details of cruelties done and suffered for by | own from whom we have been severed for men and women whose names enjoy the a while. ghastly celebrity of the Newgate Calendar.' We are, therefore, ready to maintain, at the point of the critical pen, that novels are necessary that a good novel is a good thing that a poor novel is better than the dressing up, gala-fashion, of old iniquities: and that the veriest failure of a novel is less vexatious than a bad biography, or than any history that pretends to be true, and falls short of its subject. Our own preference inclines to the sunshiny view of life in fiction, though we do not object to tragedy now and then, nor even to a chapter from the dark side of morals, if it be painted with a firm, stern touch. But the cynical novel we like not, be it ever so clever the novel that casts into immortal types the baser metal of humanity, and photographs into permanent blackness the transient suggestions of evil that come and go on the mind of the million; for we can never separate from the art of a book its influence; and many simple stories of simple life, told without pretension, are rich in those grains of hidden manna, those sweet and wholesome thoughts which nourish the soul, and refresh it when it is weary.' 6 Such a book is the first work of Mrs. Oliphant: Passages from the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside, written by Herself:' a book that charmed and soothed us when we were young, and which we can read over still on summer days and winter nights with undiminished satisfaction. Mrs. Margaret Maitland is no echo and no wraith, but a real living woman, set in the midst of the loving, hoping, fearing, stirring little world of a Scotch rural parish. The place in our regard that dear old lady of Sunnyside originally achieved she keeps, and we think of her always as a person whom we have known. Her story is very simple, but her way of telling it is delightful; and when, after the lapse of a few years, she takes up the thread of it again, and in Lilliesleaf' relates the married trials of the dear bairns' whose early days are the brightest passages in her own life, we take it up with her, and listen to the story as if it concerned personal friends of our It is a great merit in a writer when she can thus compel us to realize her characters, and it is a power that Mrs. Oliphant possesses in a very high degree. These two books, Mrs. Margaret Maitland' and Lilliesleaf,' should be read consecutively. The personal experiences of Mrs. Margaret Maitland are not told in detail until she is an eldern person,' left alone in the quiet, pretty cottage of Sunnyside, to which she and her mother have betaken themselves on the death of the minister, her father. She has had her griefs of heart, but they are over, and God has comforted her; we get occasional glimpses of them, and very bitter they are, but the main story is that of her brother's children, Claud and Mary, at the manse of Pasture Lands, and of Grace, a little lassie whom she brings up at Sunnyside in simple, pious ways, quite unwitting that her charge is a rich heiress. In her sweet bright maidenhood Grace is reclaimed by her selfish father, and put under the care of fashionable Mrs. Lennox, his sister, to be mysteriously suppressed, and, if possible, bullied out of her inheritance of Oakenshaw, which is derived from her ill-used mother. Grace, however, bears a high spirit, and having discovered the truth about herself, she calmly resists her persecutors. We are very indifferent to this part of her adventures. She is much more at home at Sunnyside than in Edinburgh; and her heart being given to Claud Maitland before she is carried away, she returns eventually in triumph, having defeated wicked father, bad aunt, and foolish suitor, with her guardian's commands not to quit Suunyside again at any one's bidding but his; and who should this guardian (a sarcastic old bachelor) be, but the lost love of Mrs. Margaret Maitland! Between Claud and Grace there are no difficulties but such as true love makes light of, and soon overcomes; but between Mary and Allan Elphinstone of Lilliesleaf there are weighty obstructions, doubts, fears, and sorrows of his own causing, and which we know will have their sequel when the two are married, and the first series of the Sunnyside Chroni cle ends. During the interval that elapses before make ony heart rejoice." "Ay, Jenny, but Mrs. Margaret Maitland again takes up the mother of a family like that has many cares," her pen the clouds have begun to gather said I, for I was, without doubt, in a thankless "And what would ye visibly about the house of Lilliesleaf; and and repining frame. that she has a prescience of them is clear, have, Miss Marget?" said Jenny, "as lang as from the saddened strain in which she re- their bonnie faces every ane! I would like to they're thriving, what's care but joy? Bless ken wha daur be wae for Miss Mary, with yon four darlings at her fit. If it was the minister himself, he suld never say sae to Jenny." sumes her narrative. now, At sight of the young generation, of 'Miss Mary's' four darlings, Miss