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    gers . yet produced stamped its own independent and original characteristics ; each has gained in strength on the preceding ; each has been an advance towards a higher and more assured excellence . In The Warden , in Barchester Towers ^ The Three Clerks , he has manifested a real inventive faculty and a real constructive ingenuity ; above all , a real insight into human character and into the complexities of human motives . We -were far from supposing that as BarcJiester Towers was a sort of sequel to The Warden , it was a confession of arrested development in the author's inventive faculty ; on the contrary , on the pertinacity and continuity of purpose displayed in this elaborate filling up of an outline , every line of which was masterly in its decisive breadth and ev ery touch in its vigorous completeness , we recognized the hand of the true workman and the vocation of the genuine artist . In The Three Clerks , where the canvas -was changed , and with a new outline new figures virere introduced , we were again struck by the honest , hearty direct ness and sincerity of the workmanship . Here was unmistakably the perceptive insight of a social seer , and the treatment of the artist . Above all , there was in each and all of these remarkable fictions a strong purpose , not obtruded ( as ibe way with poor pedantic bunglers is ) with didactic dulness , nor merely subsidiary , and , so to speak , marginal , but piercing through the story as a good or evil purpose pierces through an individual life . Defects , of course , were obvious to the critical eye-. defects of craft , of style , and of humour . The conduct of the story was a little careless , not marching straight on , but turning to the right and to the left , and sometimes back , with needless ( in a young writer unpardonable ) licence . The style was occasionally bald and lax ; and the exaggeration of character was apt to degenerate into caricature . In Doctor Thome we cannpt fairly say that these defects have entirely disappeared , but they are sensibly mitigated , and we think amply compensated . Considering that he does not stake his reputation and success on characterpainting only , but quite as much on his constructive ingenuity , Mr . Anthony Trollope is perhaps a little too fond of taking his readers into his confidence , and , as -we should say of an actor , gagging his audience . It is all very -well for a low comedy man to wink at the pit , but we feel that it is neither fair to his brother actors , nor to the play , nor to the more rational part of the audience , and it is certainl y a degradation to the actor ' s art . When an author has succeeded in making us feel for his personages as if they were vital flesh and blood , we resent his coming forward from the wings to assure us that they are only puppets , and that he is pulling the strings . When an author has anything very subtle to say we willingly allow him to lose his way for a moment in a by-path of humour or of sentiment , but even this liberty admits of very sparing indulgence . Mr . Anthony Trollope ' s style is decidedly improved ; it was always masculine , vigorous , and free from any mincing affectations and foreign fripperies , but it was often inelegant and incorrect : in Doetcr Thome it has lost none of its rigour and clearness , and it is less often marred by wilful negligence or coarseness . In character-painting , however , the ^ author of The Warden has more unequivocally gained strength . There is much less propensity to caricature in Doctor Thome : the handling is bread and powerful , but sure , and under strong restraint ; every touch tells , because every touch as the result of thought and feeling subdued with rare technical skill . We are not going to commit the monstrous indiscretion and injustice of telling the story of Doctor Thome . but we cannot help commending , as an example , the selection of our every-day English life for the groundwork of the tale . We are never inclined to chicaner a novelist on the more or less of improbability ( within the limits of possibility and reason ) of his incidents , any more than upon his legal operations , for which Mr . Trollope so modestly and frankly solicits a novelist ' s licence . In Doctor Thome , however , we are not called upon to exercise any unreasonable forbearance in these respects ; the scenery , the personages , the incidents are pure English , and such as might have occurred last year ; indeed , by a casual allusion or two , Mr . Trollope has impressed a sort of contemporary actuality on his scenes . Several of the constituents of modern English society are represented with striking force and fidelity ; the factitious aristocracy of birth and wealth , the self-made aristocracy of brain and will , and the true aristocracy of simple faith and