scott at least—held a very high reputation in the world, not so much perhaps for what critics would call the highest development of art, as for a certain sanity, wholesomeness, and cleanliness unknown to other literature of the same class. This peculiarity has had its effect, no doubt, upon those very qualities of the national mind which produced it. It has increased that perfect liberty of reading which is the rule in most cultivated English houses; it has abolished the domestic Index Expurgatorius as well as all public censorship; it has made us secure and unsuspicious in our reception of everything, or almost everything, that comes to us in the form of print. This noble confidence has been good for everybody concerned. It has put writers on their honour, and saved readers from that wounding consciousness of restraint or of danger which destroys all delicate appreciation. There are other kinds of literature in which the darker problems of the time can be fitly discussed, and, with a tolerably unanimous consent, English writers have agreed to leave those subjects in their fit place. The novel, which is the favourite reading of the young—which is one of the chief amusements of all secluded and most suffering people—which is precious to women and unoccupied persons—has been kept by this understanding, or by a natural impulse better than any understanding, to a great degree pure from all noxious topics. That corruption which has so fatally injured the French school of fiction has, it has been our boast, scrupulously kept away from ours. It was something to boast of. We might not produce the same startling effects; we might not reach the same perfection in art, which a craftsman utterly freed of all restraints, and treating vice and virtue with equal impartiality, may aspire to; but we had this supreme advantage, that we were free to all classes and feared by none. Men did not snatch the guilty volume out of sight when any innocent creature drew nigh, or mature women lock up the book with which they condescended to amuse themselves, as they do in France. Our novels were family reading; and the result has been a sense of freedom, an absence of all suggestion of evil, in the superficial studies of ordinary society, which it is impossible to overestimate. "Nous sommes tous d'un age mûr," said an irreproachable French matron to the English acquaintance whose eyes expressed a certain amazement at the frankness of some drawing-room narrative; "j'espére, que vous ne pensez pas que je parlerais comme ça devant des jeunes gens." This idea, which is the very heart of French ideas on the subject, is quite foreign to our insular habits. We are accustomed both to read and to speak everything that comes in our way in the presence of jeunes gens, The habit has so grown upon us that to change it would involve a revolution in all our domestic arrangements. It would involve us in an amount of trouble which very few could face. We should require three or four packets from the library instead of one. We should have the nuisance of separating our children and dependants from our own amusements. We should no longer be able to discuss, as we do now continually, the books that we are reading and the thoughts we are thinking. This is a necessity from which we have been altogether free in the tranquil past; but it is an indulgence which only habit and the long use and wont of public security preserve to us now.
        For there can be no doubt that a singular change has passed upon our light literature. It is not that its power has failed or its popularity diminished—much the reverse; it is because a new impulse has been given and a new current set in the flood of contemporary story-telling. We will not ask whence or from whom the influence is derived. It has been brought into being by society, and it naturally reacts upon society. The change perhaps began at the time when Jane Eyre made what advanced critics call her "protest" against the conventionalities in which the world clothes itself. We have had many "protests" since that time, but it is to be doubted how far they have been to our advantage. The point to which we have now arrived is certainly very far from satisfactory. The English mind is still so far borné that we do not discuss the seventh commandment with all that effusion and fulness of detail which is common on the other side of the Channel, though even in that respect progress is daily being made; but there are points in which we altogether outdo our French neighbours. To a French girl fresh from her convent the novels of her own language are rigorously tabooed; whereas we are all aware that they are the favourite reading of her contemporary in this country, and are not unfrequently even the production, with all their unseemly references and exhibitions of forbidden knowledge, of young women, moved either by the wild foolhardiness of inexperience, or by ignorance of everything that is natural and becoming to their condition. It is painful to inquire where it is that all those stories of bigamy and seduction, those soi disant revelations of things that lie below the surface of life, come from. Such tales might flow here and there from one morbid imagination, and present themselves to us as moral phenomena, without casting any stigma upon society in general; but this is not how the appear, They have taken, as it would seem, permanent possession of all the lower strata of light literature. Above there still remains, it is true, a purer atmosphere, for which we may be thankful; but all our minor novelists, almost without exception, are of the school called sensational. Writers who have no genius and little talent, make up for it by displaying their acquaintance with the accessories and surroundings of vice, with the means of seduction, and with what they set forth as the secret tendencies of the heart—tendencies which, according to this interpretation, all point one way. When the curate's daughter in 'Shirley' burst forth into passionate lamentation over her own position and the absence of any man whom she could marry, it was a new sensation to the world in general. That men and women should marry we had all of us acknowledged as one of the laws of humanity; but up to the present generation most young women had been brought up in the belief that their own feelings on this subject should be religiously kept to themselves. No doubt this was a conventionalism; and if a girl in a secluded parsonage is very much in earnest about a husband, there is no effectual reason we know of why she should not lift up her "protest" against circumstances. But things have gone very much further since the days of 'Shirley.' We have grown accustomed to the reproduction, not only of wails over female loneliness and the impossibility of finding anybody to marry, but to the narrative of many thrills of feeling much more practical and conclusive. What is held up to us as the story of the feminine soul as it really exists underneath its conventional coverings, is a fleshly and unlovely record. Women driven wild with love for the man who leads them on to desperation before he accords that word of encouragement which carries them into the seventh heaven; women who marry their grooms in fits of sensual passion; women who pray their lovers to carry them off from husbands and homes they hate; women, at the very least of it, who give and receive burning kisses and frantic embraces, and live in a voluptuous dream, either waiting for or brooding over the inevitable lover,—such are the heroines who have been imported into modern fiction. "All for love and the world well lost," was once the motto of a simple but perennial story, with which every human creature had a certain sympathy—the romance that ended pleasantly in a wholesome wedding, or pathetically in a violet-covered grave. But the meaning has changed nowadays. Now it is no knight of romance riding down the forest glades, ready for the defence and succour of all the oppressed, for whom the dreaming maiden waits. She waits now for flesh and muscles, for strong arms that seize her, and warm breath that thrills her through, and a host of other physical attractions, which she indicates to the world with a charming frankness, On the other side of the picture it is, of course, the amber hair and undulating form, the warm flesh and glowing colour, for which the youth sighs in his turn; but were the sketch made from the man's point of view, its openness would at least be less repulsive. The peculiarity of it in England is, that it is oftenest made from the woman's side—that it is women who describe those sensuous raptures—that this intense appreciation of flesh and blood, this eagerness of physical sensation, is represented as the natural sentiment of English girls, and is offered to them not only as the portrait of their own state of mind, but as their amusement and mental food. Such a wonderful phenomenon might exist, and yet society might be innocent of it. It might be the fault of one, or of a limited school, and the mere fact that such ravings are found in print might be no great argument against the purity of the age. But when it is added that the class thus represented does, not disown the picture—that, on the contrary, it hangs it up in boudoir and drawing-room—that the books which contain it circulate everywhere, and are read everywhere, and are not contradicted—then the case becomes much more serious. For our own part we do not believe, as some people do, that a stratum of secret vice underlies the outward seeming of society. Most of our neighbours, we know, are very good sort of people, and we believe unfeignedly that our neighbours' neighbours resemble our own. It is possible to believe that very fine people or very shabby people are profoundly wicked, but as for the world as represented on our own level we know that it is not so. The girls of our acquaintance in general are very nice girls; they do not, so far as we are aware—notwithstanding a natural proclivity towards the society, when it is to be had, of their natural companions in existence—pant for indiscriminate kisses, or go mad for unattainable men. And yet here stands the problem which otherwise is not to be solved. It is thus that Miss Braddon and Miss Thomas, and a host of other writers, explain their feelings. These ladies might not know, it is quite possible, any better. They might not be aware how young women of good blood and good training feel. The perplexing fact is, that the subjects of this slander make no objection to it. Protests are being raised everywhere in abundance, but against this misrepresentation there is no protest. It seems to be accepted by the great audience of the circulating libraries as something like the truth. Mr. Trollope's charming girls do not, now that we know them so well, call forth half so much notice from the press as do the Aurora Floyds of contemporary fiction. Is, then, the picture true? or by what extraordinary impulse is it that the feminine half of society thus stigmatises and stultifies its own existence?
