Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/411

404 and his sorrowful story to justify a word of deprecation from those who go not for evidences of Christianity, or restoratives of faith, to the agreeable prescriptions of light literature. Nor do we see a sufficient probability in the recal of this lost sheep: he was too far gone, and on a path too far removed from ordinary means of recovery, to be so easily brought back, so courteously compliant to the exigencies of the plot. Sceptics of his level are not so plastic and obliging; not even, if honest, when a lady's in the case. Would to Heaven scepticism could be cured by bright eyne, dulcet tones, and a novelist's art of love!

Our author's latest venture—the "Head of the Family"—evidences a gradual ripening, if not a marked strengthening of her powers. Ninian Graeme, the "head of the family," who, at his father's death, takes upon him the duties, responsibilities, and rights of eldership, strong to renounce, to perform, to endure—is one of those plain-faced and unyouthful heroes whom it would once have been too daring a novelty to depict in fiction, and whom novelists are now only too fond of depicting at full length. Too fond, not because such a picture is untrue to nature, but because its frequent reproduction seems to involve a little affectation. Ninian, however, is a fine fellow, despite his ordinary phiz and mature years; and if all our handsome young men, real or fictitious, were half as amiable, they would be as handsome again. Judged by the old saw, "Handsome is that handsome does," Ninian is a very Apollo. That hard-featured Scottish face of his, marked with bold, clear, rugged lines, is the sort of face you can instinctively trust—the face of one who never uttered a falsehood or broke a pledge. He looks like what he is—a contented, quiet-hearted man, plodding from home to office, yet touched occasionally with keen sympathies from without—on which occasions a significant change passes over his average countenance, or what Sister Tinie calls "his W. S. face" (Ninian being a writer to the signet)—that is, his attentive, penetrating, business look. "For he had to work hard—how hard none but himself know—to keep the 'wolf from the door' of his large household. But he did it cheerfully—he loved them all so much." There is in Ninian a something to which every one instinctively comes for help; witness the confiding reverence of his elder sister, poor meek Lindsay; and of the "wronged sinner," Rachel Armstrong; and of little Hope Ansted, over whom his big heart throbs so passionately, and disquieteth itself in vain. That noble, manly heart!—for he is, indeed, worthy the name of man, who can speak so calmly when in pain, with a voice that never betrays one trace of the struggle beneath—the vehemence, the self-reproach, the love warring against other love, and the stern iron hand of duty laid over all. He is one of those who can cut off a right arm, and pluck out a right eye, and so enter maimed into heaven. He is one who can give up dreaming, and go to his daily realities—who can smother down his heart, its love or woe, and take to the hard work of his band—who defies fate, and if he must die, dies fighting to the last. His bearing under the pangs of unreturnod love recals the poet's sweet, sad verse: