The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-21 00:00:00

MRS. OLIPHANT.

Heart and Cross. By the Author of " Margaret
Maitland. Pp. 303, Hurst and Blacken.
Mrs. Oliphant has of late not only charmed, she
has fairly surprised us. Conspicuous during several
years past among that numerous and gifted throng,
our English women-of-letters, she has latterly
contrived to make for herself two or three distinct
reputations. She is foremost, to our thinking,
among the most prolific writers of her time : and—
what is yet more remarkable—instead of degene-
rating in style in proportion to the increase of her
labours, currente ccdamo, her powers evidence, on
the contrary, an appreciable improvement and ad-
vancement, the more those Labours are multiplied.
Without wishing to be in any way invidious, it is
impossible not to recognise in this fact a distinct con-
trast to the result manliest in the instance of other
lady novelists of her time, when tempted by any
more than ordinary success in the wcrld of letters
to increase the outpourings of their imagination .
In some respects the most singularly gifted among
all the female writers of this generation,
.Miss
Mary Anne Evans, has been the most cautious and
deliberate in her demands upon her own capabilities
as a fictioniLt. Yet even the authoress of " Adam
Bede" has been, in the end, too Eager and precipi-
tate in her pursuit of popularity. The melancholy
failure of " Remola"— of all her writings the
least successful, of all unquestionably the least
meritorious—is proof positive of her eventual over-
eagerness and most mistaken precipitation. Mrs.
Wood, again, and Miss Braddon, each in turn is
seriously jeopardizing her suddenly acquired re-
pute as a novelist, by the injudicious rapidity with
which the triumphs won by "East Lynne" and
" Aurora Floyd," have incited their respective
authors into new adventures of all kinds, in the
shape of serial stories contributed, sometimes two
or three simultaneously, to our weekly and monthly
periodicals. Under the exhaustive influence of
such extravagant demands upon the imagina-
tive faculty, even the capacity for hard
work manifested by Mr. Aethony Trollope
" Author of the Most of the New Nov, 18," as Punch
facetiously called him in his last Almanack, might
have been expected with tolerable certainty, sooner
or later, to have succumbed. As the majority
would thus not unreasonably have anticipated—the
consequencss of these cruel overtaskings of the
powers of our lady novelists, are proving in almost
every instance, to lamentable demonstration to be
precisely what we have here described them to be.
Male or female, in torth—authors almost invariably
show, after this fashion, the ill effects of overworking
themselves. The catalogue might readily enough
be extended. The Great Unknown, even, in this way,
betrayed the declension of his splendid capacities.
when " Waverley," as the first fruit of them, had
dwindled down to " Count Robert of Paris"as the last.
The prolific G. P. R. James, and the laborious J. Fen-
nimore Cooper had long over-exerted their capa-
bilities—before " The Pilot" had degenerated to
" The Redskins," and " Philip Augustus" to " Mor-
ley Eretein." Almost as if to claim a peculiar and dis-
tinctive place among those rare exceptions that are
said to prove a rule, the accomplished lady, whose last
graceful novelette is Low lying at our elbow, fresh
from the publishers, yet already newly read by us
from title page to finis, in some sense writes
the better, so to express it, in quality, the more
she writes in quantity. Not that we would have
it imagined for one instant that this latest effu •
sion ot her fancy is in any way to be regarded •
as her happiest effort, as her chef d'oeuvre, as in
any one respect even the most remarkable among
her varied productions. On the contrary, it is
about the least pretentious among all her now
numerous writings. For such as it is, however,
it is very conspicuous, indeed, among the most
graceful of her minor compositions. And this, it
should be remembered, is said of " Heart and
Cross," immediately after the author's brilliant
achievement as a biographer, when (it seems only
to have been the other day !) she was recounting so
very cleverly the " Lite of the Rev. Edward
Irving." And—still more surprising it is, that it
should be said of her—immediately after her most
extraordinary success of all as a writer of imagina-
