as they touch story writing.

It might be that one would wish to practice her hand, and work out any such crudities, in the dark.

Certainly, "Ramona" does not contain them. "Ramona" is a beautiful story; yet nevertheless, I should say that it does not show its author to be a novelist. It is a

poet's novel; a prose Evangeline. It has proved serviceable to the end for which it was written, for it has been very generally read, and has affected opinion as much as could, perhaps, be expected. It is read, however, not primarily as a novel with a purpose, but as a sweet and mournful poetic story.

M. W. Shinn.

2

THE period of the summer novel has scarcely passed, and accordingly few of the novels that come before us this month for review are to be taken very seriously-perhaps only three: namely, Mr. Crawford's Zoroaster, Miss Howard's Aulnay Tower and Kamehameha3 by C. M. Newell. Aulnay Tower, though we mention it among the few written with serious intent, is still not at all ambitious, but on the light, idyllic order. Remembering Miss Howard's very considerable-and, we may add, unexpectedachievement in "Guenn," one opens Aulnay Tower with unusual curiosity and interest; the more that she has not hastened to take advantage of her previous success by a swift succession of books, magazine sketches, short stories, and so on, but has remained silent for many months-quite long enough to allow of the production of another wellripened novel. In one sense, the pleasant expectation with which one begins Aulnay Tower is justified, for the story is excellently well done, in no wise unworthy of its predecessor. It is of much less weight and power than "Guenn," but in its own line, the idyl, it leaves little to be asked. Not that, even as an idyl, it has the elements of immortality; but it is a simple love story, sim1 Zoroaster. By F. Marion Crawford. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1885.

2 Aulnay Tower. By Blanche Willis Howard. Bos

:

on Ticknor & Co. 1885. For sale in San Francisco ›y Chilion Beach.

3 Kamehameha, the Conquering King. A Romance of Hawaii. By C. M. Newell. New York and London: . P. Putnam's Sons. 1885. For sale in San Franciso by Strickland & Pierson.

ply and well told, with grace, and repose, and picturesqueness. Picturesqueness is the thing above all others that Miss Howard never fails of. Each character of the play, and each feature of the setting, stands out from the canvas with unblurred outlines—a distinct and individual whole. Her characters never degenerate into confused copies of each other or of a general type; nor, on the other hand, are they apt to be individualized by any trick of speech or behavior, after the familiar Dickens device. It indicates a remarkable vividness of life in the author's own conception of her characters, that she can draw them with such clear and consistent lines; they must move about in her brain like living acquaintances.

In the present book, however, without at all losing this distinctness of figures, the author has leaned more than before toward the trick we have just mentioned as not hers

that of labeling each character by some typical trait or behavior. The characters, too, are, in the nature of things, something of conventional types: the elegant, old Legitimist nobleman; the scheming priest; the coquettish lady's maid. Yet these old properties are made very fresh, and the nobleman, priest, and maid seem real people scarcely the less for being conventional types. The reader does not feel disposed so much to ask whether they are true copies from nature, as to be content that they are complete and pleasing pictures, as they stand in the pages of the story. We should make the exception to this, that the maid seems

somewhat overdrawn: it is not essential to an idyllic story of this sort that she should be exactly what a French lady's maid may really be; but it is essential that she should seem probable. And while in her main outlines this little maid seems highly probable, the author has utilized her as a sort of chorus, by means of which she may herself express such comments on her characters, philosophical reflections, and the like, as she does not wish to say in her own person, for fear of impeding the story. The end is well accomplished. Put very neatly into the pretty Frenchy phrase of the pretty maid, these reflections not only do not in the least impede the story, but are very entertaining; nevertheless, on a little close listening, one hears the voice of the author through the disguise.

These are, however, small faults to find in a book so pleasant, so conscientious, so wellconceived. When "" 'Guenn" was reviewed in our pages, we said that the thing which justified very great hope of Miss Howard's future was the enormous amount of art-conscience that had evidently gone into the book, especially considering the character and the brains it showed to acquire and use this conscience, after having made a hit with a girlish summer novel. Aulnay Tower shows the same intention to do honestly good work, and take all the time and pains that are necessary for it. Accordingly, it cannot be called a falling-off from "Guenn,” though intentionally so much slighter. Yet, one could wish that it might have been as much better than "Guenn," as that novel was than its predecessors. It was not unreasonable to hope this, considering the serious study of her art that Miss Howard evidently makes, and the union of the power to tell a story and to draw a picture with real emotional power that she has shown. It may be that Aulnay Tower is an aside, pending the appearance of another more elaborate work; or it may be that Miss Howard has now reached the limit of her powers, and all her conscience will be necessary to keep to her present grade of work. On one point we are curious to see her tested. Her two mature books

