fallen humanity by distributing simultaneous alms and insults is, to her mind, as sorry a sport as a gentleman could indulge in. Another excellent character part is the feeble and gentle old Mr. Turner, the father of the detestable Hilda, in My Friend Jim.' Lord Bracknell is the husband of Hilda :

""Bracknell," continued Mr. Turner, "is, I am persuaded, both kind-hearted and well-meaning, and would not hurt my feelings for the world; but his habitual companions are-well, not precisely congenial to me, and he has contracted from associating with them a tendency to use words and expressions which, though possibly uttered in what I may call almost an innocent spirit, are such as I might find it my duty as a clergyman to protest against. Dear Hilda thinks-and I quite agree with her-that all risk of unpleasantness should be avoided, and therefore she has kindly secured rooms for me in a very well-conducted hotel. I must remember, however, to tell them that eggs don't agree with me. Unfortunately they seem unable to give me anything else."

'Now I very well knew that Bracknell might use language fit to make a bargee's hair stand on end before the reverend gentleman would dare to uplift his voice in rebuke.'

The heroines of Mr. Norris represent in common a very marked type of character. We refer only to the heroines whom he himself admires, and holds up for the admiration of the reader, Jeanne de Mersac, Linda Howard, Margaret Stanniforth, Maud Dennison, Stella Mowbray ; not the Nina Flemyngs and Hilda Turners, who are heroines only as constituting central figures in the story. His girls, who are intended to be charming, and who, indeed, are very charming, are all ladies; but they seem to resent violently the imputation that they are women. The slightest hint that they might in any circumstances inspire tender feelings in a man-still more the horrid imputation that they could possibly entertain such a feeling for a man-is enough to lash them into a frenzy. When Lieschen ventures to hint at the obvious fact, that Mainwairing is in love with her mistress, Linda cuts her short with

"You had better go back to your work now, Lieschen. If Christine were not so fond of gossiping she would not forget her commissions so often as she does."

Stella Mowbray is shockingly rude to Oswald Kennedy when she meets him for the first time, apparently for no reason but because he is a young man in a position to marry. When her friend Mrs. Farnaby wants to know what the young man was like, whom she had met during her morning ride,

" I

'Stella Mowbray's grey eyes flashed, and her nostrils dilated. wish," she exclaimed, "you could possibly be convinced that a man

2 G 2

is

is not invariably and necessarily a being to be flirted with or married.""

Just before she accepts Oswald, this is the way in which she speaks to him,

"Thank you, Mr. Kennedy; you have said a good many disagreeable things to me before now, and some of them may have been deserved at any rate I have always noticed that you seem to say them with perfect sincerity. But I should not have thought that even you had so low an opinion of me as to think that I would marry that man."

It is a pity that all his most attractive girls are so possessed by that fierce virginity' which George Eliot ascribes to Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda.' When Stella finally surrenders, she speaks of her effrontery in proposing to Oswald:

"I am sure we shall be a very quarrelsome couple," Stella exclaimed at length.

"I am sure we shall be no such thing," returned Oswald, confidently.

“Oh, you won't quarrel; that is the worst of you. You will always be in the right, and will take an indulgent view of my absurd ways of going on, and you will find me an unfailing source of amusement. I foresee that mine will be a trying life, and that I shall yet have reason to repent of my effrontery in proposing to you after you had quite made up your mind to let me go.'

Mr. Norris's heroines are not disposed to admit the existence of love on the girl's part before an avowal on the man's. Here is the end of a very subtle proposal scene (one can guess how it was that Beatrice could not get at her watch):–

"Tell me truly, Beatrice,'" says Brian, in Major and Minor," ""when did you first begin to care for me?

""I don't know,” replied Beatrice. "I can't get at my watch. I suppose about ten minutes ago.'

This rabid virginality is perhaps exaggerated. But how delightful is the type presented, when one thinks of Charles Reade's girls!

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Lucy, I think you want a good cry."
Julia, I d-d-d-do."

"Then come, Lucy, and have it on my shoulder."
Julia, come cuddle me quick.'

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Such is the portentous type of English girl which Charles Reade presented to us, and-infandum!-she still attracts a certain class. She has ruined that decidedly clever tale, ‘Mr.

Barnes

Barnes of New York,' in the person of Enid Anstruther, who was quite pleasing until the author in an evil hour bethought him of Charles Reade's girls. It should be remembered, to add to the horrors of Charles Reade's gynaeceum, that these creatures who display such revolting femininity, have as a rule just contended single-handed against several burglars, baffled a crew of pirates, or performed some other ultra-masculine and impossible feat. When a novelist has in view the ultimate production of his book as a drama, he can hardly avoid addressing even his novel to the pit and gallery. The modern stage seems to demand these

'Fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.'

'The spectacle of a woman who really does not want to get married is a novel and refreshing one,' says the cynical Barrington in Mademoiselle de Mersac.' If this is so, it is the fault of society, and girls are none the worse if they make the best of society and its unfair and oppressive code. Mr. Norris's favourite heroines have a violent objection to be supposed to be desirous of the married state, even a violent objection to enter it, which is a quite different thing.

