he can enjoy her presence, but gathering from it only fuel for his flame; while she, her own peace attained, gentle, sensible, and a loyal and devoted wife, seeks in vain to restore him to duty. Eleanor, unrestrained and jealous, and hiding, from pride alone, what she suffers from her husband's coldness, falls ill and lies on the verge of death. At last the long deferred explanation is made, and for the first time Edward learns from a letter laid before him the grounds of Ethel's refusal. Then at last comes that assuaging balm of truth so long denied him. Guilty yet grievously wronged as he is, it is touching to see him kneeling at those feet which had trodden out all the happiness of his life, and asking for a forgiveness which in many respects he should rather have been the one to grant.

"An hour afterwards, Ethel and I were in the sitting-room together, and he came in, with the letter in his hand. He did not seem to notice me; he went up to Ethel, regarded her earnestly, then knelt down at her feet, and with his head bent down, and his hands raised, he cried, 'Forgive me, Ethel, my sister, forgive me!' 'Oh, not thus, not thus, Edward! Rise from your knees-not thus to me!' 'It becomes me,' he persisted, it becomes me, faithless, perverse as I have been-humbled as I am-it becomes me to kneel-say only that you forgive me.' 'I do, I do,' she exclaimed, and may God forgive and bless you!' She kissed his brow, and he sprang to his feet. Not you alone, dear Edward, we have all been to blame. Sit down by me, and let us speak calmly.' 'Only one question, Ethel,' he said, ' and then no morethen I will tire your ear no more with my prayers-only one question has been burning in my heart, on my lips, for years. Ethel did you ever love me, as I loved you?' She did not instantly reply; she passed her hand over her brow, her lips quivered; but the tone of her voice was firm, as she replied, 'I loved you always, but there were moments, ere we parted, when I felt that to become your wife would have been my highest happiness. In these feelings, I was unfaithful to my father's will, to my own promise; and by a steady and continued struggle, I was enabled to overcome them. I will not say that I did not suffer, but it resulted in peace, in more then peace-in happiness and new affections; and my first and only fresh pain, was to see that you were not governed by the same duty of self-command and patience. Believe me, that in this I lost nothing of real affection for you, anxiety for your welfare, and desire to see you happy. I have loved you and prayed for you

as my brother, and as such you are most dear to me.' 'I am answered,' he replied, with a deep-drawn sigh. Why did I not know of this letter before? Why should he, and you, have feared to trust me? And with regard to its conditions, it seems to me that it was a blind adherence to a promise extorted from him, or rather to a command given him, by one who, under the pressure of those sad circumstances, scarce knew what she uttered, that impelled your father to act as he did, and demand that vow from you.' 'We will not speak of that now, Edward. Let me believe that all that has been painful in our late intercourse is at an end; that we may be to each other what we were in the innocent days of our early youth.' 'Ethel,' he said, 'you shall be my guide, my guardian angel. You have opened my eyes to behold once more Virtue and Peace-peace not yet-but peace to be won. You say you pray for me-pray me still, and most earnestly, that I may not turn again to my madness and folly. Oh, Ethel! let your spirit walk beside me on the way of life, and I shall be upheld-pure and holy being as thou art, make me like thyself!' With deep reverence, he bent before her, and would have knelt again, but she, now overwhelmed with mingled feelings, rushed to his bosom-the love of early youth, pure, passionless, yet fond, the sister's love, filled her heart-once more they were in the dell among the flowers-once more they were the world to each other-once more they mingled their tears--once more the inmost soul of each was known to the other.

"From that moment, I felt that Edward was a new man.' P. 192-194.

for

He is reconciled to his wife, whose joy gives her new health, but his neglected life has burned to the socket, and in the morning his wasted form is found stretched in death upon his bed. The beauty of the story is go great, and Ethel in all other respects touched with so happy and life-giving a hand, that we feel a double jar from the discrepancy we have above noticed, and from the way in which at the end it is as it were hushed up and hurried over. Either the misery, that is, the real misery of the unrestrained and selfish passion, should have been traced to its true source, so far as anything external can be its source, in the untruthfulness of Ethel in this one instance, and she have been represented more fully sensible of her error, or some machinery should have been adopted for making this concealment a matter of necessity, not choice. It is not an insignificant compliment to the story that no reader can escape the painful feeling excited by this mistake. When the common printing-ink-people of a novel go wrong, their

aberrations, and the inconsistencies and faults occasioned in the whole work, cause us little anxiety; but Edward and Ethel are not the ordinary lay figures of fiction, but actual creations of living beings whose errors and whose sorrows fill us with genuine anxiety.