are both European. We should like to see if she can do as well with American subjects. "A Roman Singer," "But Yet a Woman," "Guenn" and "Aulnay Tower," form a group of excellent novels, all written by Amer icans in a foreign manner, and on foreign subjects; they are not dissimilar, in a general way. Can this excellence be transferred to the study of American subjects? Mr. Crawford failed lamentably, absurdly, when he tried it; Professor Hardy has not tried it; Miss Howard tried it first, and it is impossible to know whether her faults in such work were due entirely to immaturity, or partly to subject. "Guenn," although French in scene, and partly in characters, yet had so much that was American, both in a leading character and in spirit, that it seemed more likely that Miss Howard would yet do good work in studying American life, than that either Mr. Crawford or Professor Hardy would. Aulnay Tower, however, is almost as French as "But Yet a Woman" is French, and "A Roman Singer" Italian.

It is said that "A Roman Singer" was Mr. Crawford's first book, though “Mr. Isaacs" was first published. We do not doubt that it will yet rank as his best, when the sensation of novelty that the orientalism of the other awoke has entirely passed away. Yet, for the present, it is undoubtedly more to Mr. Crawford's interest to return to Asia for his subjects. Except for the purpose of getting immediate readers, however, he has really regained little of the ground he had lost, by selecting the subject of Zoroaster for his last novel. It was a happy thought for a historical novel, for surely some one who should come to the description of ancient Persian life with some such knowledge of it as Ebers has applied to Egyptian, and with more vivacity and brevity than the learned German displays, would have a rich field. Persia is nearer to present human interest than Egypt, by virtue of its far greater share in forming the Hebrew religion; and a novel whose subject is Zoroaster ought to illuminate, most of all, the religious elements of Persian life. But Mr. Crawford has evidently come to the task with a totally inadequate historical

knowledge. The reader is surprised at the outset to come upon Zoroaster as a young pupil of the aged Daniel. It is true that the Parsees place his date as late as 500 B. C., which might make the connection with Daniel possible; but there is no historical foundation for such a date. The Greek historians, on the contrary, carry him back as far as 6,000 or 7,000 years B. C.; and modern students seem disposed to place him somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 B. C. (all the way between, in fact, as it is quite as probable that the general title Zarathustra is the personification of a school or line of religious teachers and reformers, as the title of an individual reformer). Haug considers the earliest Zend writings, the Gâthas, as the only purely Zoroastrian ones; possibly the work of the original reformer or reformers, possibly of disciples at no remote period from the formulating of the Zoroastrian religion; and these he dates between 1,200 B. C. and 900 B. C. There seems little doubt, therefore, that 1,000 B. C. is as late as the original Zoroaster can have lived, and it may have been much earlier. It is perfectly right, for the purposes of a historical novel, to assume the actual historical existence of a Zoroaster (though it would have been more accurate to call him "Spitama, the Zarathustra," or "the Zoroaster," if the more correct form be considered pedantic); but it is a pity to throw the reader's ideas into such helpless confusion as by representing him the reformer of the religion in its decadence, of which he was in fact the founder.

One

might as well write a historical novel upon Moses, and represent him as the one who restored the purity of the Mosaic religion, and systematized its creeds, after the return from Babylon.

But Mr. Crawford has, not only in the date, but in his whole conception of Zoroaster-and, we may add, of the structure of the universe-followed modern Parseeism much more than modern scholarship. Zoroaster, after his unfortunate love affair has broken off his life at court, takes to-not the lofty spiritual life of wise reasoning that certainly must have been his (whether Spitama or another), who thought out for himself,

amid the polytheistic dualism of the primitive Iranian creeds, such doctrines as these: "Blessed are all men to whom the living, wise God, of his own command, should grant those two everlasting powers [immortality and wholesomeness]. . . I believe thee, O God, to be the best thing of all, the source of light for the world. . . Thou createst all good things by means of the power of thy good mind at any time. . . . Who was in the beginning the Father and the Creator of truth? Who showed to the sun and stars their way? Who causes the moon to wax and wane, if not thou?... Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made the waters and the trees of the field? winds and the storms, that they so quickly run?" Not to this, but to Oriental occultism does Mr. Crawford's Zoroaster turn, meditates three years beside a brook, and emerges into the world full-clad with the powers of a magician, and the views of the Theosophic Society. Compare a moment with the above extract from the Gâthas (Zoroaster's own version of his own faith) Mr. Crawford's version:

Who is in the

"Gradually, too, as Zoroaster fixed his intuition upon the first main principle of all possible knowledge, he became aware of the chief cause-of the universal principle--of vivifying essence, which pervades all things, and in which arises motion as the original generator of transitory being. The great law of division became clear to him--the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat, and the hid den force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. He saw

the division of darkness and light, and how all things that are in the darkness are reflected in the light; and how the light which we call light is in reality darkness made visible, whereas the true light is not visible to the eyes that are darkened by the gross veil of transitory being. And, as from the night of earth,

his eyes were gradually opened to the astral day, he knew that the forms that move and have being in the night are perishable and utterly unreal; whereas the purer being which is reflected in the real light is true, and endures forever."

Here, again, as in "An American Politician," Mr. Crawford shows himself capable of putting forth absolute rubbish as something very wise indeed; and the great defect in intellectual power that this shows

must inevitably be fatal to him as a novelist, outside of simple story-telling. His descriptive and narrative ability is considerable; and, moreover, he often touches a strong chord of simple emotion—though it must be admitted that he also sometimes touches a very weak and artificial one. Putting aside, therefore,

consideration of Zoroaster as a historical novel, we can speak of it much more kindly as a story. The two men, Zoroaster and Darius, are noble and interesting; the two women, the Queen Atossa and the Hebrew princess Nehushta, are to the present reviewer's mind not only very disagreeable persons, but commonplace. The queen, especially, is a conventional female heavy villain, of the completest sort. The story has movement and symmetry (save the few most dreary pages devoted to theosophy); and it has much beauty of description, and is said to be historically correct therein. We quote a fine description of the coming of Darius at the head of a troop of his horse, which illustrates the best qualities of the book:

"Nearer and nearer came the cloud; and the red glow turned to purple and the sun went out of sight; and still it came nearer, that whirling cloud-canopy of fine powdered dust, rising to right and left of the

road in vast round puffs, and hanging overhead like the smoke from some great moving fire. Then, from beneath it, there seemed to come a distant roar like thunder, rising and falling on the silent air, but rising ever louder and a dark gleam of polished bronze, with something more purple than the purple sunset, took shape slowly; then with the low roar of sound, came, now and then, and then more often, the clank of harness and arms; till, at last, the whole stamping, rushing, clanging crowd of galloping horsemen seemed to emerge suddenly from the dust in a thundering charge, the very earth shaking beneath their

weight, and the whole air vibrating to the tremendous shock of pounding hoofs and the din of clashing

brass.

"A few lengths before the serried ranks rode one man alone-a square figure, wrapped in a cloak of deeper and richer purple than any worn by the ordinary no

bles, sitting like a rock upon a great white horse. As he came up, Zoroaster and his fourscore men threw up their hands.

"Hail, king of kings! Hail, and live forever!' they cried, and as one man, they prostrated themselves upon their faces on the grass by the roadside.

"Darius drew rein suddenly, bringing his steed rom his full gallop to his haunches in an instant.

After him the rushing riders threw up their right hands as a signal to those behind; and with a deafening concussion, as of the ocean breaking at once against a wall of rock, those matchless Persian horsemen halted in a body in the space of a few yards, their steeds plunging wildly, rearing to their height and struggling on the curb; but helpless to advance against the strong hands that held them. The blos

som and flower of all the Persian nobles rode there -their purple mantles flying with the wild motion, their bronze cuirasses black in the gathering twilight, their bearded faces dark and square beneath their gilded helmets.

"I am Darius, the king of kings, on whom ye

call,' cried the king, whose steed now stood like a

marble statue, immovable in the middle of the road. 'Rise, speak, and fear nothing -- unless ye speak lies.'"

The third book that we mentioned above, Kamehameha, is likewise a historical novel, and likewise in a new field, and one offering good possibilities. Mr. Newell has experimented in it before, without winning any great fame. Kamehameha is by no means an uninteresting book, and there seems no reason to doubt its substantial truth to history. Up to the time when Kamehameha came to his kingdom-to the chiefdom, that is, of the district that became the nucleus of his kingdom later-the writer can have only legend to depend upon for his narrative; but after that period the native accounts may be regarded as trustworthy enough. For the beginning of Kamehameha's reign was about two years after Captain Cook's death, and therefore about 1781 ; while the materials for the present narrative were gathered by the author forty years ago, leaving only sixty years to be bridged from the beginning of Kamehameha's reign. Not only did the whole period of that reign, therefore, fall within the actual memory of old men still living forty years ago, but much of it had been committed to record still earlier, upon the first coming of the missionaries in 1820, only the year after Kamehameha's death; moreover, from the time of Vancouver's sojourn at the islands in 1792 and 1794, there was intermittent communication with England and America, so that the chief events of this period in Hawaiian history have never been entirely dependent upon legend. the outline of ascertained history thus attain

To

able, Mr. Newell has added the more detailed accounts of battles and the like, which he obtained forty years ago from the reminiscences of old men, the songs of bards, and the legends of priests.

With regard to the Hawaiian conqueror's childhood and youth he has been entirely dependent on tradition, for no one seems to have known much about him until he appeared as an ambitious and able young chief, claimed as a son by three royal chiefs, and made the part heir of one of them. This obscurity of origin, as usual in such cases, gave rise to an abundance of romantic legends, the prettiest of which—and the one least favored by native historians-Mr. Newell follows. This makes Kamehameha the son of the Hawaiian king Kalaniopuu, by a very puissant priestess and "chiefess," as Mr. Newell has it, who reigned in sole authority over a secluded valley and its temple; growing up in this almost inaccessible valley, under the training of his mother and her assistant priestesses, the royal youth remained in obscurity till of an age to be sent to join his father's court, where his extraordinary prowess, intelligence, and breeding immediately advanced him to the front rank of favor. The novelist has set his imagination free in dealing with this legend, and has treated it really with a great deal of spirit and taste. The priestess Wailele is the most beautiful of Hawaiian women, and wisest and most holy of Hawaiian priests; the group of attendant priestesses, the deep valley, with its temple set in sacred precincts of river-traversed forest between vast, sheer cliffs, over which the river plunged in five cataracts, make an attractive picture. It is good judgment to frankly take the point of view of the legend, and boldly represent Pele as existent, appearing to her worshiper, inspiring prophecy, interfering occasionally in human af fairs; to make the boy--the chosen favorite of Pele, the long foretold conqueror—a young hero almost more than human, blameless and high-souled. This is only treating the legend as Tennyson treated the Arthurian legends-with apparent good faith and belief, and with all the idealization that may be

necessary to make their moral code acceptable to nineteenth century imagination. Accordingly, Wailele is in advance of her times in the matter of human sacrifices, and never on any account permits them; she brings Kamehameha up to her doctrine on this point, and to the highest views and habits as to veracity, magnanimity, gentleness, etc. This is all legitimate, but it necessitates a comical change in the story at the point where legend ends and history begins. Up to that line, the gallant young prince Kamehameha figures with all the chivalry of a Bayard; after it we find King Kamehameha entrapping and assassinating rivals, offering human sacrifices, and otherwise conducting himself much more like a savage monarch than a knight of story. Yet, that he was in fact not merely an able warrior, and shrewd and ambitious ruler, but a man of much amiability and magnanimity, is evident enough from the impression made upon Vancouver and others. It would undoubtedly be possible to make a far better study of this remarkable South Sea king than has Mr. Newell; nevertheless, he has told an interesting and fairly accurate story, upon a branch of history totally unknown to most readers, and yet worth their knowing something of. We note an occasional solecism, such as "the tesselated flowers of the ohia," where tasseled is obviously meant.

We may dismiss rather rapidly all the other novels now before us. Several of them are good: Bret Harte's By Shore and Sedge, Miss Phelps's An Old Maid's Paradise, and Charles Egbert Craddock's Down the Ravine, in especial. Bret Harte's is not a novel, but three short sketches, Miss Phelps's a mere episode of sea-side summering, and "Craddock's" a child's story. The three sketches in By Shore and Sedge are An Apostle of the Tules, Sarah Walker, and A 1 By Shore and Sedge. By Bret Harte. Boston:

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. For sale in San Fran

cisco by Chilion Beach.

2 An Old Maid's Paradise. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

3 Down the Ravine. By Charles Egbert Craddock Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.