variety which the vicissitudas of most family-life present,—alter- nately sad
and triumphant, till the sadness of the outer life pre- veils, and the triumph is of the spirit only. The events are laid ingly the course which our own conviction pointed out as the one We lay it down without a thought of a wasted life, or a regret
and suggests the agency of a personal foe,—such as strange sick- that this world's prizes were missed, scarcely with a sigh for the ness, madness, epilepsy. But the personification of the lowest
loneliness of the distant and solitary death•bed, so completely are we made to realize the absorbing desire to spend and surrender life in the simple falahuont of God's will, without a murmur that effort has apparently failed, or a question whether there has been result or not. The missionary whose story is told is a very young man, of humble origin, but of personal beauty and of high intel- lectual organization. He becomes Senior Wrangler, and gives up his plan of going to the Bar that he may enter the Church, then declines all promotion at home that he may go to India, and • finally chooses the most out.of-thesworld and remote stations in advancing culture to embrace the abstract, the natural, the benefi- preference to those in which Europeans reside, that he may cent. The personification of these implies a state of culture that is considerably advanced, like that of the Hindoo of the Vedic ages. literally, and not nominally only, baccrais a inissiou try to t Moreover, low races lack the predisposition to personify ; to the he heathen. The gradual growth of his character is so wild hunter there is nothing, outside of his family or his tribe, but well done that, as in life, we scarcely note its advance till food and the means of getting it. He personifies nothing except we look b.uk,—the ability an I irritability an 1 conceit of under the fascination of fear or fury, awakened by a feeling that the sensitive and fastidious boy, giving way to the tender he is interrupted or interfered with. Personification involves conscience and moral refinement of the equally sensitive and fastidious youth, awl ripening at last into the gentle and charitable, strong interest in things outside us, and can have no breadth of but firm and resolute Christian range, unless men have that kind of unselfish interest which we mai. But Frank is not th only e
call curiosity. Personification takes place under the strong effort lovable and well-drawn character. Here, for -instance, is his what it is to us, and school and college friend, Carden, come to congratulate him on to realize seine object, independently of his great success, at t
essentially belongs to an active aggressive state of the intel- he moment when Frank just gains a glimpse
What our author says about the tyranny of language, by which he youth was accomplished! "rho highest academical honour, that. of Senior Wrangler, was means the way in which men, having to make one name stand for Garden came to him, and that long thought of his many like things, imagine one real mystic being corresponding to arden came to congratulate him. A proof that the friendship of the two young mon had a solid foundation was that no poverty, no fail are that name, is a thug
iug always to be kept in mind. If the reader or glory shook it, Frank recognized n his elder companion a more noble principle of life than he had yet reached up to, and a scholarship wants an illustration of the potency of language in myth-formation, as deserving as his owu, though it had not boon crowned ; and Carden he can nowhere find a bettor one than in the book we are review- maintained over the clever lad, whose name for a day was in all men's mg (see Vol. II., chap. 15, from p. 220 to the end), and of which mouths, the superiority and affectionate watchfulness belonging to his more stable character, out of which their attachment bad originally we must defer further notice to our next issue.
Mer awe of of Honour. By Holm Lee. London; Henry S. King mill On. sprung. Frank was alone in his room when Carden entered. His fire was low, his lamp was not lighted, tho January twilight was stealing greyly through the bleak trees. Three letters lay on the table ready for the post; one to Mary, one to Doctor Cornelius, one to Doctor Tre- volyan at Creston. Carden stopt up to Frank, who sat with his back to the door, and laid a hand on his shoulder. ' Well, little Gwynner says he, in the tenderest glad voice.—' Vanity of vanities!' replies Frank ; and by the dim twinkling of the fire Carden saw that there were tears in his eyes. They shook hands, and by-and-by they began to talk. 'I am satisfied—and I don't care,' ejaculated the hero of the day, with a heavy sigh.—' Wait till to-morrow,' said Carden. 'To night's "don't care" signifies no more than the reaction of weariness after excitement You have had all the rest congratulating you, of course ?'—' Yes, but I missed you. And I wish my father had lived, Carden.'—' I wish mine bad! I think he would have loved his son unlucky.'—' There is nothing here without its flaw ! My father would have been so glad and proud— the others will not much mind.'—' You, they will mind—Mary will cry for joy, for she is a good soul, and devoted to you. To be Senior Wrangler bears looking at in all lights. It is an honour of honours, and blamelessly won, as I know it will be blamelessly, even nobly, worn:— Thank you, Carden !' cried Frank, and stretched out his hand for another grasp of his friend's, 'It does one good to he believed in. Doctor Cornelius will toss up his cap, arid give the school a holiday.'— 'I should think so, indeed They ought to write your name in letters of' gold—they will certainly carve it on the high desk, and that will last longer. I should not wonder if they sot the church bells a-ringing.'— Frank laughed at the conceited notion. 'The Vicar is not at home,' said he. 'lie is at Orexton.'—' Was there over a Pongarvon lad Senior Wrangler before ? Never' that I heard of.'—' Enough said, (Darden; lot it alone! I have attained to the highest wish of my ambition, and I feel that I have grasped a shadow.'