        The question is one at which we may wonder, but to which we can give no answer; and it is a very serious matter, let us look at it as we will. It may be possible to laugh at the notion that books so entirely worthless, so far as literary merit is concerned, should affect any reader injuriously, though even of this we are a little doubtful; but the fact that this new and disgusting picture of what professes to be the female heart, comes from the hands of women, and is tacitly accepted by them as real, is not in any way to be laughed at. Some change must have been wrought upon the social mind ere such things could be tolerated at all; and even now we are not awakened out of our calm to a full consciousness of the change. When we are so, then we will, of course, according to our natural English course of action, take tardy measures of precaution. We will attempt, in the face of all our traditions and habits, to establish the Index Expurgatorius; we will lock up the books which are not for the jeunes gens; we will glance, ourselves, with curiosity and a sense of guilt, "just to see what it is like," over the objectionable portion of our library parcel, and we will make up our minds to say nothing of it before the girls. Vain thought! If the girls are such as they are therein described, one book or another will do them little harm; and if the picture is false, why do they accept it? So far from showing any difficulty on this point, it is those very books, according to all appearances, which are most in demand. The 'Times' deals them the crowning glory of its approval. The critical journals, if they do not approve, at least take the trouble to discuss; and "the authorities at the great circulating libraries," as somebody says—those sublime critics who sit at the fountainhead of literature, and enlarge or choke up at. their pleasure the springs of our supply—find it impossible to resist the public craving for its favourite food. Mr. Mudie, too, may utter a "protest," but it is futile in face of the protests of fiction. We confess to having felt a sense of injury in our national pride when our solemn contemporary, the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' held up in one of its recent numbers the names of Miss Annie Thomas and Mr. Edmund Yates to the admiration of the world as representative novelists of England. And yet, after all, though the acknowledgment naturally costs us a pang, the Frenchman was right. Such writers are purely, characteristically English, They are not brilliantly wicked like their French contemporaries. The consciousness of good and evil hangs about them, a kind of literary fig-leaf, a little better or worse than nothing. Though it is evident that the chatter of imaginary clubs or still more imaginary studios is their highest idea of social intercourse, still the guardsmen and the painters do not talk so freely nor half so cleverly as they would have done on the other side of the Channel. That sublime respect for sentimental morality and poetic justice which distinguishes the British public, stands forth in them beyond all question. The wicked people are punished and the good people are rewarded, as they always should be; and there are exquisite bits of pious reflection which make up to the reader for a doubtful situation or an equivocal character. This, however, is what we have come to in the eyes of our neighbours. It is not so serious as the moral question, but it is in its way very serious. A critic, indeed, may deceive himself when he looks across the mists and rains of the Channel; but if he is guided by what English papers say—by what advertisements say—by the evidence of circulating libraries and publishers' announcements—how can he judge otherwise? The glories of the moment are in the hands of Miss Thomas and her class. Whether it be in appreciation, or contempt, or amazement at the extraordinary character of such successes, the fact remains that our weekly critics never fail to say something about their productions; and is not Maga also now beguiled to the further extension of their fame? It is humbling, but it is true.
        And the fact is all the more humbling when we consider the very small amount of literary skill employed in the construction of these books. In France, again, it is the other way. A wicked novel there may be very disgusting, but it is generally clever, and sometimes possesses a certain hideous sort of spiritual interest. When the vilest of topics happens to fall into the hands of such an anatomist as Balzac, or under the more human touch of Victor Hugo, there is something of calm science in the investigation—a kind of inexorable and passionless dissection which renders even such studies impressive. But English sensational books of the day have no such attraction. We do not gulp down the evil in them for the sake of the admirable skill that depicts it, or the splendour of the scenery amid which it occurs. On the contrary, we swallow the poorest of literary drivel—sentiments that are adapted to the atmosphere of a Surrey theatre—descriptions of society which show the writer's ignorance of society—style the most mean or the most inflated—for the sake of the objectionable subjects' they treat. The novels which crowd our libraries are, for a great part, not literature at all. Their construction shows, in some cases, a certain rude skill, in some a certain clever faculty of theft; but in none any real inventive genius; and as for good taste, or elegance, or perception of character, these are things that do not tell upon the sensational novel. The events are the necessary things to consider, not the men; and thus the writer goes on from one tour de force to another, losing even what little natural gift might belong to him in its over-exercise, but never losing the most sweet voices which he has once conciliated.
        Such at least is the evidence of the newspapers. 'Rupert Godwin,' for example, the last work published by Miss Braddon, already, according to the advertisements, in the fourth edition. Yet it would be difficult to point out one single claim it has to popular approval. We have met with many curious things in these lower regions of book-making, but it has never been our fate to meet with any piece of literary theft so barefaced and impudent as this book. The story is copied in all its important particulars from Mr. Charles Reade's well-known and powerful novel of 'Hard Cash'—a work, we need not say, as far above the lower world into which 'Rupert Godwin' has been born as it is possible to conceive. The story of 'Hard Cash,' as everybody knows, is that of a sailor captain, who confides his hard-won money to the care of a banker, and, being cheated, goes mad, and is only rescued after many moving adventures by sea and land, his wife and children in the meanwhile being left destitute. In 'Rupert Godwin' the conception is so far varied that the sea-captain is stabbed, and left for dead by the wicked banker; but all the other incidents may stand as above narrated. There are two pairs of lovers, son and daughter of the respective banker and victim, in both books; there is a madhouse in both books, and a clerk who betrays his master, and a marvellous recovery for the killed and mad hero. The only little difference is, that in one book this hero is a certain glorious sailor, dear to our hearts, noble old knight of romance simple old English seaman, David Dodd, altogether one of the finest conceptions in English fiction; and in the other a miserable ghost called Westfield, about whom nobody knows anything nor cares anything. How such an amount of self-confidence, or confidence in the folly of the public, could be attained as is displayed in this publication, it would be difficult either to explain or to understand. Mr. Reade is not yet a classic. He is one of the most powerful of contemporary writers; and though it may be possible to borrow with small acknowledgment a French story, it is temerity, indeed, to plagiarise so well-known a production, Yet this is what Miss Braddon has ventured to do. She has taken the bones of the tale, as a poor curate might take a skeleton sermon, Having no flesh to put upon them, it is true that, honester so far than the curate, she leaves the bones as she found them; and, notwithstanding a liberal mention of violet eyes and golden hair and dark Spanish beauty, presents her personages to us in a skeleton state. But this, it would appear, makes no difference to an admiring public. Here is the compiler's own account of the reception given to this piece of stolen goods:—
        "'Rupert Godwin' was written for, and first appeared in, a cheap weekly journal. From this source the tale was translated into the French language, and ran as the leading story in the 'Journal pour Tous.' It was there discovered by an American, who retranslated the matter back into English, and who obtained an outlet for the new translation in the columns of the 'New York Mercury.' These and other versions have been made without the slightest advantage to the author, or indeed without the faintest approach to any direct communication to her on the subject. Influenced by the facts as here stated, the author has revised the original, and now offers the result for what it is—namely, a tale of incident, written to amuse the short intervals of leisure which the readers of popular periodicals can snatch from their daily avocations, and also as a work that has not been published in England, except in the crude and fragmentary shape already mentioned."
        The public has rewarded this noble confidence in them by consuming already three editions of this much-produced tale. Three nations, accordingly, have united in doing honour to 'Rupert Godwin.' England, France, and America have seized upon it with that eager appreciation which is the best reward of genius. Most probably before this present page has seen the light it will have been, reviewed in more than one leading journal with praise proportioned to its popularity. Was there ever literary phenomenon more inconceivable? We stand aghast with open mouth of wonder, and are stricken dumb before it. Miss Braddon has, without doubt, certain literary claims, 'Aurora Floyd,' notwithstanding its unpleasant subject (though we don't doubt that its unpleasant subject has been in reality the cause of its great success), is a very clever story. It is well knit together, thoroughly interesting, and full of life. The life is certainly not of a high description, but it is genuine in its way; and few people with any appreciation of fiction could refuse to be attracted by a tale so well defined. The 'Doctor's Wife' strikes even a higher note. It is true that it is to some extent plagiarised, as was pointed out at the time of its publication, from a French story; but the plagiarism was so far perfectly allowable that it clearly defined wherein the amount of licence permitted by English taste differs from that which comes natural to the French. Other books of Miss Braddon's have not been unworthy, to some extent, of the applause bestowed upon them. There has been a good story now and then, a clever bit of construction, even an inkling of a character, She is the inventor of the fair-haired demon of modern fiction. Wicked women used to be brunettes long ago, now they are the daintiest, softest, prettiest of blonde creatures; and this change has been wrought by Lady Audley, and her influence on contemporary novels. She has brought in the reign of bigamy as an interesting and fashionable crime, which no doubt shows a certain deference to the British relish for law and order. It goes against the seventh commandment, no doubt, but does it in a legitimate sort of way, and is an invention which could only have been possible to an Englishwoman knowing the attraction of impropriety, and yet loving the shelter of law. These are real results which Miss Braddon has achieved, and we do not grudge her the glory of them; but yet we cannot conceive how the éclat of such triumphs, great as it may be, should cover a piece of imposture. The boldness of the feat is the only thing that does in any way redeem it; and that is not an excuse either for literary larceny or that marvellous public credulity and folly, which is the really alarming feature in the transaction, The author of 'Rupert Godwin' has compelled the world to accept not only a copy, but a very miserable copy, by the mere form of her name. She has palmed off upon three intelligent nations, according to her own account, a fairy changeling, bewitched out of natural beauty into decrepitude and ugliness, and France, England, and America have taken the imp at her word. This is a power which the greatest of writers might envy. It is one of the finest privileges of a great name. To have made such an impression upon your contemporaries that the whole civilised world thus acknowledges your sway, is a thing rarely achieved even by the greatest. But it has been achieved by Miss Braddon; and in sight of such a climax of fame and success, what can any one say?
        We feel disposed, however, to emulate to some extent that pertinacious critic who once, as the story goes, took upon him to annotate the course of a sermon, by announcing the real authorship of its finest paragraphs. "Turn that man out," cried the aggrieved incumbent. "That's his own," said the critic. In like manner there is something in 'Rupert Godwin' which is Miss Braddon's own. When the poor widow's virtuous and lovely daughter earns her scanty living on the stage, she is made the victim of one of those romantic abductions which used to be so frequent (in novels) forty or fifty years ago, As it happens, it does her no harm either in reputation or anything else, and, in short, is of little service anyhow except to fill up so many pages; but it is purely original and not copied. This it is only just to say. A foolish young marquess sets his heart upon the queen of beauty, in the stage tableaux, and declares himself ready, as foolish young marquesses, our readers are aware, are so apt to do, "to lay his coronet at her feet, and make her Marchioness of Roxleydale;" a desire which the villain of the piece immediately seizes upon by way of carrying out his own vile projects. And accordingly Miss Braddon, with a stroke of her wand, brings back out of the ancient ages that post-chaise with the locked doors and the impassible man on the box with which we are all so perfectly acquainted. The lovely Violet is thus carried off to the old decayed house, with the old half-imbecile housekeeper, whom also we know.. But we are bound to say that the young lady takes the accident with the composure becoming a young lady of the nineteenth century. Half-way on the road, when they stop to change horses, she satisfies herself that the pretext of her mother's illness, by which she has been inveigled into the carriage, is false, and sinks back relieved with a profound sense of gratitute to heaven. She is rescued, as we have said, and the whole affair passes off in the calmest way, as such a natural accident might be supposed to pass. This abduction is Miss Braddon's own. And so is the episode of Esther Vanberg, a ballet-girl, who dies a most exemplary death at the Star and Garter, Richmond, after having been thrown by a wicked horse which she had ordered her lover, a young duke, to buy for her for a thousand pounds. The horse is bought, and runs away and breaks the reckless young woman's spine, and she then makes an edifying end which would become a saint, and leaves her duke touchingly inconsolable, though this also is utterly unconnected with the story, Esther's beauty had been of the demoniac order in her appearances on the stage. She inhabited a bijou mansion in Bolton Row; her drawing-room was approached by "a richly decorated staircase, where nymphs and satyrs in Florentine bronze smirked and capered in the recesses of the pale grey wall, relieved by mouldings and medallions in unburnished gold." Tropical flowers shaded the open windows, and the room was furnished with amber satin. Yet all this, and the hunter worth a thousand pounds, and circlets of diamonds, and flounces of the richest lace, all bought with her duke's money, seems to be considered by Miss Braddon quite consistent with relations of the purest character between the duke and the opera-dancer. And when she dies in this perfectly' admirable way, the duke remains a kind of spiritual widower, to carry out all the last intentions, and build a monument over the grave of his love. In such an ethereal and lofty way are things supposed to be managed between young English dukes and ballet-girls. These episodes are both Miss Braddon's very own. We recognise in them the original touch of the artist, and no doubt it is thus she has indemnified herself for giving up her natural faculty of construction, and using somebody else's story. Notwithstanding the undiminished success which has attended the essay, we cannot but think it is a pity. Honesty is the best policy. A writer whose gift lies in the portrayal of character, in delicate touches of observation, or sketches of real life, may possibly find it practicable to take the mere framework which has served another man; but for an author whose sole literary gift is that of construction, it is a pity. Miss Braddon has proved that she can invent a story. She can do it much better than she can discriminate, or describe, or even talk; and though it may save trouble, it is a sacrifice of her own powers she makes when she thus borrows from another. If we could hope that it was Mr. Reade who had done it, the matter would be very much less important; for Mr. Reade has many gifts, and can play upon his audience as on an instrument, and move us to tears or laughter as is permitted to very few. Miss Braddon cannot do this; but if she can fill up the circulating library, and be translated into French, and re-translated into American, she certainly does owe her clientelle the exercise of her one faculty. Such privileges have duties attached to them; and a prophet in whom the public thus believes should at least give of her own to that believing public. She never invented any circumstance so extraordinary as this public faith and loyal adherence which she seems to have won.
        Miss Braddon is the leader of her school, and to her the first honours ought naturally to be given, but her disciples are many. One of the latest of these disciples is the authoress of 'Cometh up as a Flower,' » novel which has recently won that amount of public approval which is conveyed by praise in the leading papers and a second edition. This book is not a stupid book. There is a certain amount of interest and some character in it. The young lover is, in his way, a real man—not very brilliant certainly, nor with any pretence of intellectuality, but as far removed as possible from the womanish individual so often presented to us ticketed as a man in ladies' novels; and so is the middleaged husband. The wonderful thing in it is the portrait of the modern young woman as presented from her own point of view. The last wave but one of female novelists was very feminine. Their stories were all family stories, their troubles domestic, their women womanly to the last degree, and their men not much less so. The present influx of pone life has changed all that. It has reinstated the injured creature Man in something like his natural character, but unfortunately it has gone to extremes, and moulded its women on the model of men, just as the former school moulded its men on the model of women. The heroine of 'Cometh up as a Flower' is a good case in point. She is not by any means so disagreeable, so vulgar, or so mannish, as at the first beginning she makes herself out to be. Her flippancy, to start with, revolts the reader, and inclines him to pitch the volume to as great a distance from him as is practicable; but if he has patience a little, the girl is not so bad. She is a motherless girl, brought up in the very worst way, and formed on the most wretched model, but yet there is a touch of nature in the headstrong creature. And this of itself is a curious peculiarity in fiction generally. f[ll-brought-up motherless girls, left to grow anyhow, out of feminine guardianship, have became the ideal of the novelist. There is this advantage in them, that benevolent female readers have the resource of saying "Remember she had no mother," when the heroine falls into an unusual lapse from feminine traditions; but it is odd, to say the least of it, that this phase of youthful life should commend itself so universally to the female novelist. Here is a specimen of what the young woman of the period considers sprightly, prepossessing, and lifelike. It is the introduction of the young heroine to the reader:—

        "I gambolled up to him in a birdlike manner. 'Well,' said I, cheerfully, 'I suppose the tea is quite cold, and you're quite cross, and I'm to have a real good scolding, aren't I?' Then I stooped and kissed the whitened hairs.
        "'Eh, what?' said he, thus suddenly called back from his joyless reverie to the contemplation of a young round face, that was dear to him, and vainly endeavouring to extricate himself from the meshes of a redundant crop of curly hair which was being flourished in its redness before his face. 'Indeed, Nell, I'd forgotten your very existence that minute.'
        "'What could have chased so pleasing an image from your mind's eye?' said I, laughing.
        "'What always chases every pleasing image,' he answered, gloomily.
        "'Bills, I suppose,' returned I, discontentedly. 'Bills, bills, bills!—that's the song in this house from morning to night. Is there any word of one syllable in the English language that conveys so many revolting ideas?'
        "'None, except hell,' said my father, bitterly, 'and I sometimes think they're synonymous.'
        "'Dad,' said I, 'take my advice, and try a new plan; don't worry about them any more—take no notice of them at all. We've got the air and the sunshine, and one another left—we ought to be happy; and if the worst comes to the worst, we can but go to jail, where we shall be nicely dressed, well fed, and have our hair cut, all for nothing.'"
        A little after, this charming young lady goes to a party, where she makes great progress in the acquaintance and affections of a yellow-haired young dragoon, who is the jeune premier of the tale. But as her opinions upon general subjects are more to the point than her particular love-story, we quote from a conversation which takes place next day between herself and her father. First of all it has taken a somewhat lugubrious tone:—
        "'Do let us talk of something else,' cried I, peevishly; 'I hate such moping sort of subjects,'
        "'By all means—something gay and festive—the party last night, for instance,' says the author of my being, ironically.
