and socially, at the present day. They are no mere repetitions of
hackneyed Irish stories, no sketches drawn from a narrow or partial
phase of life, but the result of large and penetrating observation among
all classes, made in a thoroughly systematized manner, so as to form a
thoughtful and almost exhaustive study of a country which is more
dogmatized over than understood. Ireland has never been depicted with so
much interest and sympathy by any novelist since Miss Edgeworth wrote
her _Moral Tales_, and both the country and the art of novel-writing
have advanced since then, the latter possibly more than the former. Miss
Edgeworth, indeed, has been singularly unfortunate. She drew from life,
and her talent and observation were worthy of a more lasting shrine,
while the artificiality of her books has caused them to decay even
faster than those of some of her contemporaries. Her successors in Irish
fiction, with no lack of talent, have been too often careless in using
it, or have preferred story-telling to observation. Miss Laffan wields a
genuine Irish pen, graphic, keen of satire, with plenty of sharp
Hibernian humor, but she shows in its exercise a care and directness of
aim which are not the common qualities of Irish writers. In beginning
her career as a novelist she had the courage to refrain from the pursuit
of those finer artistic beauties which lure to failure so many writers
incapable of seizing them: she even put aside the question of plot, and
strove to give a sound and truthful representation of life and manners.

That end was gained with masterly success. No one reading the anonymous
novel _Hogan, M.P._, would have been likely to set it down from internal
evidence as a woman's book: it is one of the stoutest and most vigorous
pieces of fiction which have appeared for years. We can find no trace of
its having been reprinted in this country, and are at a loss to account
for the omission: its distinctively Irish character ought to form an
attraction. _Hogan, M.P._, is a political novel as realistic as Anthony
Trollope's, but more incisive in tone and wider in scope. Instead of
confining her energies to the doings and conversations of one set of
people, Miss Laffan looks at politics as they are mirrored in society,
sketching not alone the wire-pulling and petty diplomacies, but phases
of life resulting therefrom. In _Hogan, M.P._, we have a vivid _coup
d'oeil_ of Dublin society, with its sharp, irregular boundari