Fiction. Ricroft of Withens. By Halliwell Sutcliffe. (Unwin 6s.) In this novel Mr. Sutcliffe once more gives us one of his pictures of the strong, lusty, hard-living men of the Yorkshire moors; and as he has gone back to 1745 for a plot, their savage vices and virtues gain in naturalness from their setting in a ruder age. He has also invented a capital story, so that the book may be heartily recommended. to those who love drinking and fighting scenes and the play of those elementary passions, love and revenge. Also, our author has an eye for character, and his stage is ever crowded with energetic and individualised personages. But the book would have been vastly improved—at least, from the more fastidious point of view-if he had taken a little more pains to make it credible. Its central fact is that a body of disciplined and trained gentlemen robbers took possession of a dark and almost impregnable dale near Skipton and held it for over seventy years, murdering men, outraging women, and living by robbery. And if this were true of the Yorkshire of the eighteenth century, still the Carlesses are so like the Doons, Kit is so like Jan and Jessie like Lorna, that artistically the whole is condemned. On a minor point we should like information. 'Master," as a territorial title, has been a favourite with novelists since ever the Master of Ballantrae appearedperhaps ever since Scott invented the Master of Ravenswood but is there any authority for applying it to a Yorkshire yeoman? We are reversing the rules of rhetoric, and coming down from the important to the trivial, but what did gentlemen get drunk on in 1745? When Mr. Sutcliffe's heroes give it a name it is usually rum or punch, but would not October or wine be a more natural beverage? Fielding did not die till 1754, and a few years before that he issued a warning to the nation against the use of gin, which was then beginning to supersede ale, and the characters of his fiction nearly all drink beer. Punch belongs rather to the Dickens period. Would a landlord call his place a "public" in 1745? Surely that horrid modernisin had not yet replaced inn, tavern, hostelry. Further, the Silent Inn strikes us as an absurd sign-post for the time, or any time. And now may we conclude by offering Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe a piece of advice? It appears to us that he has two essentials of a good novel-writer: a fine insight into character and an independent outlook. Nor do these exhaust his merits. He makes a most dramatic use of the curious superstitions of his dales-folk, and he has the art of narration. But two things are necessary if he would master the art of writing fiction. The first is, that he should learn to read and admire without being led into imitation-this book, for instance, is too flagrantly Lorna-Doonish and yet devoid of the Blackmore personality, wherein lies the inimitable charm of that masterpiece; and secondly, if his ambition is high, he must take more pains. He knows, no doubt, the definition of genius, and the artistic and the slipshod cannot dwell in the same tent. Old Chester Tales. By Margaret Deland. (Harper & Brothers. 6s.) THIS book combines, as far as is possible, the quality of a long novel with the quality of short stories. For Mrs. Deland's eight stories are laid in one quiet town in Pennsylvania, and the same characters-notably the wise, lovable old minister, Dr. Lavendar-are met with in them all. How many capital short stories have crossed the Atlantic to us from such places as Old Chester! Yet the charm and freshness and quaintness and humour of these new ones are not the less complete. Mrs. Deland brings a very tender, laughing sympathy (not without its humorous perversities) to the delineation of her out-of-the-world folk-the Wrights, the Days, the Barkleys, the John Smiths, the Jay girls, and all the other folk who constituted Old Chester. Not for a long while, in fact, have we read a better short story than the second of this series, called "Good for the Soul." Here we learn how Peter Day began life when he was fifty years of age. Until then he had been ruled by his stern mother. Ruled by her he had grown rich; but he knew nothing of wickedness, he had not been to a theatre, he had not loved-in a word, he had not lived. Then his mother died, and Peter slowly and painfully realised that he might do as he pleased. At first it pleased him to go on as before, to shun society, and live a narrow life. Then he awoke. Simple as a child, Peter fell in love with one of the "Four Sisters Montagu" who brought their "Side-splitting Farce," their leers and dances to Old Chester. Stricken at once by the charms of Bessie, the première danseuse, Peter left his farm and followed the troupe (a great pure-hearted booby) from town to town. The sisters laughed at him; even Bessie laughed, with a catch in her throat, but when Mamie said "He is an innocent" (Peter imagined they were really sisters and that their names were really Montagu) Bessie added "He's