she has done this here. Mr. McDow has | that occurred to her, and accordingly dethe same fault as some of Flaubert's char-clined the offers. Indeed, there are not, acters- he is too uniformly disgusting. I think, wanting signs in "Destiny" that A testimonial to this man, who is a model, a fourth book would have been a failure. be it remembered, of coarseness, ignor. ance, stupidity, and selfish neglect of his duties, is a good specimen of the sharp strokes which Miss Ferrier constantly dealt to the vices and follies of society strokes sharper perhaps than any lady novelist, except George Eliot, has cared or known how to aim: MY DEAR SIR,It is with the most unfeigned satisfaction I take up my pen to bear my public testimony to worth such as yours, enriched and adorned as it is with abilities of She was no longer young; her stock of originals, taken sur le vif, was probably exhausted; her old sarcastic pleasure in cynical delineation was giving way to a somewhat pietistic view of things which is very noticeable in her last novel; and, to crown all, she was in failing health and suffered especially from impaired eyesight. Yet she survived the publication of "Destiny" for nearly a quarter of a century, and did not die till November, 1854, at the age of seventy-two. elist are well marked and not likely to esMiss Ferrier's characteristics as a novcape any reader. But nothing brings them out so clearly as the inevitable comparison with her great contemporary, Miss Austen. Of the many divisions which may be made between different classes of fiction writers, there is one which is perhaps as clearly visible, though it is perhaps not so frequently drawn, as any. There is one set of novelists (Le Sage, the first order-polished and refined by all that learning can bestow. From the carly period at which our friendship commenced few, I flatter myself, can boast of a more intimate acquaintance with you than myself; but such is the retiring modesty of your nature, that I fear, were I to express the high sense I entertain of your merit, I might wound that delicacy which is so prominent a feature in your character. I shall therefore merely affirm, that your talents I consider as of the very highest order; your learning and erudition are deep, various, and profound; while your scho-Fielding, Thackeray, Miss Austen, are lastic researches have ever been conducted on among its most illustrious names) whose the broad basis of Christian moderation and work always seems like a section of actgentlemanly liberality. Your doctrines I look ual life, with only the necessary differenupon as of the most sound, practical descrip- tia of artistic treatment. There is another, tion, calculated to superinduce the clearest with Balzac and Dickens for its most and most comprehensive system of Christian popular exponents, and Balzac alone for morals, to which your own character and con- its greatest practitioner, whose work, if duct afford an apt illustration. As a preacher, not false, is always more or less abnoryour language is nervous, copious, and highly mal. In the one case the scenes on the rhetorical; your action in the pulpit free, easy, and graceful. As a companion your colloquial stage are the home, the forum, the streets powers are of no ordinary description, while which all know or might have known if the dignity of your manners, combined with they had lived at the time and place of the suavity of your address, render your com- the story. These writers have each in pany universally sought after in the very first his or her own degree something of the society. In short, to sum up the whole, I universality and truth of Shakespeare. know no man more likely than yourself to No special knowledge is needed to appreadorn the gospel, both by your precept and ciate them; no one is likely in reading example. With the utmost esteem and re-them to stop himself to ask Is this I am, dear sir, spect, Most faithfully and sincerely yours, 'Destiny" was published in 1831, and was its author's last work. Nothing else from her pen has been published to my knowledge, except the brief reminiscences of visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford, which appeared in Temple Bar some years ago, and are reprinted in this edition. Her silence was not owing to want of invitation to write, for London pub. lishers offered her handsome terms; but she could not please herself with any idea possible or probable? In the other case the spectator is led through a series of museums, many if not most of the objects in which are extraordinary specimens, "sports," monstrosities; while some, perhaps, are like the quaint creations of Waterton's fancy and ingenuity-something more than monsters, mere deliberate things of shreds and patches more or less cleverly made to look as if they might have been at some time or other viables. Of these two schools, Miss Ferrier belongs to the last, though she is not by any means an extreme practitioner in it. A moment's thought will show that the system of relying for the most part on thumb-nail sketches which she avow-quaintness and grotesque. The characedly practised leads to this result. Not ter of Glenroy at the beginning of "Desonly is the observer prompted to take tiny" is nearly as well written as St. Evrethe most strongly marked and eccentric mond himself could have done it, and the specimens in his or her range of obser- sentence which concludes it is a good vation, but in copying them the invariable example of its manner. "As it was imresult of imitation, the deepening of the possible, however, that any one so great strokes, and the hardening of the lines, in himself could make a great marriage, leads to further departure from the com- his friends and followers, being reasonmon form. These eccentricities, too, able people, merely expected that he whether copied or imagined, fit but awk- would make the best marriage possible." wardly into any regular plot. The nov- This little sentence, with the admirable elist is as much tempted to let her story piece of galimatias already quoted from take care of itself while she is emphasiz. Mrs. St. Clair's interview with Lord Rossing her "humors," as another kind of ville, and the description in " Marriage novelist is tempted to let it take care of of Miss Becky Douglas's arms as itself while he is discoursing to his read-" 'strapped back by means of a pink ribers about his characters, or about things bon of no ordinary strength or doubtful in general. Hence the sort of writing hue," are examples taken at random of the which was Miss Ferrier's particular forte verbal shafts which Miss Ferrier scatters leads to two inconveniences the neg- all about her pages to the great delight of lect of a congruous and sufficient central those who have alertness of mind enough interest, and the paying of disproportion- to perceive, and good taste or ill-nature ate attention to minor characters. The enough (for both explanations may be contrast, therefore, even of "The Inher- given) to enjoy them. itance" with, let us say, "Pride and Prej udice" is a curious one, and no reader can miss the want in the later book of the wonderful perspective and proportion, the classical avoidance of exaggeration, which mark Miss Austen's masterpiece. On the other hand, it is interesting enough to let the imagination attempt to conceive what Miss Ferrier would have made of Lady Catherine, of Mr. Collins, of the Meryton vulgarities. The satire would be as sharp, but it would be rougher, the instrument would be rather a saw than a razor, and the executioner would linger over her task with a certain affectionