Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/93

 pleasantness—to put it in no stronger terms—which may result from the present uncertain and indefinite—to put it with equal mildness—Marriage Laws of Great Britain and Ireland. But Wilkie Collins has discovered another "evil," which he shows up as deftly —the sin of popular "muscularity." "Geoffrey" is the University "stroke oar"—a trained animal, with no ideas beyond his muscular triumphs and developments, and no literature beyond his betting-book. The delineation of his career is not only a clever moral satire upon the ultra Muscular School, and Animal Young England generally, but is a very judicious and scientific study of the physical evils of this excessive cultivation of the Physical. He shows us that the strong man does not last —that the trained animal is unreliable with all his training—and that muscle and sinew may be cultivated at the expense of vitality. "Geoffrey" breaks down physically—or, to use the graphic language of his class, "goes stale."

How far those arguments which Mr. Collins puts in the mouth of 'the Doctor"' are borne out by medical experience, we can not say; but we most heartily welcome any thing which looks like a reaction to the muscular extremes of "Guy Livingstone"? and Henry Kingsley. We have become somewhat tired of the sinewy arms and mighty fists of these gentle academicians; we are a little hoarse from throwing up our caps over the winning Oxford or Cambridge crew; we would like to contemplate victorious Manhood on some other field than a "cricket-ground," or some other place than a springboard, and from some surer eminence than a tight-rope or a flying-trapeze. It is quite possible that the Muscular Novel has "gone stale," as the Muscular Hero would seem to be likely to, and we only hope that Mr. Wilkie Collins has "knocked it out of time."

There is much honest writing in this book, and some that is very fine. We have in mind the chapter on the owls in the summerhouse, which, as a playful political satire, we think is quite unsurpassed in its way—a very Dickens-like way—by any but Charles Dickens. Yet, with the exception of the character of "Geoffrey," the dramatis personae are in the hands of the regular Wilkie Collins stock-company, and we recognize the old actors under their new costumes. That very clever artist who once made a happy hit as the Woman in White, reappears as  Hester" with poor success; and in  Anne Silvester '"we have only the usual walking-lady.

The Rob Roy has gained a certain reputation as a traveler, and is popularly known as a canoe that has traversed the waters of many of the rivers and lakes of the several continents. It is in reality a sort of Pheenix, a new boat for every cruise, still retaining the old name. In the present volume we are told how the author carried the Rod Roy, and had it carried, through the lands of Egypt and Syria, and how, occasionally, under peculiarly favorable circumstances, the Rob Roy carried the author 'on the ancient rivers, lakes, and seas in Bible lands."

There is about such a cruise, superficially considered, a suggestion of trickery, an apparent attempt to gain ¢éc/a¢ by doing an ordinary thing in an unusual way. We have no wish to quarrel with this harmless vanity. If any one wishes to go round the world on a wheelbarrow, he has our best wishes for his success, and the enjoyment of his journey; at the same time, we are unwilling to admit that he has done any thing peculiarly heroic or praiseworthy. In the present instance, however, we are at once relieved from even the suspicion of such a thing, for the author says, in the opening chapter: ''It was novel, indeed, to paddle an English canoe upon the Red Sea and the Nile, but what was seen there could be met with ih other modes of travel. When, however, the 20d Roy essayed the Syrian lakes, and rivers and seas of Palestine, she entered on scenes never opened before to the traveler's gaze, and which were entirely inaccessible, except in a canoe."

Such sentiments are not only proper, but inspiring; and the reader resignedly wades through the mass of colorless and uninteresting detail, until the author enters upon the real business. And then, in spite of his own testimony to the contrary, it is difficult to believe that other modes of traveling would not