        "'It was not so bad as I expected,' returned I, brightening up, and eradicating the moisture from my eyes with my knuckles.
        "'How did you get on with all those fine ladies?' inquired my father, kindly.
        "'Middling,' said I; 'I did not care much about them. I liked the men better. If I went into society, I should like to go to parties where there are no women, only men.'
        "'That is a sentiment that I think I should keep for home use, my dear, if I were you.'
        "'Should you? Well, perhaps so; but women are so prying and censorious. All the time you are talking to them you feel sure that they are criticising the sit of your tucker, and calculating how much a yard your dress cost. Now, if you're only pretty and pleasant—indeed, even if you're not either (I mentally classed myself under this latter head)—men are good-natured, and take you as they find you, and make the best of you.'
        "My father did not dispute my position."

        These are sentiments which everybody is aware a great many vulgar clever women think it clever and striking to enunciate. The misery of such unhappy ones as throw themselves out of the society of their own sex, their pitiful strivings after the recognition of any stray strong-minded woman who will look over their imperfections, should be sufficient answer to it in any serious point of view. But there is a great deal that is unlovely which is not immoral, and false to every human and natural sentiment without being positively wicked. This is one of the popular bits of falsehood by which lively-minded young women are often taken in and led to misrepresent themselves. And it is another curious feature in second-rate women's books, As a general rule, all the women in these productions, except the one charming heroine, are mean and envious creatures, pulling the exceptional beauty to pieces. Shall we say that the women who write ought to know? But the fact is, that a great many of the women who write live very contentedly in the society of other women, see little else, find their audience and highest appreciation among them, and are surrounded and backed up and applauded by their own sex in a way which men would be very slow to emulate. The pretence is one which only a vulgar mind could make. The man who scorns, or pretends to scorn, women's society, is generally a fool; what should the woman be? But it is one of those popular falsehoods which hosts of people repeat without in the least meaning it. It seems to imply a certain elevation above her neighbours of the speaker; although the very same woman, if brought to the test, would shrink and recoil and be confounded if her silly and false aspirations could be realised. Of course the patent meaning of it on the lips of a girl like the heroine of the book before us is, that the society she prefers is that of the man with whom she is falling in love, and who has fallen in love with her, and that for the moment the presence of other people is rather a bore than otherwise.
        This story, as we have already said, is interesting, not because of its particular plot or incidents, but as a sample of the kind of expression given by modern fiction to modern sentiments from the woman's point of view. Nelly Lestrange has no particular objections to meet her soldier out of doors whenever he pleases to propose it. He takes her in his arms after he has seen her about three times, and she has still no objection. The girl is innocent enough according to all appearance, but she has certainly an odd way of expressing herself for a girl. She wonders if her lover and she, when they meet in heaven, will be "sexless passionless essences," and says, God forbid! She speaks, when a loveless marriage dawns upon her, of giving her shrinking body to the disagreeable bridegroom. There may be nothing wrong in all this, but it is curious language, as we have said, for a girl, And here let us pause to make a necessary discrimination. A grande passion is a thing which has to be recognised as possible wherever it is met with in this world, If two young people fall heartily and honestly in love with each other, and are separated by machinations such as abound in novels, but unfortunately are not unknown in life, and one of them is compelled to marry somebody else, it is not unnatural, it is not revolting, that the true love unextinguished should blaze wildly up, in defiance of all law, when the opportunity occurs. This is wrong, sinful, ruinous, but it is not disgusting; whereas those speeches about shrinking bodies and sexless essences are disgusting in the fullest sense of the word. Would that the new novelist, the young beginner in the realm of fiction, could but understand this!) We will quote the last scene—the only scene in which there is much evidence of dramatic power in this novel, In it the poor little heroine, in her despair, flies in the face of all right and honour and virtue, yet is not revolting, nor yet nasty—which in her quite innocent impassioned moods, in her daring tone, and reckless little sayings, she frequently and unpardonably is. Everything that is worst to bear has happened to the unfortunate Nelly. Her lover's letters have been abstracted; she has been taught to think him false to her; she has married for that reason, and to save her father's life, the unattractive Sir Hugh, and her father has died the day after, losing to her all the comfort of her sacrifice; and then, in a moment when she is left alone, there comes suddenly her true lover, heartbroken with her perfidy, to look at her for the last time; and they speak to each other, and find out how it is that they have been separated. He is going to India, and it is their last meeting:—

        "Looking into his haggard, beautiful, terrible face, I forgot all I should have remembered; forgot virtue and honour and self-respect; my heart spoke out to his. 'Oh, don't go,' I cried, running to him; 'don't you know how I love you? For my sake stay. I cannot live without you.'
        "I clasped both hands on his rough coat-sleeve, and my bowed head sank down upon them.
        "Do you suppose I can live in England and see you belonging to another man?' he asked, harshly; 'the world is all hell now as it is; but that would be the blackest, nethermost hell. No; let me go,' said he, fiercely, pushing me away from him roughly, while his face was writhen and distorted.
        "'If you go,' I said in my insanity, throwing myself into his arms, 'I'll go too. Oh! for God's sake, take me with you!'
        "He strained me to his desolate heart, and we kissed each other wildly, vehemently; none came between us then. Then he tried to put me away from him.
        "'My darling,' said he, 'you don't know what you are saying. Do you think I am such a brute as to be the ruin of the only woman I ever loved?' And his deep voice was sorely shaken as he spoke.
        "But I would not be put away. I clung about his neck in my bitter pain, my mad despair.
        "Oh, don't leave me behind you! You're all I have in the world now. Oh, take me, take me with you!'
        "My hair fell in its splendid ruddy billows over his great shoulder, and my arms were flung about the stately pillar of his throat. He set his teeth hard, and drew in his breath. It was a tough ordeal.
        "'I won't,' he said, hoarsely. 'For God's sake stop tempting me! I'd sooner cut your throat than take you. Do you think it would be loving you to bring you down to a level with the scum of the earth? Oh, Nell, Nell! you ought to be my good angel. Don't tempt me to kill my own soul and yours.'
        "The reproachful anguish of his tones smote me like a two-edged sword. I said no more."

        Now, this is very objectionable, no doubt, and as wrong as it can be, but it is not disgusting. In the circumstances it is not unnatural. Great love and despair, and the sense of an irredeemable useless sacrifice and a horrible mistake, might excuse, if they did not warrant, such an outbreak. The difference is very clear and easily to be defined. At such a moment the reader forgives, and his mind is not revolted by a hopeless burst of passion, even though possible vice and the greatest of social sins is involved in it. And there is no sin involved in the light talk and nasty phrases which may mean nothing; yet to everybody of pure mind it is those latter which are most disgusting. Nor is this distinction an arbitrary one. When a human creature is under the influence of passion, it may be moved to the wildest thoughts, the most hopeless impulses, suggestions utterly foreign to its natural character; but its utterance in its cooler moments expresses the ordinary tenor of life. A woman, driven wild by the discovery of domestic fraud and great wrong, might propose any sin in her frenzy, and yet might be innocent; whereas a woman who makes uncleanly suggestions in the calm of her ordinary talk, is a creature altogether unendurable and beyond the pale. This distinction is one which goes deeper than mere criticism. It is a point upon which social literature and society itself go much astray. When people who scarcely know each other, and do not care for each other, are obliged to meet, the lightest of light talk naturally comes in to fill up the stray moments; and it is very handy for the novelist who has many stray corners to fill up; but now and then a point of some kind must be given to this light social froth. If not wit, which is not always at hand, why then a little licence, a touch of nastiness—something that will shock if not amuse. This is the abomination in the midst of us. Perhaps the indication it would seem to give of darker evil concealed below may be false—and we not only hope but believe that it is false—but of itself it is the height of unloveliness.
        After our free-spoken heroine has come to the climax of her fate, she becomes consumptive and reflective after that loftily pious kind which generally associates itself with this species of immorality; for sensual literature and the carnal mind have a kind of piety quite to themselves, when disappointment and' incapacity come upon them. The fire which burned so bright dies out into the most inconceivably grey of ashes; and the sweetest submission, the tenderest purity, take the place in a second of all those daring headstrong fancies, all that self-will and self-indulgence. The intense goodness follows the intense sensuousness as by a natural law;—the same natural law, we presume, which makes the wicked witch of romance—the woman who has broken everybody's heart, and spent everybody's money, and desolated everybody's home—sink at last into the most devoted of sisters of charity. The good women who follow the rule of St. Vincent de Paul would be little flattered by the suggestion.
