Ah, dearest, Doubt and Love are at strife, And Love breathes hard and is nigh to death. Their quarrel is old: shall it spoil our life? Or shall we heed what the cold world saith? Come forth into the wood, And let us sing and say. "Love is in the right of it, And Doubt is in the wrong of it, And the world may go its way."

ROBERTSON TROWBRIDGE.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

Dothegirls Hall.

Such was our name for it. But such was only our American name for an establishment which in reality bore a much more imposing title. St. John's Priory was the name we were known by in the guide-books and to all the country round about. A noble Priory we were at our front, with heavy stone walls veiled in centuries-old ivy, and gables and finials outlined against the sky; and it was only at the rear, where were our dank court-yard, our wheezing pump, a dark vista into our dirty kitchen, and where often were strident Miss Betsy and Miss Sally, that we looked our deserving the name "Dothegirls Hall."

It was in lovely Warwickshire, where green meadows sweep to the gentle Avon, which glides only a few miles away through Stratford and past Shakespeare's home. Many of our countrypeople drove past the stately front of our Priory every day, visiting, as all good Americans do, Kenilworth Castle, with Amy Robsart's story in their hands, and Coventry, with Lady Godiva on their tongues and silk book-markers on their minds.

Our brother and sister Yankees always gazed with admiration, not unmingled with awe, upon our Priory, and gushed over it to each other. For not only is it one of the most picturesque objects of a famously picturesque Elizabethan town, but it has an added interest to Americans in having been mentioned in Hawthorne's "Our Old Home."

Our countrypeople gazed upon us with admiration, little dreaming the dark secrets we had discovered concerning that impressive pile, whose peaked roofs and soaring gables sheltered monk and prior before yet our own country had a name, and in whose cavernous cellars only the bravest of the servants dared to go, lest gowned and hooded spectres should ask what her business was.

Of course to profane and worldly eyes these ghosts assumed the mean guise of empty boxes, decaying barrels and timbers, old kitchen-refuse, and such-like ghostly fowl. But there were spirits in mortal form among us imaginative enough to penetrate this sordid masquerade and to know that subterraneanly we were haunted by goblins damned, if ever a priory was since goblins and priories were invented. Our servants could not disbelieve in our delightful ghosts, we would not: hence we found our Priory as stimulative to the historic, poetic, and supernatural imagination as it was shocking to our moral sense and inflammatory to our tempers.

But these last two effects resulted from a rear knowledge of St. John's; our front view was always worthy of picture and poem, having wide portals, over which was the date of their last repair in 1622, humped Tudor gables, and mullioned windows set with diamond panes.

St. John's belongs to a noble earl, whose castle overhangs the Avon only a stone's throw away. As is so often the case in England, it has been occupied by the same family for more than a hundred years, the family never owning stick or stone of it, but paying regular rent, as if here to-day and gone to-morrow, like the tenants of a city flat. The grandfather of the present occupants brought his bride here and here raised a numerous family. Of that family no representatives now live save two grand-daughters, the shrill and strident spinsters who made us so often forego our more impressive title to call ourselves after the flourishing institution made immortal by the deathless Squeers.

It is confidently asserted in England, and by those who really think they know whereof they speak, that although such torture-houses as Dotheboys Hall certainly did exist, even so lately as Dickens wrote, the publication of "Nicholas Nickleby," by turning attention upon the abuse, effectually swept it out of English civilization. We "smile bitterly," as romance people do, whenever we hear this assertion. For were we not ourselves inmates of Dothegirls Hall not very long ago, and do we not positively know, without perhaps or peradventure, that it lives and thrives and tortures yet, at the very instant of this writing?

Miss Sally kept a boarding-school and Miss Betsy took lodgers in the wide chambers of St. John's. We were among the lodgers, and our dining-room overlooked the gorse-golden meadows and the Avon, one side-window, however, commanding the court-yard of the house. Our way out of doors from our rooms led past the "dormitory" of the school and down-stairs through the "refectory." Thus we had ample opportunity for observation and to embitter our souls with knowledge of the interior life of English Dothegirls Halls.

