57 LOST AND SAVED. It is the first of July, and will soon be the second. "Apreμic loxέaipa drives her silver chariot through the pathless ether. But, lo! a strange shadow mars the completeness of that serene circle. Slowly, inexorably, it steals across the radiant disc. The shadow of the earth, cast so many a thousand miles across the fields of space, darkens the argent beauty of the queen of night. It is for a time only. Earth's shadows are often black and terrible, but they pass away. Artemis shall emerge again, purer, if not fairer, than Aphrodite from the foam. Yet, shocking idea! perchance the chaste goddess is in wicked league with amorous Aphrodite to-night. Calm is the night, and clear, And the weird moon sails serene, near Surges the boughs between. And lo! a shadow dim The chariot of night outstrips, And darkens over the silver rim With a slow and strange eclipse. Out on the terrace we crowd To that sight in the summer sky: There's a ripple of laughter, sweet, not loud, There are greetings soft and sly. Such diamond eyes! and ah! Such tempting rosy lips! And "Where is Constance?" asks papa : "Oh, gone out to see the eclipse." Of course she is. Young ladies now-a-day know all about astronomy, and can calculate, by sines and cosines and the like, exactly when an eclipse is coming off. But then "the devil's in the moon for mischief." Have not ladies' colleges abolished mischief? Is there any fun left in the demure girls of the present day We, who are old enough to have kissed their grandmothers, may ask this question with decorum. However, we must not delay over so difficult an investigation, as we have a heap of novels to review before the eclipse is over. The majority are by ladies, and shall have the prece dence due to them. Mrs. Norton has achieved a great success in "Lost and Saved."* In our last notice of current romance we paused to lament the fate of the thousands of young and beautiful creatures who are tempted into the horrible abyss of voluptuous sin. Such temptation comes in many ways. Mrs. Norton, with a highminded woman's natural indignation at the distinction made by the world between the sexes in this matter, has founded a novel on the case in which a practised betrayer selects as his victim one who is perfectly pure and childishly ignorant. Every one will readily admit the injustice of treating such a person as if she had been deliberately unchaste: yet the world would so treat her. We may pause which reference has been made, here to remark that the distinction to though hard to bear, is not illogical. A woman who surrenders her chastity loses her chief jewel-the very pearl of perfect womanhood. A man's highest possession, on the other hand, is his honour; if he forfeits this, he also is utterly lost to society. The code of honour fluctuates greatly; possibly the time may come when to seduce a woman will be deemed dishonourable by those on whose opinions that code is based. We heartily hope that it may be so. At present, it is certain that a man like Montagu Treherne may pursue the precise career which Mrs. Norton has ably described-may seduce young girls, and carry on liaisons with married women, and may at the same time be the pet of the highest society, and eagerly sought by all manoeuvring mammas who desire a good establishment for their daughters. The women of society are more to blame than the men, for the cruelty with which their " erring sisters" are blame for the indifference with which treated. They are not devoid of the evil actions of such men as Treherne are regarded. While there are mothers who are eager to marry their innocent girls to a man of rank and * "Lost and Saved." By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Hurst & Blackett, London. riches, even though they well know him to be a skilled seducer, it is scarcely likely that men will render their code of honour more stringent in this respect. Unhappily, the evil has descended from the mothers to the daughters themselves; the young ladies of fashionable life have tasted of the tree of knowledge. The Earl of Manyshires is none the worse received by stately dowagers, nor finds fewer girls anxious to dance with him, because it is notorious that he spends thousands a year on the charming Lais-that he furnished for her that exquisite villa at Richmond, and bought her the perfect ponies which she drives in the park. He must sow his wild oats, say the charitable creatures. Are the men likely to cut Manyshires, who gives good dinners, and has capital shooting, and is altogether the best fellow in the world, while the women smile upon him so kindly? Not at all; and we maintain that, if society is to be reformed in this matter, the women must do it. And, if they would learn from the potent pen of genius how necessary such reform is, let them read "Lost and Saved." Let them trace the career of Montagu Treherne-brilliant, prosperous, heartless, unscrupulous. Let them