The Express.
London, England, 1857-04-01 00:00:00

f a la.
Woman

in .se tor '

The various works of fiction published by this
author have achieved a large popularity, in spite of
the absence of certain features which are generally
considered almost indispensable in a romance. These
tales make no pretensions to intricate, welkleve-
loped plots; they contain no accurate delineations
of striking characters ; they are oven characterised
by a barrenness of incident. Their great merit con-
nate not in the exhibition of wonderful phenomena,
but in minute and truthful analysis of ordinary phe-
nomena. The author shows that there is as much
heroism, in the way of doing and suffering, in many
a small Scotch faintly acted upon by mere ordinary
occurrences, as in many a great battle-field ; that
there is as much holiness, devotion, and self-abnega-
tion, amongst many of those who appear to live in an
untroubled existence as in the ranks of the holy
armies of saints and martyrs; that, in short, in
every division of society. there may be as much ful-
ness of life, as much spiritual conflict, as much of
that struggle which purifies the heart and elevates
the soul as in the most elevated. It has been the merit
of the author to show how much greater is human
life than the circumstances by which it is sur-

rounded. Thus shninunikin.gswswir, is set apply
teamswestThe stikor has
travelled out el he usual and to mesh hr startling
incidents, to select talmudism./ motives, to analyse
feeling+ too strange, too Masi and complicated, to
be objects of ordinary sympathy. This is the
only defect of the book, while bears the marks of
the author's amid eaniesamm, large sympathies, and
powers of i.smlpWa .
The plat i son teed. The heroine, who tells her
own story, believes herself at the commencement of
the narrative to be the heiress of Cottiswoode, a
estate in Cambridgeshire. She is an only
child, living with her father in the family mansion.
There is the trace of • great past sorrow visible in
the behaviour of the father, but the cause is not re-
vealed to Hester Southcote until she is verging upon
womanhood. At that wind Hester meets with
her fret trouble. A stn et her father's elder
heather, Brian, wakes his sgpearaner on the scam,
and hew father mil hssulf sew obliged to give epths
edits and lease Osttisereode. Edgar South's*
the new heir, halm to make amends to his newly
found relations ter the injury which he has been
unwillingly the mans of inflicting on them, but hie
advances are widely repelled by Hester's father.
It is then that lisster learns for the first time the
nature at eta slow that has embittered her father's
life. He MA bislelike Brian had both been in
love with Hain tasdiss. The onager son was
preferred, sad Mr went to the West Indies, where
be graded. awl afterwards died, leaving a ,on, the
Alger ismalheees above-mentioned. In spite of the
ahem of Ids loather, Howard Soathcote (the father
at Meter) wee not eontent. He wes for ever pm-
essead with the ides that his wife had married him
kr pity only, sad that her alisstisaa had been placed
ea kis elder team. This eau& was the curse of
his existing". It mimosa hi own life and made
that of bie wits a seademsd qty under which
she moon mak. FAWN is Laugh up with her father,
and either from missal teasperament or from Sacli-
ke, to his condawal allmeolim of the maxim, "Pity
is a resat," sal the sews peenNaritien as the
Sim MEWL Übe him Mr. Osbeeme, a friend at
be Meek plosibe in brew of lager. veto Ms
maim bar as idle of his hand, mad believing. with
her &thee that the motive of the new heir is chicly
pity for her reduced state, she sets no bounds to her
Eadignation. She refuses to listen to any proposition
ham her nada, sad whom herself with the ration-
INflabirmrdy la sieheat." It is in vain that
Mr. MOM% Who had lama rejected lover of her
laribarls. sad Alice, an old servant, who had seen
As mother waste away under the influence of her
husband's suspicion, endeavour to bring her to •
eight Mate of feeling. All Um* remonstrances fall
poweehos on the ear of 601) who hoe steeled herself
with the unsint • Pity is a cheat" Time goes as.
Brim h inset hy a Mr. Harry
140 111111011011. at her WWI regent, with
faciltr. to dons bio NM to that of Soothe* ea
lis marls", with Msserr. The newly married
pair go abroad, and am bre when limier finds the
=Amadeu at mhos wags ehameataares in the
amine at kr beellent, wlie had amused her
sasphisas. la Mho hut Mat he is as ether than the
Edgar liouthssim who had essihi bur indignation
by presmig to Ahem Its; deem motives, as she
thought, of pity. we fah out the secret when
her husband takes bier Ise ths ist time to the mem-
tral mansion:

The @Wows of greet trees Wife over o.; bet I had
leased beck in ley maw, wad did not note thaw. Tea l

Nothing can pacify her. Her father dies, but no
change takes place. She at last elopes from her
home, and in her retirement gives birth to a child.
For the first time she softens, and after much suffer-
ing sad anxious deliberation, returns to her home.
fthe has been led to see that the child is her hus-
band's as well as her own, and she feels that it is
but justice that the father should have his rig Ats.
But she is too late. The father has taken a lesson
from her. He scorns pity, be will hear no talk of
users justice as a rule of conduct between them.
He is as rigid in refusing to adopt mere justice as a
basis of reconciliation, as she had been in rejecting
pity as a fitting foundation for love. Finally the
proad spirit of Hester is tamed down. She acknow-
, ledges her error. The pair, who in spite of their
intense love for each other, had stood so long apart,
become reconciled, and their after life makes them
amends for the stormy nature of the commencement.
When we say that the motives which actuate
Heider in determining her conduct towards her hus-
band are exaggerated and insufficient, we have
pointed out the only fault in the book. It contains
examples of that intense power of self-analysis, all
that wealth of description in narrating mental con-
flicts, for which the author is so remarkable. Some
of the delineations of scenery are masterpiece. in
their way. The author is as much at home in the
flats of Cambridgeshire ma among the heather of
the Scotch counties. "The hays of my Life," al-
though it diffen somewhat in kind from the author's
previous works, will not be lees succeeds'.