nate, or describe, or even talk; and though it may save trouble, it is a sacrifice of her own powers she makes when she thus borrows from another. If we could hope that it was Mr Reade who had done it, the matter would be very much less important; for Mr Reade has many gifts, and can play upon his audience as on an instrument, and move us to tears or laughter as is permitted to very few. Miss Braddon cannot do this; but if she can fill up the circulating library, and be translated into French, and retranslated into American, she certainly does owe her clientelle the exercise of her one faculty. Such privileges have duties attached to them; and a prophet in whom the public thus believes should at least give of her own to that believing public. She never invented any circumstance so extraordinary as this public faith and loyal adherence which she seems to have

won.

Miss Braddon is the leader of her school, and to her the first honours ought naturally to be given, but her disciples are many. One of the latest of these disciples is the authoress of 'Cometh up as a Flower,' a novel which has recently won that amount of public approval which is conveyed by praise in the leading papers and a second edition. This book is not a stupid book. There is a certain amount of interest and some character in it. The young lover is, in his way, a real man-not very brilliant certainly, nor with any pretence of intellectuality, but as far removed as possible from the womanish individual so often presented to us ticketed as a man in ladies' novels; and so is the middleaged husband. The wonderful thing in it is the portrait of the modern young woman as presented from her own point of view. The last wave but one of female novelists was very feminine. Their stories were all family stories, their troubles domestic, their women

womanly to the last degree, and their men not much less so. The present influx of young life has changed all that. It has reinstated the injured creature Man in something like his natural character, but unfortunately it has gone to extremes, and moulded its women on the model of men, just as the former school moulded its men on the model of women. The heroine of 'Cometh up as a Flower' is a good case in point. She is not by any means so disagreeable, so vulgar, or so mannish, as at the first beginning she makes herself out to be. Her flippancy, to start with, revolts the reader, and inclines him to pitch the volume to as great a distance from him as is practicable; but if he has patience a little, the girl is not so bad. She is a motherless girl, brought up in the very worst way, and formed on the most wretched model, but yet there is a touch of nature in the headstrong creature. And this of itself is a curious peculiarity in fiction generally. Ill-brought-up motherless girls, left to grow anyhow, out of all feminine guardianship, have become the ideal of the novelist. There is this advantage in them, that benevolent female readers have the resource of saying "Remember she had no mother," when the heroine falls into any unusual lapse from feminine traditions; but it is odd, to say the least of it, that this phase of youthful life should commend itself so universally to the female novelist. Here is a specimen of what the young woman of the period considers sprightly, prepossessing, and lifelike. It is the introduction of the young heroine to the reader :

"I gambolled up to him in a birdlike manner. Well,' said I, cheerfully, I suppose the tea is quite cold, and you're quite cross, and I'm to have a stooped and kissed the whitened hairs. real good scolding, aren't I?' Then I

"Eh, what?' said he, thus suddenly called back from his joyless reverie to the contemplation of a young round face

that was dear to him, and vainly endeavouring to extricate himself from the meshes of a redundant crop of curly hair which was being flourished in its redness before his face. 'Indeed, Nell, I'd forgotten your very existence that minute.'

"What could have chased so pleas ing an image from your mind's eye?' said I, laughing.

"What always chases every pleasing image,' he answered, gloomily.

"Bills, I suppose,' returned I, discontentedly. Bills, bills, bills!—that's the song in this house from morning to night. Is there any word of one syllable in the English language that conveys so many revolting ideas?'

666

None, except hell,' said my father, bitterly, and I sometimes think they're

synonymous.'

'Dad,' said I, 'take my advice, and try a new plan; don't worry about them any more-take no notice of them at all. We've got the air and the sunshine, and one another left-we ought to be happy; and if the worst comes to the worst, we can but go to jail, where we shall be nicely dressed, well fed, and have our hair cut, all for nothing.'

A little after, this charming young lady goes to a party, where she makes great progress in the acquaintance and affections of a yellow-haired young dragoon, who is the jeune premier of the tale. But as her opinions upon general subjects are more to the point than her particular love-story, we quote from a conversation which takes place next day between herself and her father. First of all, it has taken a somewhat lugubrious tone :

"Do let us talk of something else,' cried I, peevishly; I hate such mop. ing sort of subjects.'

66 6

'By all means-something gay and festive-the party last night, for instance,' says the author of my being, ironically.

"It was not so bad as I expected,' returned I, brightening up, and eradicating the moisture from my eyes with iny knuckles.

"How did you get on with all those fine ladies?' inquired my father, kindly.

“Middling," said I; ‘I did not care much about them. I liked the men better. If I went into society, I should like to go to parties where there are no women, only men.'

"That is a sentiment that I think I should keep for home use, my dear, if I were you.'

Should you? Well, perhaps so; but women are so prying and censorious. All the time you are talking to them you feel sure that they are criticising the sit of your tucker, and calculating how much a-yard your dress cost. Now, if you're only pretty and pleasant-indeed, even if you're not either (I mentally classed myself under this latter head)— men are good-natured, and take you as they find you, and make the best of you.'

66

My father did not dispute my po

sition."

These are sentiments which

everybody is aware a great many vulgar clever women think it clever and striking to enunciate. The misery of such unhappy ones as throw themselves out of the society of their own sex, their pitiful strivings after the recognition of any stray strong-minded woman who will look over their imperfections, should be sufficient answer to it in any serious point of view. But there is a great deal that is unlovely which is not immoral, and false to every human and natural sentiment without being positively wicked. This is one of the popular bits of falsehood by which lively-minded

young women are often taken in

and led to misrepresent themselves. And it is another curious feature in second-rate women's books. As a general rule, all the women in these productions, except the one charming heroine, are mean and envious creatures, pulling the exceptional beauty to pieces. Shall we say that the women who write ought to know? But the fact is, that a write live very contentedly in the great many of the women who society of other women, see little else, find their audience and highest appreciation among them, and are surrounded and backed up and applauded by their own sex in a way which men would be very slow to emulate.

The pretence is one which only a vulgar mind could make. The man who scorns, or pretends to scorn, women's society,

is generally a fool; what should the woman be? But it is one of those popular falsehoods which hosts of people repeat without in the least meaning it. It seems to imply a certain elevation above her neighbours of the speaker; although the very same woman, if brought to the test, would shrink and recoil and be confounded if her silly and false aspirations could be realised. Of course the patent meaning of it on the lips of a girl like the heroine of the book before us is, that the society she prefers is that of the man with whom she is falling in love, and who has fallen in love with her, and that for the moment the presence of other people is rather a bore than otherwise. This story, as we have already said, is interesting, not because of its particular plot or incidents, but as a sample of the kind of expression given by modern fiction to modern sentiments from the woman's point of view. Nelly Lestrange has no particular objections to meet her soldier out of doors whenever he pleases to propose it. He takes her in his arms after he has seen her about three times, and she has still no objection. The girl is innocent enough according to all appearance, but she has certainly an odd way of expressing herself for a girl. She wonders if her lover and she, when they meet in heaven, will be "sexless passionless essences," and says, God forbid! She speaks, when a loveless marriage dawns upon her, of giving her shrinking body to the disagreeable bridegroom. There may be nothing wrong in all this, but it is curious language, as we have said, for a girl. And here let us pause to make a necessary discrimination. A grande passion is a thing which has to be recognised as possible wherever it is met with in this world. If two young people fall heartily and honestly in love with each other, and are separated by machinations such as abound in novels, but unfortunately are not

We

unknown in life, and one of them is compelled to marry somebody else, it is not unnatural, it is not revolting, that the true love unextinguished should blaze wildly up, in defiance of all law, when the opportunity occurs. This is wrong, sinful, ruinous, but it is not disgusting; whereas those speeches about shrinking bodies and sexless essences are disgusting in the fullest sense of the word. Would that the new novelist, the young beginner in the realm of fiction, could but understand this! will quote the last scene-the only scene in which there is much evidence of dramatic power in this novel. In it the poor little heroine, in her despair, flies in the face of all right and honour and virtue, yet is not revolting, nor yet nastywhich in her quite innocent impassioned moods, in her daring tone, and reckless little sayings, she frequently and unpardonably is. Everything that is worst to bear has happened to the unfortunate Nelly. Her lover's letters have been abstracted; she has been taught to think him false to her; she has married for that reason, and to save her father's life, the unattractive Sir Hugh, and her father has died the day after, losing to her all the comfort of her sacrifice; and then, in a moment when she is left alone, there comes suddenly her true lover, heartbroken with her perfidy, to look at her for the last time; and they speak to each other, and find out how it is that they have been separated. He is going to India, and it is their last meeting:

"Looking into his haggard, beautiful, terrible face, I forgot all I should have remembered; forgot virtue and honour and self-respect; my heart spoke out to his. Oh, don't go,' I cried, running to him; don't you know how I love you? For my sake stay. I cannot live without you.'

"I clasped both hands on his rough coat-sleeve, and my bowed head sank down upon them.

"Do you suppose I can live in Eng

land and see you belonging to another man?' he asked, harshly; the world is all hell now as it is; but that would

be the blackest, nethermost hell. No; let me go,' said he, fiercely, pushing me away from him roughly, while his face was writhen and distorted.

"If you go,' I said in my insanity, throwing myself into his arms, I'll go too. Oh! for God's sake, take me with you!'

"He strained me to his desolate heart, and we kissed each other wildly, vehemently; none came between us then. Then he tried to put me away

from him.

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My darling,' said he, 'you don't know what you are saying. Do you

think I am such a brute as to be the ruin of the only woman I ever loved?' And his deep voice was sorely shaken as he spoke.

"But I would not be put away. I clung about his neck in my bitter pain, my mad despair.

"Oh, don't leave me behind you ! You're all I have in the world now. Oh, take me, take me with you!'

"My hair fell in its splendid ruddy billows over his great shoulder, and my arms were flung about the stately pillar of his throat. He set his teeth hard, and drew in his breath. It was a tough

ordeal.

Now, this is very objectionable, no doubt, and as wrong as it can be, but it is not disgusting. In the circumstances it is not unnatural. Great love and despair, and the sense of an irredeemable useless sacrifice and a horrible mistake, might excuse, if they did not warrant, such an outbreak. The difference is very clear and easily to be defined. At such a moment the reader forgives, and his mind is not revolted by a hopeless burst of passion, even though possible vice and the greatest of so

cial sins is involved in it. And there is no sin involved in the light talk and nasty phrases which may mean nothing; yet to everybody of pure mind it is those latter which are most disgusting. Nor is this distinction an arbitrary one. When a human creature is under the influence of passion, it may be moved to the wildest thoughts, gestions utterly foreign to its natuthe most hopeless impulses, sugral character; but its utterance in its cooler moments expresses the ordinary tenor of life. A woman, driven wild by the discovery of domestic fraud and great wrong, might propose any sin in her frenzy, and yet might be innocent; whereas a woman who makes uncleanly suggestions in the calm of her ordinary talk, is a creature altogether unendurable and beyond the pale. This distinction is one which goes deeper than mere criticism. It is a point upon which social literature and society itself go much astray. When people who scarcely know each other, and do not care for each other, are obliged to meet, the lightest of light talk naturally comes in to fill up the stray moments; and it is very handy for the novelist who has many stray corners to fill up; but now and then a point of some kind must be given to this light social froth. If not wit, which is not always at hand, why then a little licence, a touch of nastinesssomething that will shock if not amuse. This is the abomination in the midst of us. Perhaps the indication it would seem to give of darker evil concealed below may be false-and we not only hope but believe that it is false-but of itself it is the height of unloveli

ness.

After our free-spoken heroine has come to the climax of her fate, she becomes consumptive and reflective after that loftily pious kind which generally associates itself with this species of immorality; for sensual literature and the car

nal mind have a kind of piety quite to themselves, when disappointment and incapacity come upon them. The fire which burned so bright dies out into the most inconceivably grey of ashes; and the sweetest submission, the tenderest purity, take the place in a second of all those daring headstrong fancies, all that self-will and self-indulgence. The intense goodness follows the intense sensuousness as by a natural law;-the same natural law, we presume, which makes the wicked witch of romance-the woman who has broken everybody's heart, and spent everybody's money, and desolated everybody's home sink at last into the most devoted of sisters of charity. The good women who follow the rule of St Vincent de Paul would be little flattered by the suggestion.

We do not feel ourselves capable of noticing, although what we have just said recalls them to our mind, certain very fine and very nasty books, signed with the name of a certain Ouida, it is to be supposed a woman also. They are so fine as to be unreadable, and consequently we should hope could do little harm, the diction being too gorgeous for merely human faculties. We note, in glancing here and there through the luscious pages, that there is always either a mass of glorious hair lying across a man's breast, or a lady's white and jew elled fingers are twined in the gentleman's chestnut or raven curlspreferably chestnut; for "colour" is necessary to every such picture. Our readers will have remarked that, even in the crisis of her misery, the poor little heroine of 'Cometh up as a Flower' could not refrain from throwing her hair in "splendid ruddy billows" over her lover's shoulder; and the amount of use got out of the same powerful agent in 'Strathmore' and ' Idalia' seems something remarkable. Hair, indeed, in general, has become one

of the leading properties in fiction. The facility with which it flows over the shoulders and bosoms in its owner's vicinity is quite extraordinary. In every emergency it is ready for use. Its quantity and colour, and the reflections in it, and even the "fuzz," which is its modern peculiarity, take the place of all those pretty qualities with which heroines used to be endowed. What need has a woman for a soul when she has upon her head a mass of wavy gold? When a poor creature has to be represented, her hair is said to be scanty, and of no particular colour. Power, strength, a rich nature, a noble mind, are all to be found embodied in this great attribute. Samson, being a Jew, had probably black locks, which would be against him; but otherwise Samson would have made a great figure in these days, if indeed Delilah had not outdone him with amber floods of equal potency. Amber is the tint patronised in the works of Ouida. It is the only idea that we have been able to evolve out of her gorgeous pages, if indeed it can be called an idea. With other and more orthodox writers the hue is gold or red. When the conception demands a milder shade of colouring, auburn, and even chestnut (with gold reflections), are permissible; but when a very high effect is intended, red is the hue par excellence. Red and gold, in all its shades, are compatible with virtue; amber means rich luxurious vice; whereas the pale and scanty locks are the embodiment of meanness and poverty of character. As for black and brown, which were once favourites in fiction before it took to violent colouring, they are " nowhere." They may be permitted now and then in a strictly subordinate position, but they have nothing to do with the symbolism of modern art.

Red is the colour chosen by Mr Edmund Yates* to characterise the