indolent, handsome fellow named Thomas, who appears to be the convenient man-of-all-work. She has a lover, a stalwart young fisherman, Stephen Ferguson, and his manly affection offers quite the only escape possible from the distasteful surroundings in which she lives; for her aunt is a severe-featured, unsympathetic woman, who bears a hard lot with set teeth and closed lips. Milicent attracts Urquhart first as an idle fancy, then by a stronger fascination, and in a somewhat unguarded moment he offers himself to her. It is only after various adventures, all cleverly told and not forced in the telling, that this event comes about; and then a revelation follows, not from the lips of Milicent, who has fatally postponed, or been hindered in, the disclosure of facts which she knew, but by the appearance on the scene of Urquhart's guardian, Mr. Raymond, who has hurried to the island in hopes of arresting a misalliance. This gentleman, coming face to face with the group, sees in Thomas a clever but unscrupulous Mr. Chaudron, who years before had swindled his neighbors in New York, and had fled to parts unknown with his sister and daughter. The sister is the aunt Ursula; the daughter, Milicent, who is witness of her father's evil fame. The revelation brings out Urquhart's weakness. He is only a carpet knight, and cannot face the world as champion of the girl. So he goes, and the faithful Stephen wins the prize. It is almost a pity to give this barren outline, since some of the reader's pleasure is in the gradual discovery of the plot, some, but by no means all; for the best of the book is in its fresh, breezy pictures of the island life, its well modeled characters, especially those of Milicent and her aunt, and its excellent proportions. The story is well constructed, and the situations are natural and fit to characters and plot. There are one or two weaknesses, to be sure. Urquhart is not unfamiliar with the name of VOL. LV. - NO. 332. 54 Chaudron, but no intimation is given that the family on the island bears any other. That name, indeed, is never applied to Milicent; but one of commonplace mind is apt to ask whether a young man from New York, meeting a girl of evident good birth, though with a native wildness, postpones any direct address until he has the right to call her by her name. He does once or twice address her as Miss Milicent, but in the conversation which is given there is a careful avoidance in the main of any direct calling of names on either side. Again, is it at all likely that the most infatuated young man, especially if he turns out to be at bottom, and not at top, only a society man, would be so indifferent as Urquhart is to the young girl's antecedents? Her very name is not a rustic Her air is that of one well born. He can hardly have expected to go off with her as one might carry away a swan from among geese, satisfied with the swan, and careless how it happened to be among geese. one. These are defects in the probabilities of the story, and a little care might have removed them. Still, the book as a whole is not only interesting; it is unhackneyed, and it brings within the resources of native fiction a substantially new subject. We may thank these ladies for discovering the possibilities in fiction of that commonplace person, the American forger who crosses the Canada frontier, and for rehabilitating the world-old story of the prince who finds the disguised princess, by using scenes so new to fiction as the Bay of Fundy and its shores. Mr. Barrett Wendell has chosen to follow a more common practice. He has carried his hero across the water, and given him his romance in Italy. The Duchess Emilia 1 is a romance, -a Pythagorean romance. The lady who 1 The Duchess Emilia. A Romance. By BARRETT WENdell. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1885. fills the title rôle was a wicked and beautiful Italian woman, who lived two or three generations before the time of the story. She was married to a Roman nobleman, but naturally loved his brother better. She compasses her husband's death, and is ready for her lover; but he, suffering a revulsion of feeling, flees from her, becomes penitent, enters the church, and in process of time becomes a cardinal, Cardinal Giulio Colonna. Meanwhile, the duchess goes from bad to worse. No particulars are given, but she is plainly a very, very wicked woman. The cardinal grows in holiness in the same proportion, although the fire of passion for Emilia is only covered by the ashes of contrition. At last the duchess dies, and then a strange thing happens. Her soul, her poor, wicked little soul, much inflamed and very ill prepared for a long voyage, takes flight, and in less than a nightnot quite so quickly as by electricity, but making better time than by steam is "whirled about the rolling earth," in Mr. Wendell's realistic apprehension of spiritual movement. It is a bad night to be out in, but the soul stands it, and coming to the far-off fatherland of the hero of this romance, namely to New England, and presumably to Beacon Street in Boston, finds a wretched home so the hero says in the madman's body that is his. It was an unreasonable choice on the part of the Duchess Emilia, for Richard Beverly, who had just given up being born, when she came so unceremoniously, was the son of two mad people, his father afterward committed suicide; and it would naturally require a good deal of sanity on the part of a New England young man to resist the probable tantrums of a wicked old Italian soul lodged in him. The first effect upon the unfortunate infant was to make him quiver and utter a loud cry, "louder and wilder than the cries of other children. And I drew breath with a struggle, as if I would fain lie still, but could not; and cried again, with a voice of fear that made the women start." This young man, who cannot call his soul his own, is