BOOKS.

A GOOD AMERICAN NOVEL.*

NVE suppose that for every copy of this novel sold in England, at least ten, probably many more, copies of Lothair will be sold, and very naturally ; but we have no hesitation in saying that, with all its faults, and they are both many and provoking, Mrs. Whitney's story of plain American life has about ten times as much good substance in it, ten times an much solid literary faculty, as Mr.

• Ifitlterto: a Story of Yesterdays By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Author of "Faith Gartneys Girlhood," .• The Gaywortbys," &e. 3 vols. London: Sampson Low. Disraeli's very duchessy lucubratioas. Indeed, Hitherto, though disfigured by a tendency to self-conscious and high-flown emo- tion on the part both of the authoress in her own name and of her

heroine, which is beyond measure irritating, aggravating,' would be the popular term for it,—is full of life-like drawing, and contains only one ambitious failure, the picture of the ideal hero, Mr. Grandon Cope. Even the heroine, whom we cordially dislike from beginning to end, is an extremely good and.striking picture, though you feel from the very first page that the authoress sympathizes with her in the most unjustifiable manner, and falls into precisely the same detestable agonies about "the pure soul- depths," and other inventions of that sentimental devil who tempts authors, especially of the feminine gender, to make an unnatural fuss over the grandeurs of their psychological experience, as the heroine herself so tediously takes herself to task for feeling. It is a novel with a heroine of a yearning nature,—a heroine who, never having known a mother, is delineated as having a perpetual famine in her soul for something which Motherhood,—Mrs. Whitney, like all writers of this class, are very fond of the "hoods," we may even say of manufacturing " hoods " not in common use, like "straugerhood," for example,—might have appeased. Of this the unfortunate result is that she can't be satisfied with plain love simply given, but wants somebody heroic, who is well up in the significance of the precious stones mentioned in Revelations, and who can talk a mixture of experimental science and transcendental symbolism to help her in what, with singular moral perversity, she denominates her "life-climb," Yet, though we are bound to express our moral detestation of the young woman who makes such a horrible fuss about herself from the beginning to the end of this clever novel, it is quite impossible to deny she is thoroughly well conceived and delineated, and if Mrs. Whitney did not go off into precisely similar tantrums of sentimental analysis on her own account, we should be tempted to think of the picture as a masterpiece. Indeed, no far as she intends to describe the self-conscious tormentings of a mind always morbidly hungering after a sense of exaltation, trying her friends and lovers by ideals of her own, sighing audibly over their shortcomings, and looking unutterable things at them when they don't come up to this ideal,—she has succeeded admirably and drawn a picture of a good deal of power. But then, unfortunately, she betrays that she did not mean half the sentimentality to be disease, but willingly adopts it on her own account. For instance, when her heroine, after her marriage, muses thus about her husband's heart, when they are on the river together, it is by no means meant to be a morbid symptom of the most advanced sickliness of heart, but rather a gleam of temporary health :—

" The river of his heart is full of answering blessedness this (lay; of rounded perfect pictures, half a dream ; which half he could hardly say. He felt its far-off springs away up in the mountain-places of being where souls are solemnly alone ; where the beginnings of life are born and continually renewed, beside the throne of God. He knew not why the river hushed him so ; where were the awe, and the tenderness, and the close beautiful withdrawal, and the bosom-holding If great love."

That is the sort of nauseous and meaningless stuff which, by its continual recurrence throughout these volumes, seriously injures a very clever and otherwise wholesome novel. Mrs. Whitney has no suspicion of the enormity of that sort of thing. Only a very little more, in one's reading, of such stuff an that would give any man the jaundice.

Apart from this abundant delight in vapour baths of sentimental expression, which really belongs to the authoress as much as to her heroine, that heroine Anstiss Dolbeare, afterwards Austin Hatha- way, is very keenly and consistently painted. Her almost bitter jealousy of the savoir-faire and tact of the pretty woman of the world (Augusta Hare) who always knew how to make herself the centre of her circle even when she understood far less of the intel- lectual points in discussion than her country rival, is extremely well painted, though one does get indignant at the ungenerous way in which Austin virtually triumphs over the inferiority of Augusta's soul even after the latter is dead, and while the former is pro- fessedly sorrowing,—or at least going through the series of subtle emotions which do duty with her for sorrow—over her loss. Equally good is the violent resentment cherished in a sullen way by Anstiss as a child against her hard, disciplinarian Aunt Ildy, whom she will have it that she loves, though she never loses an opportunity of bitterly railing against her during the history of her childhood. After she grows up, indeed, and Aunt Ildy has turned out so good-bearted to her, this feeling very naturally disappears, but leaves behind it no sense of remorse for her many savage thoughts of her during past years. But best of all is the description of the way in which she tortures herself and her husband after her marriage, only because the latter is not up to the fanciful subtle- ties of analysis and the dreamy cobwebs of imaginative reverie which she demands as the sine qua non of an ideal man. A more nagging heart than this of Anstiss Hathaway's was never painted ; yet that such hearts there are, constantly eating away their own happiness and that of others in the demand for more emotion and more of idealism altogether, there can be no doubt. Her character is thoroughly conceived and sketched. All we com- plain of is that the authoress evidently holds that much of the sickly rubbish, which is a mere morbidness in her heroine, is rather noble and praiseworthy than otherwise.

