Our guides were evidently afraid of them, guides, having first proved our sense of and we hurried on as well as we could, but their courage and careful attention by a there was a certain sort of excitement, as suitable recognition of their services, and they whirled past, probably like that felt then retired to the rest we had so hardly by soldiers in action when the bullets are earned. Next morning we awoke thoroughheard flying past them. Schäff got a severe ly refreshed, and found ourselves in no way blow in the leg from a stone, and I was the worse for all the hardships we had struck by a small one in the back. Ortler endured. being exhausted at step-cutting, we tried to walk on the couloir without steps, but we had no sooner attempted it than J. (who had lost one of his crampons) slipped on the ice and was sliding away; but happily I had my alpenstock well in at the time, and was enabled to hold him up. The spot that we spent the night on was about 11,000 feet above the level of the sea, as well as we could calculate. We could scarcely have lived through the night if there had been any wind, unprovided as we were with suitable covering of any kind. We felt truly thankful to Providence for After three hours' hard work we reached our escape from such imminent peril, and some rocks, where we rested, and then we resolved never to risk our lives in a similar got quickly down the soft snow of the lower undertaking. Next morning we bid fareslope, at the foot of which we bade adieu well to quiet little Trafoi, and walked down to the regions of ice and snow, our way the valley to Prad, finding ourselves the lying now through a steep stony descent, objects of some curiosity to the inhabitants, where we met a man who had been de- who called us "the Örtler Herren," the spatched by our kind hostess with refresh- news of the ascent having quickly been ments for us. The heat was very great circulated through the neighbourhood. On by this time, and I could not take either our arrival at Prad, the curate and several meat or wine; my mouth and throat were of the townsfolk called to congratulate us literally dry as if they had been made of on our escape, and we had to submit to a parchment, in consequence of the long abstinence. friendly catechizing on various points of interest connected with the ascent. They About noon we reached the woods, where told us that telescopes had been brought to unfortunately no water was to be had, and bear on us while we were on the mountain, my sufferings from thirst were so great that from various places in the surrounding I could scarcely drag myself along. At district, as far as Heiden in the upper valley two o'clock we reached the little chapel of the Adige. We could not help being where the three fountains are, and I rushed impressed by the simple, kindly maninto it and drank copiously of the delicious ners of the people in this portion of the water the first thing that I had tasted Tyrol, unspoiled as they are by that with the least benefit for the last thirty-six great influx of tourists, which in other parts hours. I was at once restored; the sense of the Continent has exercised such a preof fatigue vanished, and we walked on judicial effect upon the character of the rapidly to Trafoi, which we reached after inhabitants. an absence of thirty-six hours; twelve occupied in the ascent, five in descending to our night's resting-place, twelve on that awful ledge, and seven in the final descent. The inhabitants baď nearly all given us up for lost, and the report of it was brought away by some travellers leaving the place. Mr. H., one of the Alpine Club, who was staying at our hotel, felt confident, however, that we were safe. He and his wife had been watching us during the morning making our way on the couloir, like flies crawling down a wall, and on our arrival he came forward to greet us most cordially. After a light repast, we parted with our Our experience of the conduct of the Austrian soldiery was far more favourable than that of some other travellers, as we found both the officers and privates courteous in their bearing to us, and in different instances had reason to contrast their attention and civility to strangers with the repelling hauteur assumed by certain youthful warriors nearer home; but it may have been that we were also a little biased in their favour by the fact that the ropes which had served us so well on the mountain were kindly furnished from the fort in the neighbourhood of Trafoi. From the Edinburgh Review. education a sufficient explanation of sluggish understandings and of inconsecutive arguments. With scarcely an exception Felix Holt, the Radical. By GEORGE 1866. logic at defiance. Her zeal for the elevation of the humbler classes is the more laudable because she has an extraordinary relish for the picturesque results of satisfied ignorance. In her fictions she always recurs by preference to the pre-scientific days, in which conscientious moral agriculturists had not yet learned the duty of extirpating flowering weeds. 