ditch can be thrown out after the fence is planted.

Of course the width and depth of ditch should vary according to the nature and fall of the ground.

There is a number of other plants besides the thorn which may be used for hedge-rows, such as the privet, quince, and rosa multiflora, the two last-mentioned plants making, when mixed, a strong and durable fence. The Oswage orange will prove a good substitute for thorn on warm scoria soils. The mimosa alata makes a fine evergreen hedge, but plants often die out shortly after it has attained the desired height, and blanks in a hedge are very difficult to fill up, as the taller plants abstract all the nourishment from the soil on their

own account.

Evergreen fences for divisions in gardens may with advantage be formed of privet, holly, yew, fuschias, roses, Australian may, cypress, and arbor vitæ.

The heavy post-and-rail fence detracts greatly from the beauty of our scenery here. Stone walls also, unless covered with climbing plants, are most unsightly. It is impossible to estimate the loss of a landscape which does not abound in well kept and flourishing live fences. There can be nothing much more offensive to the eye than small houses pent up within a few square yards of ground, boxed in by a heavy wooden fence some four or five feet high, and presenting rather the appearance of miniature stockades than any wholesome dwellings. Time will convince people of the evil of this system, which ought at once to be put down, and a system of light, open fences-with a live fence planted at the same time-inaugurated. In a few years the wooden fence might be dispensed with entirely, and the permanent live one alone left, which, with care, will last a lifetime.

For marshy land willows make a good fence, but unless protected they are liable to be eaten by cattle.

EVENING.

Day's eye was drooping a weary lid,
Befringed with a lash of golden light,
And the first dewy tear had gently slid

Down his blushing cheek that was softly bright,
And clouds of beamy golden hair

Floated abroad on the whispering air,

And the stars peeped through

Their veil of blue

And smiled-then hid

Themselves from view.

Till the bright day slid

Unperceived away,

And his golden lashes turned to grey

As he dropped them down

With a gentle frown,

While the whispering air

Bore his golden hair,

Where -Oh where ?

E. D.

D. HAY.

REVIEW S.

"No NAME:" by WILKIE COLLINS.

London-Sampson, Low, Son,

and Co. 1862.

It would probably be difficult to find any subject upon which a greater variety of opinions are held than that of Art. The questions-What is it that constitutes Art? and, What is the highest kind of Art ?—are questions upon which everyone has an opinion; and, as might be expected, upon which there is a vast diversity of ideas. The difficulties involved in either question are by no means trifling, and this is more especially true of the latter one. On this account we are not inclined hastily to gainsay any one who puts forward a claim to the title of an artist. All that we in our capacity of critics feel ourselves bound to do, is merely to determine whether the claimant of this title does in truth accomplish anything of merit in that branch of art, high or low, which he may have adopted for his own. In the preface of the book before us, its author lays claim to the title of artist and it will now be our part to inquire what Wilkie Collins means when he calls himself an artist, and how far the public should confirm his verdict upon his own performance. Works of fiction, amid a host of minor differences, are marked out as belonging to one of two great classes by the the prominence given in their pages either to character or incident. Some of our greatest novelists have indeed rested on the boundary line, as it were, between the two; but the great majority of writers of fiction have, either from mental constitution or deliberate choice, inclined very decidedly to one or other of these two classes of composition. Much may undoubtedly be said in favour of either; but writers in both may claim to be considered artists, and we are by no means disposed to reject those claims. Wilkie Collins has deliberately made choice of the first of those plans, which in his hands has obtained the soubriquet of the sensation school. From one who has for fifteen years laboured unceasingly to bring this particular kind of novel to its highest attainable perfection, we shall probably best learn what the objects proposed to be attained by it are, and in what manner they should be sought.