thereby compelled to a most trying life. In early youth he is obliged to be unusually good, in order to give the soul a chance. Then he s impelled, he knows not why, to go to Italy. He is conscious of some great work to do, but what the work is he cannot tell. He finds it out in time, for upon reaching Rome he meets the old cardinal, and is attracted to him. The cardinal in turn is fascinated by the melancholy young man. The reason is that his soul, or rather the soul of the Duchess Emilia, who is living in the furnished lodging of Richard Beverly, looks out of his eyes, and the old cardinal cannot withstand the influence. By degrees Beverly discovers his mission. It is to purify his lodger's conscience by undoing the mischief done by her when she lived in the Colonna palace, and by arresting the action which in a new generation is in danger of repeating the old crime. The cardinal is to be sanctified, and is also to be made to break off the engagement between his niece Filippa and a rich Count Palchi, in order to her marrying her true lover, Luigi Orsini. Everything is brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and, his vicarious mission being accomplished, Beverly dies. His lodger, it is surmised, immediately transfers her residence to a heav enly mansion. In carrying out this fantasy, Mr. Wendell has employed a simple ruse. He tells so much of the story as a person may need to tell in order to explain circumstances, but leaves most of the narrative to be developed in passages from Beverly's journal. The transition is not always closely marked, and the assumption of a style of fifty years ago is indifferently borne out, while the occa sional change from a falsetto tone to a natural one is more amusing than the author apparently intended. The basis of real action upon which the romance stands we mean the relations between Beverly and the cardinal, Luigi and Filippa is so outrageously improbable that it requires the most absorbing romance to justify it. Unfortunately, the romance is not absorbing. The whole manner of the author is fatal to that deep reality which is essential to genuine romance. He is not himself possessed by his story. He stands wholly outside of it. He has simply taken a fantastic motif and given it a mechanical elaboration. The result is that from beginning to end the reader perceives himself in presence of an affectation. He is unmoved by the intended pathos, because the author was never moved. His blood does not curdle at the proper places, because he knows that the red stains which he sees are only claret. This must be our warrant for making light of so serious an affair as the transmigration of Emilia's soul. The four novels which we have glanced at scarcely offer material enough for any but the slightest generalization. We think, however, that it is not unfair to see in them some signs that our American fiction is becoming steadily more venturesome and more varied. Mr. Keenan's foray into the scenes of the Commune was a bold one, and if he had not made up his mind to follow at the heels of Thackeray, he might have brought back worthier trophies. To treat of real Americans mixed in with real Parisians in a historic time offers a capital chance for an animated and dramatic novel. A Carpet Knight and Pilot Fortune both show that the cleverness and skill of the craft which we associate with current English fiction of the better, but not best, sort are not unknown here, where so much slovenly and careless work has been done by average workwomen. Mr. Wendell's Emilia, again, though it cannot be called a success, reminds us of the possibilities of the romance, which have been overlooked in our close allegiance to realism. It is something that a writer should be willing to lay himself open to the rude scoffers. There will always be those who are stonily indifferent to high flights of fancy or imagination, and a writer of genuine romance may always expect to be derided. On the other hand, there is that in a fine romance which melts the mood and creates true sympathy. We would really much rather not scoff, and if Mr. Wendell will cultivate his natural voice, and sing us a song with as much purity of feeling as goes to this book of his, for that is its one redeeming feature, we promise to applaud with the heartiest. an irresistible fascination that compelled my attendance. Yet it must be confessed that the horror was greatly mitigated by the anticipation of the Feast of the Tail, that always followed in due course, like the farce of other days. No triumph of culinary art can tickle the palate like the crude cookery of childhood, and pig-tail, burnt to a crisp and about half raw, had a flavor and piquancy we demand in vain, in our degenerate days of spectacles and gray hairs. The passage anent the Tragedy of the Pig recalls a page of the Autocrat treating of that universal instinct of childhood "to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, and terrors." There is, indeed, something exquisitely pathetic in the earnestness and the patient secrecy I had almost written long-suffering secrecy - with which children grapple with the problems they make to themselves out of trifles. Who does not remember such problems haunting the mind by day and night, deeply, often painfully, pondered, yet always jealously guarded? Whether from timidity, whether from a sacred unconsciousness of joy in the things that most deeply exercise their struggling reason, children are not wont to speak of the deep questions that perplex their dawning intelligence. These are seldom or never the questions propounded by pastors and masters, but suggestions springing from some distorted aspect of a familiar subject, striking the mind awry, as it were. Thus, to cite from personal experience, the church catechism was diligently instilled into my mind at an early age, and great pains taken