"Yeast," as its name implies, exhibits in their working the elements of that fermentation which is going on in ourselves and in society-of the doubts, difficulties, social lies, anomalies, half-truths, blunders, conflicting beliefs and stagnant unbeliefs, with which the England of this day is painfully struggling to compose, patch-up, re-create, or destroy faiths, systems, and institutions.

The seat of this seething, weltering flood is the brain, heart, and conscience of the hero of the story, called-not without intention probably-Lancelot Smith. Does Mr. Kingsley mean to typify in that name-which links the personification of mythic and manful knight-errantry with the eponym of modern, middleclass English common-place--the dim striving of our time to ennoble every-day existence, and dignify the traffic of the market, the labours of the factory, and the life of the home, by the quest of some grand, unselfish and sanctifying idea?

Lancelot Smith, a hale, well-to-do, easy-going, somewhat devil-may-care, but richly-endowed young Englishman, of three-and-twenty, after the usual rattling, desultory, though not idle three years of under-graduateship at Cambridge, finds himself, by the consequences of a "purl" on the hunting-field, an inmate of the country-house of Squire Lavington, with whose eldest daughter, Argemone, he incontinently falls in love. Argemone is a type of the graceful, sentimental, and somewhat conceited leaner to Anglo-Romanism; and the tendencies of that unscrupulous creed, so seductive to women, are brought into conflict with the neologizing speculations and honest struggling doubts of Lancelot. Argemone's hold on her fancied belief is shaken by the influence of the stronger mind, but Lancelot derives no comfort, on his part, from her creed. His conversion is brought about by intercourse, on the one hand, with a Colonel Bracebridge, who represents the perfectly accomplished man of the world, easy, candid, kindly, profligate by habit, but not utterly depraved, knowing the good and following the bad-and, on the other, with Paul Tregarva, a Cornish under-keeper, an earnest believer, with a call to help and save the benighted and brutalized population of the Wiltshire village about which the scene of the story is laid. From Bracebridge, Lancelot is brought to see the utter hollowness of mere worldly dexterity and accomplishment, and its miserable end when perverted to sinful and selfish gratification. By Tregarva, his eyes are opened to the duties that lie at every man's door, and the spirit in which the work of practical doing-good should be set about. By the failure of a banker uncle, he is flung on his own resources, and is about to enter manfully on the fight of life with such weapons as he can compass by his own striv

ing, when the entry on the scene of a mysterious stranger diverts him from near and common fields of labour, to follow this mystic guide to some region-dimly shadowed forth-in which he is promised the sight of God's kingdom upon earth-of a society, that is, in which the laws of God are seen in practical operation, that thereby his faith in that God and in the consistency and sufficiency of his laws for human needs, may be confirmed and made productive of good works. To clear Lancelot's way for this pilgrimage, Argemone has previously been carried off by a fever, caught in visiting the neglected cottages on her father's estate; while Bracebridge has committed suicide, in remorse for the murder of his base-born child by its wretched mother.

From this analysis our readers, who do not know the story, might expect something half extravagant, half dully-didactic. But they will be agreeably surprised, if, on the strength of an earnest recommendation, they go to the book itself. For such is the force of Mr. Kingsley's manly sympathy with men, the picturesqueness of his word-painting, and the creativeness of his imagination, that the ethical purpose of his tale is worked out by the agency of personages full of vitality, through a series of admirably-described incidents, with some excess of argumentative dialogue and letter-writing, it may be, but still with a continuity and strength of interest that can scarcely fail to rivet the attention.

There are few things in their way better than this opening description of a March morning meet and breaking cover :—

"The edge of a great fox-cover; a flat wilderness of low leafless oaks, fortified by a long dreary thorn-capped clay ditch, with sour red water oozing out at every yard; a broken gate leading into a strait wood-ride, ragged with dead grasses and black with fallen leaves, the centre mashed into a quagmire by innumerable horsehoofs; some forty red coats, and some four black; a sprinkling of young farmers, resplendent in gold buttons and green; a pair of sleek drab stable-keepers, showing off horses for sale; the surgeon of the union, in Macintosh and anti-gropelos; two holiday schoolboys with trousers strapped down to bursting point, like a penny steamer's safety-valve; a midshipman, the only merry one in the field, bumping about on a fretting, sweating hack, with its nose a foot above its ears; and Lancelot Smith, who then kept two good horses, and rode forward,' as a fine young fellow of three-andtwenty who can afford it, and has nothing else to do,' has a very good right to ride. The weather that day, the first day Lancelot ever saw his beloved, was truly national. A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March. The last brown oakleaf, which had stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered plump down, and then lay; as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great

dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-bewitched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs.-A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth-what with match-making in spring, and fêtes champêtres in summer, and dinner-giving in autumn -was fairly worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, under wet blankets, and the cold-water cure. . . . . Lancelot began to stalk slowly with a dozen horsemen up to the wood-ride, to a fitful accompaniment of wandering hound-music, where the choristers were as invisible as nightingales among the thick cover. And hark! just as the book was returned to his pocket, the sweet hubbub suddenly crashed out into one jubilant shriek, and then swept away fainter and fainter among the trees. The walk became a trot-the trot a canter. Then a faint melancholy shout at a distance, answered by a Stole away!' from the fields; a doleful toot' of the horn; the dull thunder of many horsehoofs rolling along the further woodside. Then red coats, flashing like sparks of fire across the grey gap of mist at the ride's-mouth; then a whipper-in, bringing up a belated hound, burst into the path-way, smashing and plunging, with shut eyes, through ash saplings and hassock grass; then a fat farmer, sedulously pounding through the mud, was overtaken and bespattered in spite of all his struggles ;-until the line streamed out into the wide rushy pasture, startling up pewits and curlews, as horsemen poured in from every side, and cunning old farmers rode off at inexplicable angles to some well-known haunts of pug; and right a-head, chiming and jangling sweet madness, the dappled pack glanced and wavered through the veil of soft grey mist. "What's the use of this hurry?' growled Lancelot.