—' You will find out that substantial re- wards follow it. It is to the lot of men who lay hold of such shadows that the great prizes of life fall,'" And here is a picture of Frank himself when, a few days later, he comes to receive the congratulations of the lady whose title of honour was his love. He calls at her uncle the canon's, having turned aside, on his way from Cambridge to Cornwall, nominally to see the cathedral. Eleanour, the canon, the dean and another clergyman (a Mr. Temple) have come from the cathedral service, and are at afternoon tea in the twilight in. Eloanour's parlour :- "Eleanour dispensed her cups of tea to cheer the disputants. She loved a good argument, but took discreet care to keep clear of the hard blows that were always going when Church politics were the battle. The contest was at its hottest when the door opened, and old John—the butler, evidently, by the air of him—announced another visitor, though sto name was audible. 'Who, who? ' whispered the Canon to Eleanour, aside, raising his hand to silence Temple, who was very loud and isonoroue—perhaps to make up for being one against two and a neutral in the wordy strife. It was quite dusk at the door ; but Bimini= had -quick, discerning oyes. 'It is Frauk I' said she, softly, and set down her cup.—The Canon recognized him almost at the same moment. 'Bless my heart! it is little Gwynn°. Mr. Dean, allow me' Temple, this is our Senior Wrangler !' cried ho, and shook Frank's hand till it ached again.—' Proud to make your acquaintance, sir, and to offer you my congratulations,' said the Dean himself a first-class man, and with a follow-feeling for scholars of humble origin. Elertuour was all blushes when the Canon suggested that they should have a little more light on ,the scene, and applied a taper to the wax-candles on the chimney. Mr. Temple noted the brilliance of pleasure in her eyes, and the deepened roses of her face, and than looked at the new-comer with a perplexed scrutiny. Frank seemed excited too, and not altogether at his cape ; but that might be accounted for by his abrupt introduction into the presence of so many and groat dignitaries. Thus Temple reasoned, and there was nothing else in Frank's manners or person that the most fastidious could take exception to. He had a beautiful animated coun- tenance—youthful for a Senior Wrangler, being yet not quite twenty years old—a refined countenance, though one of marked power. He wore no board, and his hair curled over his head in close crisp curls ; his eyes were dark grey, very clear, with a certain melancholy which was almost gloom when his mouth was in repose. He wee not above the middle height, but his figure, his gait, his air were elegant, distill- guiehed its Temple's own ; and Ternplo WW1 young gentleman or family and of the finest breeding, quite the line gentleman of the Close."
The sweet, graceful, and high-bred Eleanour is scarcely less admirable a picture. Simple and open, and warm and faithful in her affections, but not heroic ; full of admiration for Frank's devo- tion to his sense of duty, and as sensitively anxious not to influence him by the expression of a wish that might turn him aside, as he is not to press her to relinquish the refinements of her English life for the hardship of a long voyage and the physical and social suffer- ing of the life of a missionary's wife in India. She is so surrounded 'by an atmosphere of luxury, inseparably mingled with gentleness and goodness, that she fails to see the under-current of worldliness in her aristocratic but benevolent and kindly relatives, who set aside, so unhesitatingly, the difficulty of Frank's humble origin in consideration of his great achievements, and receive him so grace- fully and cordially and without the evidence of condescension, only desiring that he should avail himself of their position to rise to high places in the Church. This semi-religious, semi-worldly tone in the old canon and Eleanour's other friends is most deli- cately and truly drawn. So, too, are the various types of character displayed by Frank's Cornish relations ;—the grave and practical father, whose recreations are the memory of his wife, his children, and his garden ;—aud the elder sister, practical and
loving, like the father, dying early like her mother, but living, to the very last, in domestic affairs,—arranging, almost cheerfully, every detail for the time when she shall be gone, loving the natural beauty around her and her own people so much that she cannot care for heaven, and comforting herself for the want of any deep religious fervour with the hope that God will set it down to her credit that she has made an admirable wife and housewife and a wise and tender mother. The scene on the ridge of a Cornish bill, overlooking their home and the sea, where all the family are collected for the last time before Frank goes to India, and while his elder sister is still able to entertain them, is beat4iful both as a description of exquisite natural scenery and of the mental attitudes of the different members of the group,—the elders intensely sad, the children as merry as the summer day is long. There are so many other descriptive passages of great beauty and artistic power that we cannot easily select ; but the opening one of the cathedral precincts, and some others of the scenery of the New Forest, are amongst the most delightful. We have not written to much purpose, however, if our readers do not render all quotations unnecessary.
One thing, and one only, we note in this book with dissatisfac- tion. And that is the way in which brother and sister encourage each other to the creation of those soul-destroying things, journals and diaries. Of all pernicious habits, that of writing a diary—we • except the business diaries of family-practitioners and solicitors.— is perhaps the most pernicious ;—a burden to the conscience, a worry to the spirits, a nuisance to the trembling relatives—who BOO you approaching, with upraised pen and anxious ooautenance, to inquire what happened last Wednesday week—a wicked waste of time, a fatal hindrance to real work, a certain source of error— as your entries are frightfully antedated—and an unmerited cruelty to your unhappy executors—a very Winkle's tall horse to them,—" What am I to do with these dreadful journals?" There is only one habit worse, a determination to make your private accounts balance to a halfpenny, with a tendency to settle them about once in ten days.
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