Mr. Bland had left the room.

When Father Moran went away, Miss Bland ventured to look into her brother's office. Mr. Bland was not there.

"Gone to the post-office, very likely," Miss Bland said to herself. "Well, I'll just run down to Mrs. Stone's. The dear, silly old creature! And she told me only last Sunday she was doing so nicely.' Yes, it's always the way with the deserving poor. I'll never ask her another question as long as I live. No; I'll just act."

The walk to Mrs. Stone's cottage was a short one. When Miss Bland knocked at the door, it was opened by her brother who seemed to be taking his leave.

"William!" exclaimed the visitor.

"Oh, it's you, Elizabeth, is it?" began Mr. Bland, greatly confused. I—er—I have just been-er-I mean I have had a little chat with Mrs. Stone. She-that is, I-”

66

May the blessing of Heaven be upon you both!" interrupted Mrs. Stone in a voice broken with happy tears.

"Yes, Elizabeth, it's all right. You needn't stop now. I'll you all about it as we walk home," he said in a low tone to his sister.

tell

"God will reward you, sir, and you too, ma'am !" the widow exclaimed with intense emotion.

Mr. Bland led his sister away after bidding Mrs. Stone "Good afternoon."

"You see, Elizabeth," he began hurriedly and before she could ask him a single question, "I thought you would like Mrs. Stone to be a regular pensioner of ours." (Miss Bland nodded vigorously) "And so well, I have promised her ten shillings a week for the remainder of her life."

"May she live to be a hundred!" exclaimed Miss Bland, enthusiastically. Her brother's reply was an emphatic "Amen!"

DAVID BEARNE, S.J.

EVENING.

A

CUCKOO softly sends her silver call

Across the listening fields. A linnet sings
Above the homebound sheep. A river flings
Its changing jewels o'er a rock-set wall.
Close by, a corncrake stirs the rushes tall,

The while some distant meadow rings and rings
With his harsh voice. Careless with folded wings,

An apt ventriloquist, where green leaves fall,
He stands. The sun glides from the western sky,
And slow the golden gates shut to behind,
And slow the evening clouds their robes unbind,
Tired Nature rests while soft as farewell sigh

The last clear bell tolls far, now a faint wind
Wakes all the slumbering reed tops and goes by.

NIGHT.

And hush the patient stars proclaim the night
In ancient order round the moon's white throne,
The latest bird is still, save wild and lone,
A curlew crying on the fern-decked height.
Now wheels the bat unloved, of troubled sight,

And piteous mouth, to song and sun unknown,
The netted wing needs rest soon wearied grown,
Aping the slender swallow's rhythmic flight.
The fields are sweet with scent, soft dews exhale
The fragrance of the rose and blushing thorn,

The rabbit scurrries happy through the wood-
And thou, O Earth! art fair, vale, hill and dale,
As when the Lord upon creation's morn
Surveyed his work and saw that it was good.

ALICE ESMONDE.

IN

A STUDY OF THACKERAY.

III.

N the present study of Thackeray we have been concerned chiefly with the deficiencies in his writings consequent on his entire self-abandonment to the satirical method; and we have seen how these deficiencies affect his work mainly in their ethical significance. Except in passing, or by illustration, no justice has been done to his intellectual powers, so strong and virile, nor to his excellence as an Artist, without which he could not claim to rank among the Masters of the Novel.

The truth is that, as an Artist, Thackeray has hidden himself under the cloak of satire, and, were it not for his one great work, he would never have exhibited himself to us in the plentitude of his genius at all. The greatest art concerns itself about the greatest things it is not enough that we shall be true to fact: what is true we can learn each of us if we will: what is great and noble we can recognise only by the bettering of our own characters. For Shakspere to reach his greatness it was not enough that he should picture truly the moving accidents of life, the mundane heroism of history, or the laughter-moving pranks of the haunters of the tavern. He must go further. After the histories come the greater tragadies-Othello, Macbeth, Lear, after the lighter comedies come The Tempest, and A Winter's Tale. Nor, for him, is it enough that he shall create forces of evil, as heroic in their proportions as are the forces of storm: over against them he must set beatific energies, whose mere existence tell us that, despite their seeming failures here, it is better so to live, and that this life of ours is beautified by their presences.

