Here the stories perhaps should end-but there is one which is scarcely to be classed with the stories, which has the importance of a three-volume novel, for which we may still find a moment. Mrs Comyns Carr's book has neither the adventitious interest of 'Ideala,' nor the power of the 'Window in Thrums.' The story is pretty, old-fashioned, or at least belonging to a vague society which has not much in common with the everyday world-a society in which squires and farmers and small country town solicitors and errant officers in her Majesty's service live like a happy family, dancing, dining, and falling in love with each other without any awkward divisions or exclusivenesswhich would be very pleasant if all farmers' daughters were like the Miss Maliphants. But what is remarkable in the book is not so much its heroes and heroines as the beautiful background of the marsh, with all its atmospheric and other changes, in which some natural drama is always going on, and which Mrs Comyns Carr paints with great skill and effect. Mr Black has accustomed his readers to take scenery for story, and to accept a fine sunset in many cases, instead of an impressive scene, which perhaps is trying after a long experience, but now and then is very agreeable. The penalty of course is, in his case, that the seas and skies of the Western Highlands have grown painfully familiar to us, and that the red glow behind line of chimneys would be gratefully accepted as a novelty. We have not, however, been tried with a succession of marshes, and in the meantime this new landscape is beautiful, and has a great deal of novelty in it. The

young heroine is a true wanderer among the wilds, loving naturo with passion, and finding consolaticn in all her troubles from the great sweeping levels of land and sky. The old-fashioned farmhouse, the equally old-fashioned hall, of which the humbler house is the superior so far as the view goes— the wealthy vegetation intervening between the darker lines of the marsh-water and the level of the sea, which completes and fills up the great hemisphere of space, furnish a number of delightful scenes. There may be, perhaps, a little repetition in the many pictures of this landscape, but even the repetition is natural, and has something to do with the charm of that broad, vast, and level land.

"Meadows for hay, pastures for sheep, there was scarcely anything else, save here and there a blue turnipfield or a tract of sparsely sown brown land, where the wheat as yet made little show. The one little homestead to which we were bound, made a very poor effect in the vast plain: there was nothing but land and sea and sky. A great deal of land, flat monotonous land-more monotonous now in its richness and the brilliant greenness of its early summer time, than it would be later when the corn was

ripe, and the flowering grasses turning to brown: an uneventful land, relying for its impressiveness on its broad simplicity, that seemed to have no reason for ending or change: above the great stretch of earth, a great vault of blue sky flecked with white clouds out towards the horizon: bevapours and lined with long opal tween the land and the sky, a strip of blue sea binding both togethersea-blue as a sapphire against the green of the spring pasture. down here upon the level we could not see the belt of yellow shingle that, from the cliff above, one could tell divided earth and ocean: right across the white space it was one stretch of lightly varied tints, away to the ship

Far

ping and the scattered buildings at the mouth of the river."

And here is a sunset, another little charming vignette of the wide horizons and sweeping level lines of sky and sea :

"A long line of flame marked the horizon behind the hill; and upon the red sky the houses of the village, the three roofs and square tower of the church, the ivied greyness of the ancient gateway, and the solitary pines that marked the ridge here and there, all lay dark upon the brightness, their shapes defined and single. Close behind us the sea was cool and fragrant. Upon the line of the wide soft sands that shone in sunset reflections, a regal old heron had fetched his evening meal from out of the little pools that the sea had left, and unfolding his huge pinions, sailed away in a queer oblique and apparently leisurely flight to the tall trees that were his inland home."

We cannot resist the temptation to balance this picture with a pendant. The heroine has lost her way upon the marsh in a sea-fog, and after long wandering, she and the tired horse she has been riding, equally worn out, chilled and miserable, meet the somewhat vague hero driving home from market in his gig, who has also lost his way; but who lifts her into the gig, and restores comfort and the bliss of protection as incipient love has a way of doing. They drive together all through the short summer night, and find the road again only with

the dawn.