There is, too, an extremely fine contrast to this heroine's self- gnawing character in that of the second heroine, Hope, who is a

sort of bright and sunny edition of George Eliot's Dinah in Adam Dede,—as full as Dinah of spiritual trust and serenity, but with

nothing of the missionary in her, only the art of discerning, as it were, at a glance what her true relation to others is, and never even for a moment grasping at what lies beyond it, and that smiling, happy trust in God which makes every step in life easy to her and full of charm for all who are near her. There is a real originality in the delineation of Hope, for while it is compara-

tively easy to conceivi characters marked by so morbid a grain as that of Anstiss, it is seldom easy to make a shining, simple, perfect character, real,—and this, for the most part at least, Mrs. Whitney has done with hope. Take the way Hope simply puts away from

her, without an effort almost—so clearly and simply does she realize that it is not for her,—the chance of winning Richard Hathaway, whom she was, as it were, on the verge of loving, had she not known that his love was given to: another, however unable to appreciate it,—and, therefore, not even to be wished for :-

' She talked with herself, admonishingly, in a sort ; as if she knew things that self might long for, and that should be met with a reason and a satisfying beforehand. Because she could not chafe and discon- tent herself. Because it was the very law of her life to find a cheer, and u sufficiency at once, before she got restless. 'It's enough to be close to things,' she said. 'It's only really to concern yourself with them. You haven't time to live 'em all, and every one, for yourself. To know all about:anything is to have it,—the good of it. I think it's easy for the angels to be happy so. They know, you see. It's easiest of all for God. Perhaps He shows us things sometime, and puts them away again for us, to give us by-and-by when we are bigger, as mothers do with child- ren's playthings that are too beautiful for them to have right off. If all the sunshine was poured on us we should be blinded and burned. But we can see it on every little spear of grass, and in the water-sparkles, and on the bills, and the white clouds. That is the way we get it all. I'm glad—yes, I'm glad—I'm amongst it. And I have got enough ; or else, of course, I should have more. Something will be coming by-and- by. You can't have more than both hands full at once, Hope Devine ! And both hands are full."

And with very few exceptions, that shining, easy, effortless simplicity of character is maintained, never "snaking belief" not to desire what it does desire, but simply giving a misplaced feeling the go-by before it becomes keen enough to be difficult to ignore. Characters of the angelic sort are almost uniformly failures. Hope's character is really no failure. There is as much shrewdness as sweetness in it, as much lucidity as faith, as much sincerity as ease. We never met with a character in books or out of them in which the dream- ing power is made so subservient to practical wisdom, the one strengthening the other till innocence seems to be the radical principle of tact, and artlessness of sagacity. Now and then, no doubt, though very rarely, Mrs. 1Vhitney makes the mistake of letting Hope fall into Anstiss's horrible lingo of self-conscious eloquence, as when she reproaches Anstiss for her confession that she had treated Richard Hathaway shamefully :—" Then you've treated shamefully the lovingest, patientest, grand-heartedest man that breathes." Hope couldn't have said " grand-heartedest." She is intrinsically simple, and does not rejoice in coining emotional words. But it is rare indeed for Mrs. Whitney to make this mistake. It is a confusion between Hope and Anstiss.

But a great deal of the enjoyability of the novel lies in its side- sketches. Mr. Grandon Cope, the grandiose hero, is, as we have said, an ambitious failure, but almost every one else in the consider- able number of minor sketches is well drawn, and often drawn with much humour. Martha Geddis is good, with her demonstration that it was intrinsically impossible for Hope to marry Mr. Gran- don Cope, because, "Hope Cope ! who ever went and rhymed themselves up after that fashion I should like to know ? I alwers

knew it never'd do, after I put them two names together in my own mind, and took just one single squinny at 'em." Richard Hatha- way, and Aunt Ildy, and Augusta Hare (though unfairly treated), and Nurse Cryke, and several other minor characters, are all well

sketched. But most entertaining of all these minor sketches are the four old maids, the "Polisher girlses," Mies Remember, and Miss Submit, and Miss Lodemy, and Miss Euphrasia, who

live together in the antique belief that the two youngest are still, 'as it were, girls, because the two eldest have always BO regarded them. The account of the fancy life which these two youngest, or less old, ladies confide to each other on the subject of imaginary homes which they have built for them- selves, and the odd way in which they entangle their fancy- thoughts with their real, is admirably told; nor could anything be much more life-like than this description of their mode of taking their after-dinner nap :— "We went upstairs. The Polisher girls were used to a little nap after dinner. The two large opposite front rooms were open across to each other. Hope went into the elder ladies' apartment ; they were going to teach her the shell-pattern for knitting. Miss Frasie took me with her; brought out of a dark corner cupboard some volumes of 'Persuasion ' and Northanger Abbey,' and put me into the great white easy chair to read. Then she folded down the smooth bed-quilt, laid an old shawl across the lower end for their feet, turned up the night side of the pillows, and she and Demie prepared to mount. This they had to do by agreement, and with military precision, so as not to 'roll' the bed. First, they got crickets upon which they stood at either side. Then, with exact calculation, each put a foot up into the very spot where it was to stay ; Miss Demie her right foot, Miss Frasie her left ; then with a grasp of the bedposts they swung themselves up,—right and left face, the nice point here being not to bump their heads as they met aloft; and then they sat, and finally reclined, everything turning out with the marvellous precision that could only come of perfect plan and long usage. Upon which each sister said 'There!' with a satisfied breath of accomp- lishment and giving up, which was a part of the performance and a beginning cf repose. I suppose they had done just so for forty years."

If Ilitherto,—a title, by the way, which has absolutely no meaning, though a good deal of uncomfortable preface is devoted to explain- ing what its no-meaning is,—were only not so greedily sentimental in conception, it would be a first-rate novel. As it is, it is one of no common ability, and full of fresh life.