see how this man's cruelty darkened the young life of Beatrice Brooke, and changed her from a gay and innocent girl to a sad and suffering woman. Let them mourn for a great love wasted upon a man wholly unable to care for any one but himself. Let them observe how the world, unjustly vindictive, punished with poverty and shame the betrayed Beatrice, while her betrayer enjoyed life easily, and was welcomed everywhere, and encountered no apparent penalty for his great and irretrievable crime. It is a painful picture, but it is true. Not often, it must be owned, does a girl so perfectly pure and innocent as Beatrice fall into the toils. But almost always it is the most beautiful, the most fascinating, who attracts the seducer's attention. "I present to you," says Mrs. Norton, in her graceful dedication to the Earl of Essex, "no faultless heroine in Beatrice Brooke; but I have the fullest confidence and foreknowledge that you will love her better than the unexceptionable Mariana, or even than sweet Helen Wollingham." And the authoress is right. Beatrice is lovable; lovable to the eyes of the reader, as she unhappily was to the eyes of Treherne. The collateral characters in this story are drawn excellently. Mrs. Norton's pictures of noble and highbred ladies and gentlemen cannot be surpassed. Some, too, are noble, yet low-bred: teste, the Marchioness of Updown, whose selfishness, and illtemper, and vulgarity, are sketched with great humour. Her sister, Lady Eudocia Wollingham, has quite as much selfishness, but it is united with refinement. The aged Earl of Caerlaverock, retired from public life to a Venetian palace and a Russian princess, is another capital picture. Equally good, but of a very different kind, is the timid, affectionate Parkes, Lady Updown's humble companion, the only creature who shows any kindness to poor Beatrice in her sorrow. Milly Nesdale is not a pleasant character, but belongs to a class which, we fear, is only too numerous. Few fashionable fine ladies carry matters quite so far as Milly-are so brilliant, so audacious, or so wicked; but her imitators, at a safe distance, are multitudinous. The idyllic beauty of many of Mrs. Norton's calmer scenesthat, for example, in which Montagu Treherne is first introduced to Beatrice, a laughing girl, running races upon the sands; and the remarkable dramatic power displayed throughout the work, as in the narrative of Captain Brooke's. sudden discovery of his daughter's disgrace, deserve especial notice. This: is assuredly the best prose work of its authoress; it is earnest, yet artistic; full of passionate feeling, yet of severe grace. If a novel can do anything towards the extinction of a great evil, we may hope for good results from "Lost and Saved." It will be observed that there are two points in which we maintain Mrs. Norton's unquestionable superiority to most novelists of the day. One is her capacity, the result of a wide experience, of sketching aristocratic character in all its variation. Thanks to the weakness of human nature, thorough aristocracy covers a multitude of sins. Fashion makes pleasant vices almost virtuous. Vulgar impertinence which would disgrace a housemaid may be charming in a marchioness. Utter heartlessness which would be intolerable in a snob is rather admired in the heir to an earldom. Young men of the higher classes-ay, and old men too-indulge in proceedings on which the "respectable" middle class dare not venture. Ethics are more easily read in those high latitudes. A peer of the realm may commit atrocities which would ruin a grocer for life. And one chief reason hereof is the veneer of elegance and grace which covers the coarser heads of mere vice. Mrs. Norton's hero, Montagu Treherne, is simply a scoundrel, when judged by his actions; but then the polish and brilliancy of his demeanour-a mere result of his education-carries it off. Take again the Earl of Caërlaverock -in his prime, a statesman and soldier, but by no means moral-in his dotage, a sojourner in a palace of Venice, with a Russian princess as his chère amie. This is a picture from the life. But, while the higher classes may furnish such pictures, nothing like them is found when we descend in the social scale. Vice, yes: but vulgar vice. It has not the poetic city of doges and gondolas to lend it a charm; its feminine practitioners have not the exquisite tact of the Princess Gouglokoff. Hence we can only conclude that the position which affords the noblest arena for human virtue offers also the most elegant excuses for human vice. The intense selfishness of Lady Eudocia is similarly aristocratic in its tone. She deems the whole universe secondary to herself and her daughters. She regards all women of lower rank, pretty much as Pallas Athene, or any other peculiarly exclusive goddess, might regard all feminine mortals. Her selfishness has the aspect of a high moral duty, not to herself only, but to the lofty