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letail dic

:

BOOK REVIEWS REVIEWED

REVIEWS.

...

209

211

212

213

The brigands' den, the prisoned bride,

The giant yeoman's hero mould,
Who fought and garrulously told
The Iliad of his country side:

You bade them live and last for us
And for our heirs, as caught erewhile
The Doric of his rocky isle
Lives in your loved Theocritus.”

Selected Poems from the Works of the Hon.
Roden Noel. With a Biographical and
Critical Essay by Percy Addleshaw.
(Elkin Mathews.)

"His great contemporaries-Tennyson and 210 Browning-hailed him gladly," says Mr. Addleshaw; adding, "I, for one, am content to abide by their verdict, as Noel himself 213 would have been." No doubt! Although 214 the great world of small contemporaries did not hail Mr. Noel particularly gladly, those “fit who read poetry (some call them the "fit and few ") must agree that there was something of the poet in him. Moreover, he was IN a former book Mr. Gurney, vicar of sincere, and he loved nature, and he loved S. Barnabas, Pimlico, attempted "to exchildren. As with Tennyson, his best work pound and glorify friendship." Here his is the 66 " its flowered from a great grief. The death of theme marriage mystery, his little son produced A Little Child's marvels and meanings. His verse is of Monument, his most enduring claim to excellent intention, and that is all. remembrance. This may not be immortal vicar of S. Barnabas was happy in his verse, but it touches : marital relations; but he is no poet, and despite his slim search-light of song, the "marriage-mystery" remains for us unsolved; but he is modest, and if his muse does not arouse enthusiasm, it is a wellbehaved muse. Here is a specimen :

TWENTY-ONE MINOR POETS.
FEW weeks ago, when our shelf

A whereon the productions of the

song-smiths of the day are stacked would hold no more, it occurred to us to give these volumes the attention that memoirs and books about cathedrals receive. So we emptied the shelf and the slim volumes were read. We found plenty of fluent, cultured, melodious verse-plenty of little birds with agreeable twitters, but no larks. The result of our labour is below. Something is quoted from each songster. We

'offer

you, as it were, a slice from the breast. If the taste is to your palate, there is more of the bird for the asking.

By Severn Sea. By T. Herbert Warren. (Murray.)

THE President of Magdalen belongs to the reflective school of poetry. His verse is quiet, reserved, urbane; every syllable has been carefully weighed; every epithet

"What is the grey world, darling,
What is the grey world
Where the worm is curled, darling,
The death worm is curled?
They tell me of the spring, dear!
Do I want the spring?

Will she waft upon her wing, dear,
The joy-pulse of her wing,
Thy songs, thy blossoming,
O my little child !

I am lying in the grave, love,
In thy little grave,

Yet I hear the wind rave, love,
And the wild wave!

I would lie asleep, darling,
With thee lie asleep,

Unhearing the world weep, darling,
Little children weep!

tested; and the file has gone over all Rhymes of Ironquill. Selected and Arranged And this the beginning of his address to by J. A. Hammerton. (George Redway.) Lord Rosebery:

again and again. Hence we have a matured volume, as excellent as study and pains can make it. Mr. Warren certainly does not sing because he must, but because he likes to, and here are the fruits of his scholarly enjoyment. We like the book not a little. It reflects the kindly courteous temperament of a lover of good literature, of the best literary traditions, and of the West of England. There is much that we would willingly quote, but we must confine ourselves to these stanzas from his address to the author of Lorna Doone:

Prose poet of the fabled West,

Ere school and railway had begun
To fuse our shires and tongues in one,
And equalise the worst and best.
While Devon vowels fluted yet

By Dart and Lynn their mellow length,
While flourished still in Saxon strength
The consonants of Somerset.
Your Exmoor epic fixed the lines

That lingered on by combe and tor,
And in the hollow vale of Oare
You found a matter for your muse!

In his

"IRONQUILL" is known to the postman as
the Honourable Eugene F. Ware. His home
is Topeka, Kansas; he is an attorney and
politician; and in the words of Dr. John
Clark Redpath, as a publicist and man of
affairs he is second to none" of the leaders
of the American Commonwealth.
leisure Mr. Ware writes serious and comic
verse, a volume of which is now offered to
English readers for the first time. Its
straightforward vigour is its greatest recom-
mendation. Ironquill" knows his mind
and expresses it as forcibly and concisely as
he is able. He can be both dignified and
familiar, sonorous and frolicsome. He can

write thus:

"FEAR YE HIM.

1 fear Him not, nor yet do I defy.
Much could He harm me, cared He but to try.
Much could He frighten me, much do me ill,
Much terrify me, but-He never will.
The soul of justice must itself be just;
Who trembles most betrays the most distrust.

My lord, if but for thy most honest word, True Englishmen will honour thee this day." And this d propos a certain London firm who supplied the Transvaal with arms: "Oh, England! Curse this hour, cover thy head!

Where is thine honour fled ?"

But the poem by which Mr. Cobbett would
no doubt prefer to be judged is that called
simply "Passion.” Here is an extract. We
are sorry for the lady:

"Look upon my face,
Into the eyes that hunger to meet thine:
Eyes blazing with a brightness, not of wine,
But Love's fierce fire:

And note therein this sacred passion's trace
And mad desire!

The mad desire of a soul deep-stirr'd,
Who finds in thee his Heaven or his Hell,
And in thy slightest frown his funeral knell,
Making dry sobs

Choke, ere 'tis spoken, each tumultuous word
Thro' which Love throbs.

And having seen and heard, then, if thou canst,
Put calmly by a Love that sues in vain :
Vex'd by a little trick of scarce-felt pain
Turn and depart!

With this proud trophy be thy fame enhanced-
My murder'd heart!"'

A Vision of England, and other Poems. By
John Rickards Mozley. (R. Bentley & Son.)
MR. Mozley's muse is patriotic. The Vision
of England fills over twenty pages, and
extends from the period when "our mother
earth of yore did sink from fiery essence
into sleep of stone" down to the time of
Darwin. Here is an average specimen.
Mr. Mozley is addressing England

"How came it thou wast torn from Europe's strand

When

They

the Bondwoman," she attacks the difficult adds, says Miss Carey, who introduces the
theme of a girl's tumult of soul on discover- volume, a deeper pathos to their rhythm.
ing the shame of her birth. The result is The poems are very gentle, slender little
a poem which is too exclamatory, too messages. We need not say more. This-
obviously wrought up. Two other poems, "English Daisies"-is pretty and repre-
"A Dream of Death and Life," and "In sentative:
the Beginning was the Word," are open
But we like Mrs.
to the same criticism.
Graham's "Three Legends from the Pyre-
nee." The first tells how Christ appeared,
kneeling in prayer, to some goatherds.
We quote the last four stanzas of this moving

In ancient days? The Atlantic, surging strong

Between the mounts o'er which th' archangel's
hand

Once held its mighty guard, as told in song,
In moon-persuaded currents swept along,
And smote on Beachy Head with gathering

littl ballad:

The book is dedicated to the Queen. With the sentiment of the last two lines we heartily concur:

door "May thou and thine go through the open And hear 'Well done!' and join the heavenly choir."

Songs of Flying Hours. By Dr. E. W. Watson. (Philadelphia: H. T. Coates & Co.)

"With staves they beat His patient back,
With stones His flesh they tore,
With taunting words His ears they stung,
And then set on the more;
They gave themselves no time to note
The amazing love His dear eyes wore.
Then God the Father from His throne
In might arose and frown'd.

A darkness spread. The sun sank, dead.
Jagg'd darts the mountain crown'd.
An icy breath of wrath sped forth
And wrapt the goatherds round.
Our Lord stretch'd out to them His hands-
The goatherds all dismay'd
Fell down upon their trembling knees

And cross'd their breasts and pray'd.
He raised them and He led them Home
In shining garments all array'd.
No more yon starlit village street
Their clanking goat-bells heard;
No more the golden mestura

These homely goatherds stirr❜d.
On Nethou 'neath the time-long snow

Their bones await God's Final Word."

Rip Van Winkle. By William Akerman.
(Bell & Sons.)

"We were drawing very near,

And the cliffs shone white and clear,
And the little boats rowed past us from the
strand,

When a host of flowers sweet
Lighted softly at my feet,

Like a blessing and a welcome from the land.
English daisies-nothing more-
From some meadow-on the shore,
But I felt my eyes grow wet with happy
tears.

I had seen rare flowers bloom
In the fragrant forest gloom,
Where the orient palm its plumy summit rears,
While I wandered far away,

For many a weary day,

From my cottage in a sunny English lane,
But those daisies fresh and sweet

Came my longing eyes to greet,

Like a blessing and a welcome home again."

Lays and Legends of England.
Tyndall. (J. Baker & Son.)

THE title-poem is a dramatic version in
rhyme of the old legend, well enough
arranged to make a very entertaining play
at a school breaking-up. It has, indeed,
The Poems and Lyrics that
much spirit.
follow, though unimportant and not conspic-
uous for depth or novelty of thought, are
pleasant too. This fragment of a "Viking's
Song" is among the best of them:

We can imagine this volume being welcome
Dr. Watson has wide
in a sick-room.
sympathies, a list of subjects that range
from the "Song of Brahma" to "Bacilli,"
and a facility for melodious verse which
is rather agreeable. A great poet? Oh,
dear, no! But a minor poet upon whom we
are disposed to smile. I will go down to
the Land of Sleeping" is pretty; and this,"
called "At Last," may please some:

แ

By M. C.

MR. TYNDALL is a patriot, and he would
have us all patriots too; which is an excel-
lent ambition. Hence his songs and ballads
of the glory of the Navy and the Army, and
his joy in the West Country. There is no
love of land like your West Countryman's.
A Diamond Jubilee Ode very suitably opens
the volume. But for technique we think
that the hunting song from which the fol-
lowing stanzas are taken is more satisfactory
than the patriotic verse. It has swing and
spirit of its own; whereas the bulk of the
book is laudable in intention, but not spon-
taneous or distinguished.
Tyndall, mounted on Pegasus, all ready for
the chase:

Now skall to the Vikings, the Vikings so bold,
So fearless in battle, so famous of old,
Sun-tanned are our faces, our locks are of
gold;

The Child of the Bondwoman, and Other Verses. By Jean Carlyle Graham. (David Nutt.) MRS. GRAHAM writes verse with some power; she has plenty of imagination, and plenty of words. But she is too ambitious. In ho longest of these poems, "The Child of

Ahoi, my bold Vikings, Ahoi!
We plunder the noble, we plunder the priest,
We rob the fat abbot to furnish our feast,
There's no fare so fine as the convent-fed
beast,

Ahoi, my bold Vikings, Ahoi!
So now slack the ropes, turn the sails to the

And

wind,

sweep o'er the swan's bath more fortunes

to find,
The world is before us, and nothing behind,

Ahoi, my bold Vikings, Ahoi!”

Here is Mr.

"Not a cloud or a care on the spirit can lurk,
On a rattling good horse settling down to
his work,
Who the stiffest of fences was ne'er known to
shirk;

Drift Weed. By H. M. Burnside. (Hutchin-
son & Co.)

"Tis the sport of all sports, I contend. When the ruck has tailed off, to be in the first flight,

With the pick of the field, and the hounds
well in sight,

Sixty minutes with never a check going well,
And then, just as the pace is beginning to tell,
With a kill in the open to end!"

Rise in Cut out th

There, wi

With

A Tale from Boccaccio. By Arthur Coles
Armstrong. (Constable & Co.)

