BOOKS.

CHRONICLES OF CABLINGFORD.*

Tuts book will take a permanent place in English literature. There is scarcely any other tale of the present day which, for truth and humour and living effect, could take its place beside George Eliot's "Scenes from Clerical Life," without being hurt by the comparison ; but this,—that portion of it at least which re- lates to " Salem Chapel" and its organization,—might fairly do so. There is, indeed, an infusion of unreal melodramatic spice put in to stimulate the interest of the story which we could well spare. Colonel and Mrs. Mildmay, their child, who is the bone of cou- tention between them, and Miss Susan Vincent, stir up between them an artificial whirlpool of excitement just beneath the horizon of the story, of which we hear very much more than we see,—and which appears expressly contrived rather to drive a tidal wave of more powerful disturbing force through the petty agitations of the dissenting connection than to offer any field for the delineating power of the novelist. This little melodramatic • Chronicles of Carlinr5—Salem Chapel, In Two Vole. Blackwood. mystery, the mere shadow of which thrills with so much effect through the connection at Salem Chapel, is the only blot on the story, and is very easily separable from it. The Mildmay melo- drama is what almost any novelist could do as well or better than the author (or authoresi) of" Salem Chapel." And we could wish that in some new edition the Mildmay film might be skilfully removed from the book, by some neat surgical operation, and the simple squabbles of the Salem Independents left in all their purity and majesty. Not that we would on any account object to the young Independent minister's passion for Lady Western ;—that is an essential and most artistic element of the story,—the azure back- ground, without which the life of the Salem dissenters would lose half its vivid humour and many of its distinet features. But while this touch is true art, the story of kidnapping and all but murder which grows out like a fungus on the Lady Western side of the story, is scarcely even true artifice.

Having relieved our minds with this protest, we may pass to those features of the tale which we could scarcely praise too highly if we would. Mr. Vincent is the ambitious son of a minister of the Independent "connection," and has just taken charge of Salem Chapel, Csrlingford, when the story opens. He is himself a young man of taste and refinement- much above the level of Horuerton' College where he has studied theology, but still pene- trated with the maxims of the Independent school, and full of that youthful belief in eloquence, and argument, and religious sentiment, which fancies that by its own strength it can vanquish the world. Mr. Vincent, in short, believes in God because he has eloquent religious feelings of his own, instead of recognizing God as the basis of life, and far deeper than any surface current of human feeling ; and the humour and power, and we may say wisdom of the story, consist in the ruthless skill with which these religious feelings are made the sport of the personal accidents amongst which the young minister is thrown—first damped and almost extinguished by the vulgar patronage of the dissenting deacons; rekindled by the pique which his exile from the refined society of Carlingford causes him ; almost obliterated again by the gleam of temporary sunshine ; and finally thrown into an intolerable fermentation of self-distruit, and even, at moments, of despair, by the pressure of passion and panic which cloud for him the whole face of Heaven, and turn Christ into a "perhaps." From this shadow the hero scarcely emerges in the story before us, which simply leaves him in the firm conviction that eloquent religious feeling is not a rock on which anything durable can be built. Such is the finer intellectual thread of the narrative which gives unity and purpose to its plan. But the literary wealth of the book consists in the delineation of the Salem Chapel "connection," its obstructive relation to the effervescing life of the young minister, and the diplomatic . depth of worldly wisdom which it develops on critical emer- gencies in his pious and devoted mother,—herself an Inde- pendent minister's widow. All this is really wonderfully . drawn,—with a delicacy and skill of which we can give but very imperfect proof in the limits of a single article.

The two most perfect pictures in the story are Tozer, the but-_, terman and principal deacon of Salem Chapel, and Mrs. Vincent,. the young minister's mother. The latter is an etching of marvel- bons delicacy and art, with every line and shadow separately touched in—the former, a vigorous cartoon of massive effect and vigorous outline, representing a man who attaches us so much person- ally that it seems a real privation not to have been able to join the wOmerton students" in that testimonial presented to him for his great ungrammatical speech in Salem Chapel on behalf of the liberty of the ministry and against the tyranny of the "connection." Tozer, the butterman, is such a chaeacter as we should have thought scarcely any one but George Eliot could have drawn. Through all the vulgarity of its surface there is so much genial strength and breadth, so much vulgar manliness, so much in- telligence in the shopocratic shrewdness, so much true mettle behind the stratum of butter and bacon, such a liberal feel- ing within the limits which Salem ideas and the narrow personal views of his own womankind impose, that Tozer, who in the opening of the story serves to represent the vulgar pettiness of ignorant congregational aims, seems before its close to be a figure of more true dignity, though, perhaps, less intellectual significance, than the young minister himself. The difficulty in all great literary pictures lies in observing accurately the limits of your conception. Tozer is, of course, essentially a limited being ; and yet, from the first moment, When he does a certain vulgar and almost unintentional justice to the charm of Lady Western's beauty in his shop, to the great oration in which he puts down so effectively "them as is always ready to.clictate," the reader

has a sense that in his character there is something greater than his lot, a something which is, nevertheless, never allowed to break through the necessary limitations of an ignorant mind and a vulgar society.

