NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*

Via Lucis, the review copy of which, owing to an oversight, never reached us until a few days ago, is a notable novel by a new writer, who speaks of herself as a Roman, but writes as good English as that other admirable Italian novelist, Mr. Marion Crawford. " Kassandra Vivaria's " standpoint, how- ever, is very different from that of the author of Carlson& Her method is more akin to that of Mathilde Serao in its regard for " actuality " and its passion, while in her audacity and unconventionality she reminds us most of all of the Cali- fornian writer, l!drs. Atherton, whose last novel, by the way, in the character of its heroine, her relations with her father and her dearest friend, exhibits a curious parallelism with Via Lucia. Arduina d'Erella, whose chequered life-history is set forth in these brilliant pages, is the fruit of an international mesalliance between an English-American mother and a déclassé Italian Count. On the early death of her mother, who had been living apart from her ill-conditioned husband, Arduina is taken home by her father, who, with the lassistance of a disreputable gover- ness, contrives to render his daughter exceptionally miser- able. Painful and sordid though the recital of Arduina's troubles are, the narrative is profoundly interesting from the indomitable spirit displayed by the girl and the fascination which she exerts from the first moment the reader makes her acquaintance. Arduina, moreover, has alleviations in the company of a devoted English servant of her dead mother's and a girl friend, Gabriella, or, as she calls her, the Archangel," with whom her lot is closely interwoven throughout the story. On her transference to a convent school, Arduina turns from mutineer to mystic, conceives a scheme for founding a new Order of female Jesuits, falls under the influence of Monsignor Ferri, a high-minded if somewhat temporising priest, and ulti- mately, while on a visit to her friend Gabriella, captivates Sant' Onofrio, the young naval officer of whom Gabriella is enamoured. Loyalty to her ideal and to her friend induces Arduina, after much searching of conscience, to reject her lover and retire into a convent. The sailor marries Gabriella, who insists on Arduina visiting her, with disastrous results to the latter's peace of mind. The sequel deviates considerably from romantic conventions. Arduina, taking refuge in flight from Sant' Onofrio's attentions, returns to her convent, but at the last moment her courage fails her, and she buries herself in an obscure retreat with her mother's old servant. The amiable but colourless Gabriella dies in child-birth, and her husband, learning Arduina's whereabouts, marries her, only to weary of her exacting devotion and seek distraction on a foreign station. Arduina's only consolation is the affection of her little step-daughter; for when her husband at last summons her to rejoin him she discovers that her love, too, is dead. Like most life-histories, Via Lucia does not main- tain the promise of the opening chapters, which, in spite of the brutality of Arduina's father and the odious picture of the tipsy governess, are wonderfully fresh and vivid in their portraiture. The furtive meetings between Arduina and her old servant, her conversations with the adoring Gabriella, her quarrels with her father, her audacious jottings in her diary, and her life in the convent-school are all astonishingly real. The key to her character is supplied in a striking passage on p. 113 :— " I have studied myself ; I know that I am given to extremes. I must either slip into something extravagant, thoughtless, pro- fuse, into something perhaps even bad, or I must strive to be very

• (1.) Via Lucie. By Kassandra Vivaria. London : W. Heinemann.—(2.) Neil Macleod: a Tale of Literary Life in London. By L. Glacbtone. London: Hodder and 8tou5hton.—(3 ) The Main Chance. By Chruitabel R.. Coleridge. London: Hurst and Blaokett.—(4.) The Gospel Writ in Steel. By Arthur

Paterson. London : A. D. tunes and Co.—(5.) One of the By Anna Fidler. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.—(6.) A Woman of Impulse. By H. Falconer AtMe. London : F. V. White and Co.—(7.) Prisoners of Hope. By Mary Johnston. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin, and Co.—(8.) Th* Cardinal's Page. By James Baker. London: Chapman and HaU.—(9.) The Ruby sword. By Bertram Mitiord. London : F. V. White and 0o.—(10.) Nigel Ferrard. By (1. H. Robins. London : Hurst and Blackett.—U1.) A Boss-Coloured Thread. By Jessie Mansergh. London : James Bowden.—(12.) An Idyll of the Dawn. By Mrs. Fred Reynolds. London James Bowdon.— (18.) Passion Royal. By Louis Vintraa. London: Chapman and Hall.—(14.) A Lost American. By Archibald ()layering Gunter. London: George Bontledge and Sons.

a • good. Nothing half-and-half would ever satisfy me. Supposing

were rich, I should never be rich enough in proportion to my pastes; clever, fdted, it would be a constant cry for more ! more ! Loved ? I should fall against the barriers of an ordinary love and bleed to weariness. -Unless I were the object of a real, almost an historic passion, such as women mostly give to men, but so seldom men to us, I should always be hungering for more love. better, when one has the disposition I have, to bravely give pp once for all the expectation of earthly happiness and turn one's

Face to the Giver of the happiness we so long for. It is the only - way of sparing oneself constant disappointment. There are no

6ommonplaces in religion. By the side of this immense desire for real substantial happiness, there subsists the longing for use- fulness, for communication of one's deeper thoughts, for the raising of the general diapason to the level of what one has found 80 utterly satisfying. Thus you have my vocation that seems to you such a mystery, explained in two words—a longing for in- finite love, and a thirst for work and expansion. Ah ! I will wear myself out in the struggle, or I will be a saint !"

in the issue, Arduina's earthly yearnings triumph—under sore provocation, we admit—but her brief ecstasy is succeeded by abiding discontent. The talent displayed by the author is remarkable, though unbridled; her tropical exuberance of style and frankness in expressing herself will occasionally shock English readers. Still, " Kassandra Vivaria" only in- cidentally recalls the lusciousness of d'Annunzio ; one feels that she is not altogether converted to the Mmterlinckian view of self-sacrifice as a "parasitic virtue," nor altogether

disposed to.substitute msthetic for moral sanctions in glorifying any course of action.

The author of Neil Macleod tells us in the preface that it is "the true experience of a young author, and gives a Faithful picture of literary life in London as it is in these closing years of the century." Literary life is rather an elastic term : in the present instance it chiefly connotes the various cliques, coteries, and clubs which have sprung into existence in the last decade. The experiences of Neil Macleod, a young Kailyarder who, on the strength of a munificent gift from an anonymous benefactor, abandons schoolmastering for authorship, are, in the main, excessively " shoppy," but an element of romance is introduced by his infatuation for a society siren, Lady Edward Grant ham. In the end, Lady Edward shows her rustic admirer the door, and is reconciled to her long-suffering husband on his becoming Duke of Evesham. Macleod, further humiliated by the discovery that his anonymous benefactor is the aristocratic betrayer of his mother and his own father, returns to his glen to pay back the debt and make his peace with his neglected sweetheart.

Miss Christabel Coleridge can always be relied on to enforce a sound moral by legitimate means. The notion of the heir to an old estate being possessed by a spirit of fear, the hereditary enemy of his race, suggests a free use of the supernatural element, but there is nothing morbid or ex- travagant in Miss Coleridge's handling of the somewhat fan- tastic motive of The Main Chance. The demon is exorcised by the devotion of a pure woman, and the story, the scene of which is laid on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, ends on a tranquil note in welcome contrast to the dreariness or

despair of the modern novel a in mode.—Mr. Arthur

Paterson's romance of the American Civil War is a good, straightforward piece of work. The motive of the hero of The Gospel Writ in Steel, a Wisconsin farmer, in re- fusing to volunteer at the outbreak of the war may not seem altogether convincing, but when he gets his chance Later on, under Sherman, his pluck and endurance leave nothing to be desired. Mr. Paterson gives us a pleasant glimpse of Lincoln in his gentlest mood, and by bringing back all the three Wisconsin friends safe from the war shows a refreshing disregard for the modern convention of the tragic ending.—From its title and binding One of the Pilgrims might easily be mistaken for a devotional work.

As a matter of fact, it is the love-story of an American bank clerk and a pretty philanthropist, told in a genial,

restful way which renders it most welcome after the high pressure and excitement of such a book as Via Lucis.—Mr. H. Falconer Atlee relates in .A Woman of Impulse the senti-

mental journey of an artist and a barrister, with its sequel.

The story, in which two women named Gretchen and Juliette some to disastrous ends, is but a mawkish melodrama.— An English novel entitled Prisoners of Hope was reviewed in these columns only a fortnight or so ago ; another with the same name now comes to us from America. Miss Johnston lays her scene in Virginia in the days of Charles IL, and tells

the romantic and tragical love-story of Godfrey Landless and Patricia Verney—the convict Roundhead, and the Royalist beauty—with a delicacy and charm, to say nothing of her historical and local knowledge, which fully vindicate her choice of a place and period which might have been considered perilous in view of Thackeray's handling of a similar theme.

Mr. James Baker once more turns his knowledge of Bohemian history to excellent account in The Cardinal's Page, a companion volume to his previous work, The Gleaming Dawn. Mr. Baker is not always successful in his attempts at archaism of expression, but the lack of distinction in his style may be overlooked in a narrative so crowded with incident and adventure.—Mr. Mitford, as he showed in The Sign of the Spider, is an expert in the art of suspense; and The Ruby Sword, a thrilling romance of Baluchistan, proves that his pen has lost none of its cunning. The horrific experiences of the Englishman, Campian, at the hands of the Baluchee free- booters are told in a manner which redeems the somewhat undis- tinguished character of the sentimental passages.—Another highly sensational novel is Nigel Ferrard, but here the reader's interest is alienated at the outset by the complicated extravagance of the gruesome murder-scene witnessed by the heroine on her waking from a somnambulistic trance, to say nothing of the long course of ignoble deception prac- tised by the hero.—We do not care for the capital which novelists as a rule make out of the sufferings of governesses. But the romance of Janet Graham in A Rose-Coloured Thread is so tenderly handled as to disarm criticism. The scene is laid in Cairo, and the Anglo - Egyptian atmosphere is pleasantly suggested.—Mrs. Fred Reynolds gives us in An Idyll of the Dawn a study of childhood from the point of view of a precocious child. For example, one of the chapters is devoted to the "Follies of the Grown-ups," and credits children with the faculty of comparison and observation fortunately rare even in the most advanced American specimen of the enfant terrible.

Mr. Vintras in the title of Passion Royal follows the modern fashion of hotel nomenclature. In spite of the heading of the opening chapter, "The Tent of the Tartan," the scene is laid, not in the Highlands, but in Bactria, and the heroine is none other than the redoubtable Semiramis. But as Stevenson said of himself as compared with Balzac, Mr. Vintras has not the " fist " to tackle such a theme. The description of Semiramis as "clad in a light-fitting dress of soft fawn-coloured material" is not exactly heroic, and the dialogue is sadly lacking in distinction.—The author of Mr. Barnes of New York is as spasmodic and as prodigal of italics and dubious French as ever in A Lost American, a tale of Cuba in the seventies. The characters seldom speak, they shriek, scream, cry, snarl, and gasp. It is, in short, the sort of book that, as the Americans themselves say, "makes one feel tired."