tion, namely as the novelist to whose creative hand
we are indebted for the Butterman Tozer, and
little Mrs. Vincent, and the other imaginary people
flocking in and out ot Salem Chapel—that most ree
mLrkable among all the many-coloured " Chronicles
of Carlingford." Remembering the vividly contrast-
ing works we have already mentioned—remembering
also many others, such as " Zaidee," and " Merge-
ret Maitland," as" The Athelings," and" The Laird of
Norlaw," as "John Rintoul" and "Adam Graeme,"
as " Katie Stewart"and"TheLast of the Mortimers,"
who shall hesitate to give the palm, the pas, the
priority, the precedence, in martialling all the fair
sisterhood of our lady novelists of nowadays, to the
author who has added so abundantly as all this to
the stores of our imaginative literature ? In
facility she certainly surpasses the most rapid
among her contemporaries. As a delineator of
character, she has proved upon occasion teat she
can vie with the most gifted amongst them all.
Tozer the Baptist Butterman, already particu-
larised, we take to be as veritable an original, in
his way, as the immortal Mrs. Poyser herself. For
landscape painting, in pen and ink, we know he
one to be mentioned among all our lady novelists
in the same breath with Mrs Oliphant. The green
..ountry side spreads out before us through the
opening lattice of her page. She can paint a
dewy hedge-bank with the leafy distinct-
ness of a Hobbitna, and scatter about
the meadows nooks and corners, cowslip tufts
and blue bell knots, that the brush of Margaret
Gillies could hardly surpass in dainty colouring,
One of Mrs. Oliphant's most curiously distiuguieh-
ing peculiarities, again, upon opening ono of her
stories, is that noticeable in many of them—the
crowding them at the very commencement with
character upon character, often all of the same
family—as in " Z tidee," or in " Tee Athelings.l
It is even so in the pretty little story
here told about " Heart and Cross." Alice
Harley is the heroine. Pretty little Clara is her
younger sister. Maurice, the fastidious, supercilious,
overwhelmingly self-sufficient College Don (that IS,
to begin with, for he improves wonderfully before
the story ends) is her e dest brother. Another
brother, the fair heroine has,in a certain poor lameter
of twenty, called by every one Johnnie. Younger
people there are in the schoolroom and in the nursery'
—sister, aunt, nurse, playmate, governess, amongst
them atl, appearing thus throughout the whole
story, tt e unmarried eldest daughter of the house's
is the pretty heroine of twenty-seven already men.'
tioned! Unmarried, that is, until the very end of th 9
narrative—when, hung round her neck upon s
sudden on her birthday, " Heart and Cross" in ones
form the gage d'amour of the hero of the tale, Co!'
Bertie Nugent I The " Cross" being the Victoeta
Cross, won by his prowess during the India!
Mutiny—the " Heart," Bertie IVugent's own, aro,.
bolised in the very gift prcffered by him of Ost
priceless prize to
marked
thegentle AusliceiisivshoomhohseenhaswtleJeg
chivalrously ,
g u
Having saia this much of the root idea of the story
here related in five and twenty alluring if not en"
thralling chapters, we shall not further mar the
charm of its tesc; nation by attempting to etiune
rate, with cold-blooded precision, link after 110.r1
the ingenious chain of the incidents. Enough if,
be
in further reference to the general character
the narrative, we here remark that it might ,
ceecribed contradiction, let us say, to these
0
Christmas Stories once so popular—a gehtlist
Easter Story, appropriately published therefore
this Easter-tide. Mrs. Derv. ent Craton ef'Pe6o
throughout the miniature romance as the icriegl"l.ss
narrator of it. Little Derwie, ht: oily Chlidb'ief
boy of seven, the oddest little busy body ire egil"' so
figures all through the tale, child though be 15,
conspicuously in the foreground. °thee pet Eteesgfr,
some of them veil amusingly drawn, fit to Wi
across the scene as the tale advances. It is nothing
inure,elf
after all, it is true, than a little Iwircrif
Cabinet Picture at the best ; but it is one tow('
painted, and by a hand rarely skilled in its art.

THE CORPORATION OF THE CITY.---TO-1"or rOO
,
afternoon the Lord Major, the Aldermen, and o°l400
01'
Council of the city of London will go in procession t0.,,0,0
borough House, his Royal Highness the Prince of not
having appointed that time to receive their compliraell''
congratulations.