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

MRS. OLIPHANT.

Heart and Cross. By the Author of al Maegar
Maitland. Pp. 303. Hurst and Blackett.
Mrs. Oliphant has of late not only charmed, ad
has fairly surprised us. Conspicuous during sever
years past among that numerous and gifted throni
our English women-of-letters, she has latter
c-ntrived to make for herself two or three distini
reputations. She is foremost, to our thinkiall
among the most prolific writers of her time : and"
what is yet more remarkable—instead of derail
rating in style in proportion to the increase of hi
labours, currente calanzo, her powers evidence, c
the contrary, an appreciable improvement and at
vancemant, the more those 'tabours are multiplies
Without wishing to be in any way invidious, it
impossible not to recognise in this fact a distinct cot
treat to the result mani,est in the instance of °Oa
lady novelists of her time, when tempted by an
more than ordinary success in the wcrld of letter
to increase the outpourings of their imaginative
In some respects the most singularly gifted amoa
all the female writers of this generation, Mi 6
Mary Anne Evans, has been the most cautious an
deliberate in her demands upon her own capabilitit
as a fictioni,t. Yet even the authoress of " Ada
Bede" has been, in the end, too eager and precip
tate in her pursuit of popularity. The melatichol
failure of " Remola"— of all her writings tle
least successful, of all unquestionably the less
meritorious—is proof positive of ber eventual over
eagerness and most mistaken precipitation. Met
Wood, again, and Miss Braddon, each in turn I
seriously jeopardizing her suddenly acquired re
pute as a novelist, by the injudicious rapidity wit]
which the triumphs won by "East Lynne" o°l
"Aurora Floyd," have incited their respectiv
authors into new adventures of all kinds, in tie
shape of serial stories contributed, sometimes tW
or three simultaneously, to our weekly and month]:
periodicals. Under the exhaustive influence 0
such extravagant demands upon the imagine
tive faculty, even the capacity for hart
work manifested by Mr. Anthony Trollop'
" Author of the Most of the New Novels," as Pune)
facetiously called him in his last Almanack, migh
have been expected with tolerable certainty, soone
or later, to have succumbed. As the majority
would thus not unreasonably have anticipated—thg
consequences of these cruel overtaskings of tto
powers of our lady novelists, are proving in almost
every instance, to lamentable demonstration to la
precisely what we have here described them to be
Male or female, in truth—authors almost invariabl3
show, after this fashion, the ill effects of overworkiut
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. Feu'
nitnore Cooper had long over-exerted their capa'
bilities—before " The Pilot" had degenerated tv
" The Redskins," and " Philip Augustus" to " Mar'
ley &stein." Almost as if to claim a peculiar and elite
tinctive place among those rare exceptions that are
said to prove a rule, the accomplished lady, whose last
graceful novelette is now lying at our elbow, fresh
from the pubdshers, yet already newly read by us
from title page to finis, in some sense writes
the better, so to express it, in quality, tho more
she writes in quantity. Not that we would have
it imagined for one instant that this latest effu"
sion of her fancy is in any way to be regaried
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 as
about the least pretentious among all her nova
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 00
very cleverly the " Life 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 imaginal'
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 of Salem Chapel—that most lo''
w'rkable among all the many-coloured "Chronicles
of Carlingford." Remembering the vividly contrast-
ing works we have already mentioned—remembering
also many others, such as " Zeidee," and "Marge'
ret. Maitland," as" The Athalings," and "The Laird of,
Norlaw," as "John Rintoul" and "Adam Graerne,:,
as " Katie S tewart" and" The Last of the Mortimere•
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 P 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 particue
lensed, we take to be as veritable an original, 10
his way, as the immortal Mrs. Poyser herself. For
landscape painting, in pen and ink, we know no
one to be mentioned among all our lady novelists
in the same breath with Mrs Oliphant. The green
zountry side spreads out before us through the
opening lattice of her page. She can paint a
dewy hedee-bank with the leafy distinct'
ness of a Hobbima, 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. Olipbant's most curiously distioguisty
ing peculiarities, again, upon opening one 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 " Zaidee," or in " The Atbelings-'
It is even so in the pretty little story
here told about " Heart and Cross." Alice
Harley is the heroine. Pretty little Clara is bet
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 eldest 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 all, appearing thus throughout the whole
story, the unmarried eldest daughter of the house,
is the pretty heroine of twenty-seven already Inert"
tioned! Unmarried, that is, until the very end of the
narrative—when, hung round her neck upon a
sudden on her birthday, " Heart and Cross" in one,
form the gage d'amour of the hero of the tale, Col.
Bertie Nugent ! The " Cross" being the Victoria
Cross, won by his prowess during the Indian
Mutiny—the "Heart," Bertie Nugent's own, um"
bolised in the very gift proffered by him of that
priceless prize to the gentle Alice, whom he has thus
chivalrously marked out as his chosen wile-
Having saia this much of the root idea of the story,
here related in five and twenty alluring if not ea'
thralling chapters, we shall not further mar the
charm of its fascination by attempting to enurve
rate, with cold-blooded precision, link after link,
the ingenious chain of the incidents. Enough
in further reference to the general character 0'
the narrative, we here remark that it might be
described at—in contradiction, let us say, to those
Christmas Stories once so popular—a genuiue,
Easter Story, appropriately published therefore at
this Eastertide. Mrs. Dement Crofton appears
throughout the miniature romance as the imaginal
narrator of it. Little Derwie, her only child, 9
boy of seven, the oddest little busybody imaginably'
figures all through the tale, child though he is veil
conspicuously in the foreground. Other personae;
some of them very amusingly drawn, flit to andfr
across the scene as the tale advances. It is nothleg
more, after all, it is true, than a little horaelY
Cabinet Picture at the best ; but it is one tenderly
painted, and by a hand rarely skilled in its art.

THE CORPORATION OF THE CITY..---To.morr
afternoon the Lord Maya., the Aldermen, and Corn_n.
Council of the city of London will go in procession to.eeo
borough House, his Royal Highness the Prince of "40
having appointed that tines to receive their compliniellw
congmtulations.