Letters are of all forms in which a fiction can be couched the most difficult to handle, and the least satisfactory even when managed to perfection. It is almost impossible to give a dramatic interest to them: even to alter the style and rhythm of the composition requires a very rare command of expression. The author of Hearts in Mortmain narrates with a remarkable gracefulness and ease, but there is too similar a tone throughout the letters, and the course of the narrative runs better when it falls uninterruptedly into the hands of Mr. Hamilton. The old gentleman displays occasionally a quiet humour that is well in place and keeping.

The second story we must despatch more briefly.—The incidents are much more various, and the whole idea a very happy one. It would have borne and been improved by executing at greater length; the same materials used to more advantage would have made a novel of higher pretensions and at the same time of greater real value. Its defect is a certain want of fusion: it conveys the impression of agglomerated portions rather than of one whole, composed of necessary and subordinated parts. There is wanting that quality of completeness, the presence of which affords one of the highest pleasures we derive from the contemplation of a work of Art. Nothing can be more mistaken than an idea too prevalent among modern artists, and which shows itself in painting as well as writing, that it is sufficient to make transcripts of portions of Nature and human Life as they offer themselves to our experience, and that the absence of this wholeness in the scenes that the external creation presents to us, is a sufficient excuse, nay an authority for it absence in the world of Art. If we saw the whole great Universe, and had capacity to embrace its scope, we should see that no blight on the thorn, no sudden shipwreck in the calm sea, no infant breath once drawn to be silently surrendered, but possessed its exact and appropriate place, and proportioned importance, any change in which would have gone CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 50.

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to mar the symmetry of the whole vast design. But the human work is itself a whole, and cannot be pardoned for having the distorted proportions of a fragment. In Cornelia we have half a dozen separate interests soliciting and by the power of the author commanding our attention, so that we suffer from a constant distraction of our sympathy and expectations. Mrs. Stanford's history and that of Cornelia occupy positions too equal and independent; they run like parallel lines, united only at the end; and it is impossible to say which is that main interest around which all the rest should circle, and to the elucidation and enforcement of which everything should be made subservient. Again, the individual portraits want perspective; many of them stand together in the front of the picture, and challenge an equal attention. The highest instance of what may be called the artistic subordination of parts is to be found, where it might most naturally be looked for, in the greatest works of Shakespere. It is a curious and for the critic a most valuable study, to see how, as the characters recede from the centre of interest, they are drawn in fainter and less distinguishing colours, yet by a magical power retain individual characteristics.-There are instances too in Cornelia, of the introduction of unnecessary matter not moulded into the design of the work. This is a common error, and especially in first efforts, from which the author is apt to think he must leave out no good thing that he happens to have by him. Among these supernumeraries in the present story, are, not the incident of relieving Felice, for that might have been made strictly subordinate and assistant, but her history, coupled with the accident of the party on their return, of falling in with her brother, making altogether a little plot neither complete in itself nor subsidiary to the principal one. Another is the story of a haunted Chapel in Mrs. Stanford's description of her English home. Such defects may be considered trifling blemishes, but they are worth avoiding by an author who has the capacity to be a real artist, and is not disposed to be content with producing only what is sufficiently finished to earn profit and some popular applause.

The beauties of Cornelia less need any pointing hand. An imagination pervaded by the most refined feeling of

beauty has rarely presented a more moving spectacle than is afforded by the venerable and noble figure of Mrs. Stanford, bearing grief and blindness with patient serenity and dignity, and soothing with music the desolation of a heart the vigour and intense warmth of whose affections are unabated by physical decay. How charming is the contrast between this stedfast and enduring disposition, once heated, slow to cool, and the fresh, early, morninglike nature and impetuous impulses of the young Cornelia ; between the broad powerful emotions which garner up the whole past, the tares with the wheat, refusing to relax the grasp upon even resentment, but striving to make it a part of love, and the quick passionate throbs of a single unchastened sorrow. Cornelia's is one of those independent elastic dispositious, in which, though there is often a real depth of feeling that is to be weighed against a deficiency of softness, it displays itself so little in ordinary every-day intercourse, that we are apt to think it absent altogether; and such characters are among the most difficult to make engaging to our sympathies in fiction. It was a happy operation of the instinct of genius, to introduce us in the first instance to such a character, through the influence on it of a deep and passionate attachment, the affection of a child changed by death into the anguish of a loving woman.

The most remarkable and original feature, one that might be said perhaps to form the characteristic of the book, is the very high place given to the filial and still more to the fraternal affections, and the depth and delicacy of which they are represented as capable. It required powers in which deep feeling was joined with a very quick apprehension of the finer modes in which the affections work, to represent the warm interest and close sympathy between Darcy and Cornelia-to paint mutual love and confidence between the unknown sister and brother, and yet with so just and delicate a touch, that we are from the beginning free from any apprehension of what would have been of all things the most unendurable—the springing up between them of the relation of lovers. And this is done even without having recourse to the external aid of representing either heart as already occupied with an attachment. Let us cite the passage where each of the two,