It is difficult to give a true vision of the man in any short compass, but, perhaps, the following fragment in the deacon's argument with his minister, intended to bring that youth to a reasonable tone of mind,—Tozer's hand being spread over his teacup meanwhile, in the embarrassed attitude in which he had declined more tea from Mrs. Vincent,—will give some impression of him to our readers :-

'"No "No more for me, ma'am, thatikye,' said Tozer, laying his hand over

his cup. I don't deny as there's truth in what you say. I don't deny as a family here and there in a flock may be aggravating like them Pigeons, I'm not the man to be hard on a minister, if that ain't his turn. A pastor may have a weakness, and not feel himself as equal to one part of his work as to another ; but to go for to say as visiting and keeping the flock pleased ain't his duty—it's that, ma'am, as goes to my heart.' . . . When the minister and the deacon were left alone together, instead of returning with zest to their interrupted discussion, neither of them said anything for some minutes. Once more Vincent took up his position on the hearthrug, and Tozer gazed ruefully at the empty cup which he still covered with his hand, full of troubled thoughts.

I hope, sir, as you won't think there's anything but an anxious fedi& in the flock to do you justice as our pastor,' said Tozer, with a certain solemnity, 'or that we ain't sensible to our biessin's. I've said both to yourself and others as you was a young man of great promise, and as good a preacher as I ever see in our connection, Mr. Vincent, and I'll stand by what I've said; but you ain't above taking a friend's advice— not speaking with no authority,' added the good butterman, in a con- ciliatory tone ; 'it's all along of the women, sir—it's them as is at the bottom of all the mischief in a flock. It ain't Pigeon, bless you, as is to blame. And even my missis, though she's not to say unreasonable as women go—none of them can abide to hear of you a-going after Lady Western—that's it, Mr. Vincent. She's a lovely creature,' cried Tozer, with enthusiasm ; there ain't one in Carlingford to compare with her, as I can see, and I wouldn't be the one to blame a young man as was carried away. But there couldn't no good come of it, and Salem folks is touchy and jealous,' continued the worthy deacon; that was all as I meant to say."

But if Tozer is a truly great conception, Mrs. Vincent is even more delicately drawn. The imperious sense of congregational decencies and expectations which penetrates her, even at the very crisis of her distracting anguish of mind ; the laborious effort with

which she stops to speak to the women who are scrubbing the chapel, in a moment of dreadful suspense, because she thinks it probable they must belong to "Arthur's flock," and does not wish the minister's trouble of mind to give rise to gossip ; the force that she puts upon herself to call on Tozer for the same pur- pose; the preternatural maternal vigilance with which she per- ceives and defeats the rising spirit of dissatisfaction with her son, though her own heart is spellbound at the time with the dreadful and almost hopeless peril of her daughter ; the jealousy with which she sees the disposition to admire the fellow-student from " 'Omerton," who fancies he has "made an 'it" in her son's pulpit, and the cool adroitness with which she mortifies his hopes, despite the strained state of her nerves; and ,finally, the cruel severity with which she slays pink Miss Phcebe Tozer's pretensions to feel a tender interest in her son, and repels her overtures of flial affec- tion, are all touches which bring out the fond maternal heart of the widow with a distinctness of form and colour almost startling.

Nor are the minor figures in the Salem connection inferior in general effect. The superannuated and paralytic Mr. Milan, who receives his young brother with so much flabby spiritual

cordiality, and injures him so materially and yet uninten- tionally at the meeting at which Tozer redeems the day; pink Phcebe Tozer, always ready to make a foolish giggling sort

of love to any extent, and quite unable to take offence with

the repulses she receives—her good-humoured, vulgar mother entirely approving of Phcebe's love-making, but by no means disposed to take her part unduly, or to feel the delicacy of the situation when she gets a rebuff; together with Mrs. Brown, the serious dairywoman, who, not having a grown-up daughter, makes a concluding prayer the principal feature of her tea-

parties ;—and Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon, the poulterers, who lead the opposition, but who, nevertheless, cannot help being struck by the sublimity of a minister, who, for the first time in Salem, "does not condescend to be gracious at a tea-meeting," and consequently, though leaders of opposition, "honour him in their heart,"—all these, though only sketches, are yet sketches of no ordinary vividness and humour.

And through, and connecting all these sketches, there runs, as we said, a really striking picture of the growth of an impetuous young man's mind from the faith of mere eloquent sentiment up td die point at which the uncertainty of all human feelinga

and human thoughts forces itself imperiously upon the mind, though it scarcely takes him to the point at which the mind ceases to struggle for a private intellectual basis of its own, and resigns itself to rest on the arm of a divine love. The picture of Arthur Vincent's mind is not agreeable ; that fer- menting period of youth is never agreeable; but it is true, though it is not, like the other drawings, clearly outlined. Indeed, if it were, it would not be true. The time in. which the heart of a clever, sentimental, ambitious, self. admiring young man, is living through its first dreams, is a period of what Mr. Kingsley calls yeast, and to outline that, as you may outline formed and settled characters, is to falsify it. This too is a picture hem the inside, not one of out- ward observation, and hence again it is not possible to give the same marked outline. Still, both in the feverish feeling and the feverish dizzy thought, the picture is at once striking and true, and gives a distinct purpose and meaning to the book. The eloquent sermons are not merely talked of; we are told enough of them to see the real germ of impressive feeling in them, and to understand the oscillations of the young man's faith. Indeed, there is great art in presenting a picture of such essentially changeful, flicker- ing, and uncertain shades, amidst the sharp outlines and distinct vulgarities of the Salem connection. Young Vincent's fever of mind might look feeble and melodramatic, were not the stage on which it is delineated so often that savoury supper-room be- hind Tozer's shop, where the only drawback is,that whenever the door is opened "the odour of bacon and cheese from the shop came in, like a musty shadow of the boiled ham and hot sausages within." In such an atmosphere, youthful passion and idealism become real by contrast.