A secluded life and narrow range of observation mainly account for what of morbidness and lack of geniality marks these works. Charlotte's private correspondence, when printed precisely as written and not clipped or garbled, shows distinctly a sunny side, and justifies the conclusion that the early life of the sisters was "unquestionably peaceful, happy and wholesome." That this should be the fact adds to our enjoyment of the novels. Our confidence in, and consequent admiration of, a powerful picture are the more assured by our knowledge that the touch under which it grew was not cramped or warped by suffering. Had Charlotte Brontë's literary life been prolonged under the new conditions opened to her by her sudden fame, we have small reason to suppose that she would have created a more telling character than Rochester, though she would not have exhausted her powers in the microscopic delineation of commonplace people which constitutes the province of her most popular female successor. She would have portrayed stronger subjects in a more vigorous and incisive style. Some critical remarks in her few letters from London are strikingly direct and acute. Thackeray, Mrs. Browning, Turner and Macready come in for a few lines each which hit them to the life. She possessed the critical temperament and faculty. The metropolitan field suited to its best exercise she was, alas! destined never to enter.
Kismet. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.
As long as there are readers who care for a novel packed from cover to cover with interesting scenes of a promising flirtation that ripens into enthusiastic love-making by which three persons are in turn made miserable, so long such books as Kismet will be liked. The scene of the story is the Nile, the characters are for the most part voyagers on that river, and descriptions of the wonders that line its shores make an imposing background to the lightness of the incidents. This setting of the story makes the book really impressive: the scenery is brought before the reader not in the way a topographical map is constructed, but by dexterous touches which show that the anonymous author can rise above recording the vicissitudes of a more or less conventional courtship. But a good many writers have ship-wrecked just at that which seems so easy and is really so hard. All the good scenery in the world will not make a dull novel entertaining; but when, as is the case here, the story is interesting, the reader can only be grateful for everything thrown in over measure. This story is clever, because it describes so well the way in which a young woman who at the beginning of the tale is engaged to a young painter, George Ferris, whom she does not really love, learns a good deal about that passion when she meets the more fascinating Arthur Livingston on the Nile, and travels for a long time in his company. This Livingston, too, is not the conventional hero whose success wins the envious hatred of every man that reads its history: on the contrary, he is a well-drawn, probable character, who is well informed without being priggish, and whose sentimentality does not too thickly overlie his more active qualities. He seems like what he is—a rich young American who prefers Europe to this country, and who is not spoiled by living abroad. The whole relation in which he stands to the heroine, Bell Hamlyn—or Miss Hamlyn, as she is generally called, while her step-mother is almost always known as Flossy—is entertainingly and naturally told. To be sure, the veteran reader of novels will have a sense of having come across some of the incidents several times before, but what will seem much less familiar are the humor and the amusing satire with which the foibles of travellers are made fun of. The collarless American, the artless young Englishman, the light-minded flirt of the same country, and the more solemn British tourist, are shown up with great cleverness; and the talk of all the people is natural and amusing, although at times the solemn parts are not so well done as the lighter and more frivolous bits of the conversation. The book abounds with hits at social faults of one kind and another, and shows a perception of the ridiculous which promises well for the future success of the writer. It is not a great book, but it is a clever one, which belongs in the same category with The Initials; and every one has had, has, or will have a period of his or her life in which no more is asked than is to be found in that famous story. In both books the characters have a great resemblance to human beings as seen by a bright, observant, humorous person whose experience has not been wasted. It is not everybody who has afterward been famous that has made so good a beginning as the author of Kismet.
Books Received.
Narrative of the North Pole Expedition: U. S. Ship Polaris. Edited, under the direction of the Hon. G. M. Robeson, by Rear-Admiral C. H. Davis, U. S. N., U. S. Naval Observatory. Washington: Government Printing-Office.
Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. By his Nephew, George Otto Trevelyan, M. P. (Leipsic edition.) Vols. I. and II. Leipsic: Lemmermann & Co. From R. Worthington, New York.
Fruit and Bread: A Scientific Diet. By Gustav Schlickeysen. Translated from the German by M. L. Holbrook, M. D. New York: M. L. Holbrook & Co.
A Woman-Hater. By Charles Reade. (Harpers' Household and Popular Editions.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
Unclaimed: A Story of English Life. By an Englishwoman. (Loring's Tales of the Day.) Boston: Loring.