REVIEW.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1351, 13 June 1878, Page 3

REVIEW.

MR BLACK’S LAST NOVEL.* Our second best novelist seems to he writing too fast for his own reputation. Like Mr Trollope, Mr William Black is making the world believe that he can have two novels in hand pretty nearly at tho same time. “ Madcap Violet” had not finished its course in Macmillan before we heard of “ Qreen Pastures” appearing in an American monthly. And now, as sopn as the fatter novel reaches us in its complete form, we are reading the first instalments of a new story, “M’Leod of Dare,” in “ Good Words.” There is a natural fear lest such hasty writing should lose in quality. We rightly compare a man’s new work with his former achievement a. He has set his own standard, and we are naturally disappointed if ho does not always maintain it. In the “ Princess of Thule,” Mr Black reached his highest point. “ Madcap Violet,” though far away superior to many other novels, was a falling off from the author’s previous work. And if it be gladly admitted that the present book possesses many of the good qualities of the author’s former writing, yet it is impossible to speak of it as one of the most successful of Mr Black’s efforts. It is nevertheless a most fascinating book, and one which any one would be only too glad to get, and in the reading of which they will find pure and constant pleasure. It js rather unusual to make lovers talk politics. Nearer and tenderer themes are supposed to bo more absorbing to them. Mr Black, however, departs from his accustomed domain of pure romance, and after the practice, hut not after tho manner, of Trollope, makes his two lovers, Lady Sylvia and'Mr Balfour, warm politicians. “ I want to take an interest,” says Lady Sylvia,” in whatever concern's my fellow creatures. Is not jthi\t natural F And if I vyere a man, —she added with some heightened colour —I should care for nothing but politics. Think of tho good one might do—think of the power one might have. That would be worth living for—that would be worth giving one’s life for ; to be able to cure some of tho misery of the world, and make wise laws, and make one’s country respected among other nations. Do you know I cannot understand, how men cun pass their lives in painting pretty niclures, and writing pretty verses, when there is so much real work to bo done. Millions of their fellow creatures growing up in ignorance and misery —tho poor becoming poorer and poorer every day, till no one knows where the wretchedness is to cease” (p. 18.) These are fine and pretty gentimonts from the lips of a country maiden. For Mr Hugh Balfour, her lover, there is little poetry and still less dignity in being a Member of Parliament tor the good of one’s country. Ho had already seen too much of political life to be much in love with it. As member for Ballumscroon, he was already pulled up by his constituents. Said

=? Green Pastures and Piccadilly. By William Pinch. Macmillan and Co., 1878. (Fountain JSavber, Colombo street, Clmstcburch.)

one of a deputation to him —“ I make bold to say that you are not the representative of Ballinascroon. You are sitting in the honorable House of Commons under false pretences. You neglect our interests, sorr. You treat our communications, our remonstrances, with an insulting indifference. The cry of our fellow countrymen in prison, sorr, is nothing to you. You allow our fisheries to dwindle and disappear for want of that help which you freely give your own countrymen, sorr. And on the great question which is making the pulse of Ireland beat as it never has beaten before—that is making her sons and daughters curse the slavery that binds them in chains of iron, sorr, you have treated us with ridicule and scorn. When Mr O’Byrne called upon you at the Reform Club, sorr, you walked past him, and told the menial in livery to inform him that you were not in the club. Is that the conduct of a member of the honorable House of Commons. Is that the conduct of a gentleman ?” (p. 22.) This is the prosaic, matter-of-fact view of the politician’s vocation. He has already been burnt in effigy. He is duly warned to give Ballinascroon as wide a berth as is compatible with his safety. But he bears it all with praiseworthy patience, and ho can even extract a little humor from his own walk in life, as witness the following addressed to his Oxford chum, whom he is visiting:—“ What do the Government mean to do with us now?” said the amiable Dr. Jewsbury, “I should think, sir,” said Mr Balfour, modestly,” that if the Government had their wish they would like to be drinking wine with you at this moment. It would bo charitable to ask them to spend an evening like this with you. They have had sore times of it of late ; and their unpopularity is growing greater every day. Why I don’t know'. I suppose they have been too much in earnest. The English public like a joke now and again in the conduct of its affairs. No English cabinet should be made up without its buffoon, unless indeed the Prime Minister can assume that part occasionally. Insincerity, impertinence, maladministration—anything will be forgiven you if you can make the House laugh. On the other hand, if you happen to be a very earnest person, if you are foolish enough to believe that there are great wrongs to be righted, and if you worry and bother the country with your sincerity the country will take the first chance, no matter what services you have rendered it, of kicking you out of office. It is natural enough. No one likes to be bothered by serious people. As we are all quite content, why should we be badgered with new projects ? ” (P. 30.)

With some few variations on a well worn theme, Mr Black marries the lovers, sends them upon their wedding trip to Germany, and then we enter upon what is undoubtedly the better, and, therefore, the more charming, portion of the book—the green pastures in place of Piccadilly.

