than in her earlier novels. We need scarcely say that we refer to the influence of the author of Vanity Fair.' The genius was indubitably stronger in the father, though the quality is the same in the daughter. As might be expected, there is a greater infusion of tenderness in the latter, and the humour which plays about her pages is like sheet lightning compared with the blue forked flashes which presaged destruction in the other. In both, however, there is the same penetrating glance which gets beneath the outer surface of men and things, and puts the writer in the commanding position of being able to introduce to us real men and women, and not shadows. In Miss Thackeray this power may not yet be so rich and full, but there is promise that it will be. We cannot say that all her characters are lifted above the reproach of being lay figures, but in Old Kensington' she has given us more than the average of flesh and blood creations. There are at least five or six distinct individualities; such men and women as we have met, and who are reproduced with a faithful pencil. They are none the less true because they are made to attend as satellites round the sun of the whole work; they may not be beings of the most exalted type, but that they are extremely natural is, we think, beyond question. It may be said that the male personages in Old Kensington' are comparatively poor and insipid. The reproach is possibly to some extent true. Neither George Vanborough nor Robert Henley is equal to Rhoda Parnell or Dolly Vanborough. The chief strength of an author must lie somewhere, and with Miss Thackeray, as yet, it doubtless lies in the delineation of her own sex. But it should also be remembered that in the characters of Robert Henley and George Vanborough she has not chosen types of an exalted description which could afford a fair basis for the test of her capacity in drawing the opposite sex. Still, neither of the male characters named can be called a lay figure that is, in the sense of lacking life, animation. The novelist's part has been well done, but the subjects were unpromising. There was nothing to get out of them, and disappointment to some extent is the natural result. Frank Raban is a better character, and though he, as well as the others, is used as a foil to Dora, there is yet much that is attractive in his portraiture from an artistic point of view. The author is never weak with him. He is a real, genuine man, whose idiosyncrasies we have no difficulty in apprehending, and whose part in the story is no failure. First presented to us under a misapprehension he comes in an unforced manner to be a favourite, and one in whom there is seen to be great depth of good. Another fact which augurs well for the future of Miss Thackeray in her art is her possession of the dramatic faculty. Her men and women have not conversations found for them and put into their mouths whether suitable or no, but, as it were, they find their own language. This harmony of character and language is one of the chief points of strength with Miss Thackeray. In fact the careful observer will see that to this is due in great measure the success of this story. Where is its plot-that great back-bone of so many novels, and without which the whole fabric would tumble to pieces? There is scarcely any. The incidents are not very striking; they are at times very sad, and they are always very natural. There are no great surprises, stupendous crimes, and prodigious successes. There is no mystery, no deed which causes the hair to stand on end, and to weigh like a nightmare on the spirit for many a day afterwards. Everybody has known tragedies as deep and sorrows as keen as those which are depicted in these pages; but because such things have fallen to the fate of the many they are eschewed by inferior craftsmen when casting about for materials for new stories. But we live again in scenes which are depicted with a fidelity such as we find in Old Kensington,' and perhaps some of us do not know how we can live and sympathise so well till we have read books written by master hands. It is part of their great value sometimes to rouse a sluggish nature into the activity of feeling, and if a novelist were called upon for his raison d'être he could scarcely find a better one than this. Of the faults of the book we have little to say. Like every other work, it is not without them, but they are very inconsiderable when placed beside its merits. The novel was first published in a serial form, and when that is the case the author evidently considers he has to work for ends which would not certainly exist were he writing the whole work for one issue. There is a periodical straining after effect with every portion as it is called upon to appear from the press which a writer should not be subjected to. It is possible to avoid this, but it is very seldom done. We do not know that it exists to any large extent here; but we do notice that the style in some places is inferior to that in others. In certain pages we get great vigour combined with great lucidity; but occasionally again we have weakness and vagueness. In one or two junctures the interest of the story flags beyond the power, as we think at the moment, of the author to raise it again. Fortunately, this is not the case; the drag is but a momentary one, and we are soon led on as before at the will of the author and to our own great pleasure and profit. 6 6 Altogether, we are inclined to rank Old Kensington' as the second novel of the season. It is the only work worthy to be placed after the chef-d'œuvre of George Eliot Middle'march.' It is true we have had a third work by a writer of high and deserved eminence, the Kenelm Chillingly' of the late Lord Lytton, his latest bequest in fiction (with the exception of The Parisians'), but we are inclined to regard it rather as a brilliant piece of eccentricity than as a novel with the usual orthodox pretensions. Indeed it is a romance rather than a novel, for there is not in it a character which could really have existed, or an incident which could really have occurred. Philosophers do not roam about the world to tame prize-fighters, or to take a mythological view of modern society. We may, in fact, dismiss any comparison between it and Old 'Kensington' at once. With regard to George Eliot, however, a comparison will not fail to be suggested between the Dorothea of her masterpiece and the Dorothea in the work which we have been examining in the present article. Dorothea Brooke is a creation well established in the minds of most literary persons, and readers of current literature generally, before these words reach their eye. Definite opinions will have been formed of her, and she has doubtless been accepted almost everywhere as a very great and very original character. So she is: we have nothing to say against this opinion. An entirely new creation, or some grand phase of a character not wholly apprehended hitherto, is so rare amongst novelwriters that we can ill afford to pass over what comes to us with such veritable power as the limning of George Eliot's best and greatest heroine. But let us examine for a moment the points in which she differs from the heroine of Miss Thackeray. The existence of a Dorothea Brooke is not quite an impossibility, though an improbability: the existence of a Dorothea Vanborough is not an improbability at all, but a matter rather of frequent occurrence. It will probably be said at the outset that the creation loses on that account. Not at all. Is Sophia Western an improbable character? or Emilia? or Ethel Newcome? The truth is, a commonplace person can always be lifted up for the world's admiration when sketched by true genius. Dorothea Vanborough is in many respects a superior character to Dorothea Brooke. The lesson of her life will appeal to more hearts, and have a more direct response. Miss Brooke was grander and more impressive in conception probably; but there we behold a great wealth of genius employed on an acknowledged failure. She is represented as unable to reach the lofty standard she had set up for herself and her yearnings are unsatisfied. The desire of the angel was united to the volitions of humanity. She is the Saint Theresa of an unfulfilled life. Dorothea Vanborough, quite as noble and sincere, had a less comprehensive and ecstatic vision, but she had the counterbalancing advantage of being more useful to the beings amongst whom she moved. Both suffered much and keenly; but the picture of Dorothea Brooke as we last see her is one of intense melancholy; it is like that of a weeping Madonna, beautiful, but inexpressibly sad. Dorothea Vanborough, on the contrary, has not failed: her ideal has not been too high; but she has passed out of the perplexities and the sorrows of her early career into the sweet calm of womanhood, and realises exactly the conditions of such a being as Wordsworth describes when he says:— 'A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; We have read this story with unmixed pleasure, and trust it may not be long before Miss Thackeray delights her numerous readers with another proof of her rich and fertile powers. Before we opened Old Kensington' the public had already signified its approval of it by demanding a second edition, and we trust we have shown some grounds for the belief that, the popular judgment has in this instance not been misplaced. For our own part we readily subscribe to its extraordinary merits. We should have thought it dangerous for a writer to bear the same name as the author of The Newcomes': after reading this novel by Miss Thackeray we think so no longer. ART. VIII.-Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries: Their Ages and Uses. By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. London: 1872. * NEARLY thirteen years ago we examined the evidence on which Mr. Fergusson justified his position that the building now known as the Dome of the Rock or the Mosque of Omar is the church which Constantine built over the Holy Sepulchre. The conclusion forced upon us was that Mr. Fergusson's discovery received no support from the documentary history of the buildings, while it involved the portentous notion that the place of common execution was barely more than a * Ed. Review, Oct. 1860. Art., 'The Churches of the Holy Land.' stone's throw from the northern wall of the Temple. The expression of our regret that Mr. Fergusson should have propounded a theory which impugns known facts and contradicts. the historical records connected with the subject for fifteen hundred years called forth from him a rejoinder, to which, in spite of his warning that our silence would be taken as allowing judgment to go by default, we have not replied. Of the tone and style of that reply we say nothing; nor do we much care to defend ourselves against the insinuation of utter incapacity for dealing with questions of architectural evidence, or of personal motives for entering into the controversy. The welcome which we gave to his History of Architecture'† may serve to acquit us of unworthy prejudices; and it may be enough to say now that we remained silent not merely because we felt that Mr. Fergusson's reply had not improved his case, but in full confidence that further explorations would decisively refute a theory which we were compelled to dismiss as preposterous. These explorations have fully justified the anticipations of Professor Willis that under the Sakrah or rock which covers nearly the whole area beneath the dome of Omar the drains would be found which carried off the blood of the victims slain on the great altar of sacrifice. With this discovery Mr. Fergusson's theory falls to the ground; but the catastrophe carries with it an instructive lesson. Mr. Fergusson's conclusion was grounded chiefly or almost wholly on architectural as distinguished from documentary evidence, and on his power of interpreting it rightly. For the exercise of his power he claimed the right conferred by the experience of a lifetime devoted to the study of architecture. On like grounds Niebuhr claimed for himself a certain faculty of divination by which he could piece together the broken fragments of ancient Roman tradition; but the result scarcely justifies a blind trust, or indeed any trust at all, in those who profess to have acquired this vague and elastic faculty. We may take Mr. Fergusson's description of the process by which his theories are worked out: 'The moment I saw Mr. Catherwood's drawings, it was as if he had laid before me a clearly-copied inscription in a language I was perfectly familiar with, and which said: "This is the church which I, Constan"tine, erected over the Holy Cave in which the body of our blessed Notes on the Site of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. answer to an article in the Ed. Review, No. CCXXVIII. 1861. † Ed. Review, Jan. 1857, and July 1863. Being an |