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NOVELS THAT MAY BE READ.

Mrs. Bray (1798): 'The White Hoods;' 'Warleigh;' 'Trials of the Heart;' 'Courtenay of Walreddon.'

Charles James Lever (1806-1872): This writer's vivacious roystering stories of wild military life can hardly be commended to 'our Girls.' I would give a place in their library, however, to 'The Dodd Family Abroad;' 'The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly Sir Brooke Fosbrooke;' and 'Lord Kilgobbin.'

Mrs. Marsh (1799-1874): 'Emilia Wyndham;' 'Time the Avenger;' 'Norman's Bridge.' These are novels of a simple and wholesome character, with considerable domestic interest; superior in all respects to the sensational romances in which the coarser passions are apotheosised.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863): 'Vanity Fair;' "The Newcomes;' 'Pendennis;' 'The Virginians; Henry Esmond;' 'The Rose and the Ring;' 'Mrs. Perkins's Ball;' 'Our Street;' 'Dr. Birch and his Young Friends ;' and 'The Kickleburys on the Rhine.' Thackeray, remarks Mr. Hannay, was not without poetry, imagination, and sentiment; 'nevertheless, these qualities do not hold the same prominence in his writings that they do in those of some other novelists. He is more a humourist than a poet; more a man of the world than a man of sentiment. The substance of his intellect was a robust, humorous sagacity, and to this weighty element, which, by a natural law, gravitated towards absolute truth, he kept everything else subordinate.'

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875): Alton Locke;' 'Yeast;' 'Westward Ho !' 'Two Years Ago ;' 'Hereward;' 'The Water Babies.'

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855): 'Jane Eyre;' 'Shirley;' 'Villette.'

Samuel Lover (1798-1868): 'Handy Andy;' 'Rory O'More.' Mrs. Crowe (1800): The Story of Lily Dawson;' 'Light and Darkness.'

Thomas Hughes (1823): Tom Brown's School-Days;' 'The Scouring of the White Horse.'

Miss Julia Kavanagh (1824-1878): Nathalie;' 'Daisy Burns ;' Rachel Grey;' 'Adèle ;' 'Sylvia.'

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Mrs. Gaskell (1811-1865): Mary Barton; North and South;' 'Sylvia's Lovers ;' 'Lizzie Leigh ;' 'Cousin Phyllis ;' Cranford ;' Wives and Daughters.' These are fictions of a high order of merit, instinct with a spirit of true womanliness, and rich in graphic sketches of life and character.

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NOVELS THAT MAY BE READ.

175

Mrs. Margaret Gatty (1809-1873): 'Parables from Nature;' " The Poor Incumbent;' 'Aunt Judy's Tales,' etc.

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Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823): The Heir of Redcliffe ;' 'Heartsease;' 'The Daisy Chain; Dynevor Terrace ;' 'The Trial;' The Young Stepmother; The Clever Woman of the Family; The Three Brides,' and many others. No writer has surpassed, or even equalled, Miss Yonge in her pictures of the domestic life of the upper portion of the English middleclass. Her sound common sense is apparent in all she writes, no less than her deep religious feeling. Her plots are usually too complex, and they are often elaborated almost wearisomely; but she manages her characters with consummate skill, notwithstanding the number she crowds upon her canvas. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): 'The House of the Seven Gables.' Not a work, by the way, for a sensitive nature. Mrs. Stowe (1812): Uncle Tom's Cabin ;' Dred;' 'The Minister's Wooing;The Pearl of Orr's Island.'

Miss Manning (1807): Mary Powell; Household of Sir Thomas More;' Cherry and Violet;' 'Claude the Colporteur;' 'Poplar House Academy;' 'The Masque at Ludlow.'

Charles Reade (1814): Christie Johnstone;' 'It is Never Too Late to Mend;' 'The Cloister and the Hearth;' 'Hard Cash.'

George Macdonald (1814): David Elginbrod;' 'Adela Cathcart;' 'Alec Forbes ;' 'Wilfrid Cumbermede ;' 'St. Michael and the Dragon,' 'Malcolm;' 'The Marquis of Lossie;' 'Sir Gibbie;' 'The Seaboard Parish;' 'Robert Falconer.'

George Eliot (Mrs. Cross): 'Scenes of Clerical Life;' 'Silas Marner;' 'Adam Bede;' 'The Mill on the Floss; 'Romola;' 'Felix Holt;' 'Middlemarch;' 'Daniel Deronda.'

Mrs. Oliphant (1818): 'Mrs. Margaret Maitland;' 'Magdalene Hepburn;' The Brownlows; Chronicles of Carlingford; The Three Brothers;' 'Squire Arden;' 'At His Gates;' 'Valentine and His Brother;' 'Whiteladies,' and many others. All the works of this accomplished and versatile lady may safely be recommended to young folk, though in some of them one could desiderate a more hopeful tone, and a firmer expression of belief. From a literary point of view they are noticeable for their uniform excellence; if they do not attain the highest standard, they never descend to a low level. They display a keen insight into character, and no ordinary power of intellectual analysis.

176

NOVELS THAT MAY BE READ.

Anthony Trollope (1815): This writer, too, may fairly claim to have written no line which can raise a blush on a virgin cheek, and, like Mrs. Oliphant, while a prolific author, he never sinks into the deeps of mediocrity and commonplace. Among his best fictions I shall place: 'Barchester Towers ;' 'The Warden ;'' Dr. Thorne ;' ' Framley Parsonage ;'The Small House at Allington; The Last Chronicle of Barset;' and 'He Knew He was Right.'

Mrs. Craik (1826): The Ogilvies;' 'Olive;' 'Head of the Family; John Halifax; A Noble Wife ; A Life for a Life; Christian's Mistake.'

Thomas Hardy (1840): 'Under the Greenwood Tree;' 'A Pair of Blue Eyes Far from the Madding Crowd; The Hand of Ethelbertá;' 'The Return of the Native;' 'The Trumpet-Major.'

Richard D. Blackmore (1825): 'Lorna Doone;' 'Cradock Nowell; Maid of Sker;' Alice Lorraine;' 'Cripps the Carrier; Erema;' Mary Atherley.'

William Black (1841): A Daughter of Heth;' 'The Princess of Thule;' Adventures of a Phaeton;' 'Madcap Violet; Three Feathers;' White Wings.'

Anne Isabella Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie): "The Story of Elizabeth;' 'The Village on the Cliff;' 'Old Kensington;' 'Miss Angel;' 'Five Old Friends with a New Face.'

Mrs. T. K. Macquoid: 'Hester Kirton ;' 'Patty;' 'The Evil Eye.'

Sarah Tytler (Miss Keddie): Citoyenne Jacqueline ;' 'Noblesse Oblige; A Garden of Women;' and 'Lady Bell.' John Saunders: Guy Waterman;'Hirell;'Abel Drake's Wife; Israel Mort, Overman.'

Katherine Saunders: Margaret and Elizabeth ;' 'Gideon's Rock;'The High Mills.'

James Payn: Lost Sir Massingberd;' By Proxy;' 'Under One Roof.'

Annie Edwardes: Archie Lovell;' 'Steven Lawrence.' Amelia Blandford Edwards (1831): Barbara's History; 'Half a Million of Money;' 'Debenham's Vow.'

Matilda Betham Edwards: The White House by the Sea;' 'The Sylvesters.'

R. Francillon (1841): 'Olympia;' 'Pearl and Emerald;' 'A Dog and his Shadow.'

Justin McCarthy (1830): My Enemy's Daughter;' 'Lady

VALUE OF HISTORY.

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Judith; Dear Lady Disdain ;' 'Miss Misanthrope;' 'Queen Cophetua.'

Henry James, jun. The American;' 'Washington Square;' 'Portrait of a Lady.'

Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815): Amy Herbert;' 'Gertrude; Katherine Ashton; Margaret Percival;' 'Ursula.'

Ivors ;'

HISTORY: WHAT TO READ.

Whatever difference of opinion may exist in regard to the reading of Works of Fiction, there will be none as to the value of the study of History-that science which by its record of the Past furnishes us with a guide in the Present, and a forecast of the Future. It has been well said to make us some amends for the shortness of life, which, indeed, it seems to portray by bringing us acquainted with the work, character, and conduct of the generations which have preceded us. Learned Dr. Barrow observes that the histories of ages past, or relations concerning foreign countries, wherein the manners of men are described, and their actions reported, afford us useful pleasure and pastime; thereby, he says, we may learn as much, and understand the world as well, as by the most curious inquiry into the present actions of men. 'There are extant,' he adds, 'numberless books, wherein the wisest and most ingenious of men have laid open their hearts, and exposed their most secret cogitations unto us; in perusing them, we may sufficiently busy ourselves, and let our idle hours pass gratefully; we may meddle with ourselves, studying our own dispositions, examining our own principles and purposes, reflecting on our thoughts, words, and actions, striving thoroughly to understand ourselves to do this we have an unquestionable right, and by it we shall obtain vast benefit.'

It has been said that History repeats itself. If by this be meant that the passions and weaknesses, the thoughts and aspirations of humanity are always the same, it may be accepted as partially true; but History does not repeat itself

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ATTRACTIVENESS OF HISTORICAL STUDY.

in the sense that events will always follow one another in the same sequence, or that the conditions under which different actions are performed will always be the same. What we can

gather from the historic page is a code, so to speak, of principles, which we can profitably apply as the occasion may arise. We can know what errors to avoid, and the probable difficulties in any particular path of procedure. From the record of reform and revolution we can ascertain the extent of material development, and from the effects of which the chronicle is before us can go back to their initial causes. Thus, then, the value of history as a means of instruction is indisputable. Certain it is, that no inferior value attaches to it as a source of wholesome interest. To trace the long succession of the ages, to watch the gradual improvement and elevation of the masses, to be present at the great scenes in which the world's leaders have played their parts, to follow up the steps by which nations have risen or sunk to their present position: can we conceive of a study more exciting or entertaining? Do we not feel a noble impulse when we see Arnold von Winkelried gathering a sheaf of hostile spears in his bosom, so as to open for his countrymen a path through the enemy's ranks? Are we not conscious of a new inspiration when we stand by Leonidas and his Three Hundred in the clash of arms at Thermopyla? Are not our higher feelings stirred when we see the small English fleet of Howard, Drake, and Frobisher gallantly advancing to the attack of the huge galleons and galleasses of the Spanish Armada? Can we look on unmoved when Pym rises among the Commons of England, and demands the impeachment of the haughty Strafford? Or when Mary Queen of Scots stands in her blood-red robe on the scaffold of Fotheringay, do not our pulses throb and our hearts beat? History places before us the grand drama of the rise and growth and decay of empires. It shows us how the tide of civilisation, long beating against the rocks of arbitrary power and selfish tyranny and national ignorance, has at last broken through the barrier, and gradually spread its shining