a new indirect foreign influence over the southern half of the peninsula; a new rival to Piedmont at the best, or perhaps even a new friend to Austria, and a fresh gulf between themselves and that union in which alone would be strength. If that feeling was justified when the whole peninsula was still parcelled out into minute subdivisions, how much more strongly is it justified now, when more than one half of the nation is already reduced to a state of organic unity and cohesion; when the opportunity for drawing the southern half within the same bands of law and interest has already arrived, and the interposition of a new separate dynasty at Naples is an expedient which can advance no claims to consideration, but such as arise out of some assumed logical necessity of keeping Italy in perpetual dualism.

In any case, the question of the future form of the government of Italy is one which the Italians have won the right to settle for themselves. It is obvious that a congress of the powers of Europe would find no problem within its legitimate competence to consider, beyond the simple question whether a formal acceptance of what Italy has done for herself should be recorded, or a tacit acceptance implied by leaving the whole matter alone. And where Europe collectively has no right openly to assert an overruling jurisdiction, it must be obvious to every Italian that an underhand interference on the part of any single foreign power, for the purpose of prolonging-doubt or the possibility of anarchy, or of biasing the wheel of Italy's fortune towards any particular goal, is a gross national insult, as well as a grave national injury. It may appear to a narrow spirit of policy an advantage to neighbouring powers that Italy should not be too strong; but it is hardly necessary to labour the point, that her strength will be for the benefit of Europe in general. All the valuable portion of the results of the consecrated system of a balance of power in Europe will best be preserved by increasing the number of first-class States in the European family. The absence of a crowd of smaller members in that family is equivalent to a deliverance of the larger members from a specific temptation. If Belgium had approximated to the size of France, the vicinity of the lesser constitutional State to the greater imperial one would never have provided English alarmists with a reasonable subject of speculation in the possible contingency of our being some day forced to the occupation of Antwerp, as the only way of preventing the development of France towards her natural frontier of the Rhine. If the military strength of the Swiss confederation had been available to resist France but a few miles outside the limit of the natural fortresses of Switzerland, Europe would not

have witnessed the unopposed accomplishment of the transfer of Savoy. The more nearly the whole civilised world approaches to a commonwealth of independent states, internally strong by their free principles of government, so evenly balanced among themselves as to render any individual aggression all but hopelessly difficult, and so numerous as to make the preponderance of a general sense of wrong against a single malefactor all but overwhelming, the more easily and securely shall we all live at peace and charity with our neighbours. It is far to look ahead to the time when this ideal shall be realised; but in this direction, and in this direction only, lie the most positive human guarantees for the ultimate happiness of the world. Thus only shall we,-not Italy alone, but the nations at large,-advance practically towards the end of our international difficulties; thus only, in the words of Victor Emanuel, "Viva Dio, andremo al fondo."

ART. IX.-ETHICAL AND DOGMATIC FICTION:
MISS YONGE.

The Heir of Redclyffe. Twelfth edition.

Heartsease; or, the Brother's Wife.

Seventh edition.

The Daisy Chain; or, Aspirations. Fourth edition.

Dynecor Terrace; or, the Clue of Life. Third edition.

Hopes and Fears; or, Scenes from the Life of a Spinster. London:

John W. Parker. 1860.

THE relative popularity of different schools of fiction affords a curious illustration of the complex tastes of the reading world. The first requisite of fiction desired by readers of any discriminating taste is reality; and one of the earliest forms to which this taste gives rise is realism. Thackeray and Trollope are read and enjoyed by thousands who are perfectly satisfied with the brilliant daguerreotypes of superficial life alternating with heathen passion, which form the staple of those writers' works. "It is all so true," is the frequent comment. But to what is it true? Not to human nature as a whole, for the deeper aspects and finer capacities of men are either ignored by the realistic school, or merely glanced at in their abnormal or degraded forms. In contrast to the popular realists, we have the popular idealists, who probably rank next below them in public estimation. But the admiration for this school is beginning to diminish. Few

cultivated minds are deceived nowadays by Bulwer's grandiloquent basses, or sentimental tenors; we know the corps d'opera, and can predict the part that will be played by each performer. And idealist writers of far simpler and purer natures, though of less capacity than Bulwer's (such as Miss Muloch, for instance), are still felt to be unsatisfactory as painters of life. There is a want of clear open daylight in their pictures; a feverish sense of excitability and self-occupation pervades them throughout; and we turn alike from idealist and realist to the great old masters whose fame grows with the reverence of every generation of thoughtful readers,— Scott, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer. Their motive to write was not the idealist's longing to reproduce his own favourite types of character or theories of life, under the ill-kept disguise of narrative; nor was it the mere realistic desire to photograph humanity's follies and passions, omitting its aspirations and conquests; but it was the intense enjoyment in reproducing the life which they had actually seen or poetically conceived, in forms born of an ideal creative imagination essentially in harmony with the healthy realities of nature. Thus their pictures are at once real and ideal, free alike from the distortedness of photographs, and the haziness of "high art.” And as no picture of life which aims to represent it as a whole can be truthful unless it includes the noblest elements of life, so we may observe that the tone of these masters of their art is essentially noble and pure, however wide may be their knowledge of evil. There is a healthiness in their whole nature, a breezy, sunshiny atmosphere about them, which makes them eminently wholesome reading. They dwell in the diatonic scale of life, and do not wail in the chromatics of false and feeble sentiment.

