dissects the conversational ambiguities of his family with a malicious enjoyment second only to that with which he proves pretentious sciolists to be mere' beyond a doubt; in Mrs. Vereker, whose precise violations of sense almost impose upon the imagination: My dear, you said nothing, but if your father could have heard what you did not say you know very well what he would have thought'; in the singular boy who has no way of communicating with his species but through defiances and refutations, and in the running commentary throughout the narrative on confusions of thought and speech. To the same cause it is doubtless due that the book contains many more characters than visibly appear. Thus, the author has a way-slightly disconcerting, as when your horse changes his leg as he canters-of giving place to some unknown speaker of whose dialect he has momentary need. The introduction of the carpet-stretcher's jeremiad has perhaps no defensible cause of existence, other than the author's love of technical jargon in an illiterate mouth, but who would wish the delightful soliloquy away?

In the same free and confidential manner as of one who talks rather than writes, Mr. De Morgan with equal felicity will put before you an evening party or a fight in a London slum ; midsummer weather or the foreboding that is in a rough night closing over the sea; an old man's dying or the flirtations of Sally and Prosy Vereker. But the means of transmission, if it is to be admitted as style at all, is certainly an undress style. It is not a style for Sundays nor for the library. The tool is excellently fitted to its purpose and to the workman's hand, but it was never forged in any workshop of art. This has been our conclusion, and it is perhaps for this reason that books essentially masculine in character have been praised in terms more usually reserved for the encouragement of the untutored sex. Of the majority of novels published, it would be hard to tell off-hand whether they are written by men or by women. With Mr. De Morgan's books the question could never arise. It does not need the name on the title-page nor the tradi tional ring in such a sentence as this: Sally was no lawyer. We do not love her the less for our part,' to tell us the author's sex. For good or ill we have here indisputably such books as women never yet have written, and in all probability never will write. It is singular, therefore, and slightly entertaining to note how some of us have elected to express our commendation exclusively in terms suggesting attributes mildly feminine and passive- charm,'

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'knack,' 'sense of character,' nice observation,' and the like. It is true that prominent aspects of Mr. De Morgan's work deserve words of quite another import, but that cannot be helped. Those others are big words, sacred to works of art and the artificers, and Mr. De Morgan has only himself to blame-did not the road of observance lie open before him ?-if he has had to be content with lesser adjectives, denoting lesser gifts, blind nature's dew.'

casual

In Boston, says Mr. Wells-and his Boston has no geographical limits-only the authors of works 'toned and seasoned' may be lectured upon without indecorum. Mr. De Morgan, it is to be feared, may never be included in company so select. This is regrettable; but after all perhaps it does not very much signify. There are books which are better to talk about than to read. Mr. De Morgan's, it may be, are better to read than to talk about. Read at all events they are, and doubtless for various good reasons will continue to be. Though possibly, human nature being what it is, if some high-nosed Bostonian, snuffing the air for a taint of Philistinism, come upon us while we read, we shall thrust ' Joseph Vance' or 'Alice-for-Short' or 'Somehow Good' into the background, and draw forward works mellowed by age or imitation and discuss, with such decorum as we can muster, the immortals, or some modern maker of a smooth and elaborate mosaic easily recognised as style.

ELEANOR CECIL.

VOL. XXIV.NO. 143, N.S.

41

642

THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE MINX.

A STUDY FROM THE LIFE OF THE MANY.

He wondered if it would ever end, this hot and weary afternoon; if these five rows of whispering schoolboys would ever exhaust the tricks they played unceasingly-tricks that seemed to increase in power of annoyance as the boys grew more irritable with the day, with the school, with the lesson.

So, from that class-room, whose very atmosphere was charged with ennui and disgust, no one more ardently longed for escape than did Robert Engle, the young assistant-teacher. Pale of cheek and narrow-chested, his deficient vitality told against him at every step of the lesson, and rendered fruitless his patient endeavours to gain the attention of his pupils. He might, indeed, as well have tried to crib and confine the small clouds floating on high that could be seen from the window.

This hour was one supposed to be devoted to the teaching of English literature. From a book of poetical selections Shelley's 'Ode to the Skylark' was being read. One by one the boys stood up and gabbled, in a monotone, verses to which the teacher listened with as much enjoyment as might be expected, seeing that he had for these same verses an admiration so passionate as to be at times a poignant anguish.