        We do not feel ourselves capable of noticing, although what we have just said recalls them to our mind, certain very fine and very nasty books, signed with the name of a certain Ouida, it is to be supposed a woman also. They are so fine as to be unreadable, and consequently we should hope could do little harm, the diction being too gorgeous for merely human faculties. We note, in glancing here and there through the luscious pages, that there is always either a mass of glorious hair lying across a man's breast, or a lady's white and jewelled fingers are twined in the gentleman's chestnut or raven curls—preferably chestnut; for "colour" is necessary to every such picture. Our readers will have remarked that, even in the crisis of her misery, the poor little heroine of 'Cometh up as a Flower' could not refrain from throwing her hair in "splendid ruddy billows" over her lover's shoulder; and the amount of use got out of the same powerful agent in 'Strathmore' and 'Idalia' seems something remarkable. MHair, indeed, in general, has become one of the leading properties in fiction. The facility with which it flows over the shoulders and bosoms in its owner's vicinity is quite extraordinary. In every emergency it is ready for use. Its quantity and colour, and the reflections in it, and even the "fuzz," which is its modern peculiarity, take the place of all those pretty qualities with which heroines used to be endowed. What need has a woman for a soul when she has upon her head a mass of wavy gold? hen a poor creature has to be represented, her hair is said to be scanty, and of no particular colour. Power, strength, a rich nature, a noble mind, are all to be found embodied in this great attribute. Samson, being a Jew, had probably black locks, which would be against him; but otherwise Samson would have made a great figure in these days, if indeed Delilah had not outdone him with amber floods of equal potency. Amber is the tint patronised in the works of Ouida. It is the only idea that we have been able to evolve out of her gorgeous pages, if indeed it can be called an idea. With other and more orthodox writers the hue is gold or red. When the conception demands a milder shade of colouring, auburn, and even chestnut (with gold reflections), are permissible; but when a very high effect is intended, red is the hue par excellence. Red and gold, in all its shades, are compatible with virtue; amber means rich luxurious vice; whereas the pale and scanty locks are the embodiment of meanness and poverty of character. As for black and brown, which were once favourites in fiction before it took to violent colouring, they are "nowhere." They may be permitted now and then in a strictly subordinate position, but they have nothing to do with the symbolism of modern art. Red is the colour chosen by Mr. Edmund Yates^[1] to characterise the heroine of one of his many productions, the Margaret of 'Land at Last.' She has, as a matter of course, "large, deep, violet eyes," and "long, thick, luxuriant hair, of a deep-red, gold colour; not the poetic 'auburn'—not the vulgar 'carrots'—a rich metallic red, unmistakable, admitting of no compromise, no darkening by grease or confining by fixature—a great mass of deep-red hair, strange, weird, and oddly beautiful." She is picked up in the street by the artist-hero, who is equally, as a matter of course, subjugated at once by this gorgeous combination of colour. Margaret makes great play with her hair, like all the other ladies. If she does not take to sweeping it over her lover's breast all at once, she lets it over her own shoulders "in a rich red cloud," which comes to the same thing; and notwithstanding that she tells him with beautiful frankness the story of her life, into which "the usual character—without which the drama of woman's life is incomplete—a man!" had come at an early age, poor Ludlow marries her, despite all the remonstrances of his friends. Then ensues a long and sufficiently clever description of the failure of this red-haired heroine to adapt herself to the dulness of a respectable life. It is very hard work for her, as may be supposed. When she goes to visit her dull mother-in-law at Brompton, she sees in the Row, as she passes, faces that remind her of her former history; people pass her in mail-phaetons and on high-stepping horses, while she walks, who would place both at her disposal at a word. She will not say the word, but naturally, as she pursues her walk, she loathes her own bondage more than ever; and in the evening, when she plays to her good, stupid, adoring husband, dreams come upon her of the balls of other days—of "Henri so grand in the 'Cavalier seul,'" of the "parterre illuminated with a thousand lamps glittering like fireflies, . . . and then the cosy little supper, the sparkling iced drink." Such sublime recollections carry her far away from the solemn quiet of Elm Lodge. And she has a baby and hates it; and her husband loves her so much, and is so unspeakably good to her, that she grows mad with disgust and misery. And, in short, an awful crisis is visibly coming, and comes by the reappearance of the man, her first love, who, it turns out, was not her seducer, but her husband. So that the wretched creature has made a victim in cold blood of the unhappy artist—marrying him, as the villain used to marry an unsuspecting woman in the old novels, because he was a quite hopeless subject for any other treatment, and because she wanted comfort and a home! The scene in which she calmly informs Ludlow of these facts—of her utter indifference to himself and her child, her devotion to another man, and, finally, of her previous marriage—has_ considerable dramatic power, if it were not that the vile audacity of one party, and the feebleness of the other, take from it the interest which should belong to a death-and-life struggle. The idea is so far original that Margaret is at no period of her career a repentant Magdalene; and neither is she tempted by passion into her base and treacherous crime. She marries Ludlow in cold blood for a home, without any delusion on the subject, knowing that he is a good and innocent man, and that she is bringing him disgrace and ruin. The best touch in the book is the woman's stupid ignorance and insensibility, which leads her to imagine that she can return, as she says, to her husband, after having been the wife of another man—a delusion out of which she is speedily driven when the wretched reprobate to whom she goes back turns her away with a cruelty and insensibility equal to her own. So far this is true enough, and no attempt is made to clothe vice in an attractive form; but yet it is undeniable that the author throughout gives to his red-haired woman a lofty superiority over all the good people in his book, She—with the rich red cloud over her shoulders, her silence, her abstraction, the secret contrasts she is making in her own mind between the respectable suburban life and that of the illuminated parterres and iced drinks of her former state of being, and the profound disgust which fills her—is evidently, in Mr. Yates's eyes, a creature much above the level of those dull women whose talk is of babies. She sails about among them in sullen state, and he feels that she is a banished angel—a creature of a higher sphere. Her disgraceful and abominable secret, though of course he duly punishes it, still elevates her above the dull mother and gushing sister of her artist-husband. And when her real husband has disdainfully spurned her, she becomes a heroine. When she is found, she makes a little speech of self-defence, "I acknowledge my sin, and, so far as Geoffrey Ludlow is concerned, I deeply, earnestly, repent my conduct;" she says, "Have those who condemned me—and I know naturally enough I am condemned by all his friends—have those who condemned me ever known the pangs of starvation, the grim tortures of houselessness in the streets? Have they ever known what it is to have the iron of' want and penury eating into their souls, and then to be offered a comfortable home and an honest man's love. If they have, I doubt very much whether they would have refused it." And she makes an edifying end, watched and counselled and cared for by the model of womanly virtue, who all this time has been saving up for poor Ludlow. Such is the story. It is a little departure from the established type of the golden-haired sorceress, and the author does not try to soften her guilt by any touches of sentiment; but still it is clear that he feels her to be a superior woman. He may praise his other personages in words, who are contented people, making the best of their lives; but Margaret, who makes the worst of it, and to whom respectability is intolerable, and who dreams of cosy suppers and iced drinks, is evidently, though he says he disapproves of her, fashioned after a much higher ideal. Mr. Yates goes into her ways and thoughts in detail, while he contents himself with weak plaudits of "Geoff, dear old Geoff," from all the painter's surroundings. To his taste it is evident that the wickedness of the woman, her heartlessness and self-indulgence, and utter blindness to everybody's feelings but her own, render her profoundly interesting; and his good women are very dull shadows by her side. We do not forget that years ago this used to be the reproach addressed to Mr. Thackeray, and that the cleverness of Becky and the silliness of Amelia were very favourite objects of reprobation to virtuous critics. But Thackeray did not dwell upon Becky solely because she was wicked. She was infinitely clever, amusing, and full of variety. The fun in her surmounted the depravity. But at the present day this is no longer the case. There is no sort of fun, no attraction of any sort, about such heroines as the Margaret in 'Land at Last.' Their interest is entirely factitious, and founded solely upon their wickedness. The creature is a loathsome cheat and impostor, and therefore she is worthy of being drawn at full length, and presented to us in all the convolutions of her stupid and selfish nature. Such seems to be the view of fiction adopted' even by such a writer (greatly above the ordinary sensational average) as Mr. Yates, to whom, by the way, artists in general are little indebted for the flippancy and coarseness of the picture he gives to them. Beer and pipes are not refined accessories certainly, but yet their presence on the scene scarcely necessitates the production of Charley Potts as the representative painter. It is not complimentary to English art.