honest worth are contrasted in no forced , conventional manner , and in no grudging or envious spirit . We are not quite sure that in making Scatcherd ( the type of the " contractor" class , a stonemason and self-made miliionnaire ) die of delirium iremens , a con 6 rmcd drunkard , Mr . Trollope has not ( for an excellent , purpose , no doubt , and without malice prepense ) traduced the noble and energetic pioneers of the rising democracy of labour in our age of steam . Perhaps he has not only desired to point the moral of intellect without culture , and of wealth without taste and leisure , but he has sentimentally avenged the hereditary m ortgagers of old estates now fallen a prey to the new nobihty of navvies . " Yet , why should the self-made millionnaire baronet ' s son , educated at Eton and Cambridge , die of del . trenu also ? If his early death were not indispensable to the ddnoiunent , we should complain of this abuse of the bottle in fiction , and wo hold the theory according ; to which Scatcherd is made to baptize hie son Louis Philippe a satire in the wrong place . But old " Lady Scatcherd" fully atones for huBband and son : she is admirably sketched , and exoiteB our love and compassion , as only truth and nature can . Mr . Graham , the hereditary owner of [ an estate mortgaged to the throat , and the victim of his titled wife ' s family pretensions ; the high and mighty tribe of the DeCourcya and the Duke of Omnium ( the dinner at the duke ' s is a gem ) , are hit ofF with marvellous felicity . " Miss Dunstable" would , in vulgar hands , have been a caricature ; in the present author ' s she is a charming sketch drawn with delicate feeling and finesse . In spite of certain vulgarities attending her condition , she is not only not ridiculous , but she is , and designed to be , loved and respected . On the other hand , Mr . Motfat is drawn with designed severity ; and even his humiliation in Pall-mall cannot expiate his low-bred insolence and servility . The subsidiary characters , the lawyers and the doctors , are put in with a cunning hand ; Mr . Gazobeo , the swell-solicitor , is a finished study , and the rival medical practitioners in u provincial neighbourhood are so truly typical , that they will bo taken for portraits in every town in the kingdom . The scone of the Borough Election has traits and touches all its own , and is full of point and humour .

    Doc Thome , the representative of true nobility and sterling wor th h ~ the merit of not being a personification of virtue , but a creature of flesh ' and blood—a good man with a good man ' s failings—and thus he en « a <» es otm sympathy , as his sweet niece Mary engages our affection , and we ^ reioice n the good fortune that crowns his honest independence and her steadfa ^ love . . Frank is a fine fellow , and deserves to win so good a wife- by an ingenious artifice of the writer he forms a sort of reconciling bond between the sections of society represented by Scatcherd , Doctor Thorne Mr Gresham , and Lady . Arabella ; and it is thus that the tone and purpose of the story are free from all taint of class jealousies and animosities and represent those larger sympathies which , we may hope , will effect ' their fusion and reconciliation in the future . An acute and discerning critic in the Revue des deux Mondes , M . Emile Forgues , in a recent article on the celebrated " Scenes of Clerical Life , " remarked that now-a-days English no-vels were not content to reflect the phases of society , they must also fce charged with a purpose ; and that the purpose of these clerical novels appeared to be an indirect satire on church abuses—a satire reflectini * in one form of art the tendencies of a sceptical and indifferent epoch . Probatly the poet ( the novelist is the true poet of our day ) is seldom conscious of the purpose attributed to him by the ingenious critic , arid we are not going to _ accuse Mr . Anthony Trollope of writing with a purpose ; he is too genuine an artist not to write spontaneously , and , as it were , unconsciously . But his broad and vigorous portraiture , his keen insight into character , his subtle and penetrating observation , embrace too widel y and pierce too deeply into the society around him not to give to all he writes the strength and consistency of a purpose ; and we cheerfully add , that his purpose seems to us to be Unexceptionable in its courageous independence and brave humanity . By-the-by , we may here take the liberty to recommend M . E . Forgues , or M . E . Montegut , to take in hand the novels of this sturdy and healthy " realist , " Mr . Anthony Trollope ; they will find English society faithfully and powerfully pictured in his pages , and will be at no loss to extract the purpose which he has , unconsciously perhaps but inevitably , impressed upon his creations . '

