She

voice of an old schoolfellow, of Barbara them, as they are only subsidiary to LucilLake, the eldest daughter of Lake, the draw- la's noble work of social regeneration. Like ing-master. Instantaneously there germi- other conquerors, Miss Majoribanks was nated in her brain the rudiments of those destined to build her victory on sacrifice; Evenings by which society in Carlingford but she was always equal to her duty, and was disciplined to its present perfection. great alike in failure as in success. Lucilla was not one to be limited by the was never seen to flinch at difficulty, and canons of gentility. The Lakes were not from some passages of arms out of which in society, but Barbara's voice was a glo- other women would have emerged with a rious compensation for the want of birth and sense of ignominious defeat, she came with money, and Lucilla at once determined to flying colours, and with never so much as a make it available for her purposes of civili- scratch on her shield. Mr. Cavendish had zation. She publicly resolved, and avowed began to pay attention to her in what Mrs. her resolution to remain ten years at home Chiley thought a marked way, but at the 'to be a comfort to her dear papa;' and the very first evening appeared on the scene way in which she put aside a looming ob- the powerful syren, Barbara Lake, with her stacle in the shape of her cousin Tom, who rich contralto, her splendid eyes and striking had the sense to wish to appropriate her, is figure, and captivated the man of surface reexquisitely humorous. She persuaded her finement. Lucilla patronized them, and father to re-furnish her drawing-room with when they married, dismissed them with her pale green to suit her rosy complexion, and blessing. General Travers, who was proas a prelude to bringing everybody together duced in Carlingford specially to admire on the first of her immortal Thursday even-her, neglected her ample charms, and adings, she presided at one of the Doctor's little dinners, supported by old Mrs. Chiley, It could not have been more successful had she been in harness a dozen years.

To speak first of the most important particular; the dinner was perfect. As for the benighted men who had doubted Lucilla, they were covered with shame, and at the same time with delight. If there had been a fault in Dr. Majoribank's table under the ancient régime, it lay in certain want of variety, and occasional overabundance, which wounded the feelings of the young Mr. Cavendish, who was a person of refinement. To-night, as that accomplished critic remarked, there was a certain air of feminine grace diffused over everything, and an amount of doubt and expectation, unknown to the composed feasting of old, gave interest to the

meal.'

After this good beginning, people naturally grew excited about the Evenings. They wanted to see the renovated drawing-room, and in their curiosity frankly forgave Lucilla for being in advance of their provincial notions. Don't expect any regular invitation,' she had said. I hope you will all come, or as many of you as can. Papa has always some men to dinner with him that day, you know, and it is so dreadfully slow for me with a heap of men. That is why I fixed on Thursday. I want you to come every week, so it would be absurd to send an invitation; and remember it is not a party, only an evening. Nearly the whole action of this story is transacted at these Thursday evenings, which soon become an institution in Carlingford. Love and lovemaking, and divers other complications occur, but we shall not attempt to unravel

mired instead the sweet and rosy little face of Barbara's sister Rose, who designed patterns and had a tender feeling for art; but Lucilla was judicially calm on the occasion, and when Archdeacon Beverley, who really promised well for a while, was suddenly rapt away by his old and only love, whom he discovered living under Lucilla's generous protection, she smoothed the way to their reconciliation, and feasted her own heart on the pleasant thought of Cousin Tom,' who had always appreciated her. We should feel, indeed, as Mrs. Chiley did, that these accidents were rather hard upon her, if we had not a comforting presentiment that Lucilla is all the time saving up for her cousin Tom, and that he is sure to come at the proper moment and carry her off.

Amongst Mrs. Oliphant's many clever caricatures, Archdeacon Beverley is one of the cleverest. She informs us that he was Broad Church, and had a way of talking on many subjects which alarmed his hostess, Mrs. Chiley.

"It was the custom of good society in Carlingford to give a respectful assent to Mr. Bury's extreme Low Churchism, as if it were profane, as it certainly was not respectable, to differ from the rector, and to give him as wide a field as possible for his missionary operations by keeping out of the way. But the Archdeacon had not the least regard for respectability, nor for that respect for religion which consists in keeping as clear of it as possible; and the way in which he spoke of Mr. Bury's views wounded some people's feelings. Altogether he was, as Mrs. Chiley said, an anxious person to have in the house; for he just as often agreed with the

gentlemen in their loose way of thinking, as with the more correct opinions by which the wives and mothers who had charge of their morality strove hard to keep them in the right way. .. He was very nice, had a nice position, but he was not like what clergymen were in her time. For one thing, he seemed to think that every silly boy and girl ought to have an opinion, and to be consulted, which was just the way to turn their heads, and make them quite insupportable.'

the air the while, and then he would exchange glances with his sister.'

