, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it
had never come, except for the fear and loathing that it leaves
behind. This face, after that look, had nothing repulsive in
it, but was only the more subdued and sad."

The author's mind so teems with images, that he does not always
discriminate between the good and the bad. Occasionally we find some
that are manifestly faulty and overstrained.

"It is one on which the tenderness of the deep heart of the
Common Mother breaks itself; over which _the broad, dark,
silent wings of a dread mystery are stretched_."

* * * * *

"Her voice had in it that tender _touch_ which _lays itself,
warm and loving_, on the heart."

* * * * *

"And then her voice began _to drop down_, as it were, _from
step to step_,--and _the steps seemed cold and damp, as it went
down them lingeringly_:--'or for
trial,--disappointment,--whatever comes!'--and at the last, _it
seemed to have gone down into a sepulchral vault_."

We do not admire any one of the above,--least of all the last, in which
the human voice is embodied as a sexton going down the steps of a tomb.
Why, too, as a matter of verbal criticism, should the author use such
words as "tragedist," "exhibitress," and "cheaty?"

In the delineation of character the author shows uncommon power and is
entitled to high praise. His portraits are animated, life-like, and
individual. Father Terence is drawn with a firm and skilful touch. The
task which the author prescribed to himself--to present an ecclesiastic
without learning, without intellectual power, without enthusiasm, and
with the easy habits of a careless and enjoyable temperament, and yet
who should be respectable, and even venerable, by reason of the
soundness of his instincts and his thorough right-heartedness--was not
an easy one; but in the execution he has been entirely successful. We
cannot but surmise that he has met sometime and somewhere a living man
with some of the characteristic traits of Father Terence. Father
Ignatius, the conventional type of the dark, wily, and dangerous
ecclesiastical intriguer, is an easier subject, but not so well done. He
is a little too melodramatic; and we apply with peculiar force to him a
criticism to which all the characters are more or less obnoxious, that
he is too constantly and uniformly manifesting the peculiar trait