good." She was as inconsequent and unmoral, this little, flashing, suffering, pretty creature, as the sparkle on a rippling wave. And she was just now almost at the limit of her strength. The simple-hearted man who, through his big, steel-rimmed spectacles, looked at her every morning, as silent and as faithful as a dog, saw in her all the beauty and grace and good nature of which his harmless life had been starved. He thought to himself, over and over, how pleasant she was. He had had little enough pleasantness in his forty-odd years, dear knows! so it was easy to recognise it when he saw it. How these two wedded, and were happy, is not the whole story. Ten years after the wedding there slowly settled down on Peter's wife the shadow of her past. Ought sheto have told Peter all? With an art and tenderness which we are glad to proclaim, Mrs. Deland shows us Bessie-now Mrs. Day-reflecting and resolving. But before she stabbed old Peter with her long-sheathed confession she would see Dr. Lavendar. How the wise old doctor rolled away the whole cloud is the climax of the story, and must not be revealed here. If pathos, humour, sound sense, and a happy ending can make a story charming, then this story is charming. Notes on Novels. [These notes on the week's Fiction are not necessarily final. Reviews of a selection will follow.] THE DEAR IRISH GIRL. BY KATHARINE TYNAN. The current is setting towards Ireland again. Not that Scotland is being deserted, but we notice this week a work on Irish humour, a volume of Irish plays, and here is an Irish novel. Mrs. Hinkson (Katharine Tynan), who is better known as a poet than a novelist, has written a pretty story of the love affairs of the charming Biddy. It is a book rich with the brogue, goodhumoured and bright, but with its sad moments. In the end all is well, and Biddy marries O'Hara, and the three Miss Flaherties are bridesmaids. (Smith & Elder. 6s.) RED ROCK. BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE. In this novel we have a series of vivid pictures of life in the Southern States of America in the "era of reconstruction," as it is called, just after the Civil War. The passing away of the old régime with its fine old family life, its gentility and charm, is sketched by Mr. Page from memory. But the North is neither unrepresented nor ill-treated in the story. The love element is strong, and everywhere is a wealth of local colour. (Heinemann. 6s.) THE VISION SPLENDID. BY FLORENCE BRIGHT AND ROBERT MACHRAY. The Vision Splendid is the Stage, and to Jean Murray, a young girl who has just lost her father, it appeals with overwhelming power. This novel is occupied with her adventures as an actress, and is a careful study of stage-life from the point of view of a beginner. There is this passage about Fleet-street and the Strand in which the Press, the Law, and the Stage have their centres. "The first excites and then gratifies public curiosity-' au intelligent interest in the affairs' of the world, the newspapers call it, laughing in their sleeves the while. In the second men pick each other's brains to enable them to pick other people's pockets, and to prevent anyone else from doing so. The third provides a house of refuge from the garrulity of the one and a place of escape from the bickerings of the other, and ministers to the amusement of everybody." (Hutchinson & Co. 6s.) Mrs. Croker's novels are usually serene and engrossing lovestories. This one is also like that. We notice that the hero meets the heroine in Basle railway station. After giving her some needed help and lending her three pounds, he sees her off, handing her his card. Later he discovers that his blank and printed cards are mixed up in his pocket-book. "I'll bet anything I've given her a blank one," he muttered, and he had. By such small and pleasant devices Mrs. Croker holds her readers. (Chatto & Windus. 63.) A story of modern London society. The book is a little epic of match-making. All the mothers are on the look-out for young men; all the girls are speculating on their chances. Mrs. Walford can manage such a theme as this as well as anyone, and the book is quite entertaining. (Pearson. 6s.) THE DUKE'S SERVANTS. BY SIDNEY HERBERT BURCHELL. A pleasant story of the second quarter of the seventeenth century, laid partly in the country and partly in London. We see a good deal of theatrical life, and Shakespeare is alluded to as within living memory. "In three or four days," says the hero, an actor about to return to town and the Fortune Theatre, "I shall hear all the sounds of London streets, its unfortunate apprentices, its packmen, its fruit-sellers; and I shall smell all its smells, some pleasant, some less pleasant than the scent of sweet lavender and juniper. But I love them all, the shouts of the people, the smells of the streets; but no sounds will echo so pleasantly in my ears as those of my own trumpets, and the noise of my own musicians in the Fortune." (Gay & Bird. 6s.) A moving story of shipwreck and a baby which is saved and kept by a young married couple who are in constant dread of it being claimed. The child was claimed and the foster-parents died, and on "a costly monument of pure white marble, which would attract crowds to come and gaze on its sculptured beauty in the days of the future," there were chiselled the words: "Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages."-Exodus ii. 9. (Digby & Long. 6s.) ASHES OF EMPIRE. BY R. W. CHAMBERS. A glowing, mercurial story of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris of those times, by the author of The King in Yellow and The Red Republic. Mr. Chambers knows his Paris well. He begins the book-which is breathless and noisy (like its subject)—with the flight of the Empress and ends it in March of 1871. There is not only revolution and battle, there is love and romance. Two young Americans are the joint heroes, and among the names we find Victorien Sardou. (Macmillan. 6s.) THE ATTACK ON THE FARM. BY A. W. ARNOLD. By a coincidence the author of this book, which is published at the same time as Mr. Chambers's Ashes of Empire, asks how it is that so few writers seek their material in the FrancoPrussian War. He does so himself in two or three of these stories; in the others he is ingenious or sentimental or romantic. A readable collection. (F. V. White. 6s.) FETTERED BY FATE. BY G. W. MILLER. The first sentence of this novel runs to fourteen lines, and the second sentence to seventeen. The story is melodrama, beginning with the wrongful conviction of the hero for murder, and ending with a burning schooner whose powder magazine explodes and hurls the pirates "into countless heights above." (Digby & Long. 6s.) A PRINCE FROM THE GREAT NEVER NEVER. BY MARY F. A. TENCH. The Prince is Molly Despard's lover and the Great Never Never is an Australian wilderness, which he enters with an exploring party, while Molly waits in old Ireland for him at Knock-na-mulla, a village so remote from the railway that the car which met the trains "might almost be regarded as the triumph of hope over experience." A pleasant love-story with a strong vein of Irish humour. (Hurst & Blackett. 6s.) VANYA. BY OLGA ORLOFF. A short story of prison life in Siberia. (Grant & Son. 1s.) ELECTRA PECTORIS. BY S. P. E. This novel without a villain" is a little farcical love-story which may be read in twenty minutes. (A. T. Hutchinson. 1s.) The Lower Beasts and Man. WHEN Banks and Solander, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, first landed on the shores of Australia, it might well have seemed to them that in a dream they had visited another planet. For they found that every kind of shrub and tree, and every kind of beast and bird, was new, and most of them strangely different from those previously found elsewhere. As the nature of the beasts there discovered became better known, it became also more and more evident that they formed a very distinct group (a distinct order), having no affinity with animals. found elsewhere, with one exception. That one exception was the opossum, which had been noticed by Hernandez (in his history of Mexico) as long ago as 1626, while its anatomy was described by Tyson in 1698. It had then been duly noted that its hind paw was a hand like that of a monkey, and that the female habitually carried her young in a pouch. The same habit was found to be also the case with the Australian beasts, and so they, except the native dog or dingo, the bats, and a rat or two, and the various species of opossum inhabiting America, became grouped together in an order of "pouched beasts," or marsupials. By degrees it became known that these marsupials were generally distinguished from all other beasts by various peculiarities, in addition to the "pouch." One very special character concerned the mode of formation of the placenta, or vascular structure, whereby the young of man and beasts are nourished in the womb. As more and more kinds of marsupial animals were dis-covered, they were found to differ greatly in structure from one another-some to resemble cats and dogs, others to recall to mind insect-eating beasts (such as the mole, the hedgehog, and the shrews); others were like flyingsquirrels; a few to have front teeth resembling those of the beaver and other rodents (i.e., rats, mice, marmots, &c.); while the kangaroos, by their long hind limbs and powers of rapid locomotion, reminded the observer of the group of antelopes belonging to the hoofed beasts, or ungulata. These various sub-divisions of the marsupial order thus seemed to run parallel to the various long-before familiar sub-divisions of non-marsupial (or ordinary) beasts-namely, carnivores, insectivores, rodents, ungulates, &c. But besides the many marsupial animals found in Australia, there were two others also there found the structure of which was soon seen to be more exceptional and peculiar than that of any other kinds of beasts whatsoever. One of these animals was the "duck-billed platypus" or Ornithorhynchus, and the other