        Another book by the same author—whose productive powers fill us with awe and wonder—is the 'Forlorn Hope;' in which the story turns upon the forlorn and hopeless passion of a doctor, already married, for a fair young patient, who returns his love. The doctor's wife, in a fit of tragic but only too clear-sighted jealousy, poisons herself and leaves him free; but the poor, pretty, consumptive Madeline, who is the object of his love, marries somebody else just at the moment when her physician is beginning to permit himself to think of approaching her, and henceforward can only purchase a little intercourse with her hopeless lover by falling very ill and dying in his hands. Now it goes utterly against all social morality to introduce lovemaking between a doctor and his patient. There are even hard-hearted critics who have objected to the idyll of melancholy passion as set forth in the pure and pensive pages of 'Doctor Antonio,' notwithstanding that the scene is Italy, and the story as spotless as imagination could conceive. Doctors and patients have no right to fall in love with each other; it goes in the face of all the proprieties and expediencies of life. A young physician may, it is true, be permitted to appreciate the beauty and excellence of the sweet nurse in a sickroom, who ministers along with him to the sick mother or father or brother; but when she herself becomes his patient, a wall of brass rises between them. Yet Mr. Yates's sympathies evidently go with the physician, and it appears only natural to him that the golden-haired patient (pale gold in this case, which is angelic—not red gold, which is of the demons) should quite obliterate in Dr. Wilmot's mind the reserved and dark-complexioned wife who wants for him at home. The poor woman does not right herself even by suicide, The facts of the case give her husband, when he finds them out, a great shock; but not so great a shock as does the marriage of the delicate Madeline, who, angel of purity as she is, evidently feels it quite legitimate on her part to recall her medical lover, and enact little scenes of despairing love on her deathbed, and die happy in his arms, with a sweet indifference to the fact of her husband's existence. It is no doubt very melancholy that people should obstinately persist in marrying the wrong person, as indeed is visible in real life as well as in novels; but how far it is expedient to call in the right man, whom you have not married, as your medical attendant, may, we think, be questioned. The suggestion is not a pleasant one.
        As Miss Thomas has been mentioned in the beginning of this paper, we may say, in justice to her, that she has freed herself to some extent from the traditions of her school, Her two last books^[2] are neither immoral (to speak of), nor horsey, which is akin to immoral. They are very frothy, and deal with a world which is not the ordinary world around us—a world where there is either very gorgeous upholstery or very shabby meanness, and no medium between them; but still the books are not nasty. 'Played Out,' in fact, is not a bad story. The little heroine Kate is very tiresome in her changeableness, but still she is a well-known character, whom we have met so often that we feel a certain interest in her, and indignation at the amazingly senseless way in which her prospects are thrown away. The device by which this is accomplished is one which is becoming about as general as the golden hair. It is used in both Miss Thomas's books—in 'Cometh up as a Flower'—in a lively and clever novel called 'Archie Lovell,' which is a little earlier in date—and no doubt in a host of others if we could but remember. It is a device not very creditable either to the invention or the good taste which suggested it. In all these books the heroines are made to spend a night accidentally in the society of a man with whom they have been known to flirt. It is done in the purest innocence, and in that curious fortuitous way with which things happen only in novels. Chance alone on both sides brings it about, but yet it becomes known, and the consequences are generally disastrous. Kate Lethbridge, for instance, in 'Played Out,' is persuaded to step into a railway carriage in which her friend is going off to London, and which is supposed to wait ten minutes at a little country station, to enable him to spend these ten minutes pleasantly. And the moment she has entered it the train sweeps away, and the young lady's reputation is ruined for life. This expedient, it must be allowed, is a very poor one; and it is a curious sign of the absence of all real inventive power in this kind of literature, that it should be so often employed. In 'Called to Account,' Miss Thomas enters upon the less safe ground of married life, and displays to us, among a number of "grandly-simple" beauties, with the usual sublime attribute of golden locks, a scanty-haired pale-coloured woman, who makes mischief and destroys domestic peace, yet turns out very good at the end, and goes into the Sister of Mercy business with much applause on all hands. Here, too, an unhappy pair are condemned to rouse everybody's suspicion, and to risk their character by being shut up together in a cave for some twenty-four hours or so, though happily, as they are all but killed by the experience, scandal is silenced, Certain curious symptoms of the kind of culture prevalent in the region to which this class of literature belongs, are, however, to be gleaned out of these books—a real contribution to our knowledge of our species. The first of these gives us a sketch of the favourite literature of the hero, who is, like so many heroes, a man of letters publishing novels in magazines, and otherwise contributing to the instruction of the public. He is, besides, a clerk in a government office, a university man, and has suddenly and unexpectedly become heir to a fine estate. We are told to glance round his sitting-room in his absence, with the view of throwing light upon his tastes and pursuits—and this is what we find:—

        "The recesses on either side of the fireplace were occupied with broad shelves, and these were filled with books—original editions most of them, of the standard modern novelists, An independent oak book-stand, placed within reach of the one arm-chair in the room, might be supposed to contain the more special favourites of that room's occupant, and there Fielding and Smollett, Wycherly and Ben Jonson, Spencer and Sidney, Bon Gaultier, Bacon, Addison, Ingoldsby, and a host of other wits, poets, essayists, dramatists, humorists, and scholars, stood in amicable array."

        Our readers will admire the admirable conjunction of names herein assembled, and the charming way in which they relieve and heighten each the effect of the other. Bacon and Addison leashed together, and marching between Bon Gaultier and Ingoldsby, is a true stroke of genius; and there can be no doubt that a very peculiar light is thrown upon the "tastes and pursuits, if not on the character of my hero," by the fact that his shelves are filled with the standard modern novelists in the "original editions." It is intelligible that people who read nothing but standard modern novelists should produce such books as those which are now under review. The second passage we shall quote is also a description of a room—a room which the hero—again a literary man—of 'Called to Account' thinks so perfect, that he never tires of raving about the exquisite taste which has arranged it. It must have been done "by a woman of genius essentially human," he says. We do not go into the paraphernalia of silver lamps, "shallow silver urns, classical in design and execution," and reflected in "immense sheets of plate-glass," but go on to its more purely artistic features:—
        "On either side of these glasses were niches (oval-shaped at the top in the wall, which was coloured a faint warm cream-colour). containing marble statuettes about two feet high. Venus and Hercules, Apollo and Diana, were chosen as the respective types of beauty and strength. . . . In one recess by the side of the fire-place, a small semi-oblique piano stood, with a pile of loosely arranged music on it. In the corresponding recess there was a ruby velvet shrine, composed of a pedestal and curtains for the glorious goddess, who is grander and more perfect in her mutilated beauty than anything else the world has seen in marble, a nearly lifesize copy of 'Our Lady of Milo." . . . And pictured suggestions of the past and the future were not wanting; for Raphael and the Fornarina, Dante and his Beatrice, and a Madonna with the warm soft beauty of a moonbeam, all looked upon one from the walls."
        This amazing combination strikes the poet-hero as half divine. Very likely Miss Thomas imagines that the relation of the Fornarina to Raphael, and that of Beatrice to Dante, were identical; and that it is very fine and classical to talk of the Venus as Our Lady of Milo. Such wonderful exhibitions of the uneducated intelligence which has caught up a name here and there, and is bold enough to think it knows what they. mean, are very astonishing. Truly, a little learning is a dangerous thing.
        We have gone as far as human patience can go in our survey, and leave off with the certainty that we have left a great deal that is more objectionable still untouched. In one novel, which we do not attempt to notice here, but which lately passed through our hands,^[3] we remember that the chief interest turns on the heroine's discussion with herself as to whether or not she will become the mistress of a very fascinating man she happens to be brought in contact with. Her decision eventually is on the side of virtue, but she takes the whole question into consideration with the most frank impartiality, In another^[4] the central point is a certain secret passage leading from the chamber of the profligate master of a house into a room occupied by an old general and his charming young wife—a passage which the villain uses once too often, finding himself at last in presence of the insulted husband, But it is needless to multiply instances. It would be a task beyond our powers to enter into all the varieties of immorality which the novelists of the day have ingeniously woven into their stories. In these matters the man who writes is at once more and less bold than the woman; he may venture on positive criminality to give piquancy to his details, but it is the female novelist who speaks the most plainly, and whose best characters revel in a kind of innocent indecency, as does the heroine of 'Cometh up as a Flower.' Not that the indecency is always innocent; but there are cases in which it would seem the mere utterance of a certain foolish daring—an ignorance which longs to look knowing—a kind of immodest and indelicate innocence which likes to play with impurity. This is the most dismal feature among all these disagreeable phenomena. Nasty thoughts, ugly suggestions, an imagination which prefers the unclean, is almost more appalling than the facts of actual depravity, because it has no excuse of sudden passion or temptation, and no visible boundary. It is a shame to women so to write; and it is a shame to the women who read and accept as a true representation of themselves and their ways the equivocal talk and fleshly inclinations herein attributed to them. There patronage of such books is in reality an adoption and acceptance of them. It may be done in carelessness, it may be done in that mere desire for something startling which the monotony of ordinary life is apt to produce; but it is debasing to everybody concerned. Women's rights and women's duties have had enough discussion, perhaps even from the ridiculous point of view. We have most of us made merry over Mr. Mill's crotchet on the subject, and over the Dr. Marys and Dr. Elizabeths; but yet a woman has one duty of invaluable importance to her country and her race which cannot be over-estimated—and that is the duty of being pure. There is perhaps nothing of such vital consequence to a nation. Our female critics are fond of making demonstrations of indignation over the different punishment given by the world to the sin of man and that of woman in this respect. But all philosophy notwithstanding, and leaving the religious question untouched, there can be no possible doubt that the wickedness of man is less ruinous, less disastrous to the world in general, than the wickedness of woman. That is the climax of all misfortunes to the race. One of our cleverest journals took occasion the other day to point out the resemblance of certain superficial fashions among ourselves to the fashions prevalent among Roman women at the time of Rome's downfall. The comparison, no doubt, has been made again and again, and yet society has not become utterly depraved. But yet it has come to have many very unlovely, very unpromising, features in it. We are no preacher to call English ladies to account, and we have no tragical message to deliver even had we the necessary pulpit to do it in; but it certainly would be well if they would put a stop to nasty novels. It would be well for literature, well for the tone of society, and well for the young people who are growing up used to this kind of reading. Considering how low the tone of literary excellence is, and how little power of exciting interest exists after all in these equivocal productions, the sacrifice would not seem a great one.

