Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/457

Rh nor, again, to those instances in which some special information, buried in the bosom of the dead, has been imparted, in sleep, to the living. In maintaining the affirmative side of the vexed question concerning supernatural experiences, Mrs. Crowe occupies a foremost place among modern agitators.

Nor can she be accused, as many of the latter, not always unjustly, are, of deficiency in shrewdness, sagacity, and hard common sense. These qualities are as characteristic of her style of mind as is a love for the marvellous.

Her acute faculty of observation, and cool-headed tact in eliminating a mystery through devious mazes, are seen in her frequent and favourite tales of circumstantial evidence. Give her a case of that kind, as one of her reviewers has said, and she will draw out every scrap of it so cunningly that, during the progress of the story, you will fix the guilt on half a dozen individuals in succession; nor is it always, apparently, quite clear to Mrs. Crowe herself who is the real delinquent, until she is compelled to decide the question towards the close of the third volume. There is, nevertheless, room in her constructions for an ingenuity of design and arrangement which shall be more artful, or rather artistic, and less artificial, and which shall have the ars celare artem.

About a dozen years since, a great "hit" was made at the circulating libraries by the production of "Susan Hopley," with the fascinating alias of "Circumstantial Evidence." On a work so widely read, there is little for us to remark, at this time of day. Undoubtedly it was read and commended up to the pitch of its deserts, and perhaps a little beyond. It was just the book for ordinary habitués of the Temple of Novel-ty—not a whit beyond their comprehension or reflective powers—demanding no pause on their part to mark as well as read, or inwardly digest as well as swallow; and at the same time cramming them with incident, scheming and cross-scheming, ravelling and unravelling, plot and counterplot, to the very top of their bent. A huge favourite was Susan with provincial matrons, who daily scan the lights and shadows of human nature in its avatars at the police-courts and assizes. Her adventures were as good as a twelve-columned murder case, with the speeches by Bodkin and Ballantyne, and the cross-examination by Serjeant Wilkins into the bargain. The imbroglio of confusion worse confounded, yet so sure to be agreeably dispersed and cleared up, was delightful matter for those whom it concerned. The perplexity was not, however, managed with consummate art; for too much light was cast upon the process—the wires of the machinery were slightly hid, and creaked in undue tell-tale fashion; you were not kept in suspense as to the issue; you felt, in a degree calculated to injure a work of fiction, that when things were getting to be at the worst, they would inevitably mend, and that it was s Jaw of the work that the darkest hour should be the immediate precursor of sunrise, Mrs. Crowe's next story, "Men