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    SCOTTISH GEOLOGY . The Cruise of the Betsey s or , a Summer Ramble among the Fossiliferous Deposits 0 / the Hebrides ; with Ravibles of a Geologist . By Hugh Miller , Autlior of " The Old Red Sandstone , " &c . &c . Constable and Co . This book , the production of a man who laid the foundation of his geological knowledge whilst working day by day as a labourer in a quarry of the old red sandstone of the north-east part of Scotland , evinces talent of the highest order , a deep and healthful moral feeling , perfect command of the graces of style , and a beautiful union of philosophy and poetry . No geologist can peruse without instruction and pleasure a narrative embracing at once highly philosophical views of the science -to which be is especially devoted , with a just estimate of its relation to that Great Being whose work of creation he here earnestly yet humbly labours to elucidate . It is , of course , a posthumous work . Naturalists of any class know too well how Hugh Miller died—the victim of an overworked brain—and how that bright and vigorous spirit was abruptly quenched for ever . Mrs . Miller , after recovering from the first shock of bereavement , hoped to do justice to the literary remains of her husbsind . Unhappily the excitement and anxiety naturally arising from a revision of his works proved over much for one suffering from such recent trials , and from an affection of the spine and brain induced by it Mrs . Miller was in consequence forbidden for a time to engage in any work associated with intellectual exertions . Under these circumstances the Rev . W . S . Symonds , a scientific friend of the author , undertook to perfect this labour of love . No liberties seenv t . o have been taken with the original text . The 3 tyle and arguments of Hugh Miller are so peculiarly his own that any such interpolations would h : ive been injudicious . The disposition of land and water upon the sea-coast of the Western Highlands suggests the idea that from the line in the interior whence the rivers descend to the Atlantic , to the islands beyond as fur as the outer Hebrides , is all one great mountainous plain inclined slantways into the sea . First , the long receding valleys of the mainland , with their brown mossy streams , change their character as they dip beneath the sea level , and become salt-water lochs . The ranges of hills that rise over them , jut out as promontories till interrupted by some transverse valley , dipped still deeper into the brine , now existing as a kyle or sound and swept twice every tide by powerful currents . The sea deepens as the ancient plain slopes downward , mountain chains stand out of the waves as large islands , single mountains as islets , lower eminences as mere groups of pointed rocks , till finally , as -we advance seawards , all trace of the submerged land disappears and the wide ocean stretches out its unfathomable depths . The model of some alpine country raised in plaster on a ilat board and slanted at a low anglo into a basin of water would , on a minute scale , exhibit an aspect exactly similar to that presented by the western coast of Scotland and the Hebrides . The water would rise along the hollows , longitudinal and transverse , forming bays and lochs , and surround like miniature islands the more deeply submerged eminences . Pursuing from duy to day the object of his scientific rambles , he finds himself upon the well-known isle of Eigg just as the sun lu \ d leaped up from behind the heather-clad summit of its eastern hills . One of the first objects that fixed hit * attention was the almost supernatural whiteness of its sandy bench . A few minutou' examination and the origin of this peculiarity was revealed . The hollows of the rock , a rough trachyte with u surf ace like that of a steel rasp , are filled with quantities of broken shells thrown up by the surf from the sea banks beyond ; fragments of eclnni , bits of the valves of razor fish , the island cyprinu , mactridie , buecinidoc , and fractured periwinkles , lie heaped together in vast abundance . Here the traveller should not fail to search for the pitch-stone veins of Eigg . Seen from a boat they suggest the idea of it huge pitch cauldron of the roug hest and largest , cracked by the heat , and that the fluid contents were escaping

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    ' V J J fin Each of the works that he has has been with tor .., ^ l ^ v ^¦;^ . ¦ .:. ; . ^ . l ^^^_^^__ : ^ Lgife- ^ 1858 . /• ' ¦ TTl 1- ** i ' 1 ' _ 1 ii J _ 1 ^ - _ j ¦ ' ' . 5 _ _ _ " _ " 1 1 ' ' ^ ¦'¦''¦ 1 i ^ * w ^ v ' .. * v *« _» - . ¦ _ ¦ " . __„ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^¦^^¦^^^ fc—

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 29, 1858, page 520, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2244/page/16/