From all the works of this author we gather, that the object kept steadily in view by him throughout is the telling an interesting story, bringing in of course characters as agents, but grouping these characters round the facts, so as best to develop the latter, not fitting the events to preconceived characters. Some may be inclined to object to this as not real art. We reply, on behalf of the sensation school, that engraving is as much an art as sculpture, and that the first-rate engraver is a far truer artist than the second-rate sculptor. Which is the higher art of the two, taken absolutely, is another question, and one not easy of solution, as it is almost impossible to obtain a satisfactory canon for our criticism. it to be decided by the relative numbers who find pleasure in the reading of each class of novels? We believe the sensationists would carry the

Is

day. Is it by the fewness of those qualified to excel in their creation? We really are at a loss to decide upon such a basis. In short, we believe each class must be left by itself, and considered wholly apart from the other. A part of the public will always be found who will hold to each and scout the other altogether. All that is left for the critic then to do, is to say what amount of perfection a novel attains in that direction whither it aspires. Mr. Collins's object in writing "No Name," as in the "Woman in White," was simply to construct such a tale as should hold the reader in breathless suspense as to the result of its intricate and nicely balanced plot. Such was evidently his object, and we must bear him witness that in this he has emphatically succeeded. As in the "Woman in White," the characters introduced are supplementary to the plot, not the plot to the characters. The mode of thought in the author's mind seems to have been something of this kind: given, a case of a family left suddenly destitute and nameless by a parent's crime and an uncle's cruelty, how could this ill-used wealth be wrested from the cruel uncle and his heirs and returned to the family who have not legally a shadow of a claim to its possession. Such a case obviously demanded several agents, and the choice of these agents, and the moving them as puppets, when chosen, so as to complicate to the utmost the web of the story, form the sole art of the narrator. This art, however, is a very difficult one indeed to attain to, and the wonderful success of Wilkie Collins's works has arisen from the fact that he has arrived almost at per fection in it.

"No

To speak, however, more particularly of the present novel. Name" is, like its predecessor, the "Woman in White," a tale of mystery. It differs from it, however, in several important respects. It is not a tale of horror-no one comes to life, as it were, from the grave; there are no mad women, and no very ruffianly men. The fiction is, in short, composed of more simple materials, which must have rendered the attainment of an equally effective result a matter of no small difficulty. In this, however, the author has succeeded. With the every-day materials of an angry and revengeful woman, a clever rogue, a weak conceited invalid, and a sleek sly housekeeper, Wilkie Collins has produced at least as thoroughly sensational a novel as his former one, when he used the extraordinary agencies of Ann Catherick and Count Fosco. This is no mean praise; for the perfection of art must ever be to make the splendour of the execution entirely cast into the shade the slightness of the material employed: as when a great painter produces a marvellous effect of light and shade by one or two strokes of his brush, which, in the hands of one less gifted, would but have produced an unmeaning daub. As we have already intimated, the author concentrates all his strength upon the elaboration of the plot, and the result quite justifies the labour bestowed. The elaborate subtlety of the design, which is not apparent without study; the patient strength with which every minute touch is added which may in any way heighten the effect, are beyond praise; while the evidence in every sentence of the three volumes of careful calculation and minute weighing of cause and effect, fills the mind with astonishment at the evidences of untiring labour they display. When to these we add the power so remarkably developed by this writer of producing the most thrilling effect by a few carefully selected words of description, we have, we believe, fully accounted for the marked popularity which has attended

the "Woman in White," and which we confidently predict in no less a degree for its present successor.

The plot of "No Name" is composed of what, at first sight, seem very ordinary materials. The idea of a family left, by a sudden accident, without name or fortune, is one neither new nor difficult of conception. Even the stern determination of an angry girl, if possible, to re-possess herself and her sister of what she considers the law to have unjustly deprived them, is, if more novel, certainly by no means an extraordinary conception. These ideas, in the hands of an ordinary writer of fiction, might have made an average tale, but would never have made one of the engrossing interest commanded by "No Name:" they wanted, in fact, the hand of the true artist to work up such very ordinary materials into a remarkable fabric. In Wilkie Collins such an artist was found, and it is by the subtle management of these ordinary characters for the production of extraordinary effects, rather than by the handling of more extraordinary agents in the "Woman in White," that we recognise in him this proper artistic power.

