Swithin's convent to Saltasche the broker swindler, and from the Lord Mayor of Dublin to the wretched tenant of the peat country. There she meets and loves Jim Devereux, a handsome, manly young farmer of the better class. Her beauty wins also the love of a richer man, Mr. Satterthwaite, who, as the purchaser of the estate of Rosslyne, supplies the English element of the tale. But convinced that Helena's happiness lies in Devereux's hands, the Englishman generously puts himself aside; and when Jim and Helena turn their faces toward the New World, it is he who bids them "God-speed" from the steamer's deck. The scenes are crowded with characters as numerous as those in Mrs. Rafferty's ultra-fashionable drawing-rooms, and as diversified as the motley crowd on Kingstown Pier. There are the wild and reckless college fellows, the giddy devotees of fashion, the dissolute military colonel squandering his wife's money, the distinguished clerical magnates, match-making mammas, and gossiping spinsters. The political state of affairs is freely discussed. We are admitted to electioneering assemblies, and listen to the stump orators; in the crowded ball-room we overhear the side talk of dignified functionaries and their conservative opinions on the question of Home Rule, Tenant Right, and minor agitated measures; and following Hogan in his campaign, we listen to the rant of a Yankeeized Hibernian loudly proclaiming for an Irish republic. Altogether we have to thank Mrs. Hartley, who was a native of Dub- Beyond the Pale, by B. M. Croker. lin, for a most skillfully delineated portrait of her countrymen as we find it in 'Hogan, M. P.,' the first of her novels. Honorable Miss Ferrard, The, an Irish romance by May Laffan Hartley, London, 1877. Helena Ferrard, or "Hel," the only remaining daughter of an utterly impoverished and fallen house, grows to girlhood with the woods and fields for sole teachers, and for companions her three stalwart, reckless brothers, the most arrant poachers for miles around. With the one servant, Cawth, a virulent old hag, who is yet faithful to the family in its degradation, Lord Darraghmore and his children "flit» from town to town, from hovel to hovel, as their creditors or their whims urge; subsisting for the most part on the results of the sons' questionable industry. To "Hel" at sixteen comes a brief civilizing interval under the care of two maiden aunts in Bath. But the beautiful half-savage creature, unused to restraint of any kind, chafes and suffocates in the Among the minor characters which illustrate Irish social conditions are the noisy, vulgar Perrys, and clever Madam Reilly, whose conversations with Mr. Satterthwaite enable the author to discuss at length the social and political problems of the country. The story gives a vivid picture of Ireland as she is.- poverty-stricken Ireland with her untamed Celtic heart, beautiful even in her ruin, and pervaded by a wild romantic charm. The scene of this story is laid in Munster, Ireland. The heroine is Geraldine O'Bierne, better known as Galloping Jerry, the last representative of an old and ruined race. At her father's death, the great estate of Carrig is seized by the mortgage-holders; and her mother, a penniless and silly beauty, marries Matt Scully, a neighboring horse-dealer, — a match so far beneath her that the indignant county cuts her altogether. Scuily despises his stepdaughter till he discovers that she can ride with judgment and dauntless courage; whereupon he takes her from school, and sets her to breaking his horses. Her mother being dead, she is bullied and abused by him and his niece Tilly, a vulgar slattern; pursued by Casey Walsh, jockey and blackleg; cut by the county, and adored by the peasantry. The Irish pride of race is the main element of interest. The story is bright, original, and very well told; while two or three character-studies of Irish peasants are portraitures that deserve to live with Miss Edgeworth's. rose-scented atmosphere of the home of Cecilia de Noel, by Lanoe Falconer these two old gentlewomen. Carrying a few ameliorating traces of social training with her, she runs away, back to the heather fields of Darraghtown, where her wild clan has gathered. (Morwenna Pauline Hawker). The scene is England, in recent times; the heroine is Cecilia de Noel, an impersonation of love and sympathy, whose power of goodness is put to the highest proof by her ability to quiet a restless spirit that haunts the house of her friends Sir George and Lady Atherley. The ghost is used as a kind of touchstone of character. The book as a whole is a curious psychological study. At the time of its publication it attracted great attention. Dr. Latimer, by Clara Louise Burnham. This is called "A Story of Casco Bay"; and it contains many charming pictures of that beautiful Maine coast and its fascinating islands. Dr. Latimer, a man of fine character and position, beloved by all who know him, becomes interested in three orphan girls, Josephine, Helen, and Vernon Ivison, who come to Boston to support themselves by teaching and music. He falls in love with Josephine, the eldest, who returns his affection; and he invites the three girls to his island home for the summer. He has hesitated to avow his love for Josephine on account of the difference of age between them, and also on account of a former unhappy marriage made in early youth with a woman who had first disgraced and then deserted him. and whom he has long supposed dead. Her sudden reappearance destroys his newly found happiness; he leaves the island, bidding Josephine a final farewell. Recalled by