gerly seize this new story with the romantic title, be launched
auspiciously into gay ball-rooms, glide graciously among the familiar
flounces, dances, and small talk, only to find themselves suddenly and
without warning in some gulf of grave discussion opening out deceptively
from the sparkling stream of the story, or stranded on some lofty
sentiment never dreamt of in their philosophy. For the author's mind is,
in the best sense of the word, a discursive one. It is full of positive
thought, and strikes out right and left like a school-boy who must needs
relieve his superabundant spirits by pinching his sister's ear,
thrusting his fists in his brother's face, kicking aside the
foot-cushion, and making a plunge at the cat, while he is performing the
simple operation of walking across the room. This book is written out of
a mind so full of wit and wisdom that it overflows at the gentlest
touch. It has more sense and learning and power than go to the making up
of a dozen ordinary novels. The very prodigality of its resources is a
stumbling-block. Its great fault is its _muchness_, if we may borrow a
term from Hawthorne's mint. It is like a young minister's first sermon,
into which he frantically attempts to cram the whole body of divinity.
Especially in the early part of the book, we are constantly drawn away
front the story by delightful little essays, sometimes read to us by the
author himself,--sometimes wrought into the conversations by playful
anecdotes, by effective character-sketches, and vivid scene and
scenery-paintings. They do not always materially help forward the story,
nor do they always hinder it. They often give it an air of reality, and
they always help to utilize the author's idea. If they do not avail his
art, they avail his didactics. Where they are not good for the story,
they are good for something. By many thoughtless, and by all mere
novel-readers, they will probably be _skipped_; but for ourselves, we
confess, that, though high art may regard them as blemishes, we should
not know how to give the order for their removal. Considered in
themselves, in their style and sentiment, the little digressions, the
long conversations, the carefully wrought side-scenes are so rich in a
certain tender religious wisdom, yet crisp and piquant withal, and so
full of living thought on the great questions of the day, that we dwell
in them with enjoyment, though with a compunctious half-consciousness
that they ought not