The graceful yet powerful pen that gave us such sketches as A Salon in Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, and others equally good, has not mistaken its powers—indeed, has not, we are convinced, yet tried them to the full of their bent—in the present more finished and more ambitious work. There is little or nothing in Are You My Wife? to betray the hand of an unpractised novelist. Only here and there occurs a fulsomeness of detail on minor matters that were better condensed. In one or two places, though very rarely, the conversation flags. Conversation is, as a rule, slow enough in society itself; in a book, when slow at all, it becomes intolerable. These are the only blemishes we find in an unusually interesting book. Sir Simon Harness, Ponce Anwyll, Miss Merrywig, Miss Bulpit, Angélique, and Raymond are characters with whom we regret to part, as also Franceline and Clide, were they not so well provided for. Humor, wit, and imagination are plentiful throughout the book, while the pictures of natural scenery are often unsurpassed. Here, for instance, is a picture of still life that the best of pencils or pens might be proud to own:
“On emerging from the damp darkness after an hour with Miss Merrywig, Franceline found that the sun had climbed up to the zenith, and was pouring down a sultry glow that made the earth smoke again. There was a stile at the end of the wood, and she sat down to rest herself under the thick shade of a sycamore. The stillness of the noon was on everything. A few lively linnets
tried to sing; but, the effort being prompted solely by duty, after a while they gave it up, and withdrew to the coolest nooks, and enjoyed their siesta like the lazy ones. Nobody stirred, except the insects that were chirping in the grass, and some bees that sailed from flower to flower, buzzing and doing field-labor when everybody else was asleep or idle. To the right the fields were brimful of ripening grain of every shade of gold; the deep-orange corn was overflowing into the pale amber of the rye, and the bearded barley was washing the hedge that walled it off from the lemon-colored wheat. To the left the rich grass lands were dotted with flocks and herds. In the nearest meadow some cattle were herding. It was too hot to eat, so they stood surveying the fulness of the earth with mild, bovine gaze. They might have been sphinxes, they were so still; not a muscle in their sleek bodies moved, except that a tail lashed out against the flies now and then. Some were in the open field, holding up their white horns to the sunlight; others were grouped in twos and threes under a shady tree; but the noontide hush was on them all. Presently a number of horses came trooping leisurely up to the pond near the stile; the mild-eyed kine moved their slow heads after the procession, and then, one by one, trooped on with it. The noise of the hoofs plashing into the water, and the loud lapping of the thirsty tongues, were like a drink to the hot silence. Franceline watched them lifting their wet mouths, all dripping, from the pool, and felt as if she had been drinking too. There was a long, solemn pause, and then a sound like the blast of an organ rose up from the pond, swelling and sweeping over the fields; before it died away a calf in a distant paddock answered it.”
The Life of Rev. Mother St. Joseph, Foundress of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Bordeaux. By l’Abbé P. F. Lebeurier. Translated from the French. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1876.
When, in the early part of the seventeenth century, St. Francis de Sales founded the Order of the Visitation, he placed the corporal works of mercy, such as visiting the sick and relieving the poor, among the duties of its members, but he was afterwards induced to modify
the original plan by making enclosure a part of the constitution of the order. There was a demand, however, for communities of women devoted to the relief of human misery; and among the many congregations of this kind which were founded during the life or shortly after the death of St. Francis that of the Sisters of St. Joseph holds an important rank. This order came into existence under the fostering care of Father Medaille, a priest of the Company of Jesus, in the year 1650, in the diocese of Puy, and was soon established in many other parts of France. After an existence of a hundred and forty years, it was broken up and the sisters dispersed by the French Revolution; but upon the conclusion of the Concordat between Napoleon and Pius VII. the religious who still survived reassembled and opened a house in Lyons, in 1807, under the protection of Cardinal Fesch.
One of the most exemplary and useful members of the order since its restoration, Mother St. Joseph—in the world, Jane Chanay—is made known to us in the biography whose title we have given. There are few lives of which a judicious and faithful account would not be useful, and no kind of writing is more attractive to most readers than biography. It is seldom, however, that we meet with a religious biography with which we are altogether pleased, and this now before us is not at all to our taste. There is certainly no reason why the life of a nun should not be as full of interest as that of a woman engaged in the frivolities and vanities of the world, and we cannot but think it is the fault of the author that Mother St. Joseph’s has not been made both instructive and entertaining. The narrative is slow and interrupted, the style heavy, and the facts often trivial without being either amusing or edifying. We have the authority of Cardinal Donnet for the assertion that the book is commendable for the beauty of its diction; but this is certainly not true of the English translation, which is often neither correct nor elegant. Take, for instance, the following examples: “Other saints … are restored to their Creator with not a maze to dim their lustrous brightness” (p. 22). “When once the fire of jealousy is kindled in the soul, nothing can satiate its ravages” (p. 26).
We close with the following sentence, which we commend to the attention of
grammar-schools: “This good father having, in the course of his missions, met with several widows and pious young women who were desirous to retire from the world and devote themselves to the service of the salvation of their neighbor, but were deterred for want of means to enter convents, he formed the intention to propose to some bishop the establishment of a congregation into which those devoted women could enter and devote themselves to labor for their salvation, and fulfil all the good works of which they were capable in the service of their neighbor” (p. 66).
Principia or Basis of Social Science. By R. J. Wright. Second Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1876.