The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-11 00:00:00

THE DAWN OF LOVE,

" I am too happy," she murmured ; "just to be alive:on
such a day, in such a world, would be enough. It is so
beautiful I so be,tutiful I And to feel all this beauty
crowned with love I lam happy, so happy—too happy I
It seems as if all were love to-day—as if the sun loved to
shine—as if the earth :smiled with love to feel it shine.
Just as my sun loves to shine on me, and I—l smile with
love to feel the shining. God hastens us with joy as well
as sorrow," she said, speaking lower yet. "Oh I how
can I ever be good enough to be fit for all this joy and
love 2"

With keenest intensity she was conscious of the exquisite
sweetness and beauty filling all her senses and all her soul,
touching her as with vague longing for a new sense or
soul to fill with that superfluous loveliness.
Never, as it seemed to her, had there been such an even-
ing. Never had the soft south wind seemed so full of frag-
rance—fragrance of flowers, and yet more of fresh opened
leaves touched by the evening dew—never had the song of
birds seemed to her so mystically wonderful, so utterly and
subtly musical—never had her heart risen and fallen with
such delicious happiness, and been so full, over-full, of
love, love—love which brimmed over from her eyes, and
was shed on all they looked on.

Rest there, poor child, pause upon that happiness, drink
in that beauty. Dear, happy eyes, rain down your dew of
joy, and be ready for the shedding of bitter, briny drops of
sorrow. In this world such exquisite moments are but
moments.

In some of the other portraits the skill of the
artist's hand is very visible. Weak and erring
Mr Stonhurat, Alisoun's uncle, is very naturally
drawn. Mrs. Stonhurat is too hard for reality.
Her paragon daughter, Sara, is remarkable for
her "cold sweetness," " She had so often, when
she was much younger, heard it said that she
inherited her father's amiability, that she had, as it
were, grown up in the conscious odour of her
own sweetness." Nothing irritates, nothing
ruffles, in outward appearance at least, the calm
and complacent Sara. Her peculiar character is
well preserved throughout the story, and contrasts
well with that of the loving, easily moved and
much enduring Alieoana. The other heroine, Geral-
dine Symthe (whose distorted name is a perpetual
distinction!) is a more natural, and is, in her way
equally unlike her friend and ri val Alisonn Geraldine
Smythe, is the d ,ughter of a noble-hearted father and
a;weak and faulty mother, in her " tWO natures
are contending," and during the struggle the evil
nature. the weak, frail human nature, produces in-
calculable suffering not only to herseir but tu
Adelheid bhaipe (the writer seems to take pleasure
in selecting names), is too perfect to excite much of
our sympathy or regard. We have no particular
predilection for paragons. Conway Stonhurat and
Gilbert Kaird,Alisoun's cousins, disappoint in the
latter instance, according to the old idiom, "agree-
ably disappoint" our expectations. Gilbert Kaird
improves greatly upon acquaintance, while
Conway degenerates into a mere nobody.
l'he authoress selects him at the close—we do not
know why—of the narrative as the mouthpiece of
her theory of lova, a theory very beautiful and
loveable, if rightly carried out. But the writer, like
all enthusiasts upon any subject, is carried by her
own ideas to the length of extravagance. Witness,
for example, the following exordium :

SEAL AND IDEAL.

We have agreed to look upon the ideal in all things, as
the standard towards which—while conscious that it is un-
attaLable—we are always, in all things, to strive. It seems
to me, therefore, in all ways better that we should some of
us, whether men or women, be lost—as the world counts
"lost," and as the angels perhaps count "saved"—in a re-
coil from straining too passionately and beyond our power
at a mark too far above us, than that the ideal standard
should be ignored ; than that we should plant our little flag
upon the level plains of what is common life with common
men—miscalled by such men real life, as if the martyrdom
of any one saint, patriot, or pure enthusiast, had not more
reality because more spirituality than is in the life of the
common herd through ages of material ease and untroubled
mammon worship I—better, I say, that some of us should
fail and fall and perish miserably than that the truth should
be unrecognised, and we all walk, as men blind to all that
is not in the beaten road, safely and softly towards a show
and sham. If those among us who are artists do not hold
there is more life than can be expressed by matter, more
than shows and shines upon tho surface, things which it is
not those who run may read—if we do not maintain the
reality of the ideal—holding it to be that which is true and
beautiful in the eyes of the All-Perfect—do not maintain
it to be the aim alone, with all the might is in us, worth
struggling towards—such fragments of it as we can grasp,
the only prize worth grappling for—do not hold it to be
the only standard by which to measure ourselves, and so,
while humbled to the dust at our littleness, be enabled, con-
templating greatness, to raise our work above ourselves
and help to draw up our neighbour—if we artists, whether
in life, love, or art— and they are inextricably commingled
—do not strain towards the ideal, and, by vivid faith, make
it our real, who is to do this? And if it is not for this
God made us what we are, what is our work, and where
Taken with some reservations, doubtless, Cum-
worth House will recommend itself to many readers,
and Alisoun Grey will win many hearts with the
unconscious charms of her "devoted submissiveness
and tender self abnegation"--qualities, says the
author of " Cumworth House," by one of her cha-
racters, which are no longer essential feminine
characteristics—" the women of this nineteenth
century are striving to rid us of those fond super-
stitious which associated to our idea of womanhood
the almost exclusive possession in exquisite degree
of such exquisite qualities."

" WIIIPPIN G TIIE DOGS."—The parish clerk was,
it need not be observed, at least as important an officer in
those times as now ; but ho seems to have been very shabbily
paid, his salary in this parish, at least, being only vs. iijd.
per annum. Of this sum a portion varying from 8d to is
or is 4d a year, was allowed him for the important duty of
" whipping the dogs out of the church." It is quite edify..
ing to see with what regularity this duty is insisted on and
paid for. The animals in question are indeed designated (or
rather spelt) very differently by successive churchwardens,
heing variously written as doge, dogges, doges, doogs, and
dodges (the latter name, by the way, being probably as w. 11..
deserved as any) ; and the process to which they were sub-
jected is variously described as whipping, wiping, and
weeping, (words all of them which probably convey some
portion of the truth), But, however described, the thing
continues the same. All else is changed by the great revo-
lutions of the century. The king'© arms are set up, pulled
down, and set up again ; the Prayer-Book is taken away,
and once more is reinstated ; the surplice gives place to the
black Geneva gown, and then again returns ; the office
itself of parish clerk is even lost for a time, or shorn
ct its functions; but this remained unchanged, and i n
1649 as in 1601, in 1661 as in 1619, we find in the church..
wardens' books, " To George Fisher (or whoever it may
be) for whipping the dogs for one year, 18."—Eraser's
Magazine,