society of which she is an important member. What would become of that society if its girls married "detrimentals? What if-ridiculous idea! a few intrigues interfered with the matrimonial arrangements of "eligibles?" Lady Eudocia looks down upon such matters with the divine indifference of Mr. Tennyson's Epicurean gods-to her they tell "a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong." Indeed, she might pos sibly declare that the words are much too strong for the occasion. The skill with which Mrs. Norton has presented the aristocratic vulgarity of the Marchioness of Updown is, perhaps, the most remarkable thing in the book. A woman of that sort, utterly careless of her utterances, is scarcely conceivable in the boudoirs of Belgravia. Yet has Mrs. Norton so sketched the Marchioness that we are convinced that the portrait is truthful; and it becomes evident that no external polish will destroy or even conceal inborn vulgarity. And the aristocratic tone of this vulgarity is somewhat amusing: as it appears in an elderly peeress, so one often encounters it in the younger specimens of both sexes. What can be more perfect in its way than the insolent insouciance with which a young "swell" ignores the existence of everybody except his especial friends? It is vulgar, but it is a work of art. As to the delicious impertinences of the young ladies of the aristocracy, they are beyond our capacity of description. Anybodyespecially if he be a nobody-who has tried Lady X's routs and Lady Y's balls, will be at no loss to supply them for himself. 66 Mrs. Norton does not, however, lend herself to the absurd democratic theory that high birth extinguishes all that is either virtuous or pleasant. The vulgar Marchioness and the selfish Lady Eudocia have a charming sister, Lady Diana, who unaristocratically marries a physician. This lady, commonly known as Aunt Dumpty," is one of the most attractive pictures in the novel. She has her parallel in a lower sphere-a certain Miss Parkes, the Marchioness's waiting-maid, who comes to the help of Beatrice in her misery. Real goodness, unalloyed by anything selfish or mean, appears in both the lady and the soubrette; and Mrs. Norton has here shown, with much subtlety and skill, that position in life need have no influence on character. The second point in which our authoress displays a rare and remarkable excellence is her poetic power. Many of the scenes and situations are singularly dramatic. The pathos of some scenes rises quite to the rank of poetry, although presented in the "Rippling o'er my ocean track, Their beauty gleams; Midnight watches bring them back. And daylight dreams. "All I hope, and all I fear, Loved by thee, Haunts my heart, Oh, Phoebe, dear, These short and graceful stanzas would go charmingly to music. Let us reiterate our thanks to Mrs. Norton for having devoted her powers to a subject not specially attractive at first sight, but of infinite importance. Let us, also, reiterate our cordial hope that these delightful volumes may be read as well for warning as for pleasure; and that the ladies of our land, who are the true leaders of public opinion, may be induced to ask themselves, whether they do rightly when they inflict no punishment on the gay and brilliant seducer, while they force into ruin unutterable, into depths of anguish unsurpassed by the horrors of Tartarus the unfathomable, the ignorant, and, perhaps, guileless creature who has been betrayed. FICHTE ON THE NATURE OF THE SCHOLAR, AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS. WHILE the practical, metaphysical, and moral utilitarian philosophies of England and France resemble cosmical systems, which have already reached definition and clear visibility as far as they extend, the region of German metaphysics may be compared to one of the nebulæ, vast in circuit, immeasurable in its depths and heights, a still chaotic mistuniverse, whose centrifying nucleii, nevertheless, promise to assume luminous proportions vaster than any in their neighbourhood, and whose light, foggy though as yet it be, penetrates further into the "void and formless infinite" than that of the smaller but consolidate suns of their adjacent systems. Indications of profound meaning, and of ideas more advanced than those of other philosophies, appear throughout such works; but one is frequently inclined to infer that their authors did not entirely distinctly comprehend themselves, though assiduously labouring to make others intelligent of their half-apprehended revelations. When to this is added the peculiar terminology of German metaphysics, and the fact that these authors who, like German prose writers generally, are for the most part very indifferent artists in composition, express their thoughts in a style to the last degree obscure by its involutions, it is little marvel that German philosophy should have made but small way, and acquired but a partial acceptance among the