in from the ensemble and from each other. And their
goodness, when they are good, is--well! a little conventional; the kind
of goodness that men themselves discount rather largely in their
estimates of each other. Robert himself is certainly worth knowing--a
really attractive union of manliness and saintliness, of shrewd sense
and unworldly aims, and withal with that kindness and pity the absence
of which so often abates the actual value of those other gifts. Mrs.
Ward's literary power is sometimes seen at its best (it is a proof of
her high cultivation of this power that so it should be) in the
analysis of minor characters, both male and female. Richard Leyburn,
deceased before the story begins, but warm in the memory of the few who
had known him, above all of his great-souled daughter Catherine,
strikes us, with his religious mysticism, as being in this way one of
the best things in the book:--

"Poor Richard Leyburn! Yet where had the defeat lain?

"'Was he happy in his school life?' Robert asked gently. 'Was teaching
what he liked?'

[59] "'Oh! yes, only--' and then added hurriedly, as though drawn on in
spite of herself by the grave sympathy of his look, 'I never knew
anybody so good who thought himself of so little account. He always
believed that he had missed everything, wasted everything, and that
anybody else would have made infinitely more out of his life. He vas
always blaming, scourging himself. And all the time he was the
noblest, purest, most devoted--'

"She stopped. Her voice had passed beyond her control. Elsmere was
startled by the feeling she showed. Evidently he had touched one of
the few sore places in this pure heart. It was as though her memory of
her father had in it elements of almost intolerable pathos, as though
the child's brooding love and loyalty were in perpetual protest even
now after this lapse of years against the verdict which an
over-scrupulous, despondent soul had pronounced upon itself. Did she
feel that he had gone uncomforted out of life--even by her--even by
religion? Was that the sting?"

A little later she gives the record of his last hours:--

[60] "'Catherine! Life is harder, the narrower way narrower than ever.
I die--and memory caught still the piteous long-drawn breath by which
the voice was broken--'in much--much perplexity about many things. You
have a clear soul, an iron will. Strengthen the others. Bring them
safe to the day of account.'"

An