was the "spiny ant-eater or Echidna. Their sexual organs were strangely different from those of all other beasts-on which account they have been called Monotremes-while the bones of their breast and shoulder resembled those of various lizards. Most noteworthy of all their characteristics, however, is the fact that, unlike all other beasts, they lay eggs, though the young, when hatched, are nourished by the milk of the mother. What, then, have been the genetic relations of these three groups of animals to each other, and what was the origin of the whole group of mammals? Such problems were, among others, recently discussed at Cambridge. Putting aside, for the moment, the platypus and echidna, let us consider the nature of the Australian marsupials. Were they the earlier form of mammalian life whence all these far more numerous non-marsupial forms have been evolved? Such a view was put forward by some eminent men, among others by the late Prof. Huxley in 1880. According to that view, non-marsupial carnivores, insectivores, rodents, ungulates, &c., respectively sprang from the marsupial carnivores, insectivores, rodents, ungulates, &c. But this hypothesis is now generally abandoned, and the marsupials are deemed an integral group which at some period were developed from non-marsupial beasts. Prof. Haeckel, however, in this case, as also in the question as to the origin of man, showed himself, at Cambridge, to be a true conservative. He delared that he "adhered to the view of the origin of non-marsupial mammals from marsupials." This question is one which affects ourselves. Since man is a non - marsupial mammal, it follows that to answer it correctly determines whether or not he has to regard the opossum and its allies as among his direct ancestors. Now some facts favour the view, still adhered to by Haeckel. Among the many strange and, to us, new Australian forms of life, there is one which is exceedingly old. This very antique creature is the mud-fish (Ceratodus) of Queensland, which resembles most closely an ancient fish the remains of which are imbedded in the triassic rocks, which are the lowest of the "secondary" series, though more recent than the coal measures. If, then, we have so ancient a fish still surviving in Australia, may it not be probable that the beasts which have their home there are also survivors from the most primitive kinds of beast? To this question Prof. Osborn replied, at Cambridge, in the negative; and, indeed, as before said, the prevailing view now is that the marsupials are, as it were, a lateral offshoot from the mammalian genealogical tree, which ascends from pre-mammalian forms direct to man. A discovery by Prof. Hill that in two Australian marsupials (one an insectivorous one, while the other is the kuala or "native-bear") the placenta differs greatly in structure from the rest of the order, and approaches that of non-marsupial beasts, breaks down one very marked distinction previously supposed to absolutely characterise the whole marsupial group of beasts. What, then, were the earlier forms of mammalian life-alike the parents of both our existing marsupial and non-marsupial beasts? The answer to this question may surprise some of the readers of the ACADEMY. Among the animals which now inhabit the earth are some modest and inconspicuous kinds, which attract but little the attention of persons who are neither agriculturalists nor men of science. Such are the mole, the hedgehog, and the shrews, often called in error "shrew-mice." Of hedgehogs there are some twenty kinds distributed over Europe, Africa, Northern Asia, and Hindostan. Moles and mole-like creatures range through the Northern hemisphere, while shrews are almost all over the world, save in Australia and South America. All these animals feed on insects and other small creatures, and belong to the order of beasts known as "insectivores." But there are other kinds of insectivores not found in England or even Europe. Thus the Gymmera -a form allied to the hedgehog, but without spinescomes from the Indian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. The same region is tenanted by some very elegant, squirrel-like insectivores, which are known as Tupaias or "tree-shrews." In Africa there are others with long hind-legs, which jump as kangaroos do, and may be named "jumping-shrews." Another West African form has put on almost quite the form and appearance of an otter (named Potomagale), while in South Africa there are very curious burrowing forms called "golden moles," though they are by no means true moles. In that very zoologically interesting island Madagascar several species of spiny insectivores exist, the type of which is known as Centeles. Finally, in the islands of Hayti and Cuba there respectively exist two very peculiar long-snouted, nakedtailed species, which form a genus which has been termed Solenodon. It is an interesting fact that this insectivorous order of mammals is spread all over the world save in South America and Australia. In