Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 109.djvu/685

 page recalls old shades of thought, old touches of characterization. If it has less depth and breadth than David Grieve, less fine insight into delicate shades of human character than Helbeck of Bannisdale, it has none of the superficiality of Marriage &agrave; la Mode, where she was perhaps trying to write down to her American public, and wrote too far down.

The problem is that of an emancipated Christian rector, who, devoting himself with Christlike simplicity to teaching and preaching a simple gospel creed, comes into collision with the ecclesiastical powers, because of his radical theology. ‘All Christianity save that of Christ,’ as Mr. Herford says of Shelley, ‘failed to the last to touch his imagination.’ This type of primitive Christian piety, set against a background of labor commotions, is appealing. Richard Meynell, however, is the personification of an idea, and if it were not for his pipe, his rumpled clothes, his fawning dogs, could easily fade into a shadowy something that might be called Holiness or Greatheart.

We find here less freshness and poignancy in working out the inner struggle than in Robert Elsmere, doubtless because there is here no clash between human passion and spiritual ideal. The intellectual problem is not so fully the motive power of the tale as in the earlier book, and the most dramatic bit of story, that of the wayward young girl Hester, has small connection with the motif. The tragic crisis seems to be hers, not Richard Meynell’s, and in point of looseness of structure, of failure to identify theme and plot, the novel is somewhat inferior to most of Mrs. Ward’s serious work.

Inevitably the characterization suffers, and there is small trace of growth or change in the central personage. Perfect in conviction and in self-mastery at the outset, he is perfect in conviction and self-mastery at the end, and as a human being is far less real than David Grieve, whose slow development in the face of difficulties was masterfully traced. Neither the young disciple of Richard Meynell, Stephen Barron, in his attitude of entire adoration, nor the shadowy heroine, adds to the impression of reality in the hero of the book, and perhaps the most fully created personage is wild Hester, whose story in the sub-plot dangerously threatens the interest in the main plot.

Mr. Herrick's latest novel has for hero an embodied ideal through whom a protest and a plea are made. There is much interest in the delineation of this healer by divine right, scornful of the airy unrealities of social life, and of what he considers the commercial and subsidized power of the medical profession. A conception of what a physician should be, in honesty, disinterestedness, and curative gift, is here presented, against a background of primitive forest life, full of the appeal of clear air and the breath of freedom. As the charming love story slips into a satirical presentation of the defects of the Healer's wife, it seems sad that this man, more than human in his power of healing kindness to the world, should prove less than human in his treatment of wife and children. The first clash of opinion with his wife seems, in his own opinion, to justify him in neglect of her ever after; and the rather brutal egotism that here emerges saves him, at least, from being put among the heroes of allegory as an embodied perfection.

With all its interest, the story seems a bit hasty and ill-considered, as such swift workmanship must be. This shows in the quick, unfinished