6 666 FELIX HOLT' has some of the defects of ordinary novels, but ordinary novels have none of the merits of Felix Holt.' The great writer who, like Madame Dudevant, adopts the ungraceful disguise of a masculine pseudonym, has, after an excursion into a foreign country and a distant age, happily returned to her own region of provincial In the difficult enterprise of a historical English life, in full possession of her former novel George Eliot has been less completely vigour, of her dramatic fidelity to nature, successful. In preparing to write Romola,' and of her unrivalled humour. Few read- she had either read too much about Florers have any knowledge of a state of society ence, or had remembered too much of what which is apparently described from early she read. The admirable development of recollection, aided by local tradition, but a two or three principal characters in the creative imagination spontaneously produces book is provokingly overlaid by a profureal and living beings. Some of the inhabi- sion of irrelevant learning. The judicious tants of Treby Magna and its neighbour- student, conscious of the limits of human hood are eccentric and even grotesque, but memory, resents the assumption that he is. their language and their modes of thought bound to care for the minute details of are so natural and credible that the per- Florentine life and history in the fifteenth sonages of the story seem to have a real century. It is possible that Bartolommeo existence. Some justly celebrated humour- Scala may have sat in his garden at the ists produce all their effects by the more or Porta di Ponte with a loose mantle over less delicate use of caricature. Wiltul ex- his tunic and with his too stately silk lucco aggeration of oddities may be a legitimate thrown aside,' but it was not worth while comic method, but an engrained organic to devote half a dozen pages to an ironical absurdity furnishes deeper and more lasting analysis of his little scholastic squabble amusement. Mrs. Holt is not less illogical with the more celebrated Politian. That than Mrs. Nickleby, but she is not meant loud-barking hound of the Lord," said merely to be laughed at. The puzzled Francesco Čei, the popular poet," is not in and unwilling submission of a commonplace Florence just now. He has taken Piero and conceited old woman to a son who de Medici's hint to carry his railing prophehas grown out of her comprehension, is not cies on a journey for a while." It is necesa mere exercise of playful ingenuity, but an sary to explain in a note that Savonarola illustration of human experience. George and the Dominicans were facetiously deEliot takes almost excessive pleasure in scribed as Domini canes, and perhaps the recording the muddle-headed processes of information is less valueless than the diadull and uneducated understandings, but she logue which proceeds to explain that a always enters into the characters which she standard with a red eagle, a green dragon, reproduces, instead of contemplating them and a red lily was the gonfalon of the Guelf as subjects of farce or satire from without. party. Severe study is the worst possible The intelligent reader is conscious that if preparation for the production of an imaginature and circumstances had left his mind native work. The novelist and the poet a blank, he would have thought and talked ought to speak out of the fulness of the heart, like the collier at Sproxton, even if he had as George Eliot reveals without effort the not been obliged to give his wife a black odd mysteries of custom and character eye, to hinder her from going to the which grow up in some remote Midland preaching. Miss Austen was as fond as her village. The exquisite inaccuracy of Shaksmore ambitious and powerful successor of peare and of Scott belongs to the essence incoherent talkers, but, as all her charac- of historical fiction. Hector may quote Arters occupied the same level of cultivation, istotle, and the contemporaries of Coeur de she contented herself with studying various Lion may be sons of the companions of the forms of intellectual imbecility. Searching Conqueror, without disturbing the illusion deeper into the strata of society, George so harshly as when a tiresome extract from Eliot finds in the absence or narrowness of an obsolete Florentine chronicle is inserted 'Then back to Earth, the dear green Earth. I've left my heart at home.' In Loamshire, and at Treby Magna, there are no gorgeous processions, watched by spectators with historical names, requiring each a paragraph of description; but the sporting rector in his velveteen shooting jacket, the pompous butler in the steward's room at the manor, the retired London tradesman who tells his admiring neighbours. in the country stories about Mr. Pitt, require no long explanation to make them intelligible and pleasant. The preliminary chapter, which describes a day's journey on a coach, has never been excelled as a sketch of the varieties of English town and country scenery. in the dialogue of a novel. Notwithstand-error of exhibiting antiquarian knowledge. ing drawbacks which are by some tastes George Eliot, though far superior in genius regarded as attractions, Romola' is a won- to Manzoni, has not altogether avoided derful preformance. The whole force of the minute pedantry which disfigures the the writer's dramatic genius has been con-Promessi Sposi.' Her brilliant expericentrated on the character of Tito. The ment ought to satisfy roving ambition, for, conventional villain of romance is coarse in like Wordsworth, whom she resembles in texture by the side of the easy, good-na- few of her qualities, she leads but an artitured, and graceful Greek adventurer, ficial life in an unfamiliar atmosphere. whose selfishness, untainted with malignity, passes gradually through meanness into treachery and crime. The morbid pathology of symptoms which to a less subtle observer would indicate perfect moral health, is painful in proportion to the accuracy of the demonstration. Under the influence of fear, as in the careless pursuit of pleasure, Tito illustrates with undeviating consistency a theory which corresponds with the theological doctrine of original sin, except that it is not universally applicable. That an ignoble nature is incurable appears to be one of George Eliot's most habitual convictions; and she delights to dwell on the sufferings of women under unworthy masculine supremacy. The heroic elevation of Romola herself supplies almost too glaring a contrast to the pliant smoothness of her husband. Her gloomy history may suggest the thought which is expressed by Mrs. Transome in Felix Holt,'.' I would not lose the misery of being a woman, now George Eliot's power of constructing a I see what can be the baseness of a man.' fable is not equal to her skill in delineating The character of Savonarola is almost as character. Her shorter tales, as Silas remarkable a specimen of psychological Marner,' and the Scenes of Clerical Life" analysis as the more difficult study of Tito, have more unity and rapidity of movement. but nine-tenths of the personages of the than the Mill on the Floss,' or Felix story are merely figures in a pageant; and Holt; yet the celebrated public-house conthe best proof that indigenous humour de- versation in Silas Marner' has scarcely generates in a foreign soil is furnished by any connexion with the principal story. A the flashy and tiresome prattle of Nello the subtle perception of motives and peculiaricomic barber. The last feverish struggles ties perhaps tends to interrupt the continuof Florence for republican liberty, and the ous flow of narrative. Scott said that a fahalf-willing martyrdom of Savonarola, re- vourite character, like Dugald Dalgetty, ran tain their historical and dramatic interest away with him, and in the most humorous after the lapse of centuries; but lively of fictions, the story of Tristram Shandy mannerism and the ready use of familiar never makes the smallest progress. By far allusions, although they are the necessary the best part of Adam Bede' consists in vehicles of social gaiety, are by their nature the proverb-like sayings of Mrs. Poyser, ephemeral and perishable. No bookish who has little or nothing to do with the plot.. knowledge can supply the homely associa- It is not surprising that a writer who has tions which are indispensable to humorous the power of drawing a typical portrait in fiction. One sentence of Tommy Troun- a few strokes, is tempted to imitate the copisem's in Felix Holt' is well worth all the pages which are allotted to the Florentine Figaro. Scott had forgotten all the dates and the particulars of Philipe de Comines's history when he reproduced with admirable fidelity the central figure of Louis XI. His imitators in England, in Germany, and above all in Italy uniformly fall into the FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. III. ous irregularity of Nature, instead of adhering with severe accuracy to a preconceived design. Some of the episodes of Felix Holt,' after a laboured commencement, end in nothing; and the legal complication which forms the frame work of the story is arbitrarily disregarded in the final solution. The doubtful title to the Transome estate, 28. although it is the subject of significant allusion in the introductory chapter, and of incessant anxiety and uncertainty through the entire course of the narrative, exercises no eventual influence on the fortunes of the principal personages. One of the triumphs of English jurisprudence consists in the mixed feeling of curiosity and awe with which it has impressed authors and more especially authoresses of fiction. The law supplies to modern novels the place of that supernatural machinery which was once thought indispensable in epic composition. Like the gods of Olympus, or the Destiny of later times, some entail or settlement operates in its relentless course, impenetrable, inexorable, and sovereignly unjust. The father of Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh was prevented by the will of a remote ancestor from leaving not only bis landed estate but his large accumulations of personalty to his only child. George Eliot is perhaps a better lawyer than Mrs. Browning, but she appears to be almost equally incapable of understanding that perpetuities are among the few anomalies which are unknown to the law of England. I saw clear enough,' says Tommy Trounsem, the poaching bill-sticker, as, if the law hadn't been again' me, the Trounsem estate 'ud ha' been mine. Some such vague notion that the law is opposed to the right which it constitutes, underlies many ingenious fictions. The settlement of the Transome estates was made a hundred years ago by John Justus Transome, entailing them, while in his possession, on his son Thomas and his heirs male, with remainder to the Bycliffes in fee.' Thomas had without the knowledge of his father, the tenant in possession, sold his own and his descendants' rights to a lawyer-cousin, named Durfey. Therefore the title of the Durfey Transomes, in spite of that old Durfey's tricks to show the contrary, depended solely on the purchase of the "base fee" thus created by Thomas Transome; and the Bycliffes were the "remainder-men," who might fairly oust the Durfey Transomes, if the issue of the prodigal Thomas went clean out of existence, and ceased to represent a right which he had bargained away.' Base fees and remainder-men produce a salutary feeling of respect, but the anxieties which disturbed the peaceful enjoyment of Transome Park might have been dissipated by careful examination of the title. Esther Lyon or Bycliffe, represented as the rightful claimant of the property, was the daughter of a Bycliffe who died as a young man in 1811 or 1812. The settlement of 1729 could only take effect for twenty-one years beyond a life in being; and consequently, even if Maurice Bycliffe, the father of Esther, was the immediate successor of the original remainder-man, the effect of the limitation must have expired long before 1832. During the progress of the story, on the death of Tommy Trounsem, the last descendant of Thomas Transome, Esther's claim is supposed to accrue. In the learned language of some former Attorney-General, Upon the decease of Thomas Transome, otherwise Trounsem, we are of opinion that the right in remainder of the Bycliffe family will arise, which right would not be barred by any statute of limitation.' On the same principle an entail might tie up property for centuries, while an intermediate tenancy descended from generation to generation. The power of Thomas Transome when he was only heir in tail to cut off his own issue by a sale which was inoperative against the Bycliffes, is another illustration of Tommy's proposition that you'd better not be meddlin' wi' things belonging to the law, else you'll be catched up in a big wheel, and fly to bits.' The puzzle is additionally complicated by the threatened treachery of the family solicitor, who has the secret of Esther's birth and of Tommy Trounsem's pedigree. As Mr. Jermyn had contrived to charge the estate with annuities and mortgages in his own favour to the amount of 3,000l. a year, he might have been trusted to abstain from invalidating his own security. The alarm which may have been caused by the description on the title-page of Felix Holt as a Radical is relieved by the discovery that he is neither a popular speaker nor primarily a politician, but a social reformer. The determination of a clever and well-educated son of a tradesman to pass through life as a member of the workingclass is justly regarded by his neighbours as a crotchet, although the authoress admires his choice and the heroine rewards it with her heart and hand. Sympathy is perhaps less subtle than satirical intuition, for Felix Holt, though his conversation is manly, sensible, and thoughtful, is a less masterly portrait than Tito Melema. The virtue of wearing a cap instead of a hat, and of dispensing with a neckcloth, is rather ostentatious than sublime. If a man who has the power of earning a comfortable income by the exercise of his knowledge and ability, prefers a handicraft and weekly wages, his asceticism is as unprofitable as if it were practised in a Trappist cell, and it involves the non-monastic disadvantage of enforcing useless hardships on the modern saint's wife and children. By a happy instinct George Eliot passes over the sordid incidents which constitute the real sting of poverty. Felix Holt converses in the tone of a gentleman and philosopher with cultivated associates, and although he earns a bare livelihood as a journeyman watchmaker, his time