Ir may have been noticed by those that
receive Christmas cards that Miss Burnside
has succeeded the late Frances Ridley
Havergal as the favourite poet for Christ-
mastide quotations. According to the little
preface to this volume, Miss Burnside has
been making songs for many years, and
there is, doubtless, a large number of
persons who will be glad of this collected
edition of her kindly writings. That she
cannot hear the music of her own songs

MR. ARMSTRONG is a correct, if not impas. sioned, practitioner in verse. The title-poem is the longest; but it is machine-madean epithet which, indeed, applies to most of Mr. Armstrong's poetry. The machine it is true, is well-oiled and accurate: but a machine none the less. We like the poet best in the following lyric:

"DEATH'S SLEEP.

"I know where violets live,
Ere yet they reach the sun;
And who doth roses give
Ere summer is begun.
And when the shadows fall,
The silver stars I see;
I have a name for all,
And all are known to me.

When leaves are dead and sere,
They fall upon my head,
And keep me dry and warm
Within my earthly bed.

I am so still and warm

Laid in a quiet sleep;

Oh! wherefore dost thou cry?

And wherefore dost thou weep?"

A Window in Lincoln's Inn. By Addison
M'Leod. (Kegan Paul & Co.)

MR. M'LEOD diversifies rather good sonnets
with some of the worst blank verse we have
ever seen. This is a specimen line:

"

'Higher than Watkin's Tower at Wembley
Park;"

"Only we spell it with a capital C." Such remarks had best be put direct into prose. The book is the product of a critical mind that has observed and thought. It is not constructive; but the workmanship is deft. Here is a fair sonnet:

"Not in a dark cathedral, where the knees

Press velvet; and the lips from cups of gold
Drink precious wine; and endlessly o'ertold
One long dark stream of muttered mysteries
Sinks into ears half heeding Not from these
Drink I God's Spirit, but where mountains
bold

Rise in disdain; and tempests, wintry cold,
Cut out the heart of man's infirmities.
There, with a jut of rock for altar rail,

With bitter bread and rough and eager
wine,

On peaks that only hardiest feet have trod,
Spirits that in the valley droop and fail,

Turn to their Maker, with a touch divine,
To take the Sacrament ordained of God."

Sent Back by the Angels. By the Rev.
Frederick Langbridge. (Cassell & Co.)
Ir we were minded to describe Mr. Lang-
bridge in a phrase, we should call him the
Devotional Dagonet. His ballads have the
same sentimental basis, but there is more of
piety en route. They are always homely, and
often humorous and pathetic, the rhymes
are simple and plentiful, and the metre is
musical. Here is a part of "Doctor Dan's
Secret":

"As they lounge at ease, and toast their knees, The host, with a laugh, will say,

'My kingdom's small, but over it all

I reign with a despot's sway.

No serious dame may freeze my joke

With a glance of her awful eye,

Nor cough rebuke from a cloud of smoke,

Nor put the decanter by.

I feel in my heart, says Doctor Dan,

For that poor white slave, the married

man.

the translation of Moschus' "Lament for
Bion." Here are the closing lines:
"O! if I could, as Orpheus did of yore,
Odysseus too and Heracles before,
I also unto Pluto's home would go
To hear if thou art singing still below.
But now some sweet Sicilian music play,
Sing to Persephone some pastoral lay;
For she, too, was a fair Sicilian maid
And in the fertile fields of Enna played.
Full well of old she knew the Dorian strain,
Not unrewarded shall thy song remain ;
And as to Orpheus, when he touched the lyre,
She gave Eurydice his sole desire,
So yet it may be granted unto thee
To seek once more thy native mountains free.
If in my pipe there lurked the magic power,
To Pluto would I sing this self-same hour."
Song and Thought. By Richard Yates
Sturges. (George Redway.)
THERE is more song than thought in Mr.
Garden lore and
Sturge's twitterings.
linnets, and falling leaves and broken notes,
are the themes beloved of his correct but
Here is a bit of Love's
fragile muse.
philosophy:

"Why is old love just like new love?
Because the only love is true love;
And though years may pass away,
Love has one sweet summer day.
Why is new love just like old love ?
Because true love is still untold love;
And though time in love be sped,
All the best remains unsaid.'