Those readers who have been charmed with the “ Adventures of a Phaeton,” will rejoice in joining their old friends again, in a real voyage to America, and in a real journey over some of its mighty plains. Mr Balfour and Lady Sjlvia also become far more natural and interesting from this point in the story. Black’s really wonderful power of word-painting here had fine material to work on. The trip across the Atlantic has, of course, been described in any times before, but never with such picturesque vividness. “ Those glad days ! Each one a new wonder, as our tremendous speed drove us into successive and totally different worlds of colour. The weather prophets were all wrong. Each morning was a surprise. There might have been, for example, a ploughing and roaring all night that told us there was a bit of sea on ; but who could have imagined before-hand the brilliant and magnificent beauty of this westerly gale—the sea rolling along in mountainous waves, the wild masses of spray springing high into the air from. the bows of the ship, the rapid rainbow formed by the sunlight striking on those towering clouds, then a rattle as of musketry fire as they fell on the sunlit and streaming decks ?” Of some famous towns or cities in America the author gives some clever word sketches which fix them in the memory for a life-time. This is the way he depicts the entrance to the St, Lawrence river: —“ Surely this is neither a river nor a lake that begins to disclose itself—stretching all across the western horizon, with innumerable islands, and grey rocks, and dark clusters of fire, and bold sweeps of silver where a current passes through the dark green redactions of the trees. It is more like a submerged continent just reappearing above the surface of the sea, for as far as the eye can range there is nothing visible but this glassy plain of water, with islands of every form and magnitude, wooded down to the edge of the current. It is impossible to say which is our channel and which the shore of the mainland ; wo are in a wilderness of water, and rock, and tree, in unceasing combinations, in perpetual, calm, dreamlike beauty. And as wo open up vista after visfa of this strange world—seeing no signs of life, from horizon to horizon, but a few wild-duck that go whirring by—the rich colours in (ho west deepen; the sun sinks red behind some Hashing clouds of gold ; there is a wild glare of rose and yellow that just misses the water, but lights up the islands us if with fire ; one belt of pine in the west has become ci deep violet; while all around the qas( srn aky there is a low-lying flush of pink. And then, after the sun has gone, behold ! there is a pale, clear, beautiful green all across the west, and that is barred with russet, purple, and orange ; and the shadows among the islands have grown dusky and solemn. It is a magical night. The pale, lambent twilight still fills the world, and is too strong for the stars, unices we are to regard as golden planets the distant light of the lighthouses that steadily burn ah-ve the rocks. There is a grey metallic lustre on the surface of the lake, now ru/fied by the cool win's of night. And still we go gliding by thus lark and silent islands, having the sharp yellow ray of a lighthouse, now on this side and now on that; and still there aeeips to he no end to this world of shadowy foliago, and rook, and gloaming water. Good night, good night, before the darkness cones down ! The Lake of a Thousand Islands has burned itself into our memory in flashes of rose col air and gold,” The gr.nhic writer, like the vivid speaker, is an art iff in words. Till Mr Black accomplished the feat one would scarcely have believed that Niagara could have been described so splendidly as in (he following word with which we may well take our leave of the author. “ Through this port hole of a window we caught a glimpse of something white and grey, and, as we recognised from many pictures, the American falls, it was with a certain sense of comfort that we knew this thing to be graspable. And as we got further along, the beautiful, fair, calm picture, camo bettor into view; and it seemed to be fitting that over this silent sheet of white water and over the mass of dark rocks and trees beyond, there should be a placid, pale, blue summer sky. Further on we go, and now wo come in sight of something vaster, but still placid and beautiful and silent. We know from the deep indentation and the projection in the middle that these are the Horse-Shoe Falls ; and they seem to be a stupendous semicircular wall, of solid and motionless stalactites with a touch of green at the summit of the mighty pillars of snow. We see no motion, we hear no sound ; they are as frozen falls, with the sun-light touching them here and there, and leaving their shadows a pale grey. But we know that this vast white thing was not motionless, for in the centre of that semicircle rose a groat white column of vapour softly spreading itself abroad as it ascended into the pile blue sky. and 'abutting out altogether the dark table-land beyond. As we got out of i ho vehicle and walked down towards the edge of the precipice tiie cir around us was filled with a low and murmuring sound, go it, continuous, unfilled, and remote; and now we could catch the downward motion of these falling volumes of water, the friction of the giv fraying the surface of the heavy masses into a soft and feathery white. There was nothing here that was awful and bewildering, but a beautiful, graceful spectacle, the white surface of tho descending water looking almost lace-like in its texture—that accorded well with the still pale blue of the sky overhead. it was something to gazo on with

a placid and sensuous satisfaction, perhaps because the continuous, monotonous murmur of sound was soothing, slumbrous, dreamlike And very soon we began to see something of the mighty volume of water falling over the Horae Shoe Fall, for right away in there, at the middle of the bend, there was no white foam at all, but a projecting unceasing bound of clear crystal of a curiously brilliant green, into which the sun struck deep. Presently we found ourselves in a sort of water witches’ paradise. Far below us boiled that hell-cauldron of white smoke — roaring and thundering so that the ground around us trembled—and thus this mighty pillar rising and spreading over the landscape enveloped us in clouds of shifting shapes and colors, through which the gleaming islands by the side of the road appeared to be mere phantasies of the eye. The earth and the sky seemed to bo inextricably mixed up in this confusion of water and sunlight. We were in a bewilderment of rainbows—the pale colors coming right up to the wheels of the carriage, and shining between us and the flowing streams and water weeds a few yards off. And then again we drove on and right through this Undine world ; and behold! wo were in hot sunshine again, and rolling along a road that sent volumes of dust over us. It was only a trick of the great mother Nature. She had been treating her poor children to a bath, and now took this effectual method of drying them.”