It was a fine September afternoon, verging upon the evening, when our friends were, as usual, upon deck, straining their eyes towards the point where England was sure to be. The child seemed to have slightly amended, and her mother began to express hopes that, if she could but reach Fairfield alive, she might be spared to her. Nelson dared not to encourage such hopes, but strove to turn her mind towards the necessity of resignation to the dispensations of a higher Power.

"How beautiful the sun is, mamma!" said little Anna as she gazed upon the sky; "it looks as if it was walking down into the sea. What are they doing at Fairfield now?"

"Probably gathering in the harvest, my love."

Nelson and Anna were side by side, and the remembrance of old harvest-homes at Fairfield suddenly shot through them both, and therewith a vision of Jessie, the presiding spirit. Nelson seemed to long to pierce through that glorious red heaven, to the Fairfield beyond it, as did the child, who expressed his thought. "If I were in the sun, I would not go down into the sea, but I would stop at Fairfield. Ah! what is that, mamma? I see something coming between the sun and the sea,-far, far away. Is that Fairfield?"

"Land! land!" shouted a joyful voice from some other point of the ship.

"I have seen Fairfield," said little Anna, whilst a a sudden glow overspread her face; but the excitement was too much for her, and she was obliged to be taken down to the cabin.

All that night, whilst the gallant ship was making rapid progress athwart the dark waters towards that "Land of Promise," the well-beloved England, the child was, to all appearance, passing away. She did not speak, but lay, as in a soft sleep, scarcely breathing. Oh! who shall tell the prayers of that agonized mother? Should her child die within sight of land-within a few hours' sail of her brother's home!

No; those prayers were heard. Even whilst she knelt by her child's couch, and seemed to await her last breath, Nelson, who had been pacing, half the weary night through, upon deck, came to tell her that they were sailing on the Thames, and would soon be in the docks.

"Thank God!" was all she said, as she burst into a flood of tears.

The child was aroused, and understood that all was right.

"Don't cry, mamma, we are come to Fairfield," she murmured.

About midnight Jessie was aroused from her painful meditations by the wandering words of little Anna. She seemed to be either dreaming, or pursuing the train of thought begun in a dream.

"What pretty flowers! let me see the harvest-home, mamma. Aunt Jessie, may I feed the pigeons? Where are all the rest? I want to see little brother, and uncle Pynsent."

Jessie, perceiving that she was awake, rang the bell for her brother, and went still nearer to her. She put out her hand.

"Fairfield is very pretty; it must be like heaven?" Here Pynsent came.

"Here is uncle Pynsent, my love," said Jessie. The child smiled. Pynsent felt her pulse, and looked steadfastly into her eyes.

"You had better call Anna," he said; "she is sinking. I will get her something to take; but this cannot last." "Where is uncle Nelson?" asked the sufferer. "I will bring him," replied Pynsent, gently. He went into the drawing-room, where Anna was asleep on the sofa.

Anna," he said, gently awaking her, "I am afraid

My own Anna, my dear sister," he said lovingly, "remember you have brothers and a sister, and a beautiful child still left you. For all our sakes try to compose yourself."

"Mamma, my own mamma!" was heard through the folding doors.

Little Anna had heard her mother weep. Anna went to her, and Pynsent went down stairs, whence he returned with a soothing-draught, and accompanied by Nelson.

Jessie had been giving little Anna food, and was seated on the bed, supporting her in her arms. Anna was kneeling on the other side.

"Uncle," said the child to Nelson, "I have got aunt Jessie, and I shall go to heaven from Fairfield. Will you tell me about the little children and Jesus Christ ?"

Nelson went to the head of the bed, opposite Jessie; and bending over the child, said slowly, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

"Mamma, may I go to Jesus Christ?" said little Anna to her mother, whose hand she held, and who in reply could only bury her face in the bed-clothes to check her sobs.

Nelson went on gently whispering to the child of the love of Christ for His children, His tender lambs; and she, with a quiet smile, leant back on Jessie's shoulder, and fell asleep. Was it sleep or death? They could not tell. Nelson helped to support her; and thus, between Jessie and him, Anna's child went away from this world, and was borne by angels to Him who "gathereth the lambs in his arms."

The minor characters are well drawn, and deserving of attention. Pynsent Burton, the doctor brother, Louisa Colville, and two uncles, are well distinguished. The artist brother, and Tiny his artist wife, are well described, and naturally invested with some dramatic attributes. There is, however, a total absence of counter-interest. We deplore the absence of a villain. Mr. Michelson, father of Chatham, is only cold and disagreeable, and even he repents; while Mrs. Hicks, a depredating housekeeper, only becomes villanous towards the end of the story, does very little beyond cheating her master, and burning some letters during his illness. Her evil disposition causes but a temporary inconvenience, and evidently did not enter into Miss Beale's original scheme, Mrs. Hicks being, at first, represented as rather pleasant than otherwise.

The greatest fault of this novel, as a work of art, is the disregard of dramatic balance. The story proceeds through three volumes, equal in length to at least a dozen by Alexandre Dumas ; and there is no reason why it should not pro

ceed for many years longer with sequels and continuations equal to those of that mighty weaver of interesting tales. The story is too even and equal. It has no rise and no fall, and we should not feel surprised at the successive appearance of separate works, such as Jessie," a continuation of "Simplicity and Fascination;" Annabella," sequel to "Jessie;" "Chatham Michelson," being the second series; "Tiny," and, in fact, a hundred other works, gliding one after the other with the creamy smoothness of the one before us.

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Miss Beale's description of Wales, and her knowledge of Somersetshire localities, answer well to the general tenor of her work; and her apparently personal objections to our course of policy in India will meet with the hearty concurrence of many of our readers.

Ir is hardly necessary for us to tell our readers that Mr. Brooks is a very clever man and an accomplished writer. All who keep them selves au courant of the passing literature of the day know his pleasant, epigrammatic style, and recognise his versatile fluency in travels, vaudevilles, and weekly newspapers. Accordingly, when it was known that this untiring author had a three volume novel in the press, great expectations were raised among the lovers of good books, for his name was full of promise.

We hardly like to say that the promise has not been quite fulfilled; for is not the book full of clever sayings? are not its pages pétillantes of wit? Whereas nine-tenths of the novels of the day are equally dull and flippant. Mr. Brooks, then, has written a book far superior to the general run of circulating-library novels? Undoubtedly he has; but a man of his talents is hardly likely to be satisfied with such an achieve ment as this. We presume, at least, that he has the laudable ambition to fill a more prominent place in the Walhalla of literature; and to see his works classed with those of the few great writers of prose fiction whose tales we are almost loth to call novels,-a good name in itself, but dishonoured by its application to every sickly story, without plot, invention, or character, which corrupts the taste (if not the morals) of precocious schoolboys and love-sick milliners.

Such a position Mr. Brooks has hardly won for the book before us. Clever as it undoubtedly is, with much excellent writing, with considerable knowledge of the world, and without one particle of dulness, still, as an artistical work, it has many grave blemishes and offences against taste. These will prevent its taking the place in literature which a novel by Mr. Brooks ought to take.

The story is very complicated. A debauched

spendthrift, Mr. Wilmslow, with a charming wife and three pretty daughters, is placed in possession of a fine estate in Gloucestershire (Aspen Court), through the intervention of an attorney, Mr. Molesworth, whose confidential clerk, Mr. Bernard Carlyon,-the hero of the book,-is sent down to Aspen Court to superintend the installation of the family, and to exercise a salutary control over Mr. Wilmslow,—as ferocious a domestic tyrant, and, consequently, as arrant a coward, as ever beat his wife in Seven Dials. Mr. Carlyon, in one of his walks in the neighbourhood, rescues a young lady from some rustic robbers. The young lady is Lilian Trevelyan, the representative of the family ejected by Mr. Molesworth to make room for the Wilmslows. Of course, Mr. Carlyon falls in love with her; of course, she reciprocates; and, of course, in the third volume, they marry. But there are plenty of difficulties to overcome in the second volume, and one or two wily enemies to out-general or defeat. The most formidable are the Earl of Rookbury and the Reverend Cyprian Heywood, a Roman Catholic priest. Lord Rookbury is a clever, unprincipled old roué, very charming and very gentlemanlike, very avaricious, and an unblushing liar. Mr. Heywood is a Catholic without faith, and a Jesuit who laughs at his vows. He is a sort of mortal Mephistopheles, with a power of prescience, omniscience, and ubiquity more vraisemblable in a German romance, or in a French melo-drama, than in a story purporting to describe English life and character in the reign of Queen Victoria. The peer, who, for his own ends wishes to do good service to Carlyon, persuades Mr. Selwyn, a Cabinet Minister, and one of the best-drawn characters in the book, to take the young man as his private Secretary. Then come plot, intrigue, chicanery of all kinds. Lord Rookbury plots against Mr. Heywood; Mr. Molesworth against both; and all three mystify Bernard, who has a difficult game to play among them all. The fault which we have to find with the story is, that it is too intricate and perplexing; and (but this is the case very often in actual life) that there seems no adequate cause, no perceptible motive, for some of the subtlest machinations of the Jesuit, or the most daring falsehoods of the nobleman. The frequent episodical chapters, and the introduction of an undue quantity of supernumeraries (to speak theatrically), who have nothing whatever to do with the "business of the book, are also, we consider, drawbacks to the merit of " Aspen Court." Paul Chequerbent is but a ghostly revival of Mr. Dickens's Dick Swiveller. Mr. Molesworth's clerk is far less amusing than Miss Sally Brass's assistant; and, though meant to be more gentle

manly, and made to associate with men of fashion, he is, after all, but a poor snob. The chapters describing his police-court adventures, and Gravesend junketings, with Angela Livingstone, a trans-Pontine actress, are in the worst possible taste. We are sure that, if Mr. Brooks had allowed himself time to "weed" and to revise his book, he would never have sent to press such vulgar trash.

The supper-scene at Mrs. Forester's is still more unfit for the pages of an English novel. Mrs. Forester, a warmly-described widow, is in love with Selwyn, the Secretary of State. After the opera, one Saturday night, she invites Carlyou, whom she has only once before seen, to supper, promising him a pleasant party. No one is there, however, but the widow and a Miss Maynard young protégée, a strange young lady, who, in the third volume, carries off Heywood, the infidel priest, to America, where they turn Mormons.

--

He played his part well, whipped the trifle called talk with an adroit hand, and finding that the slightest dash of foreign flavour was not unwelcome to the taste of Mrs. Forester, he availed himself of certain Parisian recollections which, if indiscreet, he managed discreetly enough, and which were quietly appreciated by Lucy Forester, and, it must be said, still more evidently relished by Mary Maynard. And the little supper being perfectly served, and Mrs. Forester's wine being so exquisite that Carlyon wondered who could attend to it for her, the party became exceedingly radiant as the Sabbath came in. Mrs. Forester lay back in her delightful chair, and resting her classic head upon a soft little cushion, listened with the most charining smile, and retorted without taking the trouble to move her eyes from the lamp, while that strange Mary Maynard, under some pretence or other, had curled herself up in a corner of the couch on which Bernard many advantages, not the least being that it enabled Carlyon to observe that her foot was exceedingly pretty.

was, and sat in a sort of Oriental attitude which had

*

"Take care of him, Mary," said she, in a curious tone, as she left the room. As the door closed, Bernard turned to his attractive companion, and found she was gazing wistfully at him, with something like preparations for a cry. What hard creatures men are! His thoughts immediately recurred to the wineglass. "I know you think me very strange," said she, after a pause, which he had hardly known how to break. And the symptoms of an outbreak became more and more evident. But she struggled with her impulse for

a moment.

"Don't make a common-place, civil answer," she said, "or I shall have no patience with you. I know your thoughts. You are sitting there despising me as

hard as you can. Don't tell me!"-a phrase which

the young lady seemed to affect. "Presently you will go away, and as you light your cigar in the street you will smile and say, ' Queer girl that-something wrong.' And to-morrow you will sit down and write to Miss, and tell your dearest love that you went out to supper, and met the oddest sort of girl, with her dress off her shoulders, and black hair, not altogether ugly, but cracked, you believe; and then you will make a sketch of me for Miss's amusement, and assure her that she has no cause for jealousy. I know-don't-tell-me!" And she almost gasped. Bernard compassionately

took her hand (a very soft and warm one), and she looked up quite piteously.

Mary, in the most earnest and petitioning way. "Say you will not write that in your letter," said

"Certainly, if you wish it," said Bernard, not exactly knowing what else to say.

"O, I do, do, so much!" she replied, sobbing. "Will you promise it ?-Will you pledge yourself to it? There, I am sure you will, and-and-"

It was so evident that she meant to be kissed, by way of confirmation of the promise, that there was really no appeal; and though, of course, Bernard, under existing circumstances, most reluctantly approached her lips, he did touch them. And whether she had bent too forward in her kneeling position, or however else it might happen, a cloud of black curls fell upon his cheek, and Mary Maynard into his arms. He could hardly look up for a moment or so, but as her curls fell back from his face, he did, and met another gaze.

"Which is the white Hermitage, young Carlyon? said Mr. Heywood. "Ah! this, I think," he added, quietly filling his glass.

There is something in all this which reminds. us painfully of Eugene's Sue's pictures of high life in Paris. It is strangely unpleasing to our English taste. This Mrs. Forester, thus acting a part unfit to name, an unprincipled gambler, the harbourer and cruel task-mistress of poor Mary Maynard, an unscrupulous tool of the Jesuit Heywood, afterwards employed by him in a still more disreputable work, marries (and without any reformation on her part) the high-minded, pious Selwyn, and is chosen by Bernard Carlyon to present at court his pureminded wife!

Surely Mr. Brooks must see the gross indelicacy of all this. The man who draws such bewitching characters of women as Jane Wilmslow, little Amy, and the lofty Lilian cannot be utterly insensible to all the finer feelings.

The chapter describing the incarceration of the Wilmslows' girls by Lord Rookbury, in his house at Rookton Woods, is certainly as exciting as a chapter in Monte Christo, but even more improbable. The second title of this book is,

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A Story of Our Own Time." We cannot quite believe in the existence, now-a-days, in England, of such wonderful mechanical contrivances to prevent escape, to facilitate eavesdropping, and to convert the drawing-rooms of a country-house into a sensuous Oriental harem as are described as part of the household furniture of the Earl of Rookbury. Such startling improbabilities, not to say anachronisms, greatly mar the effectiveness of the book as a description of modern manners.

It is more pleasing to read such a scene as this, full of truth and tenderness, where the two hard men of the world exchange a few words of honest sympathy and sorrow for the poor mother about to lose her darling child:"I hope nothing is seriously the matter with poor little Amy."

-

"I fear," said Lord Rookbury, "that the poor child is not long for this world."

"What! Amy," exclaimed Bernard, much shocked. "That sunshiny little face!" He stopped to hear

more.

"A cloud has come over that sunshine," said the Earl, in a tone of real feeling, "and I doubt whether a darker shadow be not approaching faster than is believed at Aspen Court. I have seen some sad business in my time, Carlyon," he continued, “and there is not much that I need a physician should tell me. But a physician will have to tell a cruel story to poor dear Mrs. Wilmslow before long."

"It will kill her," said Carlyon, in a low voice "She is the best mother in the world, and is devoted to all the girls, but little Amy she idolizes."

"And I will tell you why," said Lord Rookbury, once more speaking in the calm voice of one who analyzes a subject, but without sympathy. "That child was born just as the dream that Henry Wilmslow was anything but a selfish profligate came to an end. Amy is the link between her mother's happiness and her desolation. That link is about to be broken, but Mrs. Wilmslow has too strong a sense of duty to let her heart break with sorrow."

Carlyon listened with much surprise, as Lord Rookbury uttered these sentences. Bernard had never heard him give so much proof that he could appreciate a woman's nature or her goodness. That evil old man, who had walked in his reckless way over the world's best gardens, he had, then, sometimes owned the beauty of the flowers he had snatched and cast away. More often, perhaps, than the younger man imagined. Carlyon accordingly takes down a great London doctor, who, having seen Amy, pronounces her to be dying rapidly. The cowardly cur, her father, listening behind a curtain, hears the sad statement without sorrow, but with rage at his not being taken into their confidence, and, determined that the awful news shall not be broken gently to his poor wife, rushes into the garden, whither the gentlemen had gone to seek her, and tells the terrible truth in his own vicious

way:

Amy had sat down upon a garden-seat. Then Kate, to Bernard's surprise, laid her hand on his arm, and made a gesture that she must speak to him apart. They proceeded a few steps from the rest of the party. "There is no time for more than one word. Is that a doctor, and is Amy dying?"

"Yes," said Bernard.

Her hand clutched upon his arm, and he felt her tremble violently, but she mastered her agitation, and said, in a hasty and imploring voice, "Tell mammayou tell her, for God's sake-now."

Bernard guessed all, sprang to Mrs. Wilmslow's side, and made an imperative sign to Rockbrook, unperceived by her, that he must instantly make his communication. The ready-witted physician understood him, and without comprehending the emergency of the case, offered his arm to his hostess, with a request that she would permit him to say a word or two. Jane, gentle as ever, took his arm, though with some surprise, but they had scarcely turned from the others when a strong hand was laid upon her shoulder, and her husband stood among them. He was excited by liquor, but in the perfect possession of his faculties, and his face, bloated by low debauchery, bore a savage expression, which, as it seemed to Carlyon at the moment, would have justified him in felling Wilmslow to the ground.

"Ah! I'm in time, I see," he said, as Jane, in her

habitual effort to screen her husband's vices, forced a smile, and tried to frame some playful words to help him to excuse his rudeness. The smile told him that she had not heard the fatal news.

"One word with you, Mr. Wilmslow," said Carlyon, dashing in as a last chance, for he saw Henry's intention. "I have a message to you from Lord Rookbury. Just come and hear it-a secret from the ladies."

"In-deed," returned Wilmslow, looking at him with an insolent scowl. "I'll hear it at my leisure, Mr. Secretary Carlyon, Sir. What I have to say, is what this gentleman says that a mother ought to hear from her husband. I believe those were your words, Sir. I was afraid that my daughter might have forestalled

me."

"Take her away," said Bernard to Rockbrook.

"At your peril, Sir," shouted Wilmslow, seizing his wife by the arm. "I have only to inform you, Mrs. Wilmslow," he said, in a drawling, malicious voice, "that this gentleman is a London doctor, brought down by that gentleman to see your youngest daughter; and his report is that she is dying, and can't live two months."

All eyes turned to seek Amy, who retained her seat at the foot of the old tree, but the mother was the first to clasp her in her arms.

“I knew it,” said Amy, quietly. "I thought you all knew it. Oh, yes, I am dying!"

From that day Wilmslow is a doomed man. Molesworth and Carlyon, who never forgive, pursue the wretch to his merited destruction.

The reason given for Molesworth having brought about the wretched marriage between the brute Wilmslow and the gentle Jane Tracy, again reminds us of Eugene Sue. That a man disappointed in winning for himself a woman, whom he loves with the strong passions of his energetic nature, should plot to consign her to the arms of a sot, a villain, and a fool, in order that she might never respect her husband, or love him, is too melo-dramatic a piece of absurdity for our sober English taste.

There is an excellent description of a debate in the House of Commons, from which we extract the following spirited sketch ::

He was hardly down when one of the staunchest leaders of the Opposition stood at the red box on the other side. He confronted the ministers boldly, as became the fearless and honest commoner, lord of half a county, and with a pedigree few lords can show. Lacking the practised composure of the Minister, he grew excited, even with the game in his own hands, and the broad, hale face reddened up to the roots of the silver hair. A fine, kindly old man, that county member, and one who would far gladlier have led the whole House after one of his foxes, than have hounded them on to tear down a Minister, but he thought he saw duty, and it had been a way with the men of his blood, for eight hundred years, to do it. The House rang again with his lusty old voice, as he denounced the bad measure and the worse cabinet, and moved that the bill be read a second time that day six months. The Speaker's eye fell right and left with extreme impartiality, now calling up an energetic barrister, bent on a Solicitor-Generalship, and now a wealthy ship-owner, strong in well-applied sense, stronger in ill-applied aspirates. A professional orator delivered his prepared harangue-it did not fit very well, being an answer to what had not been said, but was otherwise unexceptionable and another gentleman, primed with

champagne, let off a "smart" speech which he had got ready for a previous night, but had not been able to make the jokes missed fire certainly, but so they would have done at any other time. Ireland pronounced against the Minister, and again enlivened the scene by another little internicene war, in which Munster scoffed mightily at, and was scoffed at mightily, by Connaught.

The night wore, and the great guns roared not. Timid cries of "divide" broke out as two or three bores successively rose.