With all the energy left him he endeavoured to make the schoolboys feel that here a poet had poured forth his soul for their delight, but even the few pairs of eyes that were fixed on him remained dull and uncomprehending. At length a despairing resignation settled upon him. He made no more attempts to explain or praise, and he spoke only to call boys to order.

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Smith, you sit up and attend, sir!'

Ford, you come out and put on my desk all the sweets you have in your pocket!'

Ford obeyed. As he returned to his seat he found an opportunity to amuse his friends with a series of grimaces made behind his teacher's back. Having thus thrown half the class into silent

convulsions of merriment he felt that he had not lost his sweets in vain.

Robert Engle knew full well that as a disciplinarian he was painfully lacking in strength. This fact, many times impressed upon him by his headmaster, completed the sum of the misery he suffered in school.

He would have been a more useful member of society had he not suffered from too acute an artistic perception, a love of poetry over-keen for an elementary school-teacher, an imagination that broke bounds and was apt to wander and stray as he tried to do his daily work. In his day-dreams unheard melodies and haunting visions beset his mind; lines of poetry that he had read echoed and re-echoed through his brain, and as he awoke from these alluring phantasms the sordid rigidity of his life hemmed him round like a prison.

The sound of a cane with which the master in an adjoining room unceasingly belaboured the shoulders of his pupils, the unhealthy atmosphere, the rough, dirty clothes and hobnailed boots of the boys, their unintelligent bovine faces, the contemptuous grins with which they greeted his attempts to awake in them some sense of honour and beauty-all these were a nightmare under which he laboured daily.

Now, with an eagerness which none of his pupils could equal, he glanced through the glass doors of his class-room, watching the clock in the corridor outside.

The last five minutes, leaden-footed as they were, came to an end, and then the shrill sound of the headmaster's whistle gave permission for lessons to be closed. Prayers were read with singularly little of devoutness; out scuffled the boys, single-hearted in their eagerness to escape; a boy who had been kept in began to scribble his lines defiantly, and the teacher turned to his desk, where a pile of exercise-books was ready for correction.

To-night the task was beyond him. Some half-dozen, indeed, were marked, but then the after-school atmosphere oppressed him beyond all bearing. With unpardonable weakness he released the boy who had been kept back, and bundled the unmarked books into a cupboard, heedless of a decree which said that all exercises should be corrected the day they were written.

I will be here early in the morning to mark them, in case the inspector comes to-morrow,' Robert Engle assured himself, knowing

meantime from past experience that there was little likelihood of any such effort on his part.

He took his hat and passed hurriedly through the central hall, avoiding a group of his fellow-teachers who were standing there eagerly discussing some obscure point in the latest Code issued by the Board of Education. So elastic was Engle's nature that as he passed across the asphalted playground, out of the iron gates, and along a depressing street of smoky dwarf houses, his spirit soared again. Forgetful of school, he luxuriated in happy thoughts of a meeting which was to take place anon.

For he would see her in three and a-half brief hours, the woman who in her person retained the grace and the mystery of the elect few who had charmed his mind since the magic of the printed page first held him captive.

To him she had the wild elfish sweetness of the Belle Dame sans Merci, the pathetic innocence of Elaine, and the majestic beauty of Guinevere. She had the haunting eyes of the Damozel. And was not her hair the colour of ripe corn?

That she was a dressmaker's assistant and a friend of his strident-voiced landlady were incongruous details which he was happily able to wave aside.

Hitherto Engle had been single-souled in his worship of the deal, and the few women who had attracted him he had been content to admire at a distance with a fugitive and qualified admiration. This had lasted until he had returned one evening from a science class to find a girl named Etty Clark sitting with his landlady.

Just then his mind, weary and depressed, craved something more tangible than the dreams upon which it had been nourished. In the lamplight Etty Clark, smiling and fresh, seemed to him the embodiment of his most ecstatic vision.

His appearance seemed to put an end to the conversation. Miss Clark said conventionally to her friend the landlady that she thought she must be going, giving at the same time a quick glance in the direction of the young school-teacher.

Being untutored and obtuse in such matters, Robert would have let slip this golden opportunity had not the landlady struck in with a meaning smile :

Perhaps Mr. Engle would not mind seeing you to the corner, my dear?"