the former region they are replaced by many different species of opossum; while in Australia their place is taken by other various small marsupials of different kinds. Now, the great interest possessed by these insectivores is twofold: (1) In the first place it consists in the fact that they bear certain noteworthy resemblances to one or other forms of marsupial life; (2) they show other resemblances to creatures which were among the earlier forms of beasts the fossil remains of which science has revealed to us. All readers, no doubt, know that the rocks above the chalk-the tertiary series-consist of three sets, the oldest of which is termed eocene. Certain eocene fossils discovered by the late Prof. Cope were classed by him in a group termed Creodonta, and some of them he considered to have But. been ancestral forms of our present insectivores. below the chalk, in the rocks known as the trias and the oolite, remains of small beasts have long been known to exist the nature of which is still somewhat problematical. At first they were thought to be marsupial, but this is now much doubted. At the recent Cambridge Congress Prof. Osborn declared that "there was abundant evidence that many of these small beasts were not marsupials but insectivores, fulfilling all the conditions required by the ancestry of the living Insectivora and the Creodonta, and, through the latter, of all the higher existing types of mammals, including man." This view the present writer regards as the most probably correct one, and, according to it, the whole marsupial group must be regarded as a lateral offshoot from the genealogical tree of mammalian life, yet one coming forth above the insectivorous branch, and a portion above that branch, or part of the stem represented by the extinct Creodonta. The question as to the origin of the whole class of mammals, though much debated at Cambridge, is one which our limits do not allow us here to enter upon. It must now suffice to say that the remarkable resemblances which exist between the monotremes and reptiles, together with different mammalian characters found here and there in different groups of extinct reptilian forms, makes it. almost evident that the class Mammalia, as a whole, was derived by development and evolution from the class. Reptilia. ST. GEORGE MIVART. Nordau Reconsidered. All To take up to-day Nordau's Degeneration, which, Heaven help our public! went through eight English editions, is to see how perfectly it represents the attitude of all modern commercialised society towards art. Degeneration is, strictly speaking, the reductio ad absurdum of the utilitarian theory in the life of the middle classes. the ignorance, prejudice, and limitations of the average man in matters æsthetic were deified there, and set up before his delighted eyes as scientific truths. Nordau, in the name of the outraged community, proposed three tests for whole legions of the unhappy artists he examinedviz.: (a) The Test of Indecency; (b) the Test of Obscurity; (c) the Test of Singularity; and no great artist satisfied the requirements of the examining board. It was very difficult for them to get through, poor darlings. Thus: Ibsen was "a malignant, anti-social simpleton"; Walt Whitman was "a vagabond, a reprobate rake, and morally insane"; Tolstoi's talent was "made up of morbid hyperesthesia and emotional gigantism"; Verlaine was "a wicked angel grown old"; Rossetti, Morris, and the pre-Raphaelites were "mattoids, imbeciles with the livery, but without the fecund originality of genius" (vide Lombroso's Test, Century Mag., October, 1895); Wagner was crazy, and not a genius," &c.; and to prevent the Ibsens, Tolstois, Whitmans, Rossettis, Wagners, &c., infecting the community's moral health, Nordau proposed that an association composed of the people's leaders and' instructors, professors, authors, members of Parliament, judges, high functionaries, should have the power to The absurdity of Nordau's charlatanism was, of course, hidden under such a cloud of pseudo scientific terminology that the English middle classes really did believe that Nordau was an authority on art; but in reality Nordau in all the two hundred thousand words of Degeneration addressed only one argument to the public--viz., These great artists must be mad, because they don't believe in you. And to expand this argument a little one may re-state it thus: The community is forced to believe in the ideals of which its own life is an expression. If the artist (a) (as Tolstoi) holds up other ideals, (b) (as Ibsen) exhibits the public in an unfavourable light, () (as Maeterlinck, Rossetti, &c.) is not understood by the public, he is not in harmony with his environment, and is consequently an enemy to society and society's ideals. Nordau complicated matters for the critics (and this, no doubt, was partly the reason that the English Press attached great weight to the book) by condemning as antisocial all the ideas and sentiments of artists which clash as truths with the truths