the news that his wife has drowned herself and that he is at last free, he marries Josephine. Helen and Vernon are mated to the men of their choice: the former to Mr. Brush, a German teacher; the latter to Olin Randolph, a society youth of much charm and character, whose aunts, Miss Charlotte and Miss Agnes Norman, are characters of interest, as is also Persis Applebee, the doctor's old-fashioned housekeeper. The story was published in 1893. The island so accurately described is Bailey's Island, where Mrs. Burnham makes her summer home. Diana iana Tempest, by Mary Cholmond eley. (1893.) The clever author of (Sir Charles Danvers here attempts a more elaborate novel. It is a story of good society, wherein the motives potent in bad society-greed, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness - have room and verge enough. » The head of the Tempests, a family ancient as the Flood, is engaged to a brilliant beauty of seventeen, Diana Courtenay. His younger brother, a handsome, fascinating, perfidious, selfish army officer, falls violently in love with her, and persuades her to an elopement. After a brief dream of happiness, she awakes to the knowledge that she has married a cold-hearted, selfindulgent spendthrift; he makes her life miserable until she dies at twenty-four, leaving a boy of six, Archie, and a newborn daughter, Diana. Meantime John Tempest, the head of the family, whose whole heart had been given to Diana, marries without love to perpetuate the line, and to prevent the estate's going to his hated and worthless brother. A son is born, but he believes his silly and unloving wife to have been faithless to him, and after her death treats the younger John with justice but without affection. Nevertheless, in his will he makes this lad sole heir. Colonel Tempest disputes the will, but fails to impugn John's title. His rage and disappointment goad him on to make a bet of £10,000 with a plausible scamp named Sloane, that he, Edward Tempest, will never inherit the estates; the implication being that the obstacle to his inheritance is to be removed. Many attempts are made on John's life; and the Colonel, not knowing whose hand thus strikes in the dark, becomes at last almost frenzied with fear and suspense. John, as boy and man, has treated both Colonel Tempest and his profligate boy Archibald with generous kindness; and at last the Colonel is driven to borrow the £10,000 from John to buy off his invisible enemies. He succeeds in reaching two of them, but cannot obtain the clue to the rest. John falls in love with his cousin Diana, a beautiful girl who has not only all the brains but all the conscience in her family. Just as he is about to win her hand, he discovers by the merest chance that the old vague suspicion is true, that he is not a Tempest, and has no right to place, name, or fortune. Tempted to conceal what, without his confession, can never be known to any other human being, his better self constrains him to tell the truth to the true Tempests, give up Diana, and begin life again. This he does: but before any step can be taken, Archie is killed in mistake for John by one of the confederates who had agreed to make away with him in the interest of the Colonel; while that gentleman himself is so excited by the news of his inheritance that he dies of cerebral exhaustion. having in his delirium, revealed to Diana and John his wicked plot. Diana marries John; and as she is now the only heir, the secret of his parentage is never told. Thus analyzed, the story appears sensational, which it is not. The children in the book are drawn with a loving hand, the characterization is as good as in 'Sir Charles Danvers,' the dialogue is clever, the general treatment brilliant, and in its charming refinement the story has a place apart. John Littlejohn of J., by George Mor gan, (1897,) is a spirited succession of Revolutionary incidents, beginning with the bitter winter at Valley Forge, and ending with the battle of Monmouth, where Lee's intolerable attitude forces an oath from the commander-in-chief. It presents George Washington in the days of his trial, when the country was doubtfully waiting for him to prove adequate to its needs, when his suffering army was clamoring for food and clothes, her a shelter and a home, half as companion and half as guest. At the château Sainville she meets the head of the family, Madame Marceau's brother, Armand de Sainville, a man many years her senior; and the story henceforth becomes the story of the action of these three lives upon each other. The most admirable of the minor characters is the gentle old baroness, Aunt Radegonde, the type and epitome of the old French gentlewoman; who adores Nathalie, but has no money to help her with, and who cannot persuade the proud girl to share her little store. The charm of the book lies in its admirable characterizations, its bright and natural dialogue, and above all in its atmosphere of exquisite refinement, the breeding of an old race with traditions and instincts of perfect courtesy. and the Conway Cabal was secretly try. Hope Leslie, by Miss Catherine M. ing to wreck him. Throughout all, he is the calmly dominant figure of our histories. John Littlejohn, a young patriot serving in the American army, is mistaken for his uncle, a bitter old Tory; arrested on charge of treason; and narrowly escapes being shot. His efforts to clear his name, the exciting adventures he meets in outwitting his uncle, and the beautiful but unprincipled Alicia Gaw, the bringing a prize of British gold and British supplies to Washington, are narrated by one Asa