That university education, invariably described in George Mac Donald's pages, which is to prepare the humble student for possible destinies which otherwise he could never have pretended to, is the fruit of such self-denying aspirations and such sublime self-sacrifice. But we have said enough to indicate the especial merits of Harry Muir,' and must hurry on, without calling attention to its lighter beauties, or indulging in other extracts we had marked for quotation. Yet before leaving it we must single out, for notice, as in sober keeping with the cheerful contentment of the hard-working family living among noisy neighbours in a dismal suburb, that picture of Nature, which is beautiful in every place,' with which the Muirs refreshed themselves when they could spare themselves the time:

'The distant traffic of the "port," to which the canal is the sea, the flutter of dingy ship-sails, and a far-off prospect of the bare cordage and brief masts of little Dutch vessels delivering their miscellaneous cargoes there, gave a softened home-look, almost like the quiet harbour of some little seaport, to a scene which close at hand could boast of few advantages. But the air was light with the haze of sunset, and in the east the sky had paled down to the exceeding calmness of the eventide, lying silently around its lengthened strips of island-cloud like an enchanted sea. Dull and blank was the long level line of water at their feet, yet it was water still, and flowed, or seemed to flow... These were homely sights, but the charmed atmosphere gave a harmony to them all.'

Katie Stewart' was published in Blackwood's Magazine' nearly a quarter of a century ago. It may be more properly styled an historical novelette-compact and light, abounding in action, and overflowing with feeling and passion. It takes us back to the generation that was excited in 'the '45' by the chivalrous exploits of the young Pretender. The scenes are shifted between the family mansion of the noble Erskines, Earls of Kelly, and the dwellings of their humbler neighbours and dependents. Katie Stewart, the daughter of the miller, is almost the adopted sister of the Ladies Erskine. Bewitching in mind as in person, made half indifferent from habit to the love and admiration that are lavished on her, she has had the gift of winning all hearts from her childhood. In the natural pride of her fascinations she takes very kindly to her new position, and had there been less of warm impulsiveness and earnestness in her heart, her happiness might have been wrecked in her ambition, and she might have been betrayed into an unfortunate mariage de convenance. But a genuine love lays hold of her in time, and she discovers somewhat

regretfully that her heart has been ravished away by a handsome young seaman in her own original station. The perils and misfortunes of her lover keep her true to him through a suspense that might well have shaken an ordinary constancy, and we have a delightfully piquant tale of alternating hopes and fears, that end in a prospect of unclouded happiness.

The Minister's Wife' takes a more ambitious range. In place of a quiet narrative of every-day feelings and incidents centring very much in a single family, we have the throbbing sensation of one of those great waves of religious agitation which from time to time will stir to its depths the fervid earnestness of the Scottish people. The Spirit is abroad in a Highland parish; single-minded fanaticism believes itself charged with inspired messages to a sinful generation; the ignorant in their terror hang eagerly on the lips of the self-commissioned apostles, and the moderate and cool-headed people who resist the contagion are confounded and denounced with the scoffers and the indifferent. In the revival at Loch Diarmid we see the germs of the great religious schism that severed the Kirk; and as they are forced in the warmth of an unnatural atmosphere, it seems as if you were examining their growth through the lenses of a microscope. No one could have attempted to describe that course of thought and feeling who had not an intimate acquaintance with the habits of mind of an undemonstrative people, and who had not been herself subjected in her youth to the influences of Presbyterian teachings. Nor is the actual life of the minister's wife as uneventful as the title would imply. A young and lighthearted girl, she is scarcely caught up in the vortex of the devouring spiritual agitation around her. Yet she becomes the innocent instrument of deciding the fate of others, and her spirits are sobered prematurely by the scenes passing around her. Her mind, besides, is tempest-tossed from the first by personal doubts, fears, and troubles. She forms in her innocence an unfortunate attachment; friends and circumstances save her when her happiness has almost made shipwreck; and she glides into contented tranquillity at the manse with the minister, only to be cast out again by a mysterious crime into a more stormy sea than before. Under the chastening of misfortune she is strengthened and purified. Struck down by her sudden and bitter reverses, she emerges from her trials sadder and better; and although the course of her education seems natural enough as you follow it, yet you can barely recognise the gay Isabel of the opening chapter in the sorrow-stricken mother who only struggles against despair from her sense of

religion and her devotion to her only child. The turmoil of her conflicting feelings is highly dramatic, when she discovers that that first love of hers to whom she has bound herself in second nuptials was the murderer of the fond and generous husband who had taken her to his bosom, to cherish in the

manse.

In the prelude to our article we remarked on the unsuspected veins of feeling and passion in those quiet Scotch people who spend their uneventful lives in their native parishes. We appeal to the Minister's Wife' in illustration of our remarks. Intense local excitement had made the parishioners of Loch Diarmid forget their self-consciousness and cast off their reserve. In a succession of thrilling scenes we have them brought out in dramatic lights, which we feel notwithstanding to be perfectly natural. Among all those who are troubled about their spiritual state, one mind at least remains blessedly tranquil. Margaret, the elder sister of Isabel, lying in the last stage of a decline, is joyfully expectant of the end that is approaching. The whole parish recognises her for a saint, and because her hold on heaven is so evidently assured, it comes into the heart of Ailie Macfarlane, the inspired prophetess, to bid the invalid arise and walk, that she may take her share in the work of revival. The one thing needful is faith on the part of the sufferer. Ailie burst into the chamber of the dying girl, followed by a troop of devotees and curious inquirers, all eager to be present at the working of the miracle. With Ailie there comes a certain Mr. John Diarmid, a converted profligate who is now amongst the prophets, and who had once made dishonourable advances to Margaret. On the other side of the sick-bed are grouped the relatives, with the worthy minister of the parish. Though they would gladly keep her last days undisturbed, they are overmastered by the earnestness and impetuous faith of the intruders. The contrast of the peace breathing from the death-bed, with the tender earthly anxieties, on the one side, and the fanatical turmoil on the other, are painfully impressive. Ailie makes her appeal with the authority of one with a mission, but the convictions she counted on to work the miracle are paralysed by Margaret's assured and enlightened resignation. A chilling doubt will creep to her heart that her fancied power and message may be a delusion; and half with the idea of reassuring herself, she breaks out in a final passionate appeal :

""You're not to think your prayers refused," said the sick girl. "I'm near to the gate, and I can hear the message sent. It says, 'Ay, she

shall be saved; ay, she shall rise up; not in earth but in heaven.'

"No," said Ailie passionately, "it's no a true spirit of prophecy; it's an evil spirit come to tempt you. No! oh ye of little faith, wherefore do Is the Lord to be vexed for ever with the generadoubt? you tion that will not believe? Listen to His voice. Arise, arise, shake off the bonds of Satan. Rise up and stand upon your feet. Margaret, let not God's servants plead in vain. Oh, hearken while I plead with you, harder, far harder than I have to plead with God. Why will ye die, oh house of Israel? Rise up and live: I command you in the name of the Lord!

Even the calmer onlookers are half carried away by Ailie's fervour, and for the moment would scarcely be surprised if the wild appeals proved effectual.

"Oh, if ye would but try! Oh my Maggie, will ye try?" sobbed Isabel, clasping her sister closer and gazing with supplication beyond words in her face. And the minister lifted his face from his hands and looked at her; and little Mary, who had stolen in, came forward like a little wandering spirit and threw herself with a cry on Margaret's shoulder in a wild attempt to raise her up.'

We have Ailie wrestling afterwards in the hillside in anguish that is almost despair; we have Mr. John writhing in agonies of grief and self-humiliation in the heather, under the windows of the dying girl. Such scenes would be impossible to Scotch temperaments in ordinary times. No one but the minister or some godly neighbour would venture to intrude on the sanctity of a dying chamber; no peasant maiden would forget her sex, her station, and her ignorance like Ailie; no laird would make a parish spectacle of himself like Mr. John, careless of opinion. But we know from the actual annals of these revivals that all that Mrs. Oliphant has imagined might happen, when Scottish folk intoxicate themselves with religious hysteria, as eastern dervishes get drunk with bang. The power of her art lies in the dramatic purpose to which she has turned these contagious outbreaks, and the vigorous discrimination with which she has laid bare the working of the people's minds as they fall into moral convulsions in such seasons of awaken'ing. And such a novel flashes a strong side-light on some periods of Scottish history. It helps you to understand how the stern Cameronians suffered the spoiling of their goods, torture, and death, rather than submit to the arbitrary edicts of the Government on secondary points of faith or forms. Then the obvious arguments and retorts of the fanatics, the temporisers and Erastian Gallios among the farming people who gather nightly for their cracks' round the village forge, have a quaint, reverential, religious humour about them that we should be loth to pass over in silence, were it not that we

shall come on something even better of the kind in examining the novels of Mr. George Mac Donald.

6

After an interval of several years, we come to the last of Mrs. Oliphant's Scottish works. Indeed, Valentine: and his 'Brother' appeared only the other day in the pages of Black'wood's Magazine.' We remark in it especially the progress the author has made in the experience of life in its various phases. Now she shows herself as much at home in the aristocratic society of the county of Mid Lothian as she has always been in the homes of the lairds and the manses of the clergy. She dedicates the book to her boys at Eton, and she writes of the Eton fellows' with a fullness of knowledge that is wonderful in a woman. That, however, although deserving of notice, is a very subsidiary merit. The story is an admirable specimen of the constructive and dramatic art; and if the foundation of the plot is bold almost to extravagance, we are ready to forgive anything that is improbable in it, in consideration of the telling situations evolved. The heir of the noble house of Eskside, in his inexperienced but virtuous youth, has fallen a victim to the charms of a beautiful gipsy. He has married her, and bitterly regretted the mésalliance when he finds himself mismated in every way. Cold, though clever, the very stuff out of which you make a polished diplomat, adapting himself easily to cosmopolitan society, amusing his elegant leisure with æsthetic pursuits, he has nothing in common with the child of nature he has chosen. They drift apart, and their paths in life lie widely separate. While the Honourable Richard Ross is shining at foreign courts, Myra Forrest has gone back to her gipsy camp fires, and is carrying his twin children about on the tramp. At last she decides to do one of the children justice, and to perform a grand act of restitution. She drops the younger of the boys at the doors of the ancestral halls, and the old folks at home, Lord Eskside and his wife, recognising the features of their heir in the little waif, eagerly welcome him as their missing grandchild.

The boy, with much of the warm gipsy blood in his veins, turns out all that his fond grand-parents could desire. The only drawback to their pride in him is the fear that he may betray the wild tendencies of his maternal race; and then there is the shadow of a cloud hanging over his origin. Gossips will talk of the randy beggar wife' who brought him to the doors of Rosscraig and then vanished on the night of the great storm. But these reports about the handsome, spirited youth have been well-nigh forgotten, when they are maliciously