The appearance of a novel from this distinguished writer will be an agreeable surprise to her numerous admirers in this country, who have read with so much pleasure and profit her graver historical and biographical works. Hornehurst is an English tale illustrative of the movement in the ranks of the English Church towards Catholicity, inaugurated some forty years ago by Dr. Newman and the Tractarians. The characters throughout are well drawn, the writer being of course thoroughly acquainted with the expressions, modes of thought, and arguments of the class she portrays.
The book presents a handsome appearance, and we anticipate for it an extensive patronage, and a permanent place in our Catholic libraries.
Going Home. By Eliza Martin. Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey. 1872.
We are glad to see that this novel, which has already appeared serially in a Philadelphia Catholic newspaper, has been published in a more portable and permanent form. It is a work of very considerable merit, combining amusing and exciting incidents with sound instruction; and from its latent power and partially developed dramatic strength we judge that it is not the last nor the ablest of the productions with which the authoress is likely to favor the public. We are sadly in need of books of its refined and humanizing character, for, if our young people must read fiction, they ought to be supplied with the very best attainable in temper and tendency. The plot of the tale is not complicated, the leading characters are well and clearly delineated, the moral obvious, and the scene confined to our own country, not overdrawn. As a whole, its tone is sad, sometimes even painfully so, and in our opinion the contrasts between abject poverty and unlimited affluence, virtue almost superhuman and unmitigated villany—though all drawn with great vigor—are too violent to be thoroughly artistic. A novel should be like a well-finished painting, with a middle distance softening and blending the more prominent lights and shadows of the picture. It might be objected, also, that the physical beauty of Mrs. Martin’s heroines, of whom there are three, is too highly colored, too elaborately depicted, for actual life; but as this is a fault which carries with it its own palliation, we presume it will not be considered a very great blemish by most of her readers. For the sake of the authoress, who doubtless has devoted much time and labor to her work, as well as from the respect in which we hold her publisher, we would be glad to be able to extend our praise from the literary qualities of Going Home to its mechanical execution, but in common justice we find it impossible to do so. On the contrary, it must be admitted that the paper upon which it is printed, the type, ink, and presswork, are all of the most inferior sort—carelessness or want of ordinary taste, for we cannot attribute it to design, is evident on every page, lessening in no slight degree the unalloyed pleasure one might otherwise feel in reading so interesting a story.
The Plebiscite. By Erckmann-Chatrian. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.
This prettily bound and printed book is the combined effort of the authors of the Conscript and other tales well known by English translations on this side of the water. Its object is to give, in the form of a tale, a picture of French peasant manners and opinions immediately before and during the late Franco-German war; and to a certain extent it may be considered a success. A vein of irony and sly humor, at which our “volatile neighbors” are such adepts, runs through every page, and, Napoleon III. having been unfortunate, of course it is directed against him and his line of policy. There is nothing, it is said, so successful as success, and, now that the mighty Empire has failed, every good Frenchman with brains enough to write a pamphlet or a song considers that he is perfectly justified in heaping obloquy on everything connected with the late order of things. The authors of the Plebiscite are foremost among this army of ingrates, but they go even further than politics, and venture their ridicule on more sacred matters, a step which much greater men than Erckmann-Chatrian have attempted before now, and for which they have repented when too late.