The "school" occupied four rooms,—dining-room, school-room, and two bedrooms, the boys' dormitory and the girls'. The interior of the boys' room we never saw, but the girls' we have surreptitiously stolen into, and a more wretched, dingy, comfortless place it would be difficult to imagine. All the girls—and there were ten or twelve of them—slept in this limited space; they made their toilets, with one single towel for the whole school, at the groaning pump beneath our window, and they looked miserable and forlorn wherever we saw them, whether waiting upon us as servants at our table or staring up anxiously from the court below waiting the shaking of our table-cloth and the possible crusts that might fall therefrom.

The school-room also chanced to be just beneath, and all through school-hours of the long summer days we heard the shrill scoldings and vicious threats with which Miss Sally fulfilled her mission.

"What ever is a noun?" came floating into our ivied windows a dozen times a day.

"A noun's a-a-a—a noun's a-a-a—"

"Go to the dormitory, you good-for-nothing, and find out on dry bread that a noun's a name of anything, like helefunt, hantelope, heagle, 'and, 'eart, ighway."

Miss Sally, with furtive eyes and sly movements, always reminded us by her speech of the ci-devant butcher we once saw in London, who assured us he was "heducated at Hoxford."

The refectory had a sunken stone floor, and bare walls enclosing space enough to feed a hundred monks. It was principally used for drying clothes in wet weather and for storage of trunks and rough objects. At one end, where were fewest signs of volcanic upheaval or the passing of centuries of busy feet, stood always the table at which the pupils took their scanty fare. No white cloth ever covered this banqueting-board. In the daytime it was draped in a coarse green baize spotted with ink and grease. The pupils feasted upon this cloth, each with coarse mug and plate; at night it was removed to serve as cover for one of the beds! Once upon a time came an unexpected cold snap in the very heart of the soft Warwickshire summer. The sheets and blankets upon our beds, as also the silver and linen of our private table, were all marked with the pupils' names,—the school prospectus announcing that both linen and silver must come with each pupil. The supply of blankets, however, proved insufficient for such unseasonable weather, and, like Oliver Twist, we asked for "more."

"More" came.

And what, think you, was that "more"?

Nothing more nor less than that self-same inky and buttery baize, which we indignantly rejected, equally for our own sake as for the sake of those hapless girls shivering in their defrauded bed that we might be warm.

At Dothegirls Hall pupils were "taken in and done for," fed, lodged, taught, for twenty pounds—or one hundred dollars—a year. The luxury of bare comfort could scarcely be expected for that price. Yet Miss Sally must have made profit out of her starvelings, or Dothegirls Hall would not have existed. We always observed that a certain punishment was the usual one for every offence that children are likely to commit. Almost never a day that we did not hear low moanings from one or both of the dormitories, and thus knew that one, sometimes two or three, were incarcerated there "on dry bread" for twenty-four hours.

Once we questioned a victim, our interrogation-points assuming the shape of huge wedges of bread and jam.

"We are sent here on dry bread for missing our lessons, for having our shoes untied, for saying 'Yes' instead of 'Yes, Miss Sally,' for everything we do. I am sometimes three days of the week on dry bread."

"Why don't you write to your papa?" blurted a young American of wrathful turkey-cock aspect.

"Oh, I never had any papa," answered the poor child simply, "and I don't know where mamma lives."

Alas! this innocent remark expressed volumes. We knew that most of the poor creatures "had no papa and didn't know where mamma lived," that they were mere jetsam and flotsam thrown up on this quiet shore from the waves of the great ocean of London and forgotten by all the world save those whose business it was to pay and to receive the twenty pounds a year which was their sole importance.

Of course the best of St. John's belonged to the lodgers, and the best was delightful to tastes that prefer picturesqueness with moderate comfort to smug and dapper luxury. Miss Betsy did our cooking, the school-girls waited upon our table, the boys blacked our boots, "Mam'zel," the French governess from Kilkenny, made our beds when there was no servant, as often happened, birds nested in the ivy of our latticed windows, bees floated up from the fragrant meadows below to hum us to our afternoon naps, and our table-cloth we shook every day ourselves, having a deep purpose in refusing to allow it to be shaken by other hands.

It somehow always happened that the children's recess coincided with that white fluttering from our diamonded window.

One day, when we first came to St. John's, we heard two quiet whispers at the ivy's roots:

"Sometimes um shakes out bread-'n'-butter."

"'N' sometimes um shakes out tart!"

"O-o-o!" answered the first whisper. "Tart? Truly tart?"

"Bet yer heye! One day I hadn't had nothink to heat all day, an' I was a-'idin' 'ere, 'cos Miss Sally howed me a trouncin'. I were just a-starvin'; an' I said to myself, 'Good Lord, don't I jest wish I had a-somethin' to heat!' Jest then, bang came a great piece o' goose-berry tart right on to my 'ead!"

"Tart!" murmured the first whisper, in utter amazement. "Tart! Do ye s'pose we could get some more?"

"Let's see."

Then we conspirators above heard thick-toned mumble among the leaves,—

"Wishy, wishy, wishy wee, Wishy send some tart to me."

Fat little American legs flashed to the pantry.

Fat little American legs flashed back again.

Next instant came delighted cackle from among the ivy-roots:

"Blazes! Ef 'tain't Tart an' CAKE!"

M. W. B.

The Art of Modern Novel-Writing.

OLD STYLE.

"Do you always choose such an early hour as this for your daily rambles?" he asked.

"Not always," she said, "but very often."

"And is it because the freshness of the morning tempts you out, or because you like to be alone?"

"I rather think it is because I like to be alone."

"Then for once you have failed of your object. But let me at least plead that I have sinned in ignorance." And he held out his hand, with a laugh.

NEW STYLE.

He watched her for a moment in silence, wondering curiously whether the faint increase of color in her face was due to his unexpected appearance. When he spoke at last, there was a certain constraint in voice and manner, as though back of his apparent cordiality there lurked sundry misgivings as to the wisdom of his present course, and a sense of irritation at the failure of his own nature to grasp completely the subtile organization of his companion. "Do you always choose such an early hour as this for your daily rambles?" he asked, studying with a half-tender scrutiny the irregular, sensitive face before him.

The girl faltered, and raised her eyes to meet his glance. They were strange, light eyes,—not beautiful, but very rare in their peculiar tint of green-gray glass. They looked straight before them, brilliant and baffling. "Not always," she said, with lingering emphasis, "but very often."

Her voice was clear and sweet, though it lacked the cultivated modulations of other tones he knew and loved. There was something in its cadences that recalled to him the flute-notes of the English white-throat, a melody that attracts only to disappoint. He smiled softly at her transparent reticence, and followed up his question. "Is it because the freshness of the morning tempts you out?" he said. "Or"—dropping his voice with sudden meaning—"is it because you like to be alone?"

She hesitated, as though seeking some form of words that would negatively express what was passing in her mind, yet not give her thoughts too clear a reading. There was a touch both of defiance and of expectation in the quick turn of her head and the gleam of her half-shut eyes. "I rather think it is because I like to be alone," she said, at length.

He bowed slightly, and his face, accustomed to alter its expression with facile ease, assumed a look of well-bred regret, tempered with the faintest tinge of amusement. "Then for once you have failed of your object," he whispered apologetically. "But let me at least plead"—here the amused expression deepened, and a gleam of malice brightened his keen eyes—"let me at least plead that I have sinned in ignorance."

A. R.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

"Two Years in the Jungle. The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo." By William T. Hornaday. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

