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a "story" by one of the literary papers. As a picture of life in a world of Henry Kingsley's own it might pass, but we fail to recognise in it either the England or the India that we know. "Fantastic as the Mutiny time may have been, in the author's own phrase, we can scarcely accept the Rajah and the Nawab, or even Eddy Evans and the unfortunate Allan, as possible, or indeed probable, characters. But after all, what a grand book it is! We see the scenes as the author saw them, in the vivid touches of colour which he loved, - Roland in his scarlet and gold, riding at the head of his troop into the dusky mass of mutinous sepoys; the Rajah in his green and gold and white, waving the blood-stained handkerchief at the English officers as he leaves the messroom; dandy little Eddy stepping out into the sunshine bareheaded in his whiteand-blue uniform, carrying the flag of truce. Many episodes also there are which stand out boldly in the memory, the gathering in the ante-room of the Secretary for War before Roland's departure for India, the story of the faithful moonshee who lost his life on account of his services to the English, the night of horror on which the Mutiny broke out at Belpore. The earlier chapters of the book may, and we fear must, sink into oblivion, but no one who has read the later portion can altogether forget it.

If Henry Kingsley trusted chiefly to his vivid imagination for local colour when he wrote 'Stretton,' the same cannot be said of Colonel Meadows Taylor, whose novel of the Mutiny, 'Seeta,' appeared in 1872. The reputation of the author and his extensive knowledge of the country of which he writes give us a pleasant feeling of security-a confidence that

whatever information we may pick up from him (with the exception of his barbarous method of spelling native names) is so much clear gain. A distinct novelty is introduced in this case by his selection of a heroine. Cyril Brandon, an ideal official, marries Seeta, a lovely Hindu widow, according to native rites, and introduces her into the society of the station of Noorpoor. Her reception by the station ladies is described at some length, as are the difficulties encountered by Brandon from his English relatives, his superior officers, and the heads of the caste to which his wife belongs. There is a villain in the form of an ex-sepoy named Azrael Pandé, whose life is proof against all attempts to kill him, and this man, as well

as a rebellious native prince, is in love with Seeta. When the Mutiny breaks out, the Brandons with their friends seek refuge in the fort at Noorpoor (Agra ?), and Seeta dons male attire and rides and fights, as her Rajput ancestresses had done in their day, at her husband's side. The successive efforts of Azrael Pandé and the Nawab to obtain possession of her, either by force or treachery, are frustrated, and the reader is beginning to anticipate Seeta's conversion to Christianity, and a long and happy life for her with Brandon, when she is mortally wounded while giving the alarm during a sudden attack. This sudden and violent ending to Brandon's difficulties strikes us as akin to the action of the player who upsets the chessboard because he can see no way of winning; and our resentment is not disarmed by the hero's subsequent marriage, with the approval of all his relations, to the English girl in whom he had been mildly interested before making the acquaintance of Seeta.

Another book of the same kind -that is to say, written by a man who knows the country-is Sir George Chesney's 'The Dilemma,' published in 1876. The "dilemma" of the title is somewhat difficult to discover, as there are three, if not more, complications in the story to which that name might be given; but the history of Olivia Cunningham and her three lovers serves to introduce many interesting characters and events of the time. Yorke, the young subaltern who imagines himself beloved until he is undeceived by the lady's marriage to Colonel Falkland, an elderly Bayard, is a sympathetic character, and so is the colonel himself; but the best portrait in the book is that of Major Kirke, the dashing soldier of fortune whom Olivia marries after her husband has been reported dead in the relief of Mustaphabad (Lucknow ?). The trials into which this unscrupulous hero drags his unhappy wife grow deeper and deeper, until they are at once crowned and terminated by the reappearance of the unfortunate Falkland. Kirke, expelled from the army, has entered the service of the Pasha of Egypt, and Falkland, coming to England to obtain a distant glimpse of his wife, dies of the injuries he receives in saving her and her children from a burning house. Olivia, discovering the truth, dies mad, and thus what we take, on mature consideration, to be the dilemma from which the book is named is solved.

