As for Gilbert, through all the joy of winning Martha, and the sickening disappointment of losing his money, the shame and anguish of the mystery that hangs over his origin oppress him; and, having once experienced the horror of suspecting that Martha's father might also be his, he suffers hardly less torture when the highwayman, on the day of his conviction, sends to ask an interview with him. But Sandy Flash merely wishes to ease his conscience by revealing the burial-place of Gilbert's money; and when the young man, urged to the demand by an irresistible anxiety, implores, "You are not my father?" the good highwayman, in great and honest amazement, declares that he certainly is not. The mystery remains, and it is not until the death of the old man Barton that it is solved. Then it is dissipated, when Gilbert's mother, in presence of kindred and neighbors, assembled at the funeral, claims Alfred Barton as her husband; and after this nothing remains but the distribution of justice, and the explanation that, long ago, before Gilbert's birth, his parents had been secretly married. Alfred Barton, however, had sworn his wife not to reveal the marriage before his father's death, at that time daily expected, and had cruelly held her to her vow after the birth of their son, and through all the succeeding years of agony and contumely,—loving her and her boy in his weak, selfish, cowardly way, but dreading too deeply his father's anger ever to do them justice. The reader entirely sympathizes with Gilbert's shame in such a father, and his half-regret that it had not been a brave, bad man like Sandy Flash instead. Barton's punishment is finely worked out. The fact of the marriage had been brought to the old man's knowledge before his death, and he had so changed his will as to leave the money intended for his son to his son's deeply wronged wife; and, after the public assertion of their rights at the funeral, Gilbert and his mother coldly withdraw from the wretched man, and leave him, humiliated before the world he dreaded, to seek the late reconciliation which is not accomplished in this book. It is impossible to feel pity for his sufferings; but one cannot repress the hope that Mary and her son will complete the beauty of their own characters by forgiving him at last.
It seems to us that this scene of Mary Potter's triumph at the funeral is the most effective in the whole book. Considering her character and history, it is natural that she should seek to make her justification as signal and public as possible. The long and pitiless years of shame following the error of her youthful love and ambition, during which the sin of attempting to found her happiness on a deceit was so heavily punished, have disciplined her to the perfect acting of her part, and all her past is elevated and dignified by the calm power with which she rights herself. She is the chief person of the drama, which is so pure and simple as not to approach melodrama; and the other characters are merely passive agents; while the reader, to whom the facts are known, cannot help sharing their sense of mystery and surprise. We confess to a deeper respect for Mr. Taylor's power than we have felt before, when we observe with what masterly skill he contrives by a single incident to give sudden and important development to a character, which, however insignificant it had previously seemed, we must finally allow to have been perfectly prepared for such an effect.
The hero of the book, we find a good deal like other heroes,—a little more natural than most, perhaps, but still portentously noble and perfect. He does not interest us much; but we greatly admire the heroine, Martha Deane, whom he loves and marries. In the study of her character and that of her father, Mr. Taylor is perfectly at home, and extremely felicitous. There is no one else who treats Quaker life so well as the author of the beautiful story of "Friend Eli's Daughter"; and in the opposite characters of Doctor Deane and Martha we have the best portraiture of the contrasts which Quakerism produces in human nature. In the sweet and unselfish spirit of Martha, the theories of individual action under special inspiration have created self-reliance, and calm, fearless humility, sustaining her in her struggle against the will of her father, and even against the sect to whose teachings she owes them. Dr. Deane had made a marriage of which the Society disapproved, but after his wife's death he had professed contrition for his youthful error, and had been again taken into the quiet brotherhood. Martha, however, had always refused to unite with the Society, and had thereby been "a great cross" to her father,—a man by no means broken under his affliction, but a hard-headed, self-satisfied, smooth, narrow egotist. Mr. Taylor contrives to present his person as clearly as his character, and we smell hypocrisy in the sweet scent of marjoram that hangs about him, see selfishness in his heavy face and craft in the quiet gloss of his drab broadcloth, and hear obstinacy in his studied step. He is the most odious character in the book, what is bad in him being separated by such fine differences from what is very good in others. We have even more regard for Alfred Barton, who, though a coward, has heart enough to be truly ashamed at last, while Dr. Deane retains a mean self-respect after the folly and the wickedness of his purposes are shown to him.
His daughter, for all her firmness in resisting her father's commands to marry Barton, and to dismiss Gilbert, is true woman, and submissive to her lover. The wooing of these, and of the other lovers, Mark Deane and Sally Fairthorn, is described with pleasant touches of contrast, and a strict fidelity to place and character. Indeed, nothing can be better than the faithful spirit in which Mr. Taylor seems to have adhered to all the facts of the life he portrays. There is such shyness among American novelists (if we may so classify the writers of our meagre fiction) in regard to dates, names, and localities, that we are glad to have a book in which there is great courage in this respect. Honesty of this kind is vastly more acceptable to us than the aerial romance which cannot alight in any place known to the gazetteer; though we must confess that we attach infinitely less importance than the author does to the fact that Miss Betsy Lavender, Deb. Smith, Sandy Flash, and the two Fairthorn boys are drawn from the characters of persons who once actually lived. Indeed, we could dispense very well with the low comedy of Sally's brothers, and, in spite of Miss Betsy Lavender's foundation in fact, we could consent to lose her much sooner than any other leading character of the book: she seems to us made-up and mechanical. On the contrary, we find Sally Fairthorn, with her rustic beauty and fresh-heartedness, her impulses and blunders, altogether delightful. She is a part of the thoroughly country flavor of the book,—the rides through the woods, the huskings, the raising of the barn,—(how admirably and poetically all that scene of the barn-raising is depicted!)—just as Martha somehow belongs to the loveliness and goodness of nature,—the blossom and the harvest which appear and reappear in the story.
We must applaud the delicacy and propriety of the descriptive parts of Mr. Taylor's work: they are rare and brief, and they are inseparable from the human interest of the narrative with which they are interwoven. The style of the whole fiction is clear and simple, and, in the more dramatic scenes,—like that of old Barton's funeral,—rises effortlessly into very great strength. The plot, too, is well managed; the incidents naturally succeed each other; and, while some portion of the end may be foreseen, it must be allowed that the author skilfully conceals the secret of Gilbert's parentage, while preparing at the right moment to break it effectively to the reader.
The South since the War: as shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel and Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas. By Sidney Andrews. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
The simple and clear exhibition of things heard and seen in the South seems to have been the object of Mr. Andrews's interesting tour, and he holds the mirror up to Reconstruction with a noble and self-denying fidelity. It would have been much easier to give us studied theories and speculations instead of the facts we needed, and we are by no means inclined to let the crudity of parts of the present book abate from our admiration of its honesty and straightforwardness.
A great share of the volume is devoted to sketches of scenes and debates in the Conventions held last autumn in North and South Carolina and Georgia, for the reconstruction of the State governments; and Mr. Andrews's readers are made acquainted, as pleasantly as may be, with the opinions and appearance of the leaders in these bodies. But the value of this part of his book is necessarily transitory; and we have been much more interested in the chapters which recount the author's experiences of travel and sojourn, and describe the popular character and civilization of the South as affected by the event of the war. It must be confessed, however, that the picture is not one from which we can take great courage for the present. The leading men in the region through which Mr. Andrews passed seem to have an adequate conception of the fact that the South can only rise again through tranquillity, education, and justice; and some few of these men have the daring to declare that regeneration must come through her abandonment of all the social theories and prejudices that distinguished her as a section before the war. But in a great degree the beaten bully is a bully still. There is the old lounging, the old tipsiness, the old swagger, the old violence. Mr. Andrews has to fly from a mob, as in the merry days of 1859, because he persuades an old negro to go home and not stay and be stabbed by a gentleman of one of the first families. Drunken life-long idlers hiccup an eloquent despair over the freedmen's worthlessness; bitter young ladies and high-toned gentlemen insult Northerners when opportunity offers; and, while there is a general disposition to accept the fortune of war, there is a belief, equally general, among our unconstructed brethren, that better people were never worse off. The conditions outside of the great towns are not such as to attract Northern immigration, in which the chief hope of the South lies; and there is but slight wish on the part of the dominant classes to improve the industry of the country by doing justice to the liberated slaves. The military, under the Freedmen's Bureau, does something to enforce contracts and punish outrage; but it is often lamentably inadequate, and is sometimes controlled by men who have the baseness to side against the weak.
Of the three States through which Mr. Andrews travelled, South Carolina seems to be in the most hopeful mood for regeneration; but it is probable that the natural advantages of Georgia will attract a larger share of foreign capital and industry, and place it first in the line of redemption, though the temper of its people is less intelligent and frank than that of the South-Carolinians. In North Carolina the difficulty seems to be with the prevailing ignorance and poverty of the lower classes, and the lukewarm virtue of people who were also lukewarm in wickedness, and whose present loyalty is dull and cold, like their late treason.
Social Life of the Chinese: with some Account of their Religious, Governmental, Educational, and Business Customs and Opinions, etc. By Rev. Justus Doolittle, Fourteen Years Member of the Fuhchan Mission of the American Board. With over One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. In Two Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers.