Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/413

406 of this domestic drama, Rachel Armstrong, and her worthless husband, Ulverston, who is a rascal quite of the sort which ladies put into print. John Forsyth, the heart-withered enthusiast, is forcibly drawn; and honest Kenneth Reay is pleasing and life-like^ Passages of pathos there are, neither few nor feeble; such as the first ré-union of the orphaned family under their new head; and the demented mood of Rachel; and the "flitting" of Hope Ansted from a home where she was neither wife, nor maid, nor widow; and the death-bed of Geoffrey Ulverston; and the betrothals of the grey-haired Ninian with the "wee birdie" he had loved so secretly and so well. And for vivid examples of powerful writing, take the various scenes wherein Rachel enacts a foremost part; especially that night at the theatre, where her husband, and his titular wife, and Ninian, and John Forsyth, are present to see her play the poor maddened bride in "Fazio,"—making the gentle Hope shudder by the vehemence of her curses against her rival, and the exulting ferocity of the glare which seems to reach and confront her own mild gaze; or that other night, clouded with blackness of darkness—darkness that might be felt, when Rachel suddenly stood beside the couch of Hope's sleeping first-born, and satiated her long-brooding spirit of revenge by one free, full, terrible disclosure of a blasting secret. There is, perhaps, a "spice" too much of the theatrical in the "make up" of this strange being; nor do we admire the abrupt terms in the disposition of John Forsyth, nor the management of Edmund's story, the whole episode of whose dissipated London life appears to us stale, flat, and unprofitable. But the novel, as a whole, is a fine and affecting illustration of a chequered biography, of which the realised motto is: Non ti lagnar, ma soffri, e taci! And so richly does Ninian Græme deserve his final blessedness, that we are willing to forget the "forcing process" by which each obstacle to it is overcome; for, in snatching away first the baby, Walter, and then Ulverston himself, Death surely is employed in the capacity of a deus ex machinâ, and cuts the Gordian knot with his scythe, after a manner highly convenient to catastrophes in art. But we are grumbling, forsooth, while little Hope is sobbing out her happiness in Ninian's bosom. More shame for us!

"Alice Learmont" is a Christmas fairy tale—a pretty, poetical tradition of Scottish elf-land—told with sweet and touching effects. Its materials are drawn both from imagination and fancy; and the due adjustment of the preternatural and human elements in the conduct of the legend is skilfully managed. All the works of this lady prove her fine poetical instincts, but in the larger and more ambitious, the poetry is apt to occupy more than its share of room; while in this little tale, it is as indigenous and by prescriptive right "at home," as in a story of Bonny Kilmeny or in a Midsummer Night's Dream. And verily, it requires no contemptible capacity, in these days of useful knowledge and rational inquiry, to produce a picture of elfin life which shall not be pooh-pooh'd by philosophic small boys. Such a picture is "Alice Learmont," which the said small boys cannot read without interest, despite their familiarity with abridged Lardners and royal roads to science; and which their elders cannot peruse without emotion—the welling-up of ancient though uncherished thoughts, which should, and in the purest-hearted do, bind youth to age in natural piety.