overdone, and that some among the humorous points that he scores are the result of rather cheap devices, but the tale as a whole is so well-knit, so spirited, and so exciting in its interest, that criticism of the minuter sort stands abashed in its presence.
Mr. Crawford's "Pietro Ghisleri" introduces us once more to the aristocratic Roman society made so familiar by the novels of the "Saracinesca" series, and even, incidentally, to many of the characters of those brilliant works of fiction. The new story is of surprising interest, and leaves little to be desired, either in constructive skill or in delineation of character. The plot is complicated and the structure compact; there is little of the padding that disfigures a number of the author's books, and often makes us feel that he was hard-pressed to fill the requisite number of pages. Many of Mr. Crawford's literary excursions have been unfortunate, noticeably his dreary novel of hypnotism and his formless Oriental fantasies; and we are glad that he has returned to the solid and familiar ground of contemporary life in the country best known to him. Mr. Crawford has recently deprecated putting the novelist's art at the service of science; but we are bound to express the opinion that, as social or historical documents, the series of his Roman stories have claims quite as strong as those based merely upon their power to amuse or to entertain.
"From Out of the Past " is one of the best novels that we have lately had occasion to read, and yet, so unobtrusive is its excellence, so far removed from the sensational its manner, it is likely to cause hardly a ripple upon the stream of current fiction. The scene is Touraine, although the characters are American, and something of the peace and old-world charm of the place has found its way into the author's pages. A deep and exquisite feeling for beauty in landscape and art has given the simple love-story of the book a setting that enhances its meaning at every point. The writer knows her Touraine minutely and lovingly; and as far as her book deals with French life it gives us the sane true life of the provinces, not the false and feverish life of the capital which so many take to be the typical life of France. Our chief adverse criticism upon the book must be for its occasional lapses into the style of the tourist manual; the author seems to know Touraine almost too well for strictly artistic purposes. The story of the book is skilfully told, although the reader is left until the very end in a not wholly justifiable state of suspense as to the outcome. We cordially commend the work to those in search of summer-afternoon literature.
A strong character gives a name to a strong book in Miss Elliott's "John Paget." He is one of two brothers whom fate separates when children, one of them to become a worldling, the other he of the title to become, through devious ways, both a preacher and a minister of the Gospel. His nature has the stamp of sincerity, and earnestness of purpose characterizes his every act. His religion, however subject to intellectual limitations, is of the true sort, for it supplements faith by undoubted works, and so commands our respect. As a protest against worldliness, as an almost passionate plea for the realities as distinguished from the shows of existence, "John Paget" is a book of fine ethical tone and worthy idealism. Yet it inculcates one lesson that is, in our opinion, distinctly false in its ethical bearings. The brothers have a cousin, Beatrice, who, after a youth of religious training in a Southern convent, is taken to the home of her relatives in New York, and there becomes devotedly attached to Claude, the brother of the worldly mind and training, who returns her love in at least equal measure. Now these two natures are in every essential respect fitted for one another; yet the shadow of dogma falls between them, and Beatrice, acting from what she supposes to be religious conviction, tears her love from her heart, and dies as the consequence. The author's sympathies are clearly with her heroine in this course; that is, we are clearly given to understand that she believes it right that two lives should be wrecked by a barren intellectual abstraction. Such tragedies occur in real life, no doubt, and perhaps we cannot greatly blame those who are directly responsible for them; but no condemnation of the system that trains young girls to act as Beatrice does can be too strong. Miss Elliott gives tacit assent to the system, and so her book seems to us to embody a profoundly immoral lesson. To the author, and to her heroine, certain passages (especially in the preface) of Mr. Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" might be recommended as profitable reading. It is a pity that so good and thoughtful a book as "John Paget" should have been marred by this insistence upon matters of "mint and anise and cummin," even if "the weightier matters of the law" be not wholly neglected.
A mining engineer from New England, searching for gold on a Virginia plantation, incidentally falling in love with a fair maiden of the South, and coming to a tragic end in the old graveyard to which, without reckoning upon native prejudice and superstition, he had extended his diggings this is the story told in "Broadoaks" by Miss McClelland. The first thing that occurs to the reader is the use made by Miss Murfree of a similar situation, although the resemblance is not carried into detail. The story is well thought out, has the atmosphere of its locality, and offers, in its negro-character sketches, a certain element of semi-humorous diversion.
"The Love Affairs of an Old Maid" are really the love affairs of a number of her friends, reflected in the sympathetic and generous consciousness of the narrator. In these pages, unaffected and exquisite in style, sparkling with humor, yet softened by a pathos that reaches the very depths of the spiritual life, are sketched the heart-stories of a dozen men and women, each with a few swift incisive strokes, and, for the most part, an insight that makes of the book a gallery of distinctly individual
