AGNES WARING.*

THE first merit in a novel is to be natural. Whatever the fiction may be, unless it resembles truth, it belies its name, and becomes only falsehood. We do not go so far as to say that if a novel be natural, it must be good; but we certainly hold that it cannot be good unless it is so.

Agnes Waring possesses this quality that of truthfulness-in a high degree. It is a simple, unadorned, yet forcible portraiture of real life. No great events are pressed into the service of the novelist--no historic celebrities lend an adventitious dignity to the page. Private life-the middle class-ordinary events-of such materials is the web woven. Whatever interest it possesses, it owes to its life-like fidelity of delineation, and the hearty sincerity with which it is evidently thought out and put together.

There are difficulties, it must at the same time be borne in mind, with which a writer who discards the assistance of the usual accessories has to contend, which more commonplace followers of routine escape. In proportion as the palette is denuded of positive colour, must the tints and shadings, in order to produce the required effect, be at the same time bolder and more delicate. The relinquishment of historic scenery, of costume, of events, is far from being a relief-it only throws the author more closely upon the human heart and human character, in the display of which there is no conventional method, but the pictures must be drawn-let us rather say, the images must be carved-after the one original existing, or sublimed, in the brain of the inventor. It is therefore a mistake in both author and reader to rate fictions of this sort too low. When we hear excuses made for the absence of incident, or the want of celebrated names, we are apt, for our part, to conclude that the writer is

either very accomplished, or very presumptuous and look to the performance to justify ourselves in one or other of these opinions expecting that the work must be either of a very superior class, or else an ambitious failure.

Having accorded to a novel thus circumscribed and thus aspiring the merit of being natural, we have said a great deal. There is room for much minor criticism, without unfavourably qualifying praise so cordial and decisive as this. And this emboldens us to speak freely wherever we shall find occasion to object.

Agnes Waring is the second novel from the pen of a lady who has already done something to merit public favour in a tale called Kate Vernon, which appeared a year or two ago. In this new essay, she has chosen a difficult position for her heroine one in which it is utterly impossible, from the nature of the case, that we can be completely at our ease or on good terms with her; and hence, in order to satisfy a self-imposed scruple, and dissatisfy the reader, a sad and unnecessary catastrophe is made to darken the last scene, and send us empty awayempty of that sort of content, whether in joy or in sorrow, which might be expected to flow from a full vindication of moral justice. The story, in a few words, is this:Agnes Waring, a young and lovely girl, having been forced by the stress of circumstances to marry a coarse-minded, cruel man whom she did not love, finds her life so miserable in a short time, that she is driven to the desperate expedient of feigning to commit suicide, with a view to escaping from a society and a position which had become intolerable to her. Travelling in Switzerland, she arranges a plan with an old guide, hides in the crevasse of a glacier, and as soon as her party are tired of looking for her, creeps out, and conceals herself in the old man's hut. There she remains till the first

excitement is over; and then, returning to London, she offers herself in the capacity of governess to a family on the point of quitting England for Quebec. Matters are arranged-and she appears, a lovely, pensive, accomplished, fascinating, mysterious stranger, on the horizon of Canada.

It is here and in this position that the great trial of her life awaits her. Reginald Leigh, an officer, gifted with those dark attractions which to females of a soft sensibility of character are so irresistible, had touched upon the verge of her heart before she had sold her hand for gold. He had disappeared, again to start up in her presence, and invade her Canadian incognito. Years had passed. She is much changed. She makes the sudden resolve of ignoring her own identity of denying that she, as Mrs. Malcolm, is the Agnes Waring he had once met. She succeeds-and this is improbable-in mystifying him. He had been touched to the heart by Agnes Waring. He knew that she had married, and heard that she had committed suicide. Mrs. Malcolm confirms him in this idea; but although she thus checks the renewal of an old suit, she is unable to prevent him from urging a new one; and she finds herself in that perplexing predicament, in which, for the sake of herself on the one hand and her secret on the other, she dares not either respond to the advances of her lover, or peremptorily reject them. The position may be dramatic, but it appears to us, we repeat, too painfully ambiguous for the purposes of the novelist.

Nevertheless, it is here that the author's powers both of thinking and writing most fully develop themselves. In the struggles of both parties; the one to feel a repulsive part as well as act it-the other to forgive and forbear without knowing why; beautiful ideas and noble expressions are occasionally struck forth, which lead us to hazard the anticipa tion that under more careful culture, and with a maturer judgment, she who has thus soared for a moment might wing her way at a permanent height, and maintain her "pride of place" where not many of her sex might aspire to keep at her side.

We have scarcely room for extracts. In the following massage,

Colonel Leigh has just saved the life of a child during a fire, at the risk of his own; and the feelings of Agnes at the sense of his danger and heroism have induced her to betray-or all but betray--the state of her heart to him. She rushes home, and regains her apartment.

