| | | | | NOVELS perhaps reflect better than any other species of light literature that | change of sentiment in regard to standing subjects of interest which | appears to be constantly taking place in the minds of the curious and | sensitive. It is a flux and reflux which is highly interesting; for though | not in itself a very important matter, it is determined by causes which are | at once very deep-seated and most momentous. | For readers who look upon novels from this point of view the | Dean may have a certain interest ~~ an interest | which may in some cases prove sufficiently strong to induce them to | read it through. We have also no doubt that the composition of it gave | the author considerable pleasure, and enabled her (for Berkeley Aikin | is obviously the pseudonym of a woman) to give to feelings creditable in | themselves a degree of clearness which it was no doubt satisfactory to | arrive at. There is a large class of people who think that they have a sort | of inarticulate solution of the various problems of life lying hid in | their minds, and to whom nothing is so delightful as the task of giving | it outward and visible, if not very coherent or systematic shape. A book | written under this impression is rarely altogether dull, inasmuch as it is | usually pervaded by a certain bona fide belief | that the author is preaching something which his, or very frequently her, | readers really ought to know for their own sakes. The gospels | according to novels never had much charm for us; but the books | which contain them do undeniably stand on a different and rather a | higher level than the mere three volumes made to order, which are | perhaps among the most melancholy products of a high state of | civilisation. | The Dean is a story about one of those awful | ogres who are systematically hypocritical, and take the trouble of | telling themselves so every time they do a hypocritical action. A | naughty Irish boy, Mick Moore, is seized with a burning thirst for | knowledge and an unlimited | | ambition. A legacy of 400 pounds paid in sovereigns, falls to his | father, and is hidden in the thatch of his cabin. Mick sets fire to the | cabin, steals the money, goes to Dublin as a student at Trinity, | becomes a famous popular preacher, marries for love (slighting a | rich widow), and on his first wife's death marries a still richer widow | than the first ~~ a Countess, with 2,000 pounds a-year ~~ within | three months after her husband's death. He becomes one of the most | popular preachers in London, and gets a deanery. His eldest son, by | his first wife, turns out a sort of genius, milder of mood than his | father, but such a beautiful preacher, and such an angelic creature in | all other ways as never was heard of out of a novel. The second son | gets into all manner of sinful courses. There are various sisters, a | heartless aristocratic heroine, and a virtuous popular one, who act after | their respective kinds. The Dean, who is a bully, a liar, a hypocrite of | the first water, and everything else that is bad ~~ and who is also a | man of profound genius, and that sort of adamantine character which | novelists favour so much at present ~~ dies in a lurid glow. His good | son marries the good heroine, his bad son is drawn into forgery by the | woman whom his father slighted, and the other characters all get their | appropriate bits of poetical justice according to the form of the | statutes. Besides these main characters, there is a female novelist, who | assumes the name of Sydney Acton (her real name being Graham), a | dissenting minister of extraordinary genius, called Pulseford Pember, | and a variety of minor personages, whose manoeuvres give the | authoress an opportunity of indulging all her special crotchets in the | most effective manner. | The story has nothing in it at all, but the gossip and the morality of | the book have a sort of interest, for the reasons which we have | already stated. They show us what sort of impression the present state | of society makes upon a pious, amiable, susceptible lady, who is | sincerely anxious to be useful in her generation, and who thinks that | she confers upon it the greatest benefit in her power by giving as | emphatic a shape as she possibly can to her likes and dislikes. The great | object which attracts her attention is of course the clergy. Clergymen | of all denominations crowd her canvas. Whether the moral is to be | pointed and the tale adorned by virtue or vice, strength or weakness, | a clerical face of some shade or other looks out of the picture ~~ the | black coat having exactly the same attraction which in old-fashioned | novels the red-coat used to be said to have for the female mind. The | absorbing contemplation of the clerical genus does not, however, | | prevent a predilection ~~ both characteristic and interesting ~~ for | some particular specimens of the race. High Churchmen, Low | Churchmen, and Dissenters are all passed in review, with more or less | appreciation of their weaknesses; but there is one school which | secures a heartfelt admiration as amusing as it is simple. That

| "man of God C~~ K~~,"