to make it clear to my comprehension. With the unquestioning faith of childhood, I accepted its teachings reverently, and took only shame to myself that I could not understand the question, "What did your sponsors then for you?" To my untutored mind, innocent of grammar, "then" had all the force of a verb, and for years I agonized intellectually, in the struggle to discover the awful meaning hidden in this inscrutable word. What was it "to then"? What pain, and effort, and solemn prayer, and vast expense did it cost my sponsors to "then" for me? By what mysterious ceremony was my "thenning" accomplished? When, after years of waiting, it dawned upon me that this word was, from my point of view, void of meaning, the sense of destitution that took possession of me is indescribable. I felt myself defrauded spiritually, and the shock was something dreadful. Nor was this my only childish error concerning the things of religion. My acceptation of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession was absolute. For me, each bishop of the church was a direct descendant of St. Paul! My only difficulty was my inability to decide how many times the epithet great should stand before the word grandson, when applied to the bishop of our diocese; and this momentous question so perplexed and har assed me that I summoned the courage to appeal to the bishop himself. Needless to say, I was désillusionnée. Closely connected with this notion of the Apostolic Succession, and in some intangible way growing out of it, was a faith I entertained regarding the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem, carried away at the time of the Captivity. These venerable relics I firmly believed to be safely stored in the vestryroom of our little church. Once, when my mother and other ladies were assisting about the Christmas decorations, I saw the door of this vestry-room standing open, and with awe and trembling I asked and obtained permission to enter. No room I have ever seen is more indelibly stamped upon my memory, though I saw it but once: bare, whitewashed walls, a table, two chairs, a fireplace, a striped curtain drawn back from the window, and three pegs behind the door. The golden vessels of the great Temple of Jerusalem were not there, and I came out weeping; but the cause of my tears I would never tell. My speculations, however, were not all about questions pertaining to the things of religion. One among the many bizarre beliefs that my childhood hugged in secret owed its birth to a doggerel rhyme which a young uncle of mine used to sing for my delectation. The words and the tune, together with the image of the chimerical creature my imagination "carved out of Nature for itself," will dwell with me forever. These are the words: "Folks, won't you go, folks, won't you go, What manner of animal was the White Also? It never occurred to me to ask, for was not the creature mentioned in connection with the Bengal Tiger, which I knew pictorially, and the Polar Bear, which likewise I knew pictorially? But no picture-book that I could command contained any representation of the White Also. The diligence with which I pursued that apocryphal beast might have sufficed, had I practiced the same in later years, to master the sciences. Doubtless the books I ransacked for I kept up the search long after I had learned to read and the menageries I studiously visited did add an appreciable amount to my fund of information; but of all the knowledge of natural history and kindred subjects gained at that time, nothing stands forth so vividly in my mind's eye as the zoological phantom that forever eluded my quest, the great White Also, the desire of my childish vision, which came at last to represent to me the type of the unattainable; and I cannot now, without a sort of mental tug, classify "also" as an adverb, I thought it was an animal for so long! Is there no specific term among philosophers for these idola juventutis ? And not only -Iceland, in spite of its insular situa tion, has always been a constituent part of Europe. No movement, social, political, or religious, has passed upon the Continent without transmitting a throb, at least, to that far-off land. The intellectual constitution of the Icelanders has favored this result. Ever since they forsook Norway, over a thousand years ago, for the cause of liberty, they have had the vigor to form an opinion and the courage to maintain it; and, during all this time, an intellectual intercourse, wholly apart from the exchange of commodities in commerce, has been maintained between Scandinavia and Iceland. Nor has this intercourse always been one-sided, for in the ancient days the skald who sang the praises of the Norwegian kings, or the saga-man who told the story of their exploits, was almost invariably an Icelander. in Norway did he find appreciative listeners, but in Sweden and Denmark, and even in England he was made welcome for the sake of his accomplishments. When Christianity, fighting its way northward, had won over all Europe, Iceland, to the last, defended its heathen religion, and only reluctantly laid it aside. For five hundred years the country was Roman Catholic, but, at length, in Iceland, too, was enacted the superb drama of the Reformation. Though the stage was smaller than in Germany and England, the action was none the less real. The incidents that accompanied the unraveling of the plot were full of dramatic force, and the plot itself, as its complications were gradually laid open to the light, became of absorbing interest. So thorough in the end was the change of faith, that, although a Catholic mission was for many years maintained in the south, it was at last abandoned, and Lutheranism became, as it now is, the one religion of the land. The history of the Reformation in Iceland is a page of its annals not wholly free from stain. There was |