"The mist was beginning slowly, very slowly, to clear away, and the hills upon which our farm stood loomed out of it in the distance. In the marsh on either side of us the cattle began to stir like their own ghosts in the white vapour, and gazed at us across the dykes with wondering, sleepy eyes. The stars were all dead, and above the mist the quiet sky spread a panoply of steel-blue, while

out above the sea the purple streaks had turned to silver, and sent rays upward into the great dome. Hung like a curtain across the gates of some wonderful world unseen, a rosy radiance spread from the bosom of the ocean far into the downy clouds above, that so tenderly covered the naked blue-a radiance that every moment was more and more marvellously illumined by that mysterious inward fire whose even distant being could tip every hill and mountain of cloudland with a lining of molten gold. Unconsciously my gaze clung to the spot where a warmth so farspreading sprung from so dainty a border of opal colouring; and when at last the great flame was born of the sea's grey breast, I felt the tears come into my eyes; I don't know why, and a little sigh of content rose from my breast."

The subject of the story, apart from the marsh, is chiefly how an anxious sister schemed and laboured to make two beautiful young people think they were in love with each other, out of the purest and most generous motives in the world-a motif not unlike that of Miss Austen in 'Emma,' but managed, we need scarcely say, in a very differMiss Margaret, after her innocent ent way though it is hard upon but silly scheming, to have her own lover carried away by the beautiful sister whose happiness she was so anxious to secure, sister, however, in her beauty though not in that way. This and reasonableness, is charmingly drawn, and so is the mother, and the ways of the homely but reBut we refined yeoman's house. turn always with fresh interest to the marsh, which is like a gallery of drawings, full of tender tints and soft visionary distance, and animated by a true love of nature in all her moods, both gentle and

severe.

The title of Mr Hamerton's

new book1 leads us to expect one of those pleasant collections of sketches which we naturally associate with his name, in which, amid charming pictures of life and landscape in midland France, all drawn with a most favourable pen, there will be an involuntary desire to celebrate the qualities of his now neighbours a little at our expence-but all so picturesquely and with co much grace, that we should be ill-natured indeed did we express any objections.

In the present case, however, Mr Hamerton has not been so well inspired. His book is about France, and those characteristics which are so unlike our own that we find endless subjects in them for the pleasant surprise and admiration which so often distinguish the attitude of the English spectator towards our neighbour country. No doubt there are many who do not assume this attitude, but, on the contrary, one of prejudice and disgust; but yet we think a very large number of English visitors to France go there with a distinct inclination to be pleased, and concerning many things, a foregone determination to find that these things are done better in France. Mr Hamer; ton, however, does not confine himself to a delineation of the rural world which he knows so well, and in which we are quite agreed as to his competency to give an opinion. His aim is a far more serious and important one, being nothing else than a close and minute comparison between the two nations in all their peculiarities, a comparison slightly, perhaps unconsciously, to the disadvantage of his own country-folk. It requires a very steady hand indeed to keep the balance quite

even in such a comparison, and Mr Hamerton has that preference for his adopted country and friends which naturally comes from a personal choice of themalways more lively than the mere compulsory claim of birthright. In every particular of their daily existence, in habits and manners, in religion and politics, he pursues the parallel. This, it is evident, is a very different matter from sketches of life. It is not nearly so amusing, but it is a more important undertaking, and there is always an interest in seeing ourselves balanced against our neighbours, and clearing up those mists of national misunderstanding or mistake on both sides, which are oft so ludicrous and sometimes arise so simply. We are all extremely conscious of the absurdities on the French side, which are very patent and apparently incorrigible by any instruction or experience; but we are not at all so well aware of the misconceptions on our own. We are indeed disposed to believe that we know a great deal better what French society is than any French critic knows what English society is. For instance, nobody in England makes or perseveres in making those mistakes about French titles and courtesy names whick Frenchmen continually make in respect to us. Nothing like Sir Gladstone, or the quite incongruous and wild use of lord, which is habitual in France, ever occurs in England. It is true that French titles are simple, and there is not the elaborate system of noble names existing among our neighbours which mystify even the partially educated writer among ourselves, causing him perpetually to speak of Lord John and Lady Mary Smith as Lord

VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXVI.

8

Smith and Lady Smith, a solecism which is too shocking for words. We, on our side, sometimes generously add a "de" where no particule is, with no consciousness that we are thus conferring nobility. These mistakes are venial, but they are curious evidences of the unteachableness in such matters of the general mind, which goes on generation after generation, thus repeating mistakes which the very smallest amount of trouble would correct. The idea of each other which is conceived by the two most eminent and highly civilised of European nations, nearest in geographical position, most connected in history, with a close acquaintance, both in hate and in (comparative) love, which has lasted for many centuriesand on either side including a considerable number of individuals who admire with enthusiasm, study, copy, and exalt the otheris curiously deficient in exactness and reality. To be sure, even in differences of locality little affected by race, we find the curious problem of this inability to understand in full force even after the closest union. It has come to be a sort of absurd commonplace that nothing, for instance, will ever enable us, in this larger island, to understand Ireland. Nay, there remains between the English and Scotch, who are now virtually one nation, the most odd mutual failures of comprehension. But why need we go so far afield for examples, when even between the two halves of the human race, the companions who share bed and board, and every incident of life, there remains the same inconceivable failure of understanding, and men and women, after those thousands of

years, continue inscrutable to each other? This great misunderstanding apparently will al

ways subsist, and certainly it is the most incomprehensible of all.