and that noble work | Alton Locke, which, with the Bible and the | Pilgrim's Progress forms the library of the | earnest parish clerk, supply the authoress with her real standard; yet | it is fair to say that she indicates her preference very briefly, though, | to our minds, quite conclusively. The naivete | with which she delights in Mr. Kingsley's views of life is | exceedingly amusing. To find that, after all, a religious person may | not only write novels, but even read them ~~ that a fondness for | Smollett and Fielding is permissible to a Christian woman, and that | she may even go the length, in a protesting sort of way, of owning a | mild preference for such books over others usually looked upon as | far more respectable ~~ all these things seem to have come upon her | as revelations which have won her heart. We would not quarrel, for | the world, with what is no doubt a most innocent delight in a liberty | which, if not newly discovered, is at any rate newly recognized ~~ | though there are certainly not a few chapters in the novels of the | eighteenth century which we should have thought could do good | neither to man, woman, nor child. Profane swearing is a very wicked | habit; but great allowance is to be made for the mild expletives of a | lad very strictly brought up, whose elder brother has just told him | that

"Hang it,"

and

"Confound it"

are not | forbidden by the third commandment. | Having thus anchored herself to a warm-hearted, and, as it is called, a | genial view of this world and the next ~~ though it is certainly rather | a vague one ~~ the authoress of the Dean | has an excellent standing-ground from which she may throw her | various dislikes into as bold relief as she pleases; and she certainly | takes occasion to do so in a manner which must, we should think, | give the parties attacked the benevolent pleasure which arises from | being the objects of assaults which gratify the assailant and do not | hurt the patient. The little arrows shot at various Church parties are | so very little, and so exceedingly free from venom, that it is | interesting to see how pertinaciously they are launched; nor can | anything be more curious than to find how much more importance a | volunteer controversialist attaches to controversy than those who are | actually engaged in it. Berkeley | | Aikin ~~ for we suppose that we must not attach to that curious alias | either Mr. or Mrs. ~~ introduces us to a clerical dinner-party which a | peacemaking and somewhat romantic young clergyman gives to a | large number of his brethren, with a view of bringing them into kindly | relations; but such an awful scene takes place between the High-church | Rector of Beyedoers and the Low-church Vicar of Allfaithnoworks | (the attempt at characteristic names is curiously impotent), that the | Evangelical party leave the house in indignation, and are shortly after | followed by their High-Church enemies. There is something | pre-eminently feminine in such a notion. That half-a-dozen clergymen, | whose theological views might differ, should not be able to treat | each other, in the dining-room of a common friend, with the most | ordinary decency, is just the sort of conception of the | odium theo-logicum which a person | would form who was debarred by her sex from any other connexion | with the subject than an irritable and absorbing sympathy with such | disputes, founded upon a very imperfect conception and a very | one-sided experience of their relations to practical charity. | The last qualification is one which it is only fair to the authoress to | point out. A strong vein of benevolence of a very genuine kind | pervades the whole book. The sentiment that the rich have got more, | and the poor less, than their share of the comforts of life, and that the | parable of Dives and Lazarus contains the only comment that can be | made on a great part of our social system, is constantly present to her | mind, and gives occasionally an air of something which borders on | pathos, and even on dignity, to much of what would otherwise be | unmitigated twaddle. As soon, however, as the sentiment is thrown into an | intellectual shape, the incapacity of the writer for any real intellectual | effort becomes painfully apparent. General denunciations of wrath to | come die away into gossip, and small-talk, and paltry little | mares'-nests which would have been simply tiresome if they had stood alone. | Thus, for example, one of the sins of the nation which engages the | special attention of a person who has such very awful warnings to | give to us all, is the evil treatment of governesses. She once wrote a | book, it seems, about the sorrows of that ill-treated class, and, with a | true womanly pertinacity, she cannot be induced to give up her | point. All the wicked people in the Dean | have governesses at 15 pounds a-year; and one particularly unkind and | absurd remark which was made by a lady of rank to a member of the | class in question, and by her | | repeated to Mrs. Aikin,

"in the summer of 1856,"

and taken | down on the spot (such was that lady's determination to give a sort of | legal authenticity to the evidence which she had to produce), is | triumphantly brought forward as a proof of the thesis that the rich have a | great deal to answer for. | Good novels by women are amongst the best books of their kind. The | Dean is very far indeed from belonging to that | class; but it is not altogether bad nor altogether unamusing. It is a | dishevelled unprotected sort of composition; but it is well meant and | kindly and shows here and there traces of power which might by | cultivation be much improved. There is a chapter about the herculean | dissenting minister's adventures in London, whither he walked up from | the country to get his living, which is an obvious and not a very bad | imitation of Goldsmith. If Mrs. Aikin could satisfy herself, once for all, | that the world will never be any better or any wiser in any respect | whatever, she would greatly improve her own chance of writing good | novels.