Lankford, a dumb soldier who takes an active part in the events. It is a book of clever plotting, of Dumas-like chances. The interest lies less in the slight but pleasant love story, than in the local color and vivid presentment of an interesting period. Nathalie, by Julia Kavanagh. (1851.) This delicate and charming love story, like the author's (Adele) and 'Sybil's Second Love,' might well take Sedgwick, (1827,) is a tale of early colonial days in Massachusetts. Hope, an orphan, is brought up by her uncle Mr. Fletcher, and loves her cousin Everett; but in a moment of misunderstand. ing he engages himself to Miss Downing, Governor Winthrop's niece. At length Miss Downing, discovering that he loves his cousin, releases him to marry the impetuous Hope. Colonial dignitaries and noble women figure equally in the book, which makes a faithful attempt to present a picture of the life of the middle of the seventeenth century in and near Boston. The story is very diffuse, is told with the long stride of the highheeled and stiff-petticoated Muse of Fiction as she appeared in the middle of our century, and is more sentimental than modern taste quite approves. But as a picture of manners it is faithful; and its spirit is wholesome and healthful. In its day it enjoyed a very great popularity. the place of certain flashy novels of the Hour and the Man, The, the most imhour in the regard of contemporary readers. Nothing can be simpler than the plot. Nathalie, a poor and charming young Provençal teacher, is dismissed from the boarding-school where she is earning her bread, because a dissipated aristocrat chooses to persecute her with his unwelcome attentions. His mother, Madame Marceau,- -more just than her worldly-minded employer, if not more kind, and really grateful for what she regards as the escape of her son,-offers portant work of fiction among the multitude of Harriet Martineau's writings, is a historical novel based on the career of Toussaint L'Ouverture. It opens with the uprising of the slaves in St. Domingo in August 1791; at which time Toussaint, a negro slave on the Breda estate, remained faithful to the whites, and entered the service of the allies of the French king as against the Convention. The struggle between loyalty to the royalist cause and duty to his race, when he learns of the decree of the Convention proclaiming the liberty of the negroes, ends by his taking the leadership of the blacks; and from this point the story follows the course of history through dramatic successes to the pathetic ending of this remarkable life. The novel is a vivid page of history. Joshua Davidson, Christian and Com munist, THE TRUE HISTORY OF, by E. Lynn Linton. (Final edition (6th), 1874.) The name of the hero of this story is meant to be read "Jesus David's Son"; the word "Jesus" being the old Hebrew word "Joshua," changed by Greek usage. The idea of the writer was to picture a man of to-day, a man of the people, repeating under altered circumstances the life of Jesus, and setting the world a Christ-example. The work was planned on the theory that "pure Christianity, as taught by Christ himself, leads us inevitably to communism"; and with this view the hero of the story, who begins as a Cornish carpenter, is carried to Paris, to lose his life in the Communard insurrection. He is represented as "a man working on the Christ plan, and that alone; dealing with humanity by pity and love and tolerance," living the life of "the crucified Communist of Galilee.» The question raised by the author is, "Which is true: modern society, earnest for the dogma of Christianity, and rabid against its acted doctrines, or the brotherhood and communism taught by the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth?" Not only are the views thus indicated extreme, but the execution of the conception, in a hasty sketch, altogether fails to adequately reproduce the understood character and life of Christ. Downfall, The (La Débâcle'), (1892,) a powerful novel of the Franco-Prussian war, by Émile Zola. It portrays with and wife of an accountant; Honoré Fouchard, quartermaster-sergeant; and Silvine, Honoré's betrothed, who has been betrayed by one Goliah, on whom she later takes terrible vengeance. The story is concerned chiefly with the friendship of Macquart and Levasseur, and the love of Macquart and Henriette, who is left a widow during the siege of Sedan. This terrible siege forms the dramatic centre of the story. The book ends tragically with the death of Maurice Levasseur by the hand of Macquart, who had bayoneted him not knowing that it was his friend. With this shadow between them, Jean and Henriette feel that they must part. "Jean, bearing his heavy burden of affliction with humble resignation, went his way, his face set resolutely toward the future, toward the glorious and arduous task that lay before him and his countrymen.