An ideal of evil involves an ideal of virtue; give us both, and you will satisfy art: but do not so do it that we may see too clearly the calculated contrasts. Do not let us have Colonel Newcombe for ever giving money and cakes to all children, money and Indian shawls to all his cousins, money and kind words to all the servants, in order that these people may respond to him with coarseness and abuse. Such wholesale outrage is not to be obtained in the world, bad as it may be; even to Timon of Athens

is to be granted a faithful Apemantus. Ingratitude is a "marblehearted fiend," but the mere acceptance of this as a truism excludes its universal domination in the doings of men. Do not show us Pendennis, clever, but lazy and extravagant, plucked in all his examinations, whilst his less intellectual but more studious companions pass with credit or with honours. Flesh is weak and easily compelled to yawn ; it is all true, but we relegate such obvious moralities to the category of "Little Frank," or the edifying stories of Canon Schmid. If a novelist cannot interest us by his art, we do not want him to preach to us in truisms. We have lived long enough to know that life does not fall into such contrasted modes, and that the mysteries of character, and the forces that mar or make it, are not so easily "paragraphed," and placed each in its respective pigeonhole. A Tito Melema is not so easily catalogued, and the tragedy of the ruin of a human soul needs no contrast in the presence of the crystal clearness of Romula's nobility: before he enters into her life, we are shown the cancerous germ that later on spreads itself to the destruction of his whole moral being.

Again, if, as a Novelist, you adopt the satirical tone, you cease to create you condemn yourself to destroy. Having stuffed with straw your effigies of men and women, there is nothing left for you to do but to burn them. You have shown us of what poor stuff they are composed,--your heroines, and your would-be heroes -a stuff far coarser than "dreams are made of "-are you proud that we are somewhat glad when we have seen the last of them? You have sneered or laughed at them, you have never laughed with them; and for none of them do we feel one tithe the sympathy or regret that we do for Falstaff in his end-the sinner, gray in iniquity, wandering in "greenfields" amid the ghosts of his childhood. You have taken Satire not art as your object; you have transformed the Novel, and by so doing you have deformed it. You have ceased to give it Art for its rule; and all your power and force as a Satirist mark your weakness as a Novelist.

That Thackeray felt this, there can be no doubt. His fate as an artist makes one think of a great genius, whose mission was to paint, compelled to design modern Gothic churches. Influenced, partly by the warp in his mind against the aristocratic spirit and

See the chapter on "Esmond" in "Thackeray"--Englishmen of Letters Series by Anthony Trollope.

the social organism of the time, and partly by the need to be successful, his bent, and the popularity of his first works compelled him year after year to repeat himself in the same scornful outbursts against existing institutions and the men who upheld them. And yet no man, condemned to work for so long in methods opposed to his better feelings, was ever more serenely conscious of the artist that lived within him, than this writer, who suddenly cast aside his well approved methods, and challenged success in the most difficult field of the Novelist's work.

For perfection of art The History of Henry Esmond stands supreme in the literature of the Novel. It is one thing to write a romance of the time of Richard Coeur de Lion and the Crusade. Even to students of Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales the manners of that far-off time have an advantage in being vague; and the modern romancist has this excuse to fall back on, that if he attempted to make men speak as they did then, none of his readers would understand them. Is not Shakspere himself, to whom they were much nearer in point of time than they were to Scott, compelled to make them speak and think in the manner of Raleigh and Sydney? Enough if you dress them in armour, or Lincolngreen; with an exquisite sense of colour, grouping, and effect; be full of the technique of tournament and archery provide us with heroines, touching, and of irreproachable manners (do not mention how they tore boar's flesh at table with their fingers) let the young gentlemen, who are to lead them, ultimately, to the altar, be excellently educated, and so utter themselves (and with at times a tender melancholy, which Byron has just now made popular) but do not let us have the truth as it is concerning this age, savage and fierce; it will not be understood; or, if it were, it would only offend and disgust. Follow these lines, and you will give us a romance, not of history, but of costume. It will be charming and picturesque; and excellent reading for our boys at school.

Thackeray in Esmond did not propose to write an historical novel above all else it is a novel of character; but, having determined on this, he set himself to write a novel of style. It is in this latter respect that no work in the English Language equals it, as, in respect of its character-drawing, none surpass it. He chose to write of a time when, not alone in literature of the severer type, but in that of the lightest and most ephemeral quality, and above