The author of this book, who is now chief taxidermist of the National Museum, was sent out in 1876 to the countries enumerated on the title-page as collector for Professor Ward's "Natural Science Establishment" at Rochester. His skill and deftness in preparing skins and skeletons for mounting were, as we are led to suppose, what specially qualified him for this mission; but if he had not possessed, in addition, many characteristics less common, perhaps, but more generally attractive, he could hardly have executed it with the same facility and completeness, still less have found in it matter for this thoroughly entertaining narrative. His ardor as a sportsman and a naturalist seems to have sprung from a stronger, independent love of "wild life," an instinctive preference for the haunts and habits of uncivilized races, apart from the pursuits for which they give scope. This may be thought to argue ignoble tastes; but the reverse conclusion would be more correct. Mr. Hornaday is a believer in the "gentle savage." The Dyak seems to him "the model man," not on account of his defects, which are few, but of his virtues, which are many. He is manly, truthful, honest, chaste, and even when drunk—which happens only on rare festive occasions and is a result of his intercourse with "the rascally Chinaman"—is perfectly decorous, and, as our author was assured, would never "dream of violating the laws of decency and good temper." For the Hindu, on the other hand, as an entirely conventional and artificial creature, obsequious, hypocritical, inhospitable, disdainful of the race on whom he fawns and before whom he trembles as "unclean," Mr. Hornaday has no other feeling than aversion and contempt. He gives an amusing account of his indignation on finding that a vessel from which he had drunk was regarded by a "ghee-seller" as "defiled." "I was strongly tempted," he writes, "to knock his ghee-pots about his ears, take thirty rupees' worth of satisfaction out of his royal highness, and then go up to court and pay my fine." It will be seen that Mr. Hornaday is a true-born American, and not disposed to stand any nonsense that conflicts with the great law of human equality. But though this trait makes him appear somewhat uncharitable toward prejudices that have survived the Declaration of Independence, it shows itself in its most amiable light in his own free and sociable disposition, his readiness to be on terms of good-fellowship with men of all sorts and conditions, and his heartiness in responding to any show of friendship in act or demeanor. Hence, on one occasion, even a Hindu, a fellow-traveller in a railway-carriage, roused his kindliest sentiments by offering him a handful of cooked "dal" after plastering it over a little pile of "chapatties." "I was completely taken aback for an instant, for the old gentleman's hands were as grimy as my own; but I accepted the food with my politest bow and ate it down with every appearance of gratitude. I would have eaten it had it been ten times as dirty as it undoubtedly was. It was an act as friendly as any man could perform, and I was pleased to find such a feeling of pure charity and benevolence in a native." Nor does his nationality prevent him from doing justice to the English character as it came under his observation in the East. He recognizes the benevolence of the English rule in India, and considers Sarawak under Rajah Brooke "the model of a good government." With individual Englishmen—who, he considers, are seen to the best advantage out of their own country—he found no difficulty in forming the most cordial relations. We have no doubt that his own qualities, his good humor, frankness, intelligence, and vivacity, coupled with his enthusiasm for pursuits in which almost all Englishmen take a strong interest, rendered him a very attractive and agreeable companion, and caused the "Britishers" with whom he came in contact to set him down at once for what he evidently is, an uncommonly good specimen of the Yankee.

Mr. Hornaday has the good sense to spare us the tedium of reading any fresh descriptions of regions and places sufficiently well known or only casually visited in the course of his travels. The few and slight exceptions prove, indeed, that he would hardly be a safe guide when off his own ground. His criticism of the Taj Mahal, than which "no other structure in the world has been so greatly overpraised," may be accepted as an instance of an independent impression and an offset to the extravagance of some of its admirers, but will scarcely testify to his competency to pass judgment on works of art in the tone of a recognized authority. Nor does his notion that Cairo was the capital of ancient Egypt, that "we may take pleasure in thinking that the city is to-day very like what it was when the Pyramids were new," (!) and "believe that these are the same cramped and crooked streets, the same latticed windows and overhanging upper stories, the same bazaars and workshops and wells, that were here when the brethren of Joseph came down, as envoys extraordinary, to practise the arts of diplomacy in the court of Pharaoh," suggest any profound acquaintance with the history of the country and the mutations it has undergone. But it would be very unfair to dwell on such points as these. In general, as has been intimated, Mr. Hornaday sticks to his last with a rare and commendable closeness. The sights which he finds most attractive in famous seaports are the fish-markets and the natural-history museums. The themes on which he loves to dilate are the habits of the crocodile, the elephant, and the orang-utan, the modes of hunting and killing them, and, above all, the process of skinning and dissecting them. But he does not delight in slaughter for the sake of sport, nor regard the forest or the river as simply the habitat of uncouth monsters, nor make the account of his journeys the record of a mere business enterprise. He has a keen love of adventure, a strong sense of the humorous aspect of his experiences, and an inexhaustible flow of spirits. He writes in an animated but unpretentious style, and without any attempt at elaborate description contrives to leave clear impressions of his achievements and surroundings. His ardor and good spirits are infectious, and the reader is as little wearied as he himself appears to have been by his long and devious tramps over the hills, through the swamps, and amid the tangled undergrowth of the jungle.

Books on Artists.

"Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Dore". Compiled from Material supplied by Dore's Relations and Friends and from Personal Recollection. With many Original Unpublished Sketches and Selections from Dore's best Published Illustrations. By Blanche Roosevelt. New York: Cassell & Co.

"Eugene Delacroix, par lui-meme." Paris: J. Ronam.

"J. F. Millet." Par Charles Yriarte. "Hans Holbein." Par Jean Rousseau. (Bibliotheque d'Art Moderne.) Paris: Jules Ronam.

Mrs. Roosevelt's volume is an engaging jumble of fact and fancy, a medley of impressions, hasty generalizations, souvenirs, reminiscences, all jotted down apparently in such breathless haste that we can only wonder that the result is a coherent and tolerably serious study of Gustave Dore, his life and his works. The author's methods are, indeed, those of the great designer himself, who obtained brilliant results regardless of careful processes. A genuine biography of Dore is yet to be written; but here we have a rather fascinating book of five hundred pages, full of personal and intimate narrations by the artist's family and friends, profuse, naif, tender, overflowing with French sentiment and an intense sympathy and camaraderie. Interspersed with this biographical matter are innumerable pen-and-ink sketches, caricatures, designs, and finished pictures, illustrating the natural evolution of Dore's marvellous talent, the first instances of which show what he could do at the age of five. In fact, long before he could read the child showed clear signs of possessing a distinctively artistic organization. His practice with pen and pencil was pursued, however, without any sympathy or encouragement from his family, and his father, at least, was strongly averse to his taking up the career of an artist. In 1847, when Gustave was in his fifteenth year, his parents, who resided at Strasbourg, took him for a fortnight to Paris. The delights of the capital made a strong impression on the mind of the stripling, and he ardently wished to remain there. The thought occurred to him of offering some of his work to publishers, and, dashing off a few caricatures, he took advantage of the momentary absence of his parents to show them to Philipon, who had just founded his "Journal pour Rire." The result was that the publisher instantly engaged Gustave as one of the regular artists for his paper, and the boy remained in Paris, supporting himself and paying for his tuition at the Lycee Charlemagne, where he had Taine and About for fellow-collegians. This early success, combined with the most untiring industry and steady, almost passionate, devotion to his work, is one of the most remarkable biographical facts on record. A year later the elder Dore died, and his widow came to Paris to reside with her two sons, the chief expenses of the menage being supported by Gustave, then little more than sixteen years of age. Between the years 1850 and 1870 he is said to have made by his pencil seven millions of francs,—almost a million and a half of dollars. Besides this enormous activity, a supreme and jealous ambition induced him to undertake not only every piece of work offered, from Bible-illustrations to a comic almanac, but whatever his brain or his fancy could conceive as possible for artist to achieve. Inspiration seized him at each new idea, bold and striking images, fantastic fancies, all the splendors of a magnificent or grotesque ideal. His work was a delirium; in a single morning he has been known to throw off twenty blocks which brought him ten thousand francs. He was, however, perpetually discontented, disgusted with his vocation, and envious of successful painters. He had almost a convulsion one day on hearing that Meissonier had received two hundred thousand francs for a single painting. "What!" he exclaimed; "a thing like that? Now, look at me. I can paint; I know I could paint better than Meissonier, at any rate. Have I ever been paid two hundred thousand francs for anything? No; and I never shall be. The fact is that no one understands me. I shall live and die misunderstood, or never comprehended at all,—which is worse." Fired by emulation, he shut himself up to create masterpieces which should surpass Meissonier and paralyze the world; and in a short time he showed his friend Lacroix twelve colossal canvases on which he had painted revolting realistic pictures which he called the "Abominations of Paris." "What do you think of Meissonier now?" he asked.

He longed ardently to be a painter, and was never at peace with critical Paris while it refused him the name of painter and called him only a designer. London was dearer to his heart from the fact that there were enshrined in the Dore Gallery and made one of the sights of the town his stupendous canvases imaging forth his conceptions of Scripture subjects. What he might have done as a painter had he studied at any early age under good masters must be left to conjecture, although his paintings carry with them a clear confession that naturally he did not possess a good eye for color. He was always impatient of criticism which made him feel that there was any lack of technique in his works. "He has it all in him, but lacks 'school,'" was the verdict of the critics. Undoubtedly, wishing to do all that man has done, Dore would have liked to focus his powers on marvels of refinement and exactness, like Meissonier's; but he was proud of his distinctive characteristics, and wanted the least block he touched to show something Doreish.

"Now you will give us some Velasquezes," a lady said to him during his journey in Spain.

"No, madame," he replied; "I shall give you some more 'Dores.'"

What he enjoyed was an audacious and gigantic experiment, a subject which allowed him free and bold handling and a mystic, half-grotesque attitude toward what he found in it of poetry or strength. The feverish and hurried character of his work is sadly evident in many of his most ambitious designs. His illustrations of Milton, Dante, and the Wandering Jew may be said to show his powers at their best,—and perhaps we ought to include his Bible-pictures. Too often he uses without apparent motive feeble allegory and fantasy; and many of his later works must be considered by his most charitable critics not only obscure, but almost insane.

To turn from Dore to Delacroix is to take up the very different career of one of those "immortals" among whose works the great designer was eager to see his own unlucky paintings enrolled. Opposite as these two artists were, they had nevertheless certain things in common: their work was their life,—all personal gratification was subordinated to art,—each denied himself marriage, and yet enjoyed the untiring devotion of some sort of womankind. Dore had both his mother and his nurse to humor and spoil him. Delacroix endured the affectionate tyranny of his housekeeper, who watched over him as a lioness over her young. Delacroix, who was frail, sensitive, feverishly carried away by his work, needed just the careful intervention which this woman imposed to save him from the depressing influences of every-day life. She kept all uncongenial visitors from him. He was fastidious to a degree,—could not use a spoiled palette, and Jenny learned to prepare his palette, colors, and brushes with the nicest care. Delacroix began with a masterpiece. He was only twenty-three when he produced his "Dante and Virgil," which put him at the head of the so-called "romantic school." His clear intellect, his strength as a draughtsman, his abundance of invention, his wonderful color, made themselves felt at once. He had a long career in which to develop, and he was tireless in reinforcing his own great powers by profound and careful study of great authors, besides working perpetually to discover the secrets of the splendid paintings of Raphael, Velasquez, Veronese, and, above all, Rubens. It was his habit to spend whole days at the Jardin des Plantes, watching the animals, observing their postures and movements, aiming to pluck the heart out of the mystery of each organization. In 1828 he went to England, and, although he disliked the country, its architecture, the ill-made shoes and soiled stockings of the women, he carried back with him powerful impressions from Constable and from Kean's impersonations of Shakespeare which animated all his later work. His picture of "Hamlet," although it was not completed until 1843, owes its conception to this period. His lithographs of "Faust" elicited from Goethe the remark, "He has surpassed the pictures I had made for myself of the scenes written by myself."

The carefully-prepared monographs on Millet and Holbein, accompanied by excellent designs after their works, are full of suggestive criticism, and show how well the modern practice of popularizing art is carried on in Paris. Millet was born some sixteen years after Delacroix, and came to Paris in 1837, when that great master had produced some of his best pictures, which of all contemporary art were what aroused Millet's admiration and homage. "Grands par les gestes," he called them, "grands par l'invention et la richesse du coloris." Millet himself, however, was to found a separate school from that of the brilliant Delacroix. The fac-similes in this brochure from his original designs in crayon or pastel give much of the sentiment and meaning of his work. As the author says, they might well be the illustrations of a mighty poem called "The Earth." Night and morning, sunrise, noon, and sunset, the succession of seasons, the patient industries of the workers who toil like nature's own forces, simply, sternly, and with silent strength, all tell their story here. Millet had passed his youth in the fields, and, the son of a peasant, he must himself have been the central figure in many such scenes as those with which he has charmed the world. His picture of "The Haricot-Gatherer" represents the paternal cottage, and the figure of the woman in the garden is that of his mother herself. When he enshrined personal memories like these, no wonder we find in Millet's work the interpretation of so much that is deepest and most intimate in the history of man.