Marget' catches some of her old servant's cheerful and wise philosophy. Was there ever a sweeter picture than this, though you see the shadow of an invisible trouble in the background of it? When I came to Sunnyside the place looked strange to me. There it was upon its quiet brae, looking down upon Burrowstown, with the thorn hedge grown up high around it, and the ash trees midway down the road arching over to meet one another, and the very apple trees and currant bushes grown high and big, like the bairns that once played about the gate. It made my heart sad to look upon this house; I knew not wherefore. It minded me of the days when I was in my middling age, and when Grace and Mary, my dear bairns, with their young pleas- I did not go to the door, but stood at the ures and their young troubles, were the joy of window, watching them. And in they camemy heart. Woe's me! I was an aged woman all the bairns, skipping through the shadows of and had little help to give them, that aye the trees, and running into the blithe morning were used to come to me for counsel, and life light that was like themselves, so bonnie and was upon their bonnie heads with all its weights fresh and innocent. They all gathered close and its burdens; and I thought in my heart about Jenny on the door steps; and every one upon this lone house of Sunnyside, and the past had a word to tell her; and Jenny was so fain that dwelt in it, and kent it was even like my and so pleased that she was nigh to greeting; old age and me. My maid Jenny was aged like and I saw what a delight these little things myself; but Jenny was ever a cheery body, and were to every old person that had a right to aye was able for her canny work, and her crack them. Truly, there is nothing in the world so with her old neighbours; and it was a comfort sweet or so blessed as the heritage of bairns. to see her kindly face again.. . . I tarried at Susie, for all so genty and quiet a bairn as she the door looking down upon the town; truly was, was mounted up upon Jenny's shoulder; change comes upon us, but the heavens and the and that was how she came in to me, to the parearth change not. It might still have been that lour where I was waiting. Jenny had on a day twenty years ago when I came here with short gown, made of a thrifty print, and a my mother, for all the difference that was in the checked apron tied about her, as was right in place, or in what I looked forth upon. It was the morning; and truly the strings had need a pleasant day; the young ash leaves were loos- to have been well sewn on, for the strain Claud ing out from the branches, and there was a gave them, tearing at the apron; though what chirp in the air of all the birds of spring-and the laddie wanted with it, except just mischief, truly, I was both cheered and cast down in my I know not. Cosmo was behind them all, with own spirit, and I knew not which most. When his mamma. He was a big callant of his years, strong, and well grown; and it was his pride to be aye beside her, like a grown up man, taking care of her. Doubtless, Mary was proud of him, such a fine bold, bonnie boy as he was; but I could not help minding that there was aye a glance in Cosmo's eye, which meant that his father should have been there, and defied everybody to think less of his mother than of the Queen upon her throne.' I went in, it was aye still the same. - the old things that aye put me in mind of old days, all standing as they used to stand, and my own very chair drawn to the new-kindled fire, as if Grace herself had put it there. I laid down my bonnet upon the table, and sat at the lone fireside, from which both life and pleasantness had passed away; and I could not send back the tear from my eye that came at the thought of what was gone; for truly the fireside of Claud, my brother, was as deserted as mine. There is heartache in the story of Lillies"Jenny," said I," it is an eerie thing to think leaf,' but not heartbreak, for love abides upon. Do you mind what a pleasure it was to still between the one who strays away and do everything for the bairns? and now the those who stand fast by duty, and justifies bairns are sober men and women, and have itself as the greatest power for good that their ain firesides, and their ain troubles; truly God has given to his creatures, by bringing nature and the course of life are hard upon old folk." 66 But, Miss Marget, they're a' so weel," the prodigal home to his own roof and peosaid Jenny, who was at the fire, rousing up the ple in final repentance, forgiveness, and newly-lighted coals with the poker to make a blaze. "If any ane of them was in distress I would mak my maen; but just to look at that bonnie bairn-time at Lilliesleaf- it's enough to peace. There is a changeful legend of young love woven into the serious warp and woof of the married lives at Oakenshaw, which brightens and relieves the book. The heroine of it is Rhoda, Grace's half-sister, who has lived concealed from her for seventeen years, and is then abruptly thrown upon her charity by their unprincipled father. There is a streak of genius in Rhoda, but she is a wilful passionate girl, who hates her dependence, and tells her long-suffering entertainers that she would rather work with the reapers in the fields than live at ease in their fine house, and eat their bitter bread. Her lover is a match for her in pride, discontent, and temper, and though they both mend a little, and have a considerable fund of perverse affection between them, when they are finally married and quit the happy walls of Oakenshaw, with ambitious hopes and projects of getting on in the world, we have no desire to follow their fortunes. Soon after this event Mrs. Margaret Maitland takes her leave of us, being now old, and stricken in years. All is well at last; at Lilliesleaf and at Oakenshaw are great quiet and peace of heart. The labour of the elder generation prospers at the good bidding of the Lord, and the light of His countenance has brightened upon the path of all the bairns.' Mrs. Oliphant is far too voluminous a writer to permit us to treat all her works in detail. We must in the majority of cases content ourselves with a passing allusion, and devote our space to the consideration of those novels by which her fame is, we trust, secured beyond this generation. Merkland' was her second story, and the scenery is Scotch again, as it is also in Harry Muir,'The Laird of Norlaw,' and Adam Graeme of Mossgray'; but in The House on the Moor' she has crossed the Border, and written a story as eerie and dreary as a sunless day on the fells in November. It is not a pleasant book. The bad people fill far more than their fair share of the stage, and they are dismal and uninteresting, and the misery amongst them is as all-pervading as an east-wind. The germ of the story is an iniquitous will, by which a man, with cunning spite against his son, leaves all his large possessions to accumulate in the hands of trustees until the said son's death, when they are immediately to devolve upon his grandson - a fine opportunity indeed, for the devil to set the evil passions of father and child to work! The authoress lets the Old Enemy avail himself of it to his heart's content. He has it entirely his own way; neither resists him, neither shows fight for an hour. Meaner, uglier domestic scenes than pass in The House on the Moor' were never drawn. The disinherited father allows his son to grow up an utter cub, ignorant of his future. and a companion of village ale-house popularity. The two are of the same thoroughly bad and sour nature, and hatred, malice, and uncharitableness thrive between them as such ill-weeds will in a congenial soil. Only by grace of Susan, the daughter, do we ever get a gleam of sunshine throughout the ignoble tragedy. We shall not transcribe any of its scenes; it is a good situation wasted, which might have been put to excellent profit, if the authoress had but taken it up in her sweeter vein, and shown the victims of the old man's wicked device, resisting the devil with the natural affection and confidence of their kinship, instead of giving place to him at his first assault; and it would have been, so far as our judgment goes, a truer story, and certainly a pleasanter and more healthy story to study. It is, however, by The Chronicles of Carlingford' that Mrs. Oliphant will most probably live and amuse her grandchildren to the third and fourth generation. They were published originally in Blackwood's Magazine,' and in their collected form fill nine substantial volumes. They are capital studies of country-town life in our own times; and Carlingford has by their means become a much more real place to hundreds of readers than half the chief cities and celebrated places on the railway map. there are no alien activities to disturb the place It is a considerable town now-a-days, but And no manufactures, and not much trade. there is a very respectable amount of very good society at Carlingford. To begin with, it is a pretty place- mild, sheltered, not far from town; and naturally its very reputation for good society increases the amount of that much-prized article. The advantages of the town in this respect have already put five per cent. upon the house-rents; but this, of course, only refers to the real town, where you can go through an entire street of high garden walls, with houses inside full of the retired exclusive comforts, the places; and where the good people consider their dainty economical refinements peculiar to such own society as a warrant of gentility less splendid, but not less assured, than the favour of Majesty itself.' sense in Miss Lucilla, when she hadn't got nothing in her head.' rather relieved to have got through the an'Just so,' said Dr. Majoribanks, who was nouncement so easily; you will see that her room is ready, and everything comfortable, and of course to-morrow she and I will dine alone." · eral, and though we are meant to laugh at to fix an hour like that. Ladies is terrible tireher good-humoredly throughout her trials some in that way; they'll come in the middle of and triumphs, we never lose sight of her the day, when a body don't know in the world honourable, liberal, serviceable qualities, what to have for them, or they'll come at night, or waver in our allegiance and liking. when a body's tired, and ain't got the heart to Mrs. Oliphant displays in this story an ex-go in to a supper. There was always a deal of cess of that shrewd humour in which Lucilla Majoribanks is so gloriously deficient, and she becomes now and then as sarcastic as Mrs. Woodburn, who was the terror of Carlingford society when Lucilla was forming it. There is, indeed, a strong touch of caricature in several of her delineations 'Yes, sir,' said Nancy; but this assent was in the Chronicles,' but even in the most not given in the decisive tone of a woman whose exaggerated, the natural features are pre- audience was over, and then she was seized with served. Every character is distinct as life, a desire to arrange in a more satisfactory manand their variety is as wonderful as life. ner the cold beef on the sideboard. When she But their portraits are laboured at. There had secured this little interval for thought, she is no question of etching or sketching with returned again to the table, where her master Mrs. Oliphant; she draws her faces and ate his breakfast with a presentiment. If you figures by line and rule, and paints every vexation nor trouble, which every one knows it please, sir,' said Nancy, not to give you no bit of them with minutest care. She takes has been the aim o' my life to spare you, as has nearly a score of lines to describe Miss so much on your mind, but it's best to settle Majoribank's hair, and nearly a dozen to afore commencing, and then we needn't have no show us her hands and feet. Perhaps it is heart-burning—if you please, am I to take my not too much for so useful and remarkable orders of Miss Lucilla or of you, as I've always a young woman; and there we have her at been used to? In the missus's time,' said last, complete and rounded, thoroughly ca- Nancy, with modest confidence, as was a good pable of the mission before her - -a large missus, and never gave no trouble as long as girl, full and well-developed at fifteen, with she had her soup and her jelly comfortable, it a face that might ripen into beauty and be- was always you as said what there was to be for come grandiose, and a mass of tawny hair dinner. I don't make no objections to doing up that curled to exasperation. She lost her a nice little luncheon for Miss Lucilla, and mother at this date, and would fain have giving a little more thought now and again to remained at home to be a comfort to her the sweets; but it ain't my part to tell you, sir, dear papa,' but Dr. Majoribanks found him- lady's, ain't to be expected to be the same as as a lady's taste, and more special a young self so well able to dispense with her conso-yours and mine, as has been cultivated like. lations (having his practice and an excellent old cook to see to his little dinners) that he sent Lucilla back to school for three years, and then to travel another year abroad, by which time she was a finished gentlewoman, and there could no longer be any pretence for keeping her away from the sphere which she was destined to revolutionize and enlighten. Like a judicious girl, she timed her journey to arrive at home by the train that reached Carlingford at half-past five, and the scene in which her coming is announced to Nancy, the important functionary who had hitherto ruled over the widowed establishment of Dr. But the Doctor was not to be let off so easily. Majoribanks, is a capital introduction for As you say, sir, everything's to be hoped,' these leading personages in Lucilla's story. said Nancy steadily, but there's a many ladies My daughter is coming home, Nancy,' said as don't seem to me to have got no taste in their Dr. Majoribanks; you will have to make pre-mouths; and it ain't as if it was a thing that parations for her immediately. So far as I can could be left to hopes. Supposin' as it comes to make out from this letter, she will arrive to- that, sir, what am I to do?" morrow by the half-past five train.' 'Well, sir,' said Nancy, with a tone of a woman who makes the best of a misfortune, it ain't every young lady as would have the sense I'm not one as likes contention,' continued the domestic oracle, but I couldn't abear to see a good master put upon; and if it should be as Miss Lucilla sets her mind on messes as ain't got no taste in them, and milk puddings and stuff, like the most of the ladies, I'd just like to know out of your own mouth, afore the commencement, what I'm to do?' Dr. Majoribanks was so moved by this appeal that he laid down his knife and fork, and contemplated the future with some dismay. It is to be hoped Miss Lucilla will know better,' he said. She has a great deal of good sense, and it is to be hoped that she will be wise enough to consult the tastes of the house.' . Well,' said the Doctor, who was himself a little puzzled, you know Miss Lucilla is nineteen, Nancy, and my only child, and the natural mistress of the house.' tor, Sir,' said Nancy austerely, them is things with such expectations in the way of cookas it ain't needful to name; that ain't the ques-ery, that they were never content with a tion as I was asking. Supposin' things come to good family dinner after. Then the ladies, such a point, what am I to do?' Bless me, it's half-past nine,' said the Doc- been expected in the way of making society from whom something might justly have and I have an appointment. You can come just as usual when we are at breakfast, that will pleasant, were incapacitated either by charbe the best way,' he said, as he went out at the acter or by multiplicity of children. Mrs. door, and chuckled a little to himself, when he Centum was too busy in her nursery; Mrs. felt he had escaped. He rubbed his hands as he Woodburn liked nothing so well as to read bowled along to his appointment, and thought novels, and take off' her neighbours when within himself that if Lucilla turned out to be a anybody called on her; Mrs. Chiley was girl of spirit, as he expected, it would be good old and hated trouble, and her husband, fun to see her struggle with Nancy for the veri- the colonel, could not enjoy his dinner if table reins of government. If Doctor Majori- he had more than four people to help him banks had entertained any positive apprehen- to eat it; in short, you might have gone sions that his dinners would be spoiled in conse-over Grange Lane, house by house, finding quence, his amusement would have come to an a great deal of capital material, but without abrupt conclusion; but he trusted entirely in encountering a single individual capable of Nancy and a little in Lucilla, and suffered his making anything out of it. long upper lip to relax at the thought without much fear.' And yet nobody could say that there were not good elements to make society with. When Dr. Majoribanks' confidence was not you add to a man capable of giving excellent misplaced. Lucilla was even cleverer than dinners, like Dr. Majoribanks, another man like he supposed, and the way in which she young Mr. Cavendish, Mrs. Woodburn's brother, took her proper place in the house is excel- who was a wit and a man of fashion, and belently told. The young sovereign gave longed to one of the best clubs in town, and no intimation of her future policy; but brought down gossip with the bloom on it to the morning after her arrival, she usurped Grange-lane, and when you join Mrs. Centum, her father's place in front of the urn and who was always so good and so much out of tea-pot with such amiable ingenuousness, temper, that it was safe to calculate on some that the old Doctor only said Humph,' thing amusing from her, the languid but trenand abdicated. When Nancy came in and chant humour of Mrs. Woodburn, not to speak saw what was done, she stared aghast, and of their husbands, and all the nephews, and though she did not, perhaps, see the joke visits to old Mr. Western and Colonel Chiley, cousins, and grandchildren, who constantly paid of it so clearly as her master, she was de-and the Browns, when they were at home, with throned with the same consummate tact and grace to which he had succumbed. Her domestic rule initiated, Lucilla in the course of the day walked serenely forth to view the country she had come to conquer. We are informed that the social condition of the town at her advent was deplorable. "There was nothing that could properly be called a centre. To be sure, Grange Lane was inhabited, as at present, by the best families in Carlingford; but then, without organization, what good does it do to have a lot of people together?' Mr. Berry, the evangelical rector, was utterly unqualified to take any lead; his wife was dead, his daughters were married, and his maiden sister, who kept his house, asked people to tea-parties where the Dissenting minister, Mr. Tufton, was to be met, and other Dissenters, small tradesmen, to whom the rector, in his universal benevolence, held out the right hand of fellowship. Dr. Majoribanks gave only dinners, to which naturally, while there was no lady in the house, ladies could not be invited; and, besides, he was rather a drawback than a benefit to society, since he filled the men their floating suite of admirers, and the young ladies who sang, and the young ladies who sketched, and the men who went out with the hounds, and the people who came when there was an election, and the barristers who made the circuit, and the people who came for the races, not to speak of the varying chances of curates who could talk and play the piano, and the occasional visits of the lesser county people, and the county clergymen, it will be plainly apparent that all that was wanting to Carlingford was a master hand to blend these different ele ments.' This master-hand was now come in the person of Miss Majoribanks. We have not words to express our admiration of Lucilla's social strategy. Would that she were multiplied a thousandfold, that women in her likeness might rise everywhere and pioneer a way through the density and obstruction of provincial dulness! On her very first walk abroad, with the luck that attends the brave, she heard resounding from the plebeian side of Grovestreet, three doors from Salem Chapel, a magnificent contralto voice, which she knew would go charmingly with her own; the |