The second of the Carlingford Chronicles,' in order of time, recounts the wooing and wedding of Dr. Ryder, the purchaser of the practice of Dr. Majoribanks, whose sudden death in embarrassed circumstances is skilfully made use of by the authoress to bring out in a new light the genuine goodness and affectionateness of his daughter. The contrast of this gentleman's liberal If any reader wishes to know what manner theories with his dogmatic manner is very of woman succeeded Lucilla in her charmamusing, and so is the consternation of all ing drawing-room, when she retired from right-thinking people, when it is confidently Carlingford on her marriage, to the family reported that the Rector had invited Mr. estate of Marchbank, they will find Mr. Tutton, of Salem Chapel, to meet the Arch- Ryder's prenuptial life and adventures most deacon, and that, but for the Dissenting entertainingly set forth under the title of minister's good sense, that unseemly con- The Doctor's Family,' and then, for inforjunction would have taken place. And here mation as to how Carlingford society mainour authoress condescends to, or at least tained itself after its fair reformer went to paints, the unworthy and insulting common-carry light and progress into the society of place of modern journalism, that the Dis- the country, we must refer them to the senter must necessarily belong to a lower stories of the appointment of The Rector' caste of society - -a blunder from which her who succeeded Mr. Bury, of The Perpetual own associations ought to have kept her. Curate' of St. Roque's, and of the ininisThe encounter of the Rector and Archdea-ter of Salem Chapel.' con at Dr. Majoribanks' table verges on the comic. Mrs. Oliphant represents the evangelical clergy as peculiarly fond of good living. The disagreeable curate always turns up at the Rector's house ten minutes before dinner, when there is a certain excellent pudding, and Mr. Bury is said to have had a way of sneering at the flesh,' while sparing no pains to nourish it, which provokes Dr. Majoribanks into launching at his spiritual ruler a shaft of medical wit.

There is some capital writing in The Rector,' which opens with a sketch of Carlingford, and introduces the successor of Mr. Bury in the course of a morning call on one of the pleasantest families in Grange Lane The scene, which is as effective as a good -the family of Mr. Wodehouse. drawing in water colours, is in the garden -the warm, well-furnished garden, where high brick walls, all clothed with fruit-trees, shut in an enclosure of which there was not a morsel, except the velvet grass, with its "I have no doubt," the Doctor would say, highest and most careful cultivation. Tall nests of daisies, which was not under the "that an indigestion is an admirable way of mortifying the flesh, as our excellent Rector plumes of lilac and stray branches of applesays. Fasting was the suggestion of a barbar- blossom gave friendly salutations over the ous age, and it must have kept those anchorite walls to the world without; within, the fellows in an unchristian strength of stomach. sweet summer snow dropt on the bright And it's far more philosophical to punish the head of Lucy Wodehouse, and impertioffending body, as Mr. Bury does, by means of nently flecked the Rev. Frank Wentworth's made dishes ;" and when he had thus disturbed Anglican coat. She was twenty, pretty, his reverend guest's enjoyment, the Doctor blue-eyed, and full of dimples, with a Legwould go on with his dinner with great relish. horn hat and blue ribbons; she had great This, however, was not the only danger to which gardening gloves on, and the grass at her the peace of the party was exposed. For the feet was strewn with the sweetest spring Rector, at the same time, regarded Mr. Beverley blossoms, narcissus, lilies, hyacinths, gold with a certain critical suspiciousness, such as is ranunculus globes, and sober wallflower. seldom to be encountered except among clergy- He was the perpetual curate of St. Roque's, superior, who had only recently been appointed and there was that indefinable harmony in to his archdeaconry, but there was something in their looks which prompts to the bystander his air, his looks and demeanour, which indicat- the suggestion of a handsome couple.' ed what Mr. Bury thought a loose way of think- On a green bench under the great May-tree ing. When the Archdeacon made any remark, sat the elder Miss Wodehouse, who was the Rector would pause and look up from his pious and leisurely, and verging on forty; plate to listen to it, with his fork suspended in and not far off shone the bright English