-to create a new France.» ssommoir, L', by Émile Zola, entitled (Gervaise in the English translation, was published in 1877, and forms one of the series dealing with the fortunes of the Rougon-Macquart family. The chief figure, Gervaise, a daughter of this family driven from home when fourteen, and already a mother, goes with her lover to Paris. There he deserts her and her two children. She afterwards marries a tinsmith, Coupeau. The beginning of their wedded life is prosperous; but as the years go on, vice and poverty disintegrate what might have been a family into mere units of misery, wretchedness, and corruption. Zola traces their downfall in the pitiless and intimate fashion characteristic of him, and not difficult with characters created to be analyzed. The book is a series of repulsive pictures unrelieved by one gleam of nobler humanity, but only "realistic" as scraps: the life as a possible whole is as purely imaginative as if it were lovely instead of loathsome. strength and boldness, on a remarkable She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver breadth of canvas, the incidents of that great campaign. Intermingled with the passions of war are the passions of love; the whole forms a pageant rarely surpassed in fiction. The principal characters are Jean Macquart, a corporal in the French army, who had fought at Solferino; Maurice Levasseur, a young lawyer enlisted as a private in Macquart's command; Delaherche, chief cloth manufacturer of Sedan; Henriette Weiss, sister of Maurice, Goldsmith. This admirable comedy was first produced in 1773, and is said to have been founded on an incident in the author's own life. Young Marlow, who is of a very diffident disposition, on his way to see Kate Hardcastle whom his father designs for him as a wife, is directed to Squire Hardcastle's house, as an inn, by Tony Lumpkin, the squire's stepson. With Marlow is Hastings, a suitor to Constance Neville, whom Mrs. Hardcastle designs for her son Tony. They meet Kate and Constance, but Marlow's timidity prevents him from looking them in the face. Meeting Kate later, in her housewife's dress, he takes her for a barmaid and loses his timidity, representing himself as "the agreeable Mr. Rattle," the ladies' favorite; and laughs at Miss Hardcastle as "a mere awkward, squinting thing." The excesses of Marlow's servants force Hardcastle to remonstrate; a quarrel ensues in which Marlow asks for his bill. Hardcastle tells him he is much disappointed in his old friend's son, and leaves him. Marlow calls the "barmaid," and learns what a "dullissimo macaroni» he has made of himself. She allows him to believe she is a poor relation, and as such he woos and wins her. Tony agrees to help Hastings to elope with Constance. He receives a letter, saying Hastings is ready with a coach; but not being able to read it, gives it to his mother, who discovers the plot. Tony, however, learning that he has been of age for three months, refuses to marry her, and she is thus allowed to keep her dowry and her lover. In drilling his servants to receive Marlow, Hardcastle tells them they must not laugh at his stories. "Then, ecod, your worship must not tell the story of the ould grouse in the gun-room: we have laughed at that these twenty years.» And "the grouse in the gun-room has become proverbial for an old story Tales of a Traveller, by Washington Irving, (1824,) is a delightful medley of humorous and tragic elements. The genial humorist himself declares them to be "moral tales," with the moral "disguised as much as possible by sweets and spices." Sometimes sportive, abounding in mockery which although keen is never bitter, they are again weirdly grotesque or horrible, like the work of Poe or Hoffmann. Always they have the individual flavor and easy grace characteristic of Irving. The volume is divided into four parts. In the first, a nervous gentleman and his friends, guests of a jovial fox-hunting baronet in his "ancient rook-haunted mansion," become reminiscent of family ghost-stories and vie with each other in wild romances, the actors in which cannot rest, but frighten would-be sleepers from their former haunts. In Part ii., Buckthorne, ex-poor-devil author and actor, become a comfortable country squire, narrates the ups and downs of his varied career. Part iii. is a succession or adventures with Italian banditti, recounted by a group of travelers gathered in an inn at Tarracina. Among them is a pretty Venetian bride who shudders to hear of the wild horde infesting the Apennines, always ready to attack and rob defenseless parties, and carry them off in the hope of extorting ransom. Another and more incredulous listener is a young Englishman, whom the bride dislikes for his insensibility. The next day he is taught a practical lesson in the existence of brigands; and by rescuing the fair Venetian from their hands, reverses her opinion of him. In Part iv., Irving collects the romantic legends concerning Captain Kidd and his fellow buccaneers, and the treasure they are supposed to have secreted in the neighborhood of Hellgate. There are other legends too, involving the compact with the Devil, which tradition has made an inevitable condition of the securing of illegal gains. All these varied scenes of England, Italy, and America, Irving presents in happy incidental touches which never clog the action with description, yet leave a vivid picture with the reader. Marble Faun, The, by Nathaniel Haw thorne. (1860.) This is the last complete romance by the author, and was thought by him to be his best. It was composed carefully and maturely, Hawthorne not having written anything for seven years; and appeared simultaneously in Boston and London under different titles. The original name proposed was 'The Transformation of the Faun,' shortened by the English publisher into Transformation,' and changed in America by Hawthorne to The Marble Faun.' The scene is laid in Rome; the chief characters, four in number, are introduced together in the first chapter: Kenyon, an American sculptor; Hilda and Miriam, art students; and Count Donatello, an Italian friend. Hilda, blonde and gentle, with New England training and almost Puritanic feeling, is beloved by Kenyon. Miriam, dark and passionate, is admired by Donatello. An accidental resemblance of Donatello to the famous Faun of Praxiteles is |