of scientific men. Whereas, of course, the evolution of science has been too rapid to suit the evolution of society, and just as too rapid an introduction of material science into the life of the people has produced the hideous physical conditions of the factory. towns, so the over-commercialisation of society has had a coarsening and hardening effect on the spiritual life of the middle classes. But modern art, as Morris's, in striving to reach back to the more beautiful ideals of ancient society, is either atavistic or imbecile (vide Lombroso); or as Ibsen's, in striving to show modern society its false ideals, is anti-social and degenerate (vide Nordau). Nordau's book would not be worth reconsideration for a moment if it were not a very curious illustration of the extreme difficulty with which art can convey anything to the mind of a naturally inartistic people. Had Degeneration been a less vulgar piece of nineteenth century sensationalism it would not have mirrored in so faithful a manner commercialised public's attitude towards art; but, as it stands, the critic may reverse Nordau's conclusions altogether, and, thus reversed, these conclusions run: Modern art, where it is morbidly analytic (as Zola's), is healthy in its tendencies, as revealing the evils of modern society to itself. Where modern art is medieval and mystical (as the Symbolists') the result is a necessary and healthy reaction from the over-development of material science and its pressure on the spiritual life of the people. Majorities in society would compel art to evolve in certain arbitrary directions. Science finds in art a natural evolution, throwing light on the evolution of society, and does not seek to fetter it in any way. EDWARD GARNETT. John Halifax, MRS. CRAIK's most famous novel, John Halifax, Gentleman, has just passed out of copyright, and Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co. have signalised the fact by producing an edition of the book, with illustrations in colour, topographical pictures, specially designed end - papers, an introduction and a bibliography. They have, indeed, accorded to it the honours of a classic; and, in a limited, temporal way, a classic it is, or was-the classic of a period, of a particular class, of a certain set of ideas. Although we are assuredly justified in calling it bad art, we shall do well to remember that nearly all art is only good or bad by comparison. If John Halifax is inferior to Jane Eyre (which preceded it by nine years), Jane Eyre, in turn, is inferior, say, to Eugénie Grandet; while, on the other hand, by the side of East Lynne-another classic of a class-John Halifax must be counted masterly. Art of a sort John Halifax decidedly possesses, for it has sincerity, a little imagination, and form-though the form is simple and naïve to the verge of crudity. Mr. Joseph Shaylor, the writer of the somewhat indiscreet introduction, says, by way of an appreciation: "From a critical standpoint it is probable that John Halifax, Gentleman, will not be classed as one of our choicest specimens of literature, but as a novel of the imagination it will continue to hold a prominent position. Its language is always of the purest; its style characteristic and free; and is greatly to be preferred to the stilted and involved in fiction which finds so much favour in the present day. No one can doubt the sincerity of purpose with which it is written. The pronouncement is rather obscure, but so far as we can put a meaning to it, we have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Shaylor is mainly in the wrong. John Halifax will cease to hold "a prominent position" just because it is lacking in imagination and in style. Its imagination is weak, and it has no style whatever. We have read the book with mild interest, undisturbed by the memory of youthful perusals, and not a single chapter or incident stands forth above the rest; nor can we find in it any evidence that Mrs. Craik had a perception of the beauty of words. All is a smooth level of mediocre and painstaking accomplishment. But "sincerity of purpose"-in this virtue it is indeed rich. The fine strenuousness of a profoundly religious. temperament gives it character and gives it justification. In the days when John Halifax was produced, art, in the eyes of the great body of the nation, was less even than the handmaid of morals; it was the very slave and scullion. So much of art as survived was not countenanced, but rather tolerated. It held small place in the general life. It was therefore austere, not joyous; in order to retain the right of existence it had, in some sort, to pour scorn upon itself, bowing its neck beneath the foot of that neoPuritanism which had forgotten the uses of beauty. Here lies the secret of the enormous vogue of John Halifax. (And you may estimate its success when you reflect that it was the one novel lawful to be read on Sunday.) Written sincerely, by a beautiful spirit which was in perfect accord with the spirit of the time, it |