The gallery of the portraits of Hans Holbein the younger is well chosen, and gives some excellent instances of the artist's unsurpassed manner. There is inevitably something in any picture of Holbein's which holds the attention by its absolute reality: it is not only natural, but true, the reflection of an actual personality. An interest attaches to the portrait of Anne of Cleves, although one hardly finds in it the beauty which misled Henry VIII. and altered the history of England a little.

Five Novels.

"A Wheel of Fire." By Arlo Bates. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"As it was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story." By Sidney Luska. New York: Cassell & Co.

"Love—or a Name." By Julian Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Co.

"A Social Experiment." By E. A. P. Searing. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"For Lilias." By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

Mr. Arlo Bates's novel "A Wheel of Fire" shows such skilful construction, is so nicely balanced in its parts, while its literary execution is so far above the common, that we can only wish the author had expended such faithful and conscientious work upon a plot less hopelessly dreary than one must be which hinges upon the problem of hereditary insanity. Every other human infirmity may be rounded off, merged into a lofty ideal of acceptance, renunciation, and expiation. But under no imaginable conditions can madness be regarded as something from which the heart and soul of man does not shudderingly recoil. Accordingly, a heroine who is haunted, beset, and finally driven crazy by the dread of the fatal inheritance being in her blood seems set apart from the fluctuations and hesitations of maidenly passion. There is something unhealthy, eerie, in the story Mr. Bates has made and in the situation he has chosen.

Damaris Wainwright's mother has died insane, her brother is a hopeless lunatic,—in fact, he commits suicide in the early part of the story,—and she has accepted the conditions fate seems to have imposed, and has renounced all idea of marriage, when the nephew of her family lawyer falls in love with her and shows an indomitable resolution to win her for his wife. The old story of "femme qui ecoute" follows. Damaris is swayed partly by his influence, partly by her own impulses, and in great measure by the freely-expressed opinion of the specialist who has had charge of her insane brother, that she is in no danger of inheriting her mother's malady. Unluckily for her, she half consents to engage herself to the lawyer. Had she wholly consented or wholly refused, her doom might perhaps have been averted. We frankly consider her lover quite unequal to the situation. He imposed upon her long and lonely musings, sleepless nights and melancholy days, when he should have given her the support of the strong will and powerful intellect which the author lays claim to for his hero. Agonizing over painful doubts is not good for people whose intellects hover on the border-lands of nervous fantasy. Lincoln, if resolved to marry the unfortunate girl, should have shown more Lochinvar-like haste. Instead, during the long interval of waiting, Damaris is allowed to run the whole gamut of painful experiences, and, naturally, at the climax of the story, her "fate cries out." Of course this is the author's intention; but we cannot help feeling that Miss Wainwright had hardly a fair chance. As an offset to the gloom and melancholy of their tragedy, there is a lively love-affair between two young people who snatch a fearful joy in the midst of as dreary an environment as can easily be imagined. Both Miss Dimmont and Dr. Chauncey Wilson are life-like, although not engaging, characters, and the doctor, in particular, although we do not think highly of his science, is a vigorous and consistent creation.