The story contains but three leading characters, and in one at least of these we recognise a favourite type of the author's. Magdalen Vanstone, who is the young lady deprived of her name and inheritance by her parent's fault, is by no means an extraordinary girl, except in the possession of strong passions and a strong will, and an unusual power of mimicry. We fancy we can trace a strong resemblance between her original character and that of Marian Halcombe in the author's last novel. Mrs. Lecount, the housekeeper of Noel Vanstone, who has succeeded to his cousin's wealth, is merely a feminine edition of Count Fosco; this resemblance holds good even as far as personal habits. Like him, she is smooth, smiling, and repulsive; and like him, too, she shows a strange affection for the inferior animals which she wholly denies to her own species. What Fosco's mice were to him, Mrs. Lecount's toad is, though in a less marked degree, to her; something that is intended to display a strange incongruity of character. In Captain Wragge alone do we find an absolutely new character in this novel; and the touches which develop the peculiarities of the "Moral Agriculturalist" form an admirable relief to the more sensational passages of the book. The nature of these sensational chapters will be best understood by an extract or two. Thus, at the moment in which the wretched heroine is shrinking from the mockery of a marriage with her cousin, brought about by her own artifices—

"The new day had risen. The broad grey dawn flowed in on her over the quiet eastern sea. She saw the waters, heaving large and silent in the misty calm; she felt the fresh breath of the morning flutter cool on her face. Her strength returned; her mind cleared a little. At the sight of the sea, her memory recalled the walk in the garden overnight, and the picture which her distempered fancy had painted on the black void. In thought she saw the picture again-the murderer hurling the spud of the plough into the air, and setting the life or death of the woman who had deserted him on the hazard of the falling point. The infection of that terrible superstition seized on her mind, as suddenly as the new day had burst on her view. The promise of release which she saw in it from the horror of her own hesitation roused the last energies of her despair. She resolved to end the struggle by setting her life

or death on the hazard of a chance. On what chance? The sea showed it to her. Dimly distinguishable through the mist she saw a little fleet of coasting vessels drifting slowly towards the house, all following the same direction with the favouring set of the tide. In half-an-hour-perhaps in less-the fleet would have passed her window. The hands of the watch pointed to four o'clock. She seated herself close at the side of the window, with her back towards the quarter from which the vessels were drifting down on her-with the poison placed on the window-sill and the watch on her lap. For one half-hour to come she determined to wait there and count the vessels as they went by. If, in that time, an even number passed her-the sign given should be a sign to live. If the uneven number prevailed-the end should be death. With that final resolution, she rested her head against the window and watched for the ships to pass.

"The first came—high, dark, and near in the mist-gliding gently over the silent sea. An interval-and the second followed, with the third close after it. Another interval, longer and longer drawn out— and nothing passed. She looked at her watch. Twelve minutes, and three ships. Three. The fourth came; slower than the rest, larger than the rest, farther off in the mist than the rest. The interval followed; a long interval once more. Then the next ship passed, darkest, and nearest of all. Five. The next uneven number-Five. She looked at her watch again. Nineteen minutes, and five ships. Twenty minutes. Twenty-one, two, three-and no sixth vessel. Twenty-four; and the sixth came by. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight ; and the next uneven number-the fatal Seven-glided into view. minutes to the end of the half-hour; and seven ships. Twenty-nine; and nothing followed in the wake of the seventh ship. The minute hand of the watch moved on half way to thirty-and still the white, heaving sea was a misty blank. Without moving her head from the window, she took the poison in one hand, and raised the watch in the other. As the quick seconds counted each other out, her eyes, as quick as they, looked from the watch to the sea, from the sea to the watch-looked for the last time at the sea, and saw- -the eighth ship. She never moved; she

Two

never spoke. The death of thought, the death of feeling, seemed to have come to her already. She put back the poison mechanically on the ledge of the window, and watched as in a dream the ship gliding smoothly on its silent way-gliding, till it melted dimly into shadow-gliding, till it was lost in the mist."

We think the reader will now see what we mean when we say that Wilkie Collins has vindicated his title to the name of an artist. Without entering upon the question of whether it is the highest kind of art or not, it is clear that art of a certain kind is brought to a very high degree of perfection in every sentence of the foregoing.

Before closing this review, we cannot refrain from giving an extract to show the style of the lighter parts of the book: the setting, as it were, of filagree work, designed to take off the appearance of heaviness in the main jewel. Captain Wragge-who has given up "Moral Agriculture," alias swindling, for the more respectable branch of "Medical Agriculture," or quack medicine-is explaining his position to his cousin :

"Magdalene smiled. 'It's no laughing matter to the public, my dear,' he said. 'They can't get rid of me and my pill-they must take

VOL. L-No. 3.

K