'Whenever I have loved a woman,' says Alfred de Musset, 'I have told her of it; whenever I have ceased to love her I have also told her of it; believing that in such matters there is nothing to be ashamed of except falsehood.' Such is the French conception of a young man's duty to a girl, and such seems to have been the view of at least one German, Goethe. Barrington looks at the situation from the French point of view; indeed he resembles a Frenchman more than Jeanne resembles a Frenchwoman. The sound English sentiment on the matter finds expression in the mouth of Barrington's practical English friend, on the receipt of the letter in which the former glorifies his love's middle-aged dream: 'making love is very good fun, as everybody knows; but, hang it all! if a man don't mean anything by it, its deuced hard lines on the girl.'

It is strange that none of Mr. Norris's tales have been dramatized. Many of his heroines supply the very rôle most fitted for Mrs. Kendal. Any one who has seen that admirable actress in 'The Queen's Shilling' or the 'Scrap of Paper' will recognize how perfectly she could play Linda Howard, or Stella Mowbray, or Mrs. Herbert. Here is a scene for Mrs. Kendal from 'The Bachelor's Blunder.' Mr. and Mrs. Herbert are really in love with each other; but Herbert, who is no longer young, does not believe that he has engaged her affections, and is content to

wait

wait till love may come. He carefully abstains from seeming to look for any signs of love from his wife till he may have won it, and she naturally mistakes his reasonableness for coldness. Dick is careful to avoid playing the part of the lover. To do so would seem to him unpardonable audacity. This is the

Scene:

'There must be something very wrong about cats who refuse fish, Lord Mayors who do not care to accept a baronetcy, and women who have no love for jewels. She opened the velvet cases, giving utterance to little cries of delight, as, one after another, the glittering clusters and sprays of diamonds revealed themselves. "Oh Dick!" she exclaimed, "how lovely! Why did you not tell me I was going to have all these lovely things?"

"Because I wanted to have the pleasure of seeing you look as you are looking now," he answered.

'With a sudden twinge of compunction she jumped up, pushed back her chair and laid both her hands upon her husband's arm, looking up into his face.

"Dick," she said, "am I generally very horrid ? Am I cross and impatient without any reason?"

'He replied-with that terrible truthfulness of his, "Well, you are rather--sometimes."

Possibly this may not have been the rejoinder that Hope anticipated or desired; for it did not seem to please her much, and her face grew graver. Presently, however, she smiled again, and remarked with apparent inconsequence,

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Well, at any rate you must have been thinking a little about me when you ordered this pendant, because here are two H's intertwined and an anchor, which I suppose stands for Hope, and-what is that knot at the top, Dick?"

"It's-it's a sort of bowline," said Dick, departing for once from the path of strict veracity. . . . Hope's eyes glistened as she looked up at him.

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Dick," she said with a tremulous little laugh, "do you know that you are very funny? I am not sure that I can quite make you out; but-but I think I rather like you."

Pathos Mr. Norris uses sparingly, but with great judgment. He makes no attempt at all to touch the feelings by the death of Margaret Stanniforth, who though very lovable is not beautiful, and is no longer young. And it must be remembered that Mr. Norris's heroines look plain when they are plain, unlike those of Rhoda Broughton, who, we are often assured, are downright ugly; yet, fortunately for them, it so happens that when any one, especially the hero, chances to direct his full orbs upon them, they look, though they by no means are, inexpressibly lovely. Their greenish eyes glow with the soft

fire of deep violet, and their vivid tresses with the iridescent hues of amber sunlight. But Mr. Norris's heroines are not so lucky. When they are plain, they look plain, a fact in nature which our experience tends only too certainly to convert into a law. The death of Margaret was therefore perhaps not the fittest occasion for an appeal to the feelings, which respond most readily to the theme of

'O, snatch'd away in beauty's bloom!'

But the short death scene in 'Mademoiselle de Mersac' is deeply pathetic, by reason of the artistic contrast between death and the abundant strength and blooming girlhood which he indicates rather than describes in Jeanne, as skilfully as George Eliot makes us feel the glowing youth and rich sensuousness of Maggie Tulliver. This highly artistic faculty is well illustrated by the incident with the gazelle, of which Barrington (whose character is a very subtle study) writes to his friend,

If ever you meet a beautiful girl with strong wrists, take my advice and buy a gazelle-or if you can't get a gazelle, perhaps a billy goat might do. Encourage the beast to charge at her, and teach her to catch him neatly by the horns when he is going full tilt. It will be worth ten times the money you have paid for him to see the picture the girl will make as she holds the struggling brute in a perfectly firm grasp, but without any unbecoming exertion.'

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The death of poor little vulgar, loving Fanny in 'No New Thing' is also touching; and truly touching is the scene where M. de Fontvielle consigns Jeanne de Mersac to the care of Mr. Ashley, whose comic agony lest the demonstrative Frenchman should embrace him heightens by contrast the sadness of the simple old man's leave-taking: 'I think,' says Mr. Ashley at last, if you'll excuse me a minute, I'll just run and buy a paper.' It is, however, in My Friend Jim' that Mr. Norris has put forth his best powers in this department of artistic effect. When the Marquis of Staines revisits the Eton playing-fields and spends a long summer day in the scenes of his boyhood, the feelings of the broken-down old worldling are analysed with a pathos which Thackeray could hardly have used more delicately. But by far his most touching scene is the death of little Lord Sunning, who is thrown from his pony in Rotten Row, having been allowed to stray by the selfish negligence of his mother, the detestable Hilda. We will conclude with this deeply pathetic passage:

The poor little man was lying flat on his back where they had laid him. His cheeks were as white as marble, and his features were pinched and sharp; but of all the crowd of faces which I saw

confusedly