They will

all be back again. I never have the luck to see a run.' But no; on and on- -down the wind and down the vale; and the canter became a gallop, and the gallop a long straining stride; and a hundred horsehoofs crackled like flame among the stubbles, and thundered fetlock-deep along the heavy meadows; and every fence thinned the cavalcade, till the madness began to stir all bloods, and with grim earnest silent faces, the initiated few settled themselves to their work, and with the colonel and Lancelot at their head, 'took their pleasure sadly, after the manner of their nation,' as old Froissart has it.

till the rolling grass-lands spread out into flat black open fallows, crossed with grassy baulks, and here and there a long melancholy

L

line of tall elms, while before them the high chalk ranges gleamed above the mist like a vast wall of emerald enamelled with snow, and the winding river glittering at their feet."

One of the most masterly portraitures in the book is that of old Harry Verney, the gamekeeper, introduced, according to Mr. Kingsley's wont, as an illustration of one working of our game laws, of which, as things are, we scarcely need say, that Mr. Kingsley, with all his relish for good sportsmanship, is a sworn enemy. One of the best chapters in the book is that of the encounter with the poachers, which winds up with the old keeper's death-bed :

"Wearily and slowly they stepped on towards the old man's cottage. A messenger had gone on before, and in a few minutes the squire, Mrs. Lavington, and the girls, were round the bed of their old retainer.

"They sent off right and left for the doctor and the vicar; the squire was in a frenzy of rage and grief.

Don't take on, master, don't take on,' said old Harry, as he lay; while the colonel and Honoria in vain endeavoured to stanch the wound. I knowed it would be so, sooner or later; 'tis all in the way of business. They haven't carried off a bird, squire, not a bird; we was too many for 'em-—eh, Paul? eh?’

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Where is that cursed doctor?' said the squire. colonel, save him; and I'll give you

,

Save him,

"Alas! the charge of shot at a few feet distance had entered like a bullet, tearing a great ragged hole. There was no hope, and the colonel knew it; but he said nothing.

"The second keeper,' sighed Argemone, 'who has been killed here! Oh, Mr. Smith, must this be? Is God's blessing on all this?'

"Lancelot said nothing. The old man lighted up at Argemone's

voice.

There's the beauty, there's the pride of Whitford! And sweet Miss Honor, too, so kind to nurse a poor old man! But she never would let him teach her to catch perch, would she? She was always too tender-hearted. Ah, squire, when we're dead and gone,-dead and gone, squire, they 'll be the pride of Whitford still! And they'll keep up the old place-won't you, my darlings? And the old name, too? For, you know, there must always be a Lavington in Whitford Priors, till the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy Down.'

"And a curse upon the Lavingtons,' sighed Argemone to her. self in an under-tone.

"Lancelot heard what she said.

"The vicar entered, but he was too late. The old man's strength was failing, and his mind began to wander.

"Windy,' he murmured to himself, windy, dark and windybirds won't lie-not old Harry's fault. must be home by nightfall, squire. Arter the larks, the brute!'

How black it grows! We Where's that young dog gone?

"Old Squire Lavington sobbed like a child.

You will soon be home, my man,' said the vicar.

Remember

that you have a Saviour in heaven. Cast yourself on his mercy.' "Harry shook his head.

"Very good words, very kind-very heavy game bag, though. Never get home, never any more at all. Where's my boy Tom to carry it? Send for my boy Tom. He was always a good boy till he got along with them poachers.'

*

*

*

"Listen,' he said, listen! There's bells a-ringing-ringing in my head. Come you here, Paul Tregarva.'

"He pulled Tregarva's face down to his own, and whispered,--Them's the bells a-ringing for Miss Honor's wedding.'

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"Paul started, and drew back. Harry chuckled and grinned for a moment in his old foxy, peering way, and then wandered off again. "What's that thumping and roaring?' Alas! it was the failing pulsation of his own heart. It's the weir, the weir-a-washing me away-thundering over me-Squire, I'm drowning,-drowning and choking! Oh, Lord, how deep! Now it's running quieter; now I can breathe again-swift and oily-running on, running on, down to the sea. See how the grayling sparkle! There's a pike! T'aint my fault, squire, so help me Don't swear, now, squire; old men and dying maun't swear, squire. How steady the river runs down! Lower and slower-lower and slower: now it's quite still

-still-still-'

"His voice sank away-he was dead!

He sprang

"No! once more the light flashed up in the socket. upright in the bed, and held out his withered paw with a kind of wild majesty, as he shouted,

"There ain't such a head of hares on any manor in the county. And them's the last words of Harry Verney!'

He fell back-shuddered-a rattle in his throat-another-and all was over."

Our space will not allow us to do more than refer to the incidental characters of the story; many of them are sketches, but all full of significance for our own times, representing what we may, and should, all of us, be familiar with, and able to turn to account. Such are Lancelot's weak Tractarian cousin Luke, with his resort to an infallible church for the solution of difficulties created by his own cowardice;-the Tractarian vicar, a gentleman in most things, but not above paltering with his word to win a soul for his school;-Lord Minchhampstead, the sturdy, clear-sighted, active utilitarian, the material pioneer of nobler and farther-sighted followers;-Lord Vieuxbois, the representative of courteous, cultivated, chivalrous, mystified Young England, with the most benevolent plans for conducting the poor to happiness in blinkers and leading-strings;-the banker, with his elastic conscience and morality of mammon