I was indeed thankful to be once more in the privacy of my chamber. I unfastened my shutters, and gazed out on the reflection of the fire reddening the heavens above, and glowing on the pure white of the world

beneath.

That fire had betrayed me. I felt that Colonel Leigh had read my emotion aright; that it touched an answering chord in his heart at the moment I could not doubt; and thus would the task before me be more difficult-more painful.

Yet I could not regret the scene which had just occurred. Oh! how my heart thrilled with rapturous pride in the man I loved; the tears on my cheek were dried by the glow of ecstasy as I felt he was not indifferent to me. Again-much as I dreaded hearing the words of love, which I felt he would address to me, would not his silence, after such a display as mine, be worse? Would it not be the most contemptuous slight? Alone with God and night, I shrunk down crouching on the ground in shame, at the degradation of having betrayed my own feelings unsought. What would he think of me?

Yes! the woman who loves is a slave. She ceases to see, to hear, to judge for herself; and if she be possessed of intelligence and pride, the struggle between reason and the marvellous self-abnegation to him who has mastered her spirit, is painful, and never altogether without humiliation; yet oh, what pride to be his slave!

That I should not love Reginald Leigh was impossible. But had I been surrounded by home influences, the fence of position, and the support of friends, I would not so readily have yielded my heart; I might then have waited the assurance of his affection before I unlocked the flood-gates of my own. As I had met him, cut off as by death and resurrection, in a new world, from all I had ever been and known, perfectly a stranger, without one to share my secret, and separated as I imagined from every creature once familiar to me, when he came like a beam of the past's best brightness; inseparably associated with the happiest portion of my life, with those I most loved, with my own better self; the one link known to myself alone, that preserved me from utter isolation, my heart had sprung to him as to the nearest approach to home it had known for years.

And then, his remembrance of myself. No! I should be more than mortal had I not loved him.

They were urged to part by a true friend, who loved them both. But it was suggested that they might correspond. This, after a trial, was given up. In her own forcible words, "there was no use in spanning the great gulf which separated us with threads. I begged him not to write again." And so she performed her allotted part, and lent herself to society, as a bunch of artificial flowers is borrowed to beautify a feast, without giving the perfume of life to what it adorns. The effort by and by produced its own reward. The effect of routine on the mind suggests a striking image.

How had he died? Had his spirit passed to its final doom, still choked and overgrown with the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches;' or was there any to speak truth to him of eternal realities-to point to Heaven and fill the place I had deserted?

Never had I felt thoroughly penitent till now; but now I would have given muchall-no, not all-nearly all I hoped, to have closed his eyes.

Oh! what terrible force is there in the silent rebuke of death. Who does not feel the impotence, the blasphemy, of revenge, when the great Universal Creditor claims his

just due, and calmly gathers the object of

your hatred to His harvest, far away out of your reach, there to be tried by different rules from those by which you would condemn him; while a thousand temptations you could not appreciate, a thousand palliating ignorances and good deeds your narrow, blinded, vision could not see, are mercifully cast into the scale, wherein you, too, ere the dark fire of hatred has well died out in your heart, will be weighed and found wanting.

Long and deeply I thought over the unex

pected tidings: earnestly and fervently I prayed for mercy and forgiveness, striving diligently to keep out the ray of rapturous delight that, spite of regret and penitence, was flooding my heart with golden light.

Yes! happiness is more difficult to bear

than sorrow.

Yet it was borne at last. There was much to forget; but, as the lovers now met and conversed, much -all- -was forgotten.

Long hours glided by and still we talked. I told him my whole history. I dared to rest my aching head against his shoulder; and feel utterly, completely at peace.

No more loneliness or solitude of heart for ine.

Never, oh! never can I recall those hours, without a grateful memory of the exquisite care with which he forbore to speak too much of joy, until he had won me from my self accusations.

And nothing now remained but the usual denouement. Two poor hearts had been racked for years, had been tried, tempted, tortured,and had come unscathed through the ordeal. They might have been suffered to be happy. But, perhaps, the crime of having deserted one husband under any circumstances, and having listened, though but to repel them, to the vows of him who might become a second, is inexpiable in the moral code of the novelist. Certain it is, that, on the eve of a happy marriage, the body of her faithful and chivalrous lover is borne lifeless to her feet, and she is left, as her one consolation, to exclaim with Thekla, "I have loved deeply, purely, fondly, --and I have known the highest happiness that earth can give !"

Hurriedly written, and carelessly printed, this novel is one which must take its place in the class we have pointed to-cmbodying and embalming as it does, an interesting and affecting story.

THE YOUNG LORD.* PARENTS are not always the best judges respecting their own children; and novelists certainly are not so with regard to the creations of their imaginations. Milton thought " Paradise

1856.