AN AMERICAN POLITICAL NOVEL.* Tim English public is growing more
and more familiar with novels by American writers, and there can be no doubt that these books have an immense sale and circulation. If it can be said of our novelists that they find hundreds of thousands of readers beyond the Atlantic, it is quite as true that certain Transatlantic novelists have thousands of readers in Great Britain. And, without disparagement to the ability of these ladies and gentlemen, we may fairly suppose that a part of their success among ourselves is owing to the foreign flavour of their work. Everybody in England cannot read French and German easily ; and we all know that a translation is but a more or less feeble reproduction, therefore French and German books are certain of only a limited popu- larity. But an American book, however emphatically American it may be, is written in our own tongue (or what very closely approximates to it), and goes straight from the writer to his English readers ; while at the same time it deals with people, scenes, and manners that are not English. In the reading of many, if not all American novels, we have a sense of making discoveries, of getting information, which adds a certain piquancy to the pleasure of the story. A good many of these discoveries, a good deal of this information, may be fallacious; we are rather inclined to think them so, because of the marvellously distorted pictures of English life, man- ners, and conversation which we know are given to the world by some of those English novelists whose books we understand to be popular in America, and whose delineations are, no doubt, accepted there as true to nature. But, with all our readiness to distrust, we cannot suppose that writers of a high class who are known to be conversant with certain phases of American life and society do constantly misrepresent and belie their country people. We cannot suppose that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells are engaged in a series of elaborate hoaxes, nor believe for a moment that the authors of Democracy and Through One Administration have deliberately undertaken to give scandalously false views of official life at Washington.
Mrs. Burnett was, we believe, born and partly brought up in England, and her two novels, That Lass o' Lowrie's and Haworths, show how intimate must have been her early ac- quaintance with the life of the lower classes in the Lancashire
manufacturing districts. A Fair Barbarian, too, deals with English country-town life, and if it is a little exaggerated, it is not too much so to be amusing. It bears, however, evident marks of having been studied from books, and not from nature. We should credit Miss Austen and Mrs. Gaskell with the original creation of several of the characters. But Through One Administration is a purely American book, the scene, with one
short exception, being laid in Washington, and the characters living in " tip-top parlours," and moving in the highest political circles of the Republic. The circumstances related are enclosed within the period of four years, during which a President holds office ; the hero, as he arrives at Washington, remarks, " I come in with the Administration, I wonder if I shall go out with it, and what will have happened in the interval ;" and accordingly, he does go out with it, being killed just at the moment of the next inaugural festivities. Thus the story ends sadly,—indeed, our objection to it is that it is sad throughout ; the heroine laughs a good deal, but with small cause for merriment; while the hero is a miserably dis- appointed, if not a heart-broken man, from the end of the first chapter.
To quarrel with a book for being sad implies, however, that we are interested by it; and Through One Administration is in- teresting, its characters vivid, its style clear, pleasant, and vigorous. But, as we have already hinted, whatever is really remarkable in it is derived from its pictures of a society as frivolous as that of any European capital at any period, and corrupt with a sort of cynical corruption not, it is to be hoped, ti be equalled by any other political society, at present. Here, for instance, is a passage in which one Senator expresses his views of another. Richard Amory and Senator Planefield are interested in obtaining subsidies for a projected line of railway, and Senator Blundel's favour is of importance to them:- "' Yon can't expect a man like Blundel,' said Planefield, to be easy to manage. Blundel is the possessor of a moral character, and when a man has a capital like that, and Blundel's sharpness into the bargain, he is not going to trifle with it. He's going to hold on to it until it reaches its highest market value, and then decide which way • Through One Administration. By Franoes Hodgson Burnett. London . Frederick Warn,, and Co.
he will invest it The one thing you can't be sure of is a moral character. Impeccability is rare, and it is never easy for an outsider to hit on its exact, value. It varies, and you have to run risks with it. Blunders is expensive.'—' There has been a great deal of money used,' hesitated Richard, a great deal.'—' You had better go and see Blundel yourself,' Planefield said, after a pause ; you must settle what's to be done between you. I have done my best.'—' By Jove,' exclaimed Richard, virtuously, what corruption ! ' It was an
ingenuous exclamation He felt that he was being hardly treated, and that the most sacred trusts of a great nation were in hands likely to betray them at far too high a figure. The remark amounted to an outburst of patriotism. Have they all their price P'
he cried. Planefield glanced at him No,' he said ; if they had, you'd find it easier. If they were all to be bought, or if none of them were to be sold, you'd see your way' "
We will add as a pendant to this a curious representation of the position of a clerk in a Government office, as sketched by one of the class
If there is a good deal in him, he will begin by being hopeful and working hard He will keep his eyes open, and make friends of the men about him. He will do that for a few months, and then, suddenly, and for no fault whatever, one of these friends will be dropped out. Knowing the man to be as faithful as himself, it will be a shock to him Somebody else wanted the place and got it, not because of superior fitness for it, but because the opposing influence was stronger than his. The new man will go through the same experience when his time comes, that is all That such a thing is possible, that the bread and home and hopes of any honest human creature should be used as the small-change of power above him, and trafficked with to sustain that power, and fix it in its place to make the most of itself and its greed, is the burning shame and burden which is slung round our necks, and will keep us from standing with heads erect until we are lightened of it."
We could easily have given pleasanter extracts than these from Mrs. Burnett's volumes, but we have preferred such as have a greater flavour of originality about them than any merely con- nected with the love-story. That, we strongly recommend those who do not object to being made miserable to read for them-
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