it
is believed, to be entitled "Niobe." Jonas Lie completed his sixtieth
year on the 6th of November last, and this interesting occasion has been
celebrated by a festival given in his honour by the students of his old
University at Christiania. A special number of _Samtiden_, a Norwegian
magazine, has also been devoted to a series of articles on his life and
literary work.

The present volume, as has already been said, is a translation of Lie's
first story. His literary style is at times very colloquial, and his
sentences are often of great length, running on for ten, fifteen, or
even twenty lines without a full stop. The difficulty of rendering such
a mass of words into English prose without sacrificing the meaning, and
of maintaining the easy familiarity of the conversation has been fairly
overcome by the translator. The story is simple as compared with some of
Lie's later productions, but it will always be interesting, not only in
itself but as the earliest production of Norway's most popular novelist.
Ibsen and Bjoernson may be better known in England, in America, and on
the Continent of Europe, but Jonas Lie is dearer to the Norwegian heart.
He has laid the scene of "The Visionary" in Nordland, the home of his
childhood, the last district of Norway to receive the faith of
Christendom, and even now the abode of superstitions which have survived
centuries of Christian teaching. Except along the coast, and there towns
and villages are few and far between, Nordland is very sparsely occupied
by men of Norwegian birth. Fins and Laplanders wander over the interior
during the brief summer, and have, to some extent, intermarried with the
Norwegians on the coast, who are chiefly fishermen and sailors. The
seafaring life of the people and the slight intermixture of Fin and Lap
blood have not tended to lessen their superstitions, and, doubtless,
young Lie heard many a strange tale of sea-goblins and land-spirits as
he wandered in his boyhood along the quay and in the streets of Tromsoe.
Many of the impressions he then received have contributed to the tragic
interest of "The Visionary." For "The Visionary" is a tragedy in which
resistless Fate hurries its victims to destruction. The hero, David
Holst, is one of those unhappy beings who seem doomed to a more than
ordinary share of the ills of life. He has inherited from his mother at
least a tendency to insanity, and he lives in fear of being involved in
a terrible catastrophe,