LESCAR.*

IT was with some pleasant recollections of the author's former novels that we opened this one, expecting to find the exuberance of style which was their chief sin against taste chastened, and the inaccuracy—not unpardonable for once or twice, but which only very conceited persons will not take the pains to correct— avoided. We looked for a clever story, and characters not very true to life, but agreeable in their idealism. Instead of this, we find a production which it is hard to believe can really have been written in earnest, for it is like nothing in the world except a burlesque of The Parisians. We have a meeting of ardent Republicans, in pre-Crimean days, at the workshop of one Auber Dax ; and these patriots are described in a strain which, even in " Ouida's " books, would be caricature ; while they drink their coffee and brandy (which the author calls "cognac" and " cogniac " indifferently), and perform extraordinary achieve- ments with the human organs of speech, of which " pouring out a fiery and incessant stream of words" is one of the mildest. Alphonse Lescar, the father of the Universalist, does that ; but Henri Tolberg, in spite of the fiery and incessant stream aforesaid, speaks " with the slow, kindling energy of suppressed excitement, with the 'bated breath and struggling fervour of many thoughts too strong for words," and is "a man whose rare speech comes from the veiled depths of a rich and earnest soul." Then we have a German whose rough roll of guttural accent is drowned by the soldier's superior organ and nimbler loquacity, but who has "broad brows, dull eyes, and an invincible aspect of solidity,', which he must have found useful in the " dem'd private madhouse sort" of company, who "ring down their glasses with noisy gusto on the table," amid cries of " La France ! La Gloire ! L'Armee ! La Petrie !" from the future Universalist, over whose face smiles dance (and who also rings his glass with gusto) ; while Tolberg talks of " glory, beside the quiet, broad waters of eternal- peace pacts, in a bloodless warfare for universal good." There is a girl among these worthies, a splendidly handsome young person, with a "cynical" disbelief in everything (including God), except " La Republique," and the Goddess of Reason ; and M. Valles, called Varlin (for we have all the heroes of the Commune, ender thinly disguised names), addresses her as "good daughter of an old red house," and gives her a " cogniac glass" full of claret, with this lofty exordium, " Hold ! the ruby wine for the rosy lips ! Faustine, pretty little one, drink !" She cries, " Vive la Republique at the height of her full, fresh musical voice, per- forms the not very difficult feat of " draining " her glass, and turns away frora them—" bright, beautiful young creature—with that flush of a strange passion upon her cheek." Thereupon, "Hein ! my little grandchild," says old J)ax, who always says Lescar, the Chfrersalist. By the Author of " Artiste," "Bright 3forning," &c. London: Chapman and Hall,

" Hold !" when he does not say " Hein !" " But blood will show. Her mother was a Marseillaise, comrades ; her father fell in the struggles of '48 ; and, bold ! her great grand-dame was a tricoteuse ' in the Place de la Concorde, through many a day when Paris streamed with blood." There is a general clamour for " the soil for the labourer,—the bread for the bread-winner," and the chorus always begins with " Pest !" without the final e. All this, and the ineffable nonsense these people talk, might be taken for satire, in which women are rarely successful, but that it is not to be excused on that hypo- thesis becomes plain when Auber Dar, the watchmaker, who goes on quietly with his minute and delicate manipulations, while those fine spirits are touched to fine issues, delivers the following dis-

course to the possessor of the " veiled depths of a rich and earnest soul :"— The great Nature timepiece,' that we call the world. Stay, Henri, see—wheels within wheels in nature everywhere, through all, the main- spring, action—electric life. And her—the koy fits ; but, oh! there is our need,—it is gone. We've lost the key, and all the works are striking falsely, and the harmony's no more. Alas! boy, where is the key, and where is the mender ? Ho who made it knows. And He or She, fair Wisdom, Reason, she veils her face, and hides her secret. For she has the key. There is many a false one, and men try them often, in fierce agony, with revolt and blood, forcing the watch, in the wild thought that their mad wrong can e'er work right, and they all find it wrong. There's one right key, and Wisdom hides it. Seek it, my children,—reflect." I believe you have seen the secret, Auber,' cried Tolberg, wistfully, seen it in the depths of that mignon Geneva, whose workings are nigh invisible to me.'—' I have caught a faint ray,' said Auber ; 'I have seen the hidden thing, and I seek it yet again, in thought and yearning, till it be quite revealed. Ha! listen. Einheit, you call it, Frederick—Union, broad and universal—nations merged in a brotherhood of man. Ha! my comrades, that is a great thought, I tell you. Go, get wisdom, and strive to understand. Begone, begone 1' "

With this sample of the profundity of the prophet and preacher Dar our readers will probably be satisfied to take leave of the workshop, which was " one of the nurseries of Victor Lescar." The other nursery of this wonderful young man,—who becomes a Wrangler at Cambridge, one of the Apostles of the International (here called Universal) Society, and finally plays the part of Rossel in the Commune of 1871, but is pardoned on the plain of Satory through what one must feel to have been an improbable relenting on the part of the President,—presents a scene incongruous enough to be funny, if the author's manner were not invincibly dull. The other nursery is his father's house ; his father is " a professed Atheist and free-thinker," but otherwise charming ; and his mother is an ardently pious Scotchwoman, " of heroic old Puritan blood, rich in deep, simple thought, and full of warm religious feeling," which her husband regards with toleration as " harmless," as, indeed, well he may, seeing that it has not prevented her from allying herself with a professed Atheist, for whom she pro- vides comfortable meals, but presides over them with her Bible open beside her, and her conversation constructed on the model of the Old-Testament Scriptures, which must have been very charm- ing and intelligible to the French atheist and officer of artillery. Of course in this novel, as in all writings of its class, the Almighty is" He," with a big H; Jesus Christ is "The Master," with a big M, and the Bible is the "great Book," with a big B. Likewise people are always sons of the soil and children of humanity, and workmen are prole'taires. And Victor loves them ; has he not " from his boyhood [this is in '62] seen the sweat-drops glisten on their brows; from his boyhood heard the earnest expression of the yearn- ing of their lives and souls"? Everybody is always sweating their " brows " or their " brains"—but the latter is probably the poetry of perspiration—to an extent unequalled out of Victor Hugo's verse. At eighteen Victor (" fresh, young, beauteous soul!") is " coloured with the cultured teachings of Heidelberg, eager for the contest, searching for the battle-field of life." Where shall he find it? asks the author, "Where shall he turn his steps towards the high excelsiors ?" We echo the question, without the faintest notion of its meaning. Could even Mr. Longfellow explain the word, transformed into a noun, and used in the plural? The author evidently thinks it a great bit, like the ringing of glasses with "gusto," for she employs it again, and promotes it to a big E. "Ali! Heaven guide and guard the brave-hearted boy," she exclaims, when Victor goes to Cambridge—as a stage towards " the beautiful and the true," for all the world like a Bulwerian personage—there to find Piers Ashton, the English half of his soul.

But we do not follow him thither immediately; we go to Scotland first, where we are introduced to a Scottish baronet, who says, " bless me ! " and " God bless me," just as Auber Dax says " hold " and " hein ;" to a woman of fashion, who is called Lady Curzon Kellam, though she is a baronet's widow, and is not the daughter of an earl ; and to two charming young ladies, who re- joice in the likely appellations, for Scotch lassies, of Donna and Gail, and have been goveruessed by a Friiulein Hippogram. We are naturally not surprised that Donna, aged eighteen, and engaged, as girls are, of course, habitually engaged, in the task of introspec- tion, discovers that three forces have been at work iu the forma- tion of herself ; that in fact, to put it easily, in the frolicsome formula of eighteen, "Life had surrounded her, and formed her,

reaching her character from three distinct sources,—a centre of control, a centre of influence, and a centre of affection."

In the portion of the story which passes iu Scotland its only merit is to be found. There are some pretty descriptions of scenery and home life, also of the relation between the sisters ; and Sir John Grzeme, intended by the writer as a foil to the brilliancy of her two heroes, is the one rational and estimable male personage in the book. If there be one phase of the lives of men which is supremely unintelligible to women, and whose external details they never can have an opportunity of studying, it is, for obvious reasons, that of their University career. And yet how they do delight in writing about it, plunging into University talk, manners, and amusements with confidence only equal to their ignorance When the author of Lescar gets that " bright, beautiful young soul" down to Cambridge, into the circle which ho describes

as " a nucleus of strong, new, though embryonic thought," and she calls " a wonderful coterie of brilliant young minds," she becomes almost amusing by force of sheer absurdity, and she mixes her

metaphors with a happy audacity which deserves quotation. We learn, for instance, that,—

" These nuclei of fruitful thought are especially to bo found buried in the annals of the sister Universities ; and undoubtedly, if their internal history could be unravelled, the sources would be discovered of nearly all the contending streams of thought that, from time to time, have flooded the channels of opinion. Again, in tho history of the Universities, as we read them through the telescope of biography, we select, here and there, tolling and important epochs, when this existing nucleus contained latent germs of thought destined to declare themselves vital and world-wide."

Victor Lescar and Piers Ashton talk whole chapters of tran- scendental nonsense to one another, varied by relapses into senti- ment and bad grammar, in the following style :—" How splendid the stars are over the dull old Cam there ! And, look out, can you see Luna rising over the tower of St. Saviour's? Splendid, is

it not? But you never have a sky here like we have in France." They misquote the best known verses ; they hear a little girl singing a " Gloria Deus," " learnt at the Sunday-school ;" they theorise about Love ; and they go " deep into the the rendering of subtle Socratic thoughts ;" while Victor has gone so shallowly into

the rules of English speech, that he defends his disinclination to repair at once to the aid of suffering humanity, in the centres of revo- lution, on the plea that he " must leave a Wrangler." But it is not until we get back to Paris, and into the delightful society of the Universalists, that the author exhibits the fearless familiarity with the French tongue whence her contempt for its rules of con- struction doubtless arises. There we find fashionable young men perfuming themselves with eau de violet, and wearing faultless

houbigants, with a small 11, which implies a confusion between the article made and the maker, almost as ludicrous as Mrs. Gamp's

confounding of " Jonadga " with the whale. There we find people exclaiming, " Ah, horrors !" and pursuing " The Ideal," under the guidance of Do Rochecarro, Raoul Regnau, and other guides, whom the author must not be unjustly suspected of knowing any- thing at all about. The story is rather unintelligible, and so far as it can be made out, uninteresting ; but it is not to be wondered at that the " beautiful daughter of an old red house " is shot on a boulevard, after the performance of various unwomanly feats ; and that people in general go home to England, whither, it is to be feared, however, their tendency to the speaking of bad French pursues them, for we find an English lady welcoming the English

Ashton Piers to her villa at Battersea, whither Victor accom-

panies him, thus, " Alt, Orestes ! Ah, mon cher Pylades ! Milks fois leabienvenus I" The author writes " Clyte " for " Clytie," goes into ecstasies over Sir Noel Paton's ".1foN Janua Fitz," and makes an American lady recite "The Raven " with the surprising innovation of " Leonore " for " Lenore," and the unauthorised addition of " Leonore and Nothing more." After this, it is perhaps hypercritical to remark that Lovelace did not write,—

" Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron walls a cage."