Passing over with merely a mention a vigorous work which appeared anonymously in 1883, called 'In the Company's Service,' and founded apparently on the experiences of a distinguished civilian who died only a year or two ago, we come to the writings of an author who is regarded by many

well-qualified judges as the novelist par excellence of the Mutiny. It is scarcely necessary to say that we refer to Mr R. E. Forrest, whose two books, 'The Touchstone of Peril' and 'Eight Days,' are monuments of careful observation and detailed description. If we may suggest a fault in his work, it is that it is too full of these excellent qualities. A panoramic survey of the whole condition of Indian and Anglo-Indian life at the time, after the manner of the famous first chapter of Macaulay's History, makes each book rather a collection of mémoires pour servir than a novel proper. Mr Forrest must note down every circumstance in the environment of his characters, and in this excess of background there is some danger of forgetting the story. Still, this is a fault on the right side, due, as we believe, to the eagerness of an eyewitness of the events he describes to furnish others with all the data possessed by himself, and to explain everything that is capable of explanation. But there is one crime which we cannot forgive to Mr Forrest, and that is the ruthless massacre in the courtyard of the palace at Khizrabad of all the most interesting characters in 'Eight Days,' under the cruel eyes of the Sikunder Begum. After the defence of the Bank, after Philip Lennox's furious ride. through the city, after the hopes and fears and hairbreadth escapes of the day, to end all at one blow in this way! It may be very like life, but it is very bad art.

Our next book is something of a novelty, in that it is the work of a lady, and (although we would by no means imply that this is a necessary consequence) written from a feminine point of view. We have no quarrel with those who raise the cry of "Justice to

Women!"—indeed, in our humble way, we sympathise with them to a very considerable extent, but we have a rooted objection to finding their watch - words and battleshouts scattered over the pages of a story. If they played an important part in the development of the plot we could say nothing, but so far as we can see they have no such office to perform in Maxwell Gray's 'In the Heart of the Storm.' The young soldier's escape from captivity and journey through hostile country in disguise with the beautiful girl whose acquaintance he had made at home would have thrilled us quite as much without those extraneous additions. That Ada, after her experiences, should be moved to pity by the lives of Hindu and Mohammedan women is natural enough; but in our opinion a very delightful story comes perilously near being spoiled by the way in which she, and the author also, extend their indignant sympathy at unnecessary moments to the women of the West.

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Spoiled again, but in a different way, is Mr Hume Nisbet's 'The Queen's Desire.' Hitherto the vanquished cause in the great struggle has stood almost alone in history, in that it found no Cato to please. But the Cato has appeared at last, and come to judgment, bringing with him a plentiful store of rhetoric, principally in the forms known as argumentum ad hominem and tu quoque. hesitate to say that Mr Nisbet shares the idiosyncrasy of an eminent living politician, who is popularly supposed to favour every nation but his own; but we cannot acquit him of holding another opinion with which that venerable statesman is credited, that Englishmen and the English people generally are only estimable, or even tolerable, when they have

just suffered heavily under humbling dispensations of Providence. Anglo-Indian society is, and no doubt always has been, very far from being an assemblage of immaculate angels, unfortunately; but we refuse to believe that in 1857 all its members were either unscrupulous fanatics or avaricious flirts and lady-killers, as he would fain assure us. That some men, perhaps many, were roused by the clarion of the Mutiny from lives of inglorious ease or foolish, and worse than foolish, love-making, we know; but we know also that the chief of those to whom England looked, and not in vain, at that dark hour, only exhibited in the red glare of danger the self-sacrifice and the devotion to duty which had been their daily rule for years. To touch on a minor point, we feel bound to protest against the introduction of the Nana Sahib at the beginning of the story, merely in order that a couple of chapters may be devoted later on to the tragedy of Cawnpore, with which none of the real characters have anything to do.

The fault of want of patriotism cannot be alleged against Mr Muddock, who has contributed two novels to the flood of Mutiny literature which has marked the last three or four years. Nor, indeed, can lack of knowledge of the subject, since he informs us that, like Mr Forrest, he was in India during the period of which he treats. And yet he seems to have forgotten some of his Indian lore, for to make a devout Brahmin like the Nana Sahib exclaim, "By the beard of Mahomet!" is a serious slip; while we must demur to the spelling Zeemit Mehal, used for the name of the faithful ayah in 'The Great White Hand.' Zinat Mahal is probably intended, and Mr Muddock is quite at liberty to spell it Zeenut if he pleases,

but the rendering which actually appears throughout the book is an awful warning against carelessness in proof-reading. Like those of its predecessor, 'The Star of Fortune,' the characters in 'The Great White Hand' are dwellers at Meerut, but in the second book they are involved in the more ghastly tragedy of Cawnpore. There is abundance of incident in both books, especially in the later one, characters which ought to be sympathetic, and a fine enthusiasm for deeds of daring, and yet they are not satisfying as literature. This fact we attribute to two causes, a lack of the sense of humour, which occasionally brings situations intended to be sublime perilously near to the ridiculous; and a lack of stylenot of fine writing, there is plenty of that, but of a certain smoothness which should link the different moods of a book into a connected whole.

The story of Cawnpore figures again, in a modified form, in Mr Justin Huntly M'Carthy's novel, 'A London Legend,' in which the culminating point is the attempted murder of the son of one of the English victors by the son of one of the vanquished prisoners whose crimes were avenged in the place where they were committed. The facts on which the episode is founded attracted a good deal of attention some time ago, when the son of General Neil, to whom the stern duty fell of wreaking vengeance on the murderers of women and children, was assassinated by a relative of one of the condemned men, who suffered, as he alleged, unjustly.

Turning to somewhat lighter themes, we may congratulate the young people of to day on the fare provided for them by some of their favourite writers who have elected to describe the Mutiny for their

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benefit. Time was when almost the only mention of the Mutiny in children's fiction was to be found in a short story by Madame de Witt in the French Reader,' but now it is far otherwise. There is Mrs Field's 'Bryda,' giving a wonderfully complete picture of the time from the necessarily limited standpoint of a child, and The Story of Sonny Sahib,' by Mrs Everard Cotes, better known. as Sara Jeannette Duncan, little gem of a book in every respect, with only one fault, that it is all too short. Leaving out of sight M. Jules Verne's 'Tiger of Cawnpore,' which has the merit of providing a suitable ending for the Nana Sahib, we find that for older boys and girls there is Mr. Manville Fenn's 'Gil the Gunner,' a story with no lack of exciting incidents, but suffering from the drawback of a hero of a type peculiar, we believe, to Mr Fenn's tales for boys, who can only be fitly described by the epithet cantankerous. It is scarcely necessary to remark that Mr Henty, that other veteran favourite of young England, does not handicap himself in this way when writing for his "dear lads." The two brothers of In Times of Peril,' soldier and sailor respectively, perform deeds of valour, instruct their elders, outwit the enemy, and gain promotion in a miraculously short time, after the manner which endears Mr Henty to all his youthful readers, and, wonderful to relate, their manifold successes arouse no hostility in the minds of those who behold them.

To those who read through 'In Times of Peril' again and again in their school-days, it must have caused a delightful thrill to behold on their tables a three-volume novel bearing Mr Henty's name, and treating of the Mutiny. In the matter of adventures and

wonderful escapes, the author's hand has lost none of its cunning; but, strange to relate, he has chosen for himself a hero who labours under the serious disadvantage, for one in his stirring circumstances, of becoming paralysed with fear at the sound of the discharge of firearms. True, the paralysis is physical and hereditary, but none the less does it expose its victim to misconception. Can it be that Mr Henty, tired of finding himself carped at for always choosing an astonishingly brave, muscular, high-principled, and appallingly ingenious youth as the central the central figure of his stories, resolved to pay back his critics in their own coin, and-in order not to punish the boys for the sins of their elders has thrust upon us the unfortunate Ralph Bathurst as the hero of Rujub the Juggler'? It is difficult even for the reader to remain in sympathy with this luckless young man when his peculiar malady has overpowered him several times at the most critical moments, and we really cannot wonder that it creates a breach, which threatens to be permanent, between himself and the heroine. It is obvious that he can only regain her favour by some display of gallantry such as seems impossible to him, and we feel a distinct relief when the supernatural comes to his aid in the forms of a mesmerist and a dreamer of dreams, the juggler of the title and his daughter. How they assist Bathurst to rescue Isobel cannot be told here; but the feat has this additional advantage, that in performing it Ralph is finally cured of his malady. On the whole, we are inclined to think that he escapes much more lightly than the heroine, on whom-to punish her for doubting him, as we supposeis laid a particularly cruel trial. Carried off to the zenana of the

inevitable Nana Sahib, she has no hope of escape until Bathurst, through the medium of the juggler's daughter, conveys to her a store of lunar caustic and nitric acid, with instructions to apply them to her face. This she does with such hearty goodwill as to disfigure herself for the time in a most ghastly manner, and to produce scars which will probably be visible all her life. Naturally this has the result of banishing her from the palace to the prison, whence she is rescued by Ralph.

If the method by which Isobel obtains her release is somewhat unpleasant reading for the public of to-day, it illustrates the truth that there were many women at that time who did not shrink from any expedient, however harrowing to flesh and blood, for preserving their honour or their faith. That there were some few who gave way under the awful trial the history of those days records, and we find one of them introduced into Mrs Croker's romance of a hill-station-' Mr Jervis.' So far as our recollection goes, fiction has few more pathetic figures than this renegade Englishwoman, forced to regret for nearly forty years the step by which she had prolonged her miserable life, isolated from her countrymen, lost to her friends, a traitor to her religion, noting with a dreadful mirth the monument which her husband, who had married again, had raised to her memory as one of those massacred. There were many lives ruined by the Mutiny, but the saddest by far were those of the men and women who had ruined them by their own fault.

It is of such a life that Mr Merriman treats in his latest novel, 'Flotsam.' We approach

this book with some hesitation, for we are conscious that it has disappointed us, and disappoint

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