Pan: A Collection of Lyrical Poems. By
Rose Haig Thomas. (Bliss, Sands & Co.
MISS THOMAS has a gift; and she loves
nature with a youthful and abounding
love, not looking beyond, but revelling
in all its manifestations its primordial
tumults and its finished daisy. In her
first "Nature," Miss Thomas tells in
poem,

blank verse the story of evolution to the
birth of human speech. Here is her picture
of primitive man becoming articulate:

"The brute still dominant,
In silence yet he thought
While ages rolled.
Then his intelligence
Opened a spanless gulf
'Twixt him and other kind,
He struck a flint on flint,
Quick caught the spark,
And breathed it into flame !
Still silent, still no voice,
Save the wild cry of war,
Or wooing tones of love,
Until the dumb begat
A man articulate,

And from his Being sprung
A race of loosened tongues,
The silver sound of speech
Flooded a silent world."

At the Gates of Song: Sonnets. By Lloyd
Mifflin. (Boston: Estes & Lauriat.)
THESE hundred and fifty sonnets have poetic
feeling, and are technically good. Some
weigh the large issues of life; others
convey
literary appreciations; not a few are grace-
fully trivial. Here is a sonnet inspired by
"An old Venetian Wine Glass":
"Daughter of Venice, fairer than the moon!

From thy dark casement leaning, half
divine,

And to the lutes of love that low repine

Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon
Listening with languour in a dreamful swoon-

I

On such a night as this thou didst entwine
Thy lily fingers round this glass of wine,
And clasped thy climbing lover-none too

soon.

Thy lover left, but ere he left thy room
From this he drank, his warm lips at the
brim ;

Thou kissed it as he vanished in the gloom;
That kiss because of thy true love for him
Long, long ago when thou wast in thy
bloom-

Hath left it ever rosy round the rim.
Songs of Liberty. By Robert Underwood
Johnson. (The Century Co.)

LIKE Tom Moore, Mr. Johnson sings by
turn the love of country and the love of
woman, and the regrets which attend both.
His opening "Apostrophe to Greece,"
'begun on the steps of the Parthenon, and
published in the New York Independent"
(cause and effect!), is poetically conceived-
but it is not thrilling. The brightest piece
in the volume is "An Irish Love Song":
"In the years about twenty
(When kisses are plenty)
The love of an Irish lass fell to my fate-
So winsome and sightly,
So saucy and sprightly,
The priest was a prophet that christened her
Kate.

Poems. By Henry D. Muir. (Chicago.)

MR. MUIR's book bears no publisher's name. The verses inside it are not, on the whole, such as would attract a publisher. They are full of the fine phrasings of the budding, imitative, and entirely unpromising singer. Mr. Muir is at his best in the one humorous piece we find in his volume. It is called Literary Musings."

"Corked up in Memory's bottle,

I've gems from Aristotle;

have gone through Homer's epics and have stuck my nose in Plato;

I have formed a good idea

Of Euripides'' Medea,'

Aristophanes, Eschylus, and Smith on 'The
Potato.'

Sappho, Ovid. Virgil, Horace,

And many a Grecian chorus,
Are jumbled up together with Josh Billings,
Twain, and Nye;

While Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens,
And 'The Way to Raise Young Chickens,’·
All mix within my head to form a literary pie.

But ne'er in verse or story,

Nor in the drama's glory,

Nor in the bright romantic tale, nor in the briny yarn,

Have I found that satisfaction

Which I drew in youth's abstraction From the blood-and-thunder novel that I read behind the barn."

The Starless Crown, and Other Poems. By
J. L. H. (Elliot Stock.)

Verses entitled "Gone to Grandmamma's,"
disarm the critic. Nor is anything to be
said either for or against lines such as these
on a golden-crested wren's nest-building :
"Brisk as ever,
Quick and clever,
Nest is snug and tight;
Twelve wee beauties
Bring new duties,

Work from morn till night."