seems to be always at his own disposal. When his mother teazes him with her twaddle, he answers her with a joke about the Ciceronian antiphrasis;' and except as a teacher or missionary, he seems to have no social relations with his fellow-workmen or nominal equals. He says, indeed, that he has the stomach of a rhinoceros, so that he can live on porridge, and he even boasts that he is not a mouse to distinguish between a wax and a tallow-candle; but an artisan who can amuse himself with Ciceronian figures of speech, resembles a workman as a shepherd at the opera or in Sèvres china is like a common farm servant. In one of her novels George Eliot compares a feeling of moral repugnance to the dislike of a refined temperament for a coarse odour or a flaring light; yet Felix Holt's contempt for the wax-taper which was necessary to Esther's comfort is represented as a proof of superiority. attempts in vain a pretty and natural diversion. “What is my horrible guilt," she said, rising and standing, as she was wont, with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had been any one but Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to her that this attitude showed her to advantage; but she had only a mortified sense that he was quite indifferent to what others praised her for. Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?" he said, snatching up René, and running his eyes over the pages... "You have no reason but idle fancy and selfish inclination for shirking your father's teaching, and giving your soul up to trifles." "You are kind enough to say so: but I am not aware that I ever confided my reasons to you." Why, what worth calling a reason could make any mortal hang over this trash? Idiotic immoraldoctrine tacked to it, like a hare's foot on a dish, ity dressed up to look fine, with a little bit of to make believe the mess is not cat's flesh. Look here: Est ce ma faute, si je trouve partout des bornes, si ce qui est fini n'a pour moi aucune valeur? Yes, sir, distinctly your fault, because you're an ass. Your dunce, who can't do his sum, always has a taste for the infinite. Sir, do you know what a rhomboid is? Oh no, I don't believe these things with limits. Cela vie, et si j'avais encore la folie de croire au pendant, j'aime la monotonie des sentimens de If unusual schemes of life are generally reading with that dreadful accent; it sets one's "O pray, Mr. Holt, don't go on fantastic mistakes, self-sacrificing devotion teeth on edge." Esther, smarting helplessly to the supposed good of the community is under the previous lashes, was relieved by this not the less a respectable rule of conduct. diversion of criticism. "There it is," said Esther Lyon, cultivating in a humble sphere Felix, throwing the book on the table, and getthe tastes of a fine lady, is at first shocked ting up to walk about. "You are only happy or startled by Felix's paradoxical bluntness, when you can spy a tag or tassel loose to turn and she has always felt a kindly contempt the tables, and get rid of any judgment that must carry your author after it." bonheur ' for the pious orthodoxy of the Independent Minister whom she believes to be her father. If the nature of women is truly delineated A lover's quarrel before the conscious beby writers of their own sex, an overbearing ginning of love has never been recorded spirit and a kind of masculine roughness with more delicate insight. The vigorous are the qualities which above all others en- and eager secutor, with reason and convicsure success in love. In ordinary practice tion on his side, finds himself constantly reproof and contradiction will be sparingly hampered by a cast of the net on the part employed by the judicious suitor; but in of his fugitive adversary. An argument novels the incivility of the hero rarely which includes a French quotation cannot fails of its desired effect. A sensible woman be more effectively parried, than by a commight indeed extract a kind of compliment plaint that that dreadful accent sets one's from the reproof which she has earned by teeth on edge. The loose tag or tassel some little burst of nonsense. When Felix serves for a moment the purpose of turning Holt reproached Esther for real or affected the tables, but after all the victory remains frivolity, she resented his speech, but dis- with the champion of the rightful cause. liked it less than many Felix had addressed The number of women who hinder men's to her.' 'You have enough understand- lives from having any nobleness in them' ing,' he said, to make it wicked that you would be incalculable, if potential nobleshould add one more to the women who ness were not almost proportionally rare. hinder men's lives from having any noble- Men, however, have generally some emness in them.' In her anger, slightly modi- ployment, if it is only selling tape or drawfied by a sense of gratification, Esthering pleadings, beyond the limits of home |