a high characteristic this double-natured pliancy, which bows to circumstances and adapts itself to persons; it is rather an instinct of the lower animals, who hide and whine during a storm, but divine in a moment if the stranger near them be a friend or an enemy. The whole question is, whether the type be not fairly conceived and essentially feminine. The only apparent incongruity is in the mixture of helplessness with a certain ability to appreciate and finesse. Precisely in this, we believe, is the truthfulness of the portait most evident. The minister's widow, accustomed to think all knowledge summed up in her husband's sermons, and all phases of human experience contained in the congregation of a dissenting chapel, is hopelessly adrift when a new variety of man forces himself upon her circle. In default of the keen moral instincts which would arm a largernatured woman with Ithuriel's spear, she judges the London roué by the ordinary tests for a young man who has stepped in to tea after a Bible-class. We suppose some such incapacity to comprehend the dark side of the other sex's life is the reason why so many good women make shipwreck of their lives upon sheer blackguardism. No man, however obtuse his perceptions may be, is ever very widely mistaken in his estimate of a flashy debauched adventurer, or accepts his self-assertion without a reasonable discount. There is, of course, another side to the picture; and we admit in advance that a man's judgment is equally worthless from the moment his eyes or his heart are interested. But we are not arguing as special pleaders for either side; and our problem is only to decide why the sex, in whom social tact is a sixth sense, should break down in their use of it on one point which is vital to themselves, and where men act fearlessly. Something may be allowed to the high estimate of pluck and energy which those who see life from the outside only are especially apt to form, and under cover of which a counterfeit sometimes passes current, or drawbacks are overlooked. Something may be set down to that absolute ignorance of sin in its grosser forms in which English women fortunately grow up. They do not suspect what they could not realise. But the truest reason of all we believe to be, that feminine tact is based upon self-analysis rather than on imagination or sympathy. Wilhelm von Humboldt remarked that the very occupations of the boudoir, be they music or drawing, crochet-work or embroidery, are such as lend themselves more or less to the carrying on independent trains of thought. More sensitive to impressions than the man, and more observant of little things, the woman broods over the trivial details of her life in a way which the close work of an office or the distractions of business absolutely forbid. She is matchless in her

own field, and lost out of it. The very intenseness of her study, her complete mastery of all that is within her range, unfit her to suspect her deficiencies, or surmise an outer sphere. Naturally enough, in the one instance where Mrs. Vincent is circumspect and suspicious, she is so without cause. She allows a little maternal jealousy of Mrs. Hilyard's influence over her son to take colour and form as a doubt of the poor lady's reputation. But in managing the congregation Mrs. Vincent is peerless. She knows exactly what is expected of the minister, and of the minister's mother. She puts the pretty admirer quietly but irresistibly aside, while she silences the open enemy by a calm assertion of superiority. A very sincere woman would often be at a loss where Mrs. Vincent succeeds. The little hints about the connexion at Liverpool, and her own preference for an affectionate congregation to a large income, could probably not have been uttered in the palace of truth. It is a great tribute to the skill with which the character has been drawn, that these little insincerities scarcely strike the reader as an immoral element in it. It requires some reflection to see that Mrs. Vincent's goodness is that of a shallow nature and a prosperous life, and that its very existence is secondary to her excellence as a social strategist and her instinct of motherhood.

As perfect in its way is the conception of Lady Western. The graceful radiant creature, all sweetness and sunniness, who plays with her lover's feelings in utter unconsciousness that they can be deeper than her own, and because she likes to see him happy and to be admired herself, is so inimitably reproduced, that her gestures, the very tones of her voice, seem present to us. We may doubt one or two details of the story. Highbred and slightly high-church as she is, Lady Western is hardly likely to have courted the acquaintance of the dissenting minister in a country-town, even though he wore a good coat, and was good-looking, and had the manners of a gentleman. Even less would she have asked him to meet the curate of St. Roque's at dinner. Her emotion at hearing the name of her old lover is decidedly overdrawn, and implies a capacity for strong passionate attachment which must in actual life have impaired the peculiar charm of her manner; for her attractiveness lies in her thorough kindliness and her absolute inability to comprehend deep feeling. It is precisely because she only wishes to make Vincent happy, and has no idea of encouraging a hopeless attachment, that we forgive her all the suffering she causes. Any, the smallest, experience of real love or sorrow would make her ignorance impossible, and convict her of wanton cruelty, such as Lady Western in real life could never have allowed herself, even for an hour's amusement and to an admirer. As

it is, her want of sympathy and tact becomes even an element of morality. She is able to call on Mrs. Vincent when the widow's heart is breaking, and to utter tender platitudes with the saddest voice. In pure goodness of heart she bows a last sunny smile to the poor minister, who is in the pangs of desperate love, as she passes out of Carlingford at his rival's side, having become that rival's wife. Vincent himself cannot complain if his heart has been a little wrung by such tender hands in such sweet unconsciousness of his suffering.

It is a great descent in the social scale when we pass from Lady Western to the deacons of Salem Chapel. But, setting aside charm of manner and refinement of language, the vestry is not much more vulgar than the Hall. The unsympathetic isolation of most characters in the book, from the hero and from one another, is in fact the secret of much of their interest. Tozer the dairyman, and his wife and daughter, have a high appreciation of the young minister. They see that he has something about him which common men want; gifts, as they would call it; genius and good manners, as others would say. With the true sentiment of an official, Tozer divines the opportunity for extending the connexion, and giving the chapel a name in the annals of Nonconformity. But Vincent breaks down under two tests. He never applies his doctrine properly, and he fails to visit daily among the richer members of his congregation. The former defect may be cured with time, but the social omission is palpably unfair. Salem allows genius its appropriate sphere in the pulpit, but it demands an every-day article for every-day life. It wants some one who will look in for afternoon visits or evening teas, and keep the connexion in good humour with their prophet's views of spiritual realities. There is even a commercial side to the question. "Them as chooses their own pastor, and pays their own pastor, and don't spare no pains to make him comfortable, has a right to expect" that the minister will visit and keep the flock pleased. From the first day of his arrival to the last of his stay in Carlingford, Vincent finds himself at war with these requirements. Circumstances

are against him, and he is needlessly touchy; but, on the whole, the conclusion that a refined and well-educated man is out of his place in under-bred society is irresistible. And surely never was that society sketched with more genuine humour or dramatic insight. The picture lacks the breadth and appreciative humanity of Adam Bede; it deals with shallower natures and smaller things; but its finer touches are inimitable in their way. Phoebe Tozer is as perfect when she blushes "pinker than ever," because jolly Mr. Raffles jokes her about being "unkind" to the minister, as when she hints resentment and confidence to Vin

cent himself in a later stage of the intercourse: "They say you don't think us good enough to be trusted now; but oh, I don't think you could ever be like that," and gives "an appealing remonstrative glance before she drops her eyelids in virginal humility." The young man from "'Omerton," who makes "an 'it," and who regards the Tozers as "liberal-minded people," "the flower of the middle classes," is a perfect pendant to heavy senile Mr. Tufton, who almost ruins his "young brother" by admitting every charge against him, in the genuine desire to deprecate criticism, and sways backwards and forwards between rival impulses in unctuous irresolution. Mrs. Pigeon, the malcontent of the flock, who contrives to say before Mrs. Vincent that her son cannot manage "good gospel preaching and rousing up," and who is retributively routed by the minister's mother, is a minor personage indeed, but distinct in individuality. But the triumph of the novelist's art is Tozer. We seem to understand from the first why the butterman is the directing mind of Salem, and an over-match for the poulterer. He is the typical John Bull of the religious bourgeoisie; bluff and independent towards his minister, whom he has a vested right to drive, business-like and energetic in the vestry, and a goodnatured autocrat in his family circle. He has his weakness; but we incline to think with Mr. Tozer, that it is no peculiar foible, but common to" all you men. Niver a one, however you may have been brought up, nor whatever pious ways you may have been used to, can stand out against a pretty face." In short, Tozer admires Lady Western: If the angels are nicer to look at, it's a wonder to me." Nor is this the only touch of chivalry about the dairyThe knightly heart under coat of frieze asserts itself in Vincent's time of trouble; and while Carlingford is discussing the minister's shortcomings, and heaping them with the crime charged upon his sister, the deacon stands steadily by the desolate man. The speech in defence of Vincent at the meeting called to bring about his resignation is the most manly bit of writing in the book. The jocosity with which the deacon observes, "that a young man, as maybe isn't a marrying man, and anyhow can't marry more nor one, ain't in the safest place at Salem tea-drinkings," is a fine prelude to the real argument: "It shall never be said in our connexion as a clever young man was drove away from Carlingford, and I had a share in it. For me, and them as stands by me, we ain't a-going to set ourselves up against the spread of the gospel, and the credit of the connexion, toleration, and freedom of conscience, as we're bound to fight for." It adds to the truth of all this, that it rather detracts from the moral of the book. For if a hysterical talent like Vincent's has been able under all disadvantages

man.

to command the loyal allegiance of a man like Tozer, the very embodiment of the old proprietary spirit, who can say what genuine enthusiasm in the minister might not have commanded? We suspect Tozer is as capable as Sancho Panza of following any leader who is not himself half-hearted on the adventure for a spiritual Barataria.

It is not our purpose to analyse any further the minor characters in Salem Chapel. Only one point we desire to notice, because it bears directly on one of the main criticisms we have to make on the book. The consent given by Susan Vincent to travel, not indeed alone, but essentially unprotected, under Colonel Mildmay's charge, is something more than flagrantly improbable. An innocent, rather stupid, and quite inexperienced girl might, no doubt, in the perplexity of a rash moment, consent to leave her home on some inadequate pretext. But no well-bred and pure-minded woman, however ignorant of the world, would consent to travel for hours, not to say days, in her lover's charge. She would divine instinctively that the story was false, or she would insist on not having his companionship by the way. She would be punctilious and reserved precisely because their relations were intimate, and in proportion as she valued his esteem. We regard this fault as something more than a fatal necessity of an absurd plot. It is another indication of that contemptuous vein, which leaves us throughout in doubt whether the author be not covertly amusing herself with the public she interests, or irrepressibly scornful of society, and above all of women. Here, we seem to be told, are the women for whom hearts break, or who make up the holiness of home-life; and one is shallow and heartless, another shallow and cunning, and a third nursing bitter thoughts of rancour while she sits in God's house. Here is the young girl, for whose purity all who meet her would instinctively pledge themselves, and she leaves home on the idlest of excuses to travel with the depraved man whom she loves. Here is the man, whose fiery eloquence has shaken a congregation, like God's breath passing over it; and his inspiration was compounded of a quarrel with his deacons and love for a pretty face, or, at best, mixed with some unselfish feeling for his sister. It reads almost as if the mask were thrown off, when the author marries him to a girl whom we have only known as an idiot, whose father is a villain, and her mother only not a homicide. And yet the dénouement is conveyed in words of simple beauty and serious purpose. "After all his troubles, the loves and the hopes came back with the swallows, to build under his eaves and stir in his heart." There is no irony here.

Perhaps the explanation is, after all, simpler than might