DECADENT, MYSTIC, CATHOLIC.

his earlier works.

which is as simple in construction and as
barren of incident as its forerunners. The
scene is laid at Chartres, whose cathedral
gives its title to the book. Hither
come before the volume opens Durtal, the
old priest under whose direction he took
his first steps towards reconciliation, and
a new character in the shape of a pious
woman who acts as the priest's housekeeper.
Here, too, these three meet a certain Abbé
Plomb, an antiquarian canon of Chartres,
and the four indulge in several exquisite
discussions after the fashion of Carhaix and
his guests, but this time on the symbolism
of the cathedral and on sublime points of
mysticism arising out of the lives of the
saints.

than the dozens of Parisian novelists whom the institution of the feuilleton enables La Cathédrale. Par J. K. Huysmans. to turn out romances as if by machinery for (Paris: P. V. Stock.) the delectation of the newspaper-reading THIS long-expected book is out at last, and public. His earlier critics, while giving bids fair to attract as much attention as its him credit for a strength not apparent to predecessors. Although not published till English eyes, seem to have noted in him only the beginning of the present month, it is two peculiarities-viz., a passion for trivial details and a tendency to dwell upon the seventh edition, and already in its arrangements have been made for its revolting. Both these failings they attriappearance in English dress. It is, how-buted, perhaps with reason, to his Flemish ever, so unlike any ordinary novel in form extraction, while his excursion into the and conception that it is hardly possible to eccentric in A Rebours must have seemed to appreciate it without some acquaintance many to have been inspired by the love of with M. Huysmans' own career and with cabotinage or play-acting for its own sake from which no Parisian is ever entirely free. These discussions and Durtal's Joris Karl Huysmans is one of a dis- But with Là-Bas, the opening volume of his new venture, M. Huysmans bounded clear soliloquies take up the greater part of the tinguished family of artists, for some of the ruck of his fellow-craftsmen and book; but spiritual matters are not neglected. generations domiciled in Paris, and а descendant of Huysman de Malines, whose became at once, if his publishers' figures The religious ceremonies at which Durtal works belong to the Flemish school of the are in anyway to be trusted, one of the most assists are described with much fervour and seventeenth century. Born in the Bohemian popular writers in France. In this most wealth of detail, and both the priests are life of the capital, he early preferred litera- daring book M. Huysmans shows us M. represented as busying themselves with his ture to design, and made his bow to the Durtal, a blasé man of letters, in whom state of mind and with the melancholy public at the age of twenty-six with a small some see the hero of A Rebours grown older, which perpetually besets him. Finally, they volume of poems only too plainly inspired engaged in writing a history of the monster prevail upon him to undertake another volume of poems only too plainly inspired Gilles de Rais, once the brother-in-arms of retreat, this time to the Benedictine Abbey by Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Later, he Joan of Arc, whose many crimes are detailed of Solesmes and we leave him on the way became a disciple of Zola, and published, in 1876, his first novel, Marthe, wherein he by Mr. Baring Gould in his Book of thither; but this, though it ends the book, describes the life of a courtesan of the lower Werewolves. Durtal, while chronicling the does not exhaust the series. Already two insane atrocities of this wretch, receives the more volumes are in preparation, and from class with such pronounced realism that the advances of Mme. Chantelouve, a member hints dropped in the former volumes we can book had to be published in Brussels. of the upper middle class of Parisian Catholic pronounce one of them to be the life of Then followed in quick succession Les Sœurs Vatard, the history of two factory society, but a secret adherent of the supposed St. Lydwine or Lidwine (M. Huysmans sect of devil-worshippers. By her he is sect of devil-worshippers. By her he is seems himself uncertain as to the spelling), girls; En Ménage, a study in divorce, and taken to a disused chapel in the heart of Paris, who apparently played a considerable part Several other works of which it is only where Satan is formally invoked by an apos-in Durtal's conversion; while the other will ‣ necessary to mention here A Rebours (“The Wrong Way"). In this, surely one of the tate priest, and a horrible parody of the mass deal with his reception in some Benedictine is celebrated, followed by an orgy of hysteri- house as an "oblate "-i.e., a sort of lay most tedious books ever written, M. Huys- cal lust. But all this disgusting machinery monk, who is subject to the Rule, but does mans describes with wearisome minuteness is, so to speak, but the drum beaten outside the not take the irrevocable vows of the Order. the vagaries of a debauchee of good family, booth to draw the crowd to the show inside; We sincerely hope that M. Huysmans will who, worn out with excess at the age of thirty, buys with the sale of his ancestral and the real purpose of the book is shown in leave his hero in peace when he gets him certain conversations which take place round there. Five volumes on the history of one property a house in the suburbs of Paris, the dinner-table of Carhaix, a bell-ringer of soul should satisfy even Mr. Arthur Balfour. and sets seriously to work to console himself, St. Sulpice. Carhaix and his wife are both like Pope's Sporus, with the pleasures of taste. So exquisite is his sensibility that he Bretons, pious with the piety of Catholics secludes himself not only from society, but who have never known doubt, and Durtal's from Nature herself, and lives only by fellow-guests are a doctor who apparently from Nature herself, and lives only by artificial light in rooms decorated in extra- represents the scientific negation of the artificial light in rooms decorated in extra-supernatural, and an astrologer who exhibits ordinary colours, fitted instead of windows ordinary colours, fitted instead of windows in his own person the absurdity of an overwith aquariums filled with coloured water credulous belief in it. As may be guessed, and clockwork fish, and perfumed by an the simple faith of Carhaix shines by the apparatus on which he can compose "sym-side of the doctor's cold scepticism and phonies" of scent instead of sound. Had Durtal's mental unrest, and the book ends M. Huysmans ever shown a spark of humour with his prophecy to the latter. in any of his writings, we might here suspect him of a satire after the fashion of The Colonel or Patience upon the aesthete of his time. But the book is inspired by a different motive, and when its hero is dragged back by his doctors to Paris with a digestion ruined by a dietary of liqueurs, strange teas and other nastinesses, he utters

the cry:

manner as to move the most

On the whole, we are a little disappointed with La Cathédrale. Durtal does not, indeed, His struggles improve on acquaintance. with the flesh at La Trappe, his terrible conflict with himself over his first confession, and his doubts and fears about receiving the Eucharist, were depicted for us in so lifelike a thoughtless. It was impossible, in fact, to read En Route without feeling as one would at the sight of a man struggling with a rushing stream for his life. But with Durtal at Chartres it is much more difficult to sympathise. His conversion has brought him no peace of mind, and he goes through the process which Kingsley described as "fingering his spiritual muscles to see if they are growing," with the most irritating frequency. Moreover, though the superiority of the mystic over the ordinary believer is vaunted on almost every page, Durtal does not seem to be making progress towards the conscious union of the soul with the Deity, which is said by all mystics to be the goal at which they aim. Although we are told he has been set at La Trappe, on the road to the Mystic City, and even to have "perceived its confines on the horizon, he is in no hurry to continue his course. Instead, he devotes himself to much maundering about the symbolical meanings of

"Here below," he says, "all is decomposed, all is dead-but above! Oh, I admit that the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the advent of the Divine Paraclete may be delayed! But the texts which announced it are inspired, and the future may be counted upon, The dawn will be clear."

M. Huysmans' next book, En Route, the only one which has yet been translated into Lord, have pity on a Christian who doubts, English, unfolds another chapter in the on the sceptic who wishes to believe, on the history of Durtal's soul. Shocked by the Convict for life embarking alone and in dark-sudden deaths of Carhaix and the doctor, he ness under a sky which the cheering signallights of an ancient hope no longer lighten." It is with the answer to this prayer that M. Huysmans concerns himself in the series of which La Cathédrale is the last example. So far, M. Huysmans had made no ambitious appeal to the public

more

slips back rather than is reconverted to the
religion of his youth, and spends a week in
retreat at a Trappist monastery, where, after
terrible mental struggles, he is fully recon-
ciled to the Church, and returns to Paris a
sincere and professing Catholic. And so
we come at last to the volume before us,