Is this the highest school of creative fiction? For those who take their standard from the actual, it is so; for it gives us that widest view of the actual which includes the imaginative and spiritual aspects of life. But even this does not satisfy all our requirements from the art of creative fiction. The very richness and fidelity of these delineations do but make their perpetual tragedy the sadder. After reading the Heart of Mid Lothian or King Lear, we experience a sense of pain which, though not unmixed with pleasure, does not exercise half the motive power upon us that sympathetic pain can exercise for the developing and elevating of character. Why, we ask, should writers who feel so truly and depict so magically the secrets of passion and the sacredness of justice, never choose themes which do not merely imply ethical laws and religious affections, but which designedly illustrate the supreme beauty of those

laws and affections, and show the power of man to conquer self and circumstance for their sake? To see the meshes of fate entrap the innocent, and harden the guilty, and crush out all the loveliness and glory of life, is painfully depressing, if the shadow is not seen to be cast by a light beyond. We want to feel that writers who possess such power to paint both good and evil, have a pervading reliance on the dynamic superiority of good over evil, which can only come from a living love for the good, confirmed by faith in the eternal supremacy of the Perfect Creator of our probationary humanity. Yet among the imaginative fictions written in illustration of these convictions, very few belong to a high order of genius. The reason of this is not far to seek. It is evident that the possession of a strong ethical faith by no means qualifies a man to write a good fiction. If his experience of life be small, or his sympathies narrow, he will be liable to fall into the didactic vein, and to play at Providence with his characters; to atone for the loss of organic harmony in his fiction by an artificial treatment which outrages our sense of reality. So frequently has this error been committed, that the public has a well-grounded fear of didactic fiction, and prefers the pagan and daguerreotype schools, not only as being more amusing, but as being more true. And although the didactic tale-writer may perhaps be a nobler man than the contented realist, yet as regards their relative productions, society is in the right. A genuine though incomplete picture of the actual is better worth having than a cramped and ill-proportioned sketch after the ideal. The monks who painted the legendary saints in impossible attitudes were probably often nearer heaven than Teniers and Ostade, but their works were spiritual exercises rather than paintings, and that is not an un-ethical instinct which prefers to such deformities the merest realism of every-day life. The truth is, that here, as every where, the requisite elements for success are of two distinct kinds, which require to be blended with rare harmony. To paint life, an author must first have life in himself; must have the eye to perceive it in the world, and the genius to recast it in fresh and living forms. To do this from a point of deep ethical or ideal insight, he must, besides, not only have strong ethical preferences and ideal aspirations, but he must possess a keen eye for the degrees of opacity to such preferences or aspirations which different characters will present; he must have traced some of the intricate combinations of good and evil which are apt to exist in different temperaments; he must, in short, know not less, but more, of human nature than the realists; must see all that they see, and a range beyond. His objective knowledge, and his enjoy

ment of that knowledge, must be exceeded only by his personal spiritual faith. These conditions are rarely to be found in a writer of fiction; perhaps, in their entirety, it is nearly impossible that they should ever be found in such a one; for most vigorous minds of marked ethical tendencies are more likely to deal with life first-hand, than to occupy themselves in delineating it. But occasionally we find approximations, more or less near, to the idea of Ethical Fiction, which indicate a real grappling with the problems of life, and an amount of artistic power in reproducing them, which renders such works worthy of study. One of these writers is the lady whose novels we have placed at the head of this article, and whose other works number some twenty miscellaneous volumes-historical, fictitious, and parochial, exclusive of small publications. Of her literary merits we do not now propose to speak. The numerous editions of her works sufficiently testify to their popularity; and it is because we regard that popularity as substantially deserved, that we think it worth while to examine the relationship which her works bear to a really high ideal of Ethical Fiction.

The key-note to Miss Yonge's pictures of life is to be found in this fact that with much insight into character, with a pure ideal enthusiasm, and strong moral convictions, she is utterly destitute of the speculative instinct. Feeling profoundly that true life is a service and a trust, she is yet sensible of no obligation to examine for herself the nature of that service and the conditions of that trust, and is perfectly content to accept the frame-work of her conception from an external dogmatic source. Hence an anomaly which runs through her whole works. As long as her theme relates to the free expansiveness of character in its purely individual aspects, she usually succeeds. The scene of her tales is generally domestic life, and a great deal of this admits of the free development of character and action. Miss Yonge's great wealth of material (which would often be improved by condensation), and her appreciation of the light and humorous aspects of character, enable her to paint such life with much felicity. But the free play of her moral idealism is only permitted within the limits marked out by certain dogmatic rules. The weight of neces

Of her miscellaneous works the following are the most characteristic: 1. Abbeychurch; or, Self-control and Self-conceit. 2. Scenes and Characters; or, Eighteen Months at Beechcroft. 3. Henrietta's Wish. 4. The Two Guardians. 5. The Castle-Builders; or, the Deferred Confirmation. 6. The Little Duke. 7. Ben Sylvester. 8. Kings of England. 9. Landmarks of History, in 3 vols. The first five of these works are one-volume novelettes, with the love-making minimised or omitted. They are full of life and character.