Although the plot of "As it was Written" turns on the murder of the heroine, the book is yet a considerably livelier one than Mr. Bates's, and imposes no such burden of hopeless misery on the reader. A startling and mysterious crime is dear to the human imagination, and here we are confronted with one hideous in its cruelty and inexplicable in its circumstances. The story is told by the passionate lover of the murdered Veronika, and there is much youthful eloquence and pathos in the description of his meeting with the lovely young Jewess, their sympathy in art,—for both are musicians,—their ardent hopes and beliefs for each other. They are to be married in a fortnight, when the frightful act is interposed which transforms the whole aspect of the world for the young man. The reader must discover for himself the key to the tragedy. The book is one of those which the phenomenal success of "Called Back" summoned into existence. That clearly proved that the public loved a mystery and a sensational denouement, and ever since the annals of crime have been rummaged for horrors. But "As it was Written" has an advantage over other works of its class in a certain charm and freshness, not only from its Jewish setting, but from the fervid youthful feeling which gives a pleasing and natural touch to the narrative.

Warren Bell, the hero of Mr. Julian Hawthorne's "Love—or a Name," finds himself, at first presentation, on his way to offer marriage to Miss Nell Anthony, who has just been left motherless, and to whom he feels that he owes this manly tribute. He acquits his conscience of this duty, but performs it nevertheless in such a jerky, unlover-like fashion that few young women, certainly not one of Miss Anthony's force of character, could have been imposed upon. "I thought you l-loved me," said he. Which surely is not the way to win a fair lady. Much to his comfort, as well as to his ingenuous surprise, he is refused, and goes back to New York, having renounced "Love" and decided to care only for a "Name." Mr. Hawthorne seems to have made an effort to work into the story of his hero a faithful account of New York "ring"-management and official corruption. Warren Bell finds a patron in Mr. Drayton, who has all sorts of ambitious schemes to further, and offers his committees and his confederates a "big game" in the way of "water-works" stocks, and the like. These pictures of corrupt judges and dishonest corporations have some probability: they show us many clearly-developed sensual and mercenary scoundrels; they are all, very possibly, portraits from life; but they are all excessively crude in their likenesses and inexpressibly wearisome. It is a distasteful and unsavory world to which the author introduces us: if he wishes to show us consummate rascals we insist that he should wrap them in some veil of decency, if not of art, and not fill his pages with incidents and talk which properly belong to the police-court. Mr. Hawthorne finally rescues his hero from the ignoble set from whom he has luckily escaped winning a very bad name, and makes him seek his happiness instead in love, which Miss Anthony obligingly consents to give him. The other characters mostly expiate their crimes and misdemeanors in a succession of tragic and unpleasant incidents, and one closes the book with annoyance that so raw, tentative, and unpleasant a story should have been forced upon one's attention by its bearing the signature of a writer who can do so much better.

"A Social Experiment" treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl, the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the protegee of a wealthy and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. The story is very well told, but with a good deal of needless discussion as to the right or wrong of the experiment. The heroine has complicated matters by a secret marriage to a man in her own rank of life, which later becomes distasteful to her, and the duties of which she refuses to fulfil. Like the three preceding novels in our list, "A Social Experiment" is rather doleful, and seems to have been written for any other purpose rather than to cheer and stimulate the average reader who longs for pictures of life which rouse pleasant fancies and kindle tender sentiments. None of these books are in the least degree commonplace, but, by excluding what is chiefly dear and precious to the heart and mind of common humanity, they exclude many of the qualities which achieve success for a novel.

In "For Lilias," on the other hand, the author avails herself of all the agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to the critic, who believes that although the novelist should not sacrifice his meaning to the requisitions of mere agreeableness, out of regard for art and the taste of his readers, he should still have beauty in some degree or other as his chief end in view.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] So I had written, led to agree with the anthropologists who hold this view, by my own observations among the Indians of every State and Territory in our West: the more I have seen and read of the widely-spread native races belonging to various linguistic stocks, the more their similitude has been pressed upon my attention. Nevertheless, there is another opinion, as appears in a recent letter from Professor Putnam, to whom I had quoted the sentence above. "All had certain features in common," he says; "they were red-skinned Americans in the general sense of the term, although some were more olive than red, and others were darker-skinned than red. Mr. Carr, no doubt, would accept your statement that they were all 'tarred with one stick,' but he judges from history. For my part, I feel confident that there were several stocks of the great Mongolian race in America; and there is also some evidence (facts are accumulating) of a migration across the Atlantic. I should have to write a dozen pages to give you all my reasons for wishing you to modify your paragraph."

THE END