cultivated thinkers of Europe. So far, however, from the indistinctness of their theories troubling them, they seem rather proud of them, for the reason that what is profound is not readily comprehended; and we have heard of a German metaphysician, who, disdaining the recognition of vulgar intelligence, was accustomed to boast, "that there was but one man in all Deutchland who understood him, and yet this extraordinary man did not exactly quite understand him." Fichte's treatise on "The Nature of the Scholar"-a work which in its leading principles and arrangement seems to have formed the model of Carlyle's "Lectures of Heroes and Hero Worship"-though admirable in its ideal, is impregnate with the characteristic mistiness of the German mind to which we have alluded. After announcing that the object of the scholar is to comprehend, embody, and realize the Divine Idea of the universe, which lies behind mere natural appearance or phenomena, and which, partially recognised, partially hidden, is from time to time revealed by its interpreters-Men of Genius-he proceeds to treat of the scholar in his phases of student,— that in which he has arrived at perfect cultivation,-and as author and ruler. What he means by the Divine Idea is by no means clear, as expounded by him, though amid the generalities in which he indulges, it seems probable that he understands thereby deitific being exhibiting itself in the phenomena of matter, life, and spirit. "The divine life," he says. "is in itself absolute selfcomprehending unity, without change or variableness, but in its manifestation it becomes a self-developing existence, gradually and externally unfolding itself, and constantly advancing toward higher perfection in the ever-flowing stream of Time ;"-in a word, a progressive god, who, while partially embodying his attributes in matter and life, retains apart his essential centrified being. Nature differs from reason inasmuch as the one is a rigid, self-enclosed existence, and incapable, like the other of infinite growth, it is insensible, unintelligent matter, influenced by its essential laws. "Equally an appearance of the absolute, it exists merely as the means and condition of being, as a substratum of life." Fichte limits the divine idea of the universe, as expressed in life, to the human race; though it is evident, even from the tendency of his remarks, that to the mind of the scholar it must include the recognition of all the divine appearances in creation. "The original divine idea of any particular point of time," he goes on, "remains in part unexpressed until the god-inspired man appears and declares it. What this divine revealer effects, is divine; and all things new, great, and beautiful, which have or will come to light, will find their expression through the chosen ones of his race. Such as have appeared from epoch to epoch are to be regarded as the representations, in a hundred ways, of an everprogressive Deity." Nature is not designed to be merely useful and profitable to man, but to become, as well, his fitting companion, bearing the impress of his higher dignity. Such is the tendency of art and science: thus, the wind which fills the sail, the fire and water by which steam is formed, are elevated by the manifold purposes to which they are adapted by invention-by their instrumental reference to the progress and happiness of mankind. Thus, the sunbeam by which the photographic image of a friend is taken, loses in its effect its character as pure element, and becomes as it were a spiritual instrument and artist of genial associations. But instances illustrative of Fichte's idea of rendering nature the congenial and elevated companion of man--a necessary consequence of the course of intellectual progress and civilization, -are too obvious and numerous to need reference. "The man of genius," says Fichte, "is he whose capacities and culture have enabled him to recognise the divine idea, and impress it on any special subject to which he devotes himself; while the course open to the student, who remains uncertain as to whether he possesses genius or not, is that of acting as though there were resident in him a power which must at last come to light, and of placing himself in all conditions and circumstances to awaken and eliminate it. Where special genius exists largely, it is generally early exhibited, as biography testifies; but examples also abound of men having reached maturity before the leading faculties of their minds found a true area of development." Hence Fichte's advice to the student, to experimentalize with his powers until he discovers his particular tendency, is one of practical wisdom. To elicit our special faculties, and then seek a field for their exercise, is, indeed, the true ideal of life education. If genius, however, in its brightest forms, is a rare and providential gift, all men are capable of industry; and though none should pride themselves |