Watching his opportunity, and springing up after the very stupidest of these, in order that he might snatch and mangle him by way of an opening compliment to the House (which tolerates bores wonderfully, but rejoices to see them tortured), the great Leader of Opposition stood in the battle. A perfect and accomplished debater, calmest when apparently stormiest, with a studied tone for every taunt, and a practised gesture for every jibe. His shaft missed no mark, his arm struck no blow short. He appealed to ancient principles, to historic names, to the honourable

traditions of party, to the proud elements of the consti

tution, and he urged, in accents alternately sonorous and bitter, that for an old principle the advisers of the Crown had substituted a Manchester-made expediency; that they read history backwards, as witches read prayers, and with the same desire-that of raising a destructive fiend; that they had abandoned party traditions for disgraceful hucksterings, and that if they had hitherto abstained from destroying the constitution, it was chiefly because they had hoped to make a better bargain by selling it. With these and few other gentle imputations, delivered in the most masterly and artistic style of which oratory is capable, and with a glowing eulogium upon the party with which the speaker was advancing to save the country, he concluded one of those dashing and deadly philippics, which are a feature in Parliamentary history.

Lilian is a charming heroine; but Bernard Carlyon the least loveable of heroes. We were at first puzzled to account for our repulsion to this young man. He is brave, generous and open-handed, courteous to women,-the qualities, these, of a true hero. Some of the qualities, granted; but not all. There is no sympathy in his character, no tenderness, no enthusiasm. He is cold, worldly, and calculating. We are never led to suppose that he cares for politics or party. Of a sudden we find him the active, energetic assistant of a Secretary of State, to whom he has been consigned; and we cannot help thinking that he is a mere political Swiss, who would serve a Secretary of State of the opposite party just as strenuously if his doing so would advance his prospects. Sceptical in all things, trusting in nothing but his own hard sense and unflinching boldness, his very love for Lilian Trevelyan savours less of tender passion than of a fierce resolve to win what such clever schemers as Lord Rookbury, Mr. Molesworth (afterwards, and for no earthly purpose, discovered to be his father), and Mr. Heywood, his priestly-rival, are equally determined to withhold from him.

Such a man may be very clever, very successful; but he will never be much beloved even in real life, and is by no means a good

hero for a novel. We like a man of truer principle, higher purpose, and more generous impulses to be the winner of woman's love, and the sharer of our own sympathies.

We take leave of "Aspen Court" with mingled regret and hope: regret that Mr. Brooks should have written no better a book; with hope that his next work will be more genial in its tone, less improbable in its plot, and more refined in its descriptions of life and manners.

A BOOK sad, and beautiful, and true as life itself.

Wonderful and mysterious is the power which we denominate genius. An artist with a soul for beauty and an eye for colour, with well-trained taste and scholarly mind, studies at Rome, drinks in inspiration at the Hague and at Dresden, wanders entranced through the Louvre, and comes back to Berners Street with matured judgment, honest enthusiasm, and mighty ambition, only to throw away his pencil in despair, and to kick down his easel with disappointment. He loves his art intensely; he worships it passionately; he understands it thoroughly; but beyond this is a barrier which it has not been given him to overpass. Scholarship, poetry, taste, study, are there; but the power which we call genius has been withheld. Anon a young girl, who has studied little in comparison, and who has had none of his opportunities, in a week or two, with a few touches, produces a picture before which he kneels with the honest homage of an unselfish worshipper, and in whose work he recognises the magic power which he may never attain save in a dream. Why is this? Why, when two artists draw portraits of living men, and women, and children, is the one only a Lawrence, while the other is a Reynolds? Both paint likenesses, as Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin West each drew altar-pieces.

So it is with all art. Half-a-dozen or so of authors write books which will live while the world lasts; and thousands who are, perhaps, cleverer men, toil out their days, and wear out their hearts, in longing for a fame which can never be theirs.

"They find their aspirations quenched in tears." Nature is to be so closely imitated that in the book we are to see her living reflection. This we presume to be the aim and end of every writer of fiction-no hard task, surely the people about us, the passions within us, the deeds around us, have to be but faithfully described. Yet who succeeds? Nature is not so easily to be wooed or won; and in each branch of art (which is a faithful copying of nature) there are but few great masters; and the secret of their success is not known to us. There is no

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