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It is good to turn aside from these feverish productions—and we think it right to make as distinct a separation as the printer's skill can indicate between the lower and the higher ground in fiction—to the better fare which is still set before us. Though they seem to flourish side by side, and though the public, according to such evidence as can be obtained on the subject, seems to throw itself with more apparent eagerness upon the hectic than upon the wholesome, still we cannot but hope that Mr. Anthony Trollope^[5] has in reality a larger mass of readers than Miss Braddon, and we are very sure no sensational romancist of her school goes half so near the general heart as does the author of the 'Village on the Cliff.' There are still the seven thousand men in Israel who have not bent the knee to Baal, notwithstanding that mournful prophets in all ages will persist in thinking themselves alone faithful. Mr. Trollope writes too much to be always at his best. He has exhausted too many of the devices of fiction to be able to find always an original suggestion for his plot; but there is nobody living who has added so many pleasant people to our acquaintance, or given us so many neighbourly interests out of our own immediate circle. We are disposed to protest against the uncomfortable vacillation between two lovers which has been for some time past his favourite topic; but we do so only in the most friendly, and, indeed, affectionate way. High-pitched constancy is no doubt rare nowadays. On the one hand, it is by no means always a matter of certainty that the woman a man has been accepted by, or the man whom the woman accepts, are beyond dispute the best and most suitable for them. Friends of persons about to be married are on all hands agreed on that point. And, on the other side, we agree with Mr. Trollope that, as a matter of amusement, lovemaking is decidedly superior to either croquet or cricket. But the fact remains, that the man and the woman who, without very grave cause, change their minds in this important matter, are seldom satisfactory people. Harry Clavering, though not a bad fellow in the main, looks very foolish when his first love and his second love are squabbling over him—or at least, if not squabbling, mutually determining to resign, and sacrifice themselves to his happiness. It is not an elevated position for a man. The reader feels slightly ashamed of him when he has to tell his tale, and submit to everybody's comment, and realise that the part he has played has been a very poor one. We can forgive our hero for making a tragic mistake which ruins or compromises him fatally, or we can forgive him for the most stupid blunder in any other branch of his affairs; but a blunder which necessitates. the intervention of three or four women in his lovemaking, and which is really arranged by them, he himself being very secondary in the matter, is humiliating, and goes against the very character of a hero. It seems to be Mr. Trollope's idea that, so long as he is faithful to her, a woman can see no blemish in a man whom she has once loved. But we fear this is far from being the fact. On the contrary, we should have been inclined to suppose that Florence Burton not only would never have been able to banish from her mind a certain (carefully suppressed, no doubt) contempt for her fickle lover, but that she would have indulged in a sound, reasonable, womanly hatred ever after, for all the kind intercessors who came between them. Women are neither so passive nor so grateful as they are made out to be; and a man's disdain for the girl who "having known me could decline" upon the lower heart and lower brain, is perhaps a few degrees less profound than the woman's contempt for the actor in a similar defalcation. It was mean of Florence Burton to have him again after he had forsaken her, and unspeakably mean of him to consent to the re-transfer, and to be happy ever after. The only person whom we have any sympathy with in the matter is the poor, faulty beauty, Julia, who was so dreadfully wrong in other respects, but yet not to blame in this. Here, however, is the vast difference between such a work as even the faultiest and least satisfactory of Mr. Trollope's and the best of the inferior school. Deep, tragic passion is not in them, although they are chiefly about lovemaking, and their perplexities and troubles and complications of plot all centre in this one subject. But the atmosphere is the purest English daylight; none of those fair women, none of those clean, honourable, unexhalted English gentlemen, have any terrible secrets in their past that cannot bear the light of day. There may be unpleasant talk at their clubs, and they may make no exhibition of horror—but they don't mix it up with their history, or bring it into their intercourse with their friends. Now and then @ woman among them may make a mercenary marriage, or a man among them be led into a breach of constancy; but they live like the most of us, exempt from gross temptation, and relying upon human natural incidents, contrariety of circumstances, failure of fortune, perversity of heart, for the plan of their romance. On this level we miss the primitive passions, but we get all those infinite shades of character which make society in fact, as well as society in a book, amusing and interesting. In Mr. Trollope's books there are no women who throw their glorious hair over the breast of any chance companion; indeed, the red-haired young woman, exuberant in flesh and blood, and panting for sensation, is unknown in them. So great a difference does it make when you step out of the lower into the higher world. In short, here is a novelist to whom the colour of a woman's hair is not of first importance. Lily Dale, for instance, gives us no clue as to this important point; perhaps it is mentioned—we do not remember—at all events it is no way written upon her character. Our own impression is, that it must have been a kind of soft brown, a subdued sort of framework for her refined head, not any blazing panoply. But anyhow her author is indifferent on the subject. To him her hair is clearly a secondary matter. He takes, strange to say, a great deal more trouble to show us what was passing through her mind. And it is true that he does reveal this with an amount of variety which has pointed many a gentle joke against him. His knowledge of the thoughts that go through a girl's mind when she is in the full tide of her individual romance is almost uncanny in its minuteness. How did he find it all out? What tricksy spirit laid all those secrets open to him? But, wonderful as his insight is into their ways and works, there is one thing for which Mr. Trollope deserves our real gratitude. It is not he who makes us ashamed of our girls. He gives us their thoughts in detail, and adds a hundred little touches which we recognize as absolute truth; but we like the young women all the better, not the worse, for his intuitions. They are like the honest English girls we know; and we cannot be sufficiently grateful to him for freeing us, so long as we are under his guidance, from that disgusting witch with her red or amber hair.
        Yet would we chide our beloved novelist for his 'Last Chronicle.' We did not ask that this chronicle should be the last. We were in no hurry to be done with our old friends. And there are certain things which he has done without consulting us against which we greatly demur. To kill Mrs. Proudie was murder, or manslaughter at the least. We do not believe she had any disease of the heart; she died not by natural causes, but by his hand in a fit of weariness or passion. When we were thinking no evil, lo! some sudden disgust seized him, and he slew her at a blow. The crime was so uncalled for, that we not only shudder at it, but resent it. It was cruel to us; and it rather—looks—as-if—he did not know how to get through the crisis in a more natural way. Then as to Lily Dale. Mr. Trollope's readers have been cheated about this young woman, It is a wilful abandonment of all her natural responsibilities when such a girl writes Old Maid after her name. She has no business to do it; and what is the good of being an author, we should like to know, if a man cannot provide more satisfactorily for his favourite characters? Lily will not like it when she has tried it a little longer. She will find the small house dull, and will miss her natural career; and if she should take to social science or philosophy, whose fault will it be but Mr. Trollope's? On the other hand, though he has thus wounded us in our tenderest feelings, our author has in this book struck a higher note than he has yet attempted. We do not know, in all the varied range of his productions, of any bit of character-painting so profound and so tragic as that of Mr. Crawley. Though there are scenes in 'Orley Farm' which approach it in intensity of interest, Lady Mason is not to be compared with the incumbent of Hogglestock. He is exasperating to the last degree—almost as exasperating to the reader as he must have been to his poor wife; and yet there is a grandeur about the half-crazed, wildered man—a mingled simplicity and subtlety in the conception—to which we cannot easily find a parallel in fiction. He has all the curious consistency and inconsistency of a real personage; we feel inclined to laugh and cry and storm at him all in a breath. His obstinate perversity—his sham sentiments and his true, which mingle together in an inextricable way as they do in nature, not as they generally do in art—his despair and confusion of mind, and quaint arrogance and exaggerated humility—make up a wonderfully perfect picture. The cunning of the craftsman here reaches to so high a point that it becomes a kind of inspiration. There is no high tone of colour, or garish light, to give fictitious importance to the portrait. Every tint is laid on, and every line made, with an entire harmony and subordination of detail which belongs to the most perfect art. Mr. Trollope's power of pleasing is so great, and his facility of execution so unbounded, that he is seduced into giving us a great many sketches which will not bear close examination. But so long as he continues to vindicate his own powers by such an occasional inSpiration as this, we can afford to forgive him a great many Alice Vavasours and Harry Claverings.