nen. He did not know much about his clerical

next

6

house all beaming with open doors and her husband the darker shades are much windows. On this charming domestic out- exaggerated. His prejudice against the of-door scene entered, by the door in the perpetual curate is the root of all the miswall, Mr. Wodehouse, a man who creaked chief in the story. It begins with their universally:' introducing the new rector, earliest acquaintance, when the rector, who Mr. Proctor, fifteen years Fellow of All naturally loves the constituted authority' Souls', who, on his own confession, knew that is vested in himself, finds a sisterhood very little about ladies, and had brought in grey cloaks, a provident society, and all down to the rectory, in lieu of a wife, only sorts of things going on in his parish under a dear old shrewd lively mother whom he Mr. Wentworth's direction; even an imlonged to compensate for her tedious dull promptu chapel, which he mistakes at first life so many years without him. . Their sight for a little Bethel, where the curate brief housekeeping together is very pret- hss two week-day services, and a Sunday tily told; but Mr. Proctor is not happy in evening service for the bargenen of Wharfhis strange position; fifteen years of college side. Mr. Morgan makes up his mind that seclusion do not prove to have been a good the young Anglican must be taught to know apprenticeship for parish work, and after a better than to interfere in another man's signal failure or two, feeling his incompe- parish; and in the process of teaching he tence keenly, he makes up his mind to re- allows the enmity in his heart to expand turn to All Souls', and leave his rectory to into active persecution. We cannot but Morgan, the next fellow on the list, who think that here Mrs. Oliphant's lively satiric wants to get married. We meet him again fancy carries her out of the bounds of probin the history of The Perpetual Curate,' ability. We believe that she libels coma kind and honourable man whom we like, mon human nature in the remarkable story and are glad to take final leave of in pleas- of how the hard-working and deservedlyant circumstances. popular curate becomes all at once the most suspected and despised of men. It is a proverb, that a good man's character swears for him;' yet this good Mr. Wentworth, who is a gentleman by birth and education, and a Christian in principle and life, on what seems to us the most preposterously inadequate evidence, is supposed to be guilty of folly and sin, which, if proved against him, would deprieve him of his gown. We can conceive nothing more glaringly absurd and disagreeable than this portion of the Chronicles.' The character of a minister of God is delicate as a woman's, and ought not to be breathed upon. What should we expect to take place in the world' if a clergyman whom we had always seen active in his duty, pure in his life, refined in his habits, were wildly accused of removing from her home and secreting a pretty little coquettish miss, his clerk's niece, on the strength of her having been seen haunting his lodgings, and once conducted home by him after dark, and given up to her guardians with a sharp admonition? In real life, we believe that the accusation would never be made, or if made by vulgar and credited by silly persons, would be strongly repudiated by every man and woman blessed with a grain of common sense. But what does Mrs. Oliphant represent as the probable course of action in such a community as Carlingford? She represents Mr. Wentworth as almost universally condemned! Rose Elsworthy vanishes, and her uncle, accompanied by another tradesman, impudently assails him

The Rev. Frank Wentworth and Lucy Wodehouse play hero and heroine in the Chronicle;' but there are several groups of subsidiary characters, each with a central interest, not always essential to the development of the story-in-chief, which often drags, and would have been more effective for pruning, or careful compression. It begins with the arrival of Mr. Morgan and his wife- a couple who have waited to be married until the bloom is off both their lives, and who experience a slight flavour of disappointment with each other in consequence. They are two fresh, new, active, clergymanly intellects, entirely open to the affairs of the town, intent upon general information and sound management; and it seems a highly doubtful business whether Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Morgan will find Carlingford big enough to hold them both. They do not, and how and why not is the pith of the whole Chronicle.'

Mrs. Oliphant drops into her shrewdest satiric vein the moment she mentions the middle-aged rector and his middle-aged wife. The grievance of the former is Mr. Wentworth's activity in a certain low district of the town which in strictness does not belong to his chapelry of St. Roque; the vexation of the latter is the drawingroom carpet of Mr. Proctor's choosing a carpet strewn with gorgeous bouquets, which only high Christian principle enables the poor lady to endure. Their characters are well studied up to a certain point; that of Mrs. Morgan is good throughout, but in

as her abductor; Sarah, the maid-of-all-work | tion in the very best Carlingford society. at his lodgings, thinks that perhaps, after With a fine stroke of her good-humoured all, Mr. Elsworthy may be right; Mrs. irony, she puts the moral of her story into Hadwin, the widow lady under whose roof the mouth of the reprobate Jack, whose he had lived ever since he came to St. airs of penitence are most assuming and Roque's, grows troubled with contemptuous delusive while they last. pity for the poor young man; but it never Occurs to her that his good sense and pride "I have had things my own way since I and superior cultivation may have been came here," said the prodigal, who no longer sufficient defence against little Rose's dim- pretended to be penitent; "somehow it appears ples and blue eyes; his Aunt Dora, who have a great luck for having my own way. It has known and loved him from boyhood, is your scrupulous people who think of others, quite coincides in Mrs. Hadwin's fears and and of such antiquated stuff as duty, and so sentiments; Dr. Majoribanks, meeting him forth, that get yourselves into difficulties. My on his way to a dying bed, prayer-book in dear aunt, I am going away; if I were to remain an inmate of this house-I mean to say, hand, remarks to his colleague, Dr. Ryder, could I look forward to the privilege of continuI confess that, after all, there are cases ing a member of this Christian family — another in which written prayers are a sort of se- day, I should know better how to conduct mycurity; Mr. Leeson, the odious curate self; but I am going back to my bad courses, who is fond of All Souls' pudding, hears Aunt Dora; I am returning to the world." the tale, swallows it greedily, and promptly "Oh! Jack, my dear, I hope not," said Aunt reports it to Mr. Morgan; Mr. Morgan Dora, who was much bewildered, and did not is only too glad to credit the worst he know what to say. "Too true," said the reeven sees the hand of Providence in it for lapsed sinner ; "and considering all the lessons the humiliation of his popular rival; the you have taught me, don't you think it is the poor folk of Wharfside, to whom he had best thing I could do? There is my brother done nothing but good, eye him askance; Frank, who has been carrying other people about on his shoulders, and doing his duty; a trio of pious old evangelical maids are ready to testify against him with personal moved in his behalf. You leave him to fight his but I don't see that you good people are at all witness; even his sweet Lucy does not stand way by himself, and confer your benefits elseby him as a true lover should; indeed, where, which is an odd sort of lesson for a worldthe only people who reject the vulgar slan-ling like me. If my convictions of sin had gone der imperatively, as it deserves, are the bad or unpleasant people of the story: Mr. Wentworth's reprobate brother Jack, his disagreeable Aunt Leonora, and Mrs. Morgan; and their behaviour on the occasion redeems all their little naughtinesses and asperities. The scandal being countenanced by so many respectable persons, becomes the common town's talk, and at

length necessitates a semi-public inquiry

into the curate's life and conversation.

just a step farther," said the pitiless critic, "if I had devoted myself to bringing others to repentance, as is the first duty of a reformed sinner, my aunt Leonora would not have hesitated to give Skelmersdale to me- "Jack, hold your tongue," said Miss Leonora ; but though her cheeks burned, her voice was not so firm as the man who had determined to have his say, usual, and she actually failed in putting down "Fact, my dear aunt," said Jack: "if I had

I tell

been a greater rascal than I am, and had gone a little farther, you and your people would have Of course, the reader, who knows all along thought me quite fit for a cure of souls. I'd that he is innocent, expects him to come have come in for your good things that way as out of the investigation triumphantly, and well as other ways; but here is Frank, whom so he does; while shame and confusion de- even I can see is a right sort of person. I don't scend like a cloud on the rector, the par- pretend to fixed theological opinions," said this ish clerk, aud the shabby scoundrel who is unlooked-for oracle, "but so far as I can see, Rosy's real deluder. Lucy's eyes brighten he's a kind of fellow most men would be glad to again on her persecuted lover, and though make a friend of when they were under a cloud he loses the family living of Skelmersdale, - not that he was ever very civil to me. because his views are not precisely the same you, so far from rewarding him for being of the as those of his ultra-evangelical Aunt Leo-true sort, you do nothing but snub him, that I can see. He looks to me as good for work as nora (one of the three partronesses), Mrs. Oliphant, who has no morbid taste for nar- any man I know; but you'll give your livings to any kind of wretched make-believe before you'll row circumstances, does not set the wed- give them to Frank. I am aware," said the heir ding-bells a-ringing until she has put her of Wentworth, with a momentary flush," that hero in the way of affording to her heroine I have never been considered much of a credit to all the comforts and enough of the luxuries the family; but if I were to announce my intenof life to make them happy in the marriage- tion of marrying and settling, there is not one state, and to enable them to keep up a posi- of the name who would not lend a hand to

smooth matters. That is the reward of wicked-
ness," said Jack, with a laugh. "As for Frank,
he is a perpetual curate, and may marry per-
haps fifty years hence; that's the way you good
people treat a man who never did anything to
be ashamed of in his life; and you expect me to
give up my evil courses after such a lesson? I
trust I am not such a fool," said the relapsed
prodigal. He sat looking at them all in his easy
way, enjoying the confusion, indignation, and
wrath with which he was received,
"The man

who gets his own way is the man who takes it,"
he concluded, with his usual composure pouring
out Miss Leonora's glass of claret as he spoke.'

partial judgment, had been moved, not by heroic and stoical justice and the love of souls, but a good deal by prejudice, and a good deal by skilful artifice, and very little indeed by the highest motive, which is called the glory of God? And it was Jack who had set all this before her clear as daylight. No wonder the excellent woman was disconcerted. She went to bed gloomily with her headache '—

And there we will leave her to salutary humiliation and repentance.

It will be seen that there is much amusing reading in the Chronicles' that we have already reviewed; but it is to 'Salem This Aunt Leonora is an admirably- Chapel' that we should accord the palm for drawn character, and with fewer traits of most laughable entertainment. When it exaggeration than Mrs. Oliphant usually first came out in the pages of Maga' it was gives to those whom she depicts as wise and a revelation to its staunch old torified pious in their own conceits. Every relig- Church and State readers, which delighted ious community has its Aunt Leonora its them infinitely. We are all apt to imagine feminine pope; and probably the sketch of that our own words and ways, being perthis lady's state of mind after her repro- fectly familiar to ourselves, must needs be bate nephew's harangue, has delighted and so to the world at large. But this is a sigcomforted thousands who have suffered un-nal mistake. Church-folk, born and bred in der such a yoke as hers. We give it as a the Church, are (or rather were) for the good specimen of Mrs. Oliphant's serio-sar- most part, as ignorant of the customs of Noncomformity at home as of the customs

castic vein.

piquant and exaggerated caricature of a social and religious state of things in the midst of us of which they were previously quite unaware. It is so cleverly done, that being published anonymously, the chapel portions of the story raised a general suspicion that the author of it was that greatest genius amongst living women, George Eliot. Mrs. Oliphant surpasses herself here, or the subject inspires her with of the tale is, as usual with her, far too a humour as rare as it is real. The tragedy long drawn out; and it is always a relief to escape from the woes of Mrs. Hilyard to the society of Mr. Vincent's chapel friends.

'Miss Leonora, who never had known what it of the Mahometans; and to the excitewas to have nerves in the entire course of her ment of reading a good story was thereexistence, retired to her own room with a head-fore added the pleasure of surveying a ache, to the consternation of the whole family. She had been a strong-minded woman all her life, and had managed everybody's affairs without being distracted and hampered in her career by those doubts of her own wisdom, and questions as to her own motives, which will now and then afflict the minds of weaker people when they have to decide for others. But this time an utterly novel and unexpected accident had befallen Miss Leonora; a man of no principles at all had delivered his opinion upon her conduct — and so far from finding his criticism contemptible, or discovering in it the ordinary outcry of the wicked against the righteous, she had found it true, and by means of it had, for perhaps the first time in her life, seen herself as others saw her. . . . She recognized the fact that she had committed herself. and that, instead of dispensing her piece of patronage like an optimist to the best, she had, in fact, given it up to the most skilful and persevering angler, as any other woman might have done. The blow was bitter; not to say that the unpleasant discovery was aggravated by having it thus pointed out by Jack, who in his own person had taken her in, and cheated his sensible aunt. She felt humbled and wounded in the tenderest point, to think that her reprobate nephew had seen through her, but that she had not been able to see through him, and had been deceived by his professions of penitence. The more she turned it over in her mind, the more Miss Leonora's head ached; for was it not growing apparent that she, who prided herself on her im

According to the latest information, Salem Chapel is still the only dissenting place of worship in Carlingford, where there are no Dissenters above the rank of the milkman or the grocer. It is a small red brick building, on the shabby side of Grove Street, presenting a pinched gable, terminated by a curious little belfry, not intended for any bell, and looking not unlike a handle to lift up the edifice by to public observation.' Its chronicle is contemporary, or nearly so, with the story of The Perpetual Curate,' and opens with the retirement of Mr. Tufton and the call' of Mr. Vincent, fresh from Homerton, in the bloom of hope and intellectualism, a young man of the newest school,' who was almost as particular as Mr.