first-hand, far wider, and more intimate experience of Catholics and
their ways, and, above all, by that key which a share in their faith and
beliefs alone furnishes to the right understanding of their conduct.
Here too, no doubt, a contrary bias is to be suspected, nor is a purely,
"positive" treatment of the subject conceivable or desirable. The view
of an insider is as partial as the view of an outsider, though less
viciously so; nor can we get at truth by the simple expedient of fitting
the two together. The best witness is the rare individual who to an
inside and experimental knowledge, adds the faculty of going outside and
taking an objective and disinterested view. In truth this needs an
amount of intellectual self-denial seldom realized to any great degree;
but we venture to say that Mrs. Wilfrid Ward proves herself very worthy
of confidence in this respect. There is certainly no artistic idealizing
of Catholics, such as we are accustomed to in books written for the
edification of the faithful. There is the same almost merciless realism
which we find in "Helbeck" in dealing with certain trivialities and
narrownesses of piety--defects common to all whom circumstances confine
to a little world, but more incongruous and conspicuous as contrasted
with the dignity of Catholic ideals. Without conscious departure from
truth, Mrs. Humphrey Ward is evidently influenced in her selection and
manipulation of facts by the impression of Catholicism she already
possesses and wants to illustrate and convey; but Mrs. Wilfrid Ward has,
we think, risen above this weakness very notably, and should accordingly
merit greater attention.

It may well be that this judicial impartiality may meet with its usual
reward of pleasing neither side altogether. Some will complain that she
brings no idealizing love to her subject, and does little to bring out
the greatness and glory of her religion. Yet this would be a hasty and
ill-judging criticism; for our faith is no less to be commended for the
restraint it exercises over the multitude of ordinary men and women,
than for the effect it produces in souls of a naturally heroic type.
That it should bring a certain largeness into the smallest life, that it
should impart a strange stability to a naturally unstable and frivolous
character; that it should check the worldly-minded with a sense of the
superior claims of the other world--all this impresses us, if not with
the sublimity or mystic beauty,