        The household at Plumstead, in its way, is almost as good. The Archdeacon's fierce wrath against his son, who is going to marry against his will—his suspicion of everybody conspiring against him to bring this about, and at the same time his instant subjugation by pretty Grace, and rash adoption of her on the spot—is altogether charming. Mr. Trollope is about the only writer we know (with, perhaps, one or two exceptions) who realises the position of a sensible and right-minded woman among the ordinary affairs of the world. Mrs. Grantley's perception at once of her husband's character and his mistakes—her careful abstinence from active interference—her certainty to come in right at the end—her half-amused, half-troubled spectatorship, in short, of all the annoyances her men-kind make for themselves, her consciousness of the futility of all decided attempts to set them right, and patient waiting upon the superior logic of events, is one of those "bits" which may scarcely call the attention of the careless reader, and yet is a perfect triumph of profound and delicate observation. As for old Mr. Harding, our grief for his loss is yet too fresh to permit us to speak of him. We should like to go to Barchester and see his stall in the cathedral, and hear his favourite anthems, and linger a little by his grave. Honour to the writer who, amid so much that is false and vile and meretricious in current literature, beautifies our world and our imagination with such creations as these!
        We might say the same thing in a different sense of the 'Village on the Cliff,' though in it there are no striking developments of character or distinct creation. No painter for a long time has given such a sweet bit of colour—a picture so full of light and atmosphere and harmonious brightness—to the world. It is sweeter and more perfect than the 'Story of Elizabeth,' bright and glowing as that was. There is not a colourless corner on the canvas, not a bit of careless shade in the whole picture. The grass is green and the water blue, and the sun shines as if he meant it, and the shadows themselves are rich with all the innumerable neutral tints of nature. The story is a simple one enough. There is a young Englishman, a young painter, mildly Bohemian, yet fond of everything that is fair and orderly, who loves a Norman maiden, half-lady half-peasant, metaphorically called Reine, and who is loved by, without knowing or having done anything to bring it about, a certain sweet, little, bright-eyed governess, one of the Catherines of the book. But everybody knows the story, and the story is little in comparison with the manner of its telling, and the series of pictures which compose it. The reader feels, indeed, that it is rather a picture than a book. What could be more perfect, for instance, than the following sketch?—

        "Five o'clock on a fine Sunday—western light streaming along the shore, low cliffs stretching away on either side, with tufted grasses and thin straggling flowers growing from the loose arid soil—far away promontories, flashing and distant shores which the tides have not yet overlapped, all shining in the sun. The waves swell steadily inwards, the foam sparkles where the ripples meet the sands.
        "The horizon is solemn dark blue, but a great streak of light crosses the sea; three white sails gleam, so do the white caps of the peasant women, and the wings of the sea-gulls as they go swimming through the air.
        "Holiday people are out in their Sunday clothes. They go strolling along the shore, or bathing and screaming to each other in the water. The countrymen wear their blue smocks of a darker blue than the sea, and they walk by their wives and sisters in their gay-coloured Sunday petticoats. A priest goes by; a grand lady, in frills, yellow shoes, red jacket, fly-away hat, and a cane. Her husband is also in scarlet and yellow. Then come more women and Normandy caps flapping, gossipping together, and baskets, and babies, and huge umbrellas. . . . The country folks meet, greet each other cheerfully, and part with signs and jokes: the bathers go on shouting and beating the water; the lights dance. In the distance, across the sands, you see the figures walking leisurely homewards before the tide overtakes them. The sky gleams whiter and whiter at the horizon, and bluer and more blue behind the arid grasses that fringe the overhanging edges of the cliffs."

        This we quote, not because it is the best of the continually recurring vignettes, but simply because it is of quotable length, and can be detached from the context. The description of Dick Butler's studio at Chelsea, where he gives his pretty cousins and their little brothers and sisters and the governess tea, is more perfect still. The chateau of Tracy itself, and Reine's farm, and Monsieur Fontaine's chalet, are all drawn with the same vivid and bright reality; we walk about among them, and feel the grass cool under our feet, and the fragrance of the flowers. There is a delicate art in all this which conveys a quite separate and characteristic kind of pleasure. The story is pleasant, the characters true to nature, but the style is simply exquisite. The reader lingers over it as over a picture; the gleams of sweet colour move and change about, and flash out upon him; the lights are lighted, the dew falls, he knows where the poppies are growing in the fields, and how the boats lie on the beach, and is familiar with the reflections that shine out of all the bright surfaces in the Norman farm-kitchen. The picture is so fine, so delicate, and clear, that it moves him with that curious delight in itself which only things perfect produce.
        But for our own part we are inclined to doubt whether Dick and Reine would be very happy together. Looking at things in a vulgar and commonplace way, we are not sure that it would not have been better for him to marry Catherine. The young Norman is very charming, but her temper might get a little troublesome, especially if the Eaton Square people snubbed her, as no doubt they would endeavour to do, One feels there is a certain cruelty in adding the one word of criticism which rises to our lips in reference to so soft and sweet a creature as this same little Catherine. Nothing has ever been more daintily, more delicately done than the revelation of her feelings when she was the kindly-treated yet solitary governess among all those cheerful Butlers. In this and in 'Elizabeth,' and in those charming little fairy tales which we believe we owe to the same pen, the wistful little maiden in the shade, with her modest longings for happiness, her pensive consciousness of being alone, her surprised, sad, unenvying sense of contrast when everything bright goes to the other, and all that is dim and darksome comes to herself, is set forth with a grace and tender feeling which we would be brutes not to appreciate. The strain is exquisite, but it is a monotone. No doubt there are pangs of pain in the young creature's lot which are as keen as anything which ever befalls the heart; but still we all know that the time might come when even Catherine should look back and sigh for the days quand j'etais jeune et souffrais tant. The story of those youthful troubles is very sweet, but there are other troubles in the world, and: other kinds of experience worth the study. We do not blame—we only suggest. The author of the 'Village on the Cliff' has too much real power to confine herself to one string. The harp has many strings, and there is music in them all.
        We had hoped to have found room in this paper for some words of comment upon the works of Mr. Charles Reade, who has gradually become one of the greatest artists in the realm of fiction; but we have already exceeded reasonable limits, and we will not do that powerful romancist so much wrong as to bring him in at the end. His power is of the kind which will alWays seem coarse to a certain class of minds unable to discriminate; for he is very apt to call a spade a spade; and among the minikin performances of the day, his strong and genuine mastery over human characters and passions shows out with a force of outline which may possibly, in some cases, look exaggerated. We will, if the fates are propitious, return on another occasion to the works of a writer to whom we are disposed to assign one of the highest places in his art.
        And we cannot but add, by way of conclusion to our sermon, that though we have much to lament, we have something too to congratulate ourselves upon in the present condition of English fiction. The objectionable writers are all second-rate; genius there is none among them, and not much even of anything that can be called real talent. It is to be supposed they must be entertaining to somebody, else they would not be popular; but then we are all aware that there are a great many foolish people in the world—people, happily, too foolish to be really injured by any rubbish they may read; and all that is best and highest in fiction, honourably maintains that character for purity which has been won by the English school of novels. This ought to be a consolation to everybody concerned; and in the mean time, we can but trust that the tide may turn—that even foolish and vulgar readers may get tired of foolish books, and that the respectable name of Mr. Mudie may no longer be made the means of introducing nasty sentiments and equivocal heroines to English novel-readers far and wide.

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        1. 'Land at Last;' 'The Forlorn Hope.'
        2. 'Played Out;' 'Called to Account.'
        3. 'Which shall it be?'
        4. 'Guy Deverell.'
        5. 'The Claverings;' 'Last Chronicle of Barset.'