Mr Hamerton begins his contrast of the two peoples in the schoolroom, and continues it through all the national and domestie institutions, contrasting the culture of the affections in France with their repression in England, the different views of both peoples in respect to rank, their patriotism, their differing kinds of conservatism, their religion, and, in short, everything which deeply affects national character, with a very full knowledge of what we may call from an English point of view the other side of the question; but with not so elear a perception we think of ours, which perhaps he has partially forgotten, and with which, seeing his long inhabitation of another country, he probably, to begin with, was not entirely pleased. Here, however, is something like a statement of his theory as to the mutual judgment of the two nations, which he takes as explaining all their hard thoughts of each other, and which will show at once his position and its defects :

"I cannot conclude this chapter withut frankly admitting that national jealousy is reasonable so long as it It is confines itself to the truth. quite reasonable that the French should want to push the English out of Canada and Egypt, and that the English should wish to sink the French fleet. What is unreasonable is for two peoples to depreciate each other in books and newspapers, and blacken each other's private characters because both are formidable in a military or naval sense. How is it that we hear so much of French immorality, and nothing, or next to nothing, of Italian? How is it that in France we have heard so much of English cruelty and barbarity, whilst the accounts of Turkish cruelty were received with the smile of incredulity or the shrug of indifference? Why this so tender French sympathy for

the Irish, exaggerating all their woes? Why this wonderful sympathy in England for the unauthorised religious orders in France? How does it happen that everything which seems to tell against one of the two countries is received with instant credence in the other?"

The explanation that it is patriotic jealousy which is the cause of all these misstatements and misapprehensions, is here, we think, not at all carried out by facts. That the French should wish "to push the English out of Egypt" is very comprehensible; it is an old ground of contention, and, however little we may like the perpetual rivalry, we can neither wonder at it nor find it unreasonable. As for Canada, that is unreasonable 'more because it is impossible than for any other cause; for certainly we should not at all on our side be content to leave a large section of our country-folk, obstinately tenacious of our language and ways, under French subjection if we could help it. But what Englishman wishes "to sink the French fleet" We may desire that it should remain inferior to our own, or rather—what is at once a better and a more veracious way of stating the fact that our own should be manifestly and indisputably superior to it, which is the most reasonable thing in the world; but to sink the French fleet, unless, indeed, we were engaged in deadly warfare, and its destruction or our own was the only alternative, is what nobody could for a moment either desire or think of, and would be a most serious injury to the world in general: and to place such a fantastic imaginary wish against the other two facts, both of them quite comprehensible, is a proof at once of the failure of Mr Hamerton's argument, and a singular absence

of material on our side for establishing the wished-for balance. As for the question why we should accuse the French of immorality and not the Italians, nothing can be more easy to answer. French books, and especially French works of fiction purporting to give a picture of French life and morals, are very much read in England. Italian books are not so. In themselves the latter are much less numerous and less attainable, so that we have not the material on which to form our judgment. And that the French should dwell much more on what they think English cruelty than on the cruelty of the Turks, is likewise the most comprehensible thing in the world. If we are cruel, we are much more guilty than the Turks. The Turks are unprogressive: they have not the same tenets as we have; their conscience is unaffected, by the laws which dominate Western systems. There are persons, indeed, who maintain that the Mohammedan civilisation is a more effective Christianity than our own; but these enlightened individuals have not yet succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that it is so, and we are all, French and English alike, united in believing that what is expected from the peoples in the front of civilisation is not to be expected from the Oriental. It seems hardly worth while to insist on facts so apparent.

Mr Hamerton, however, is very strong in his reiterated protest against our general disposition to take French fiction as a just illustration of French morality and manners. He uses the somewhat extravagant argument that the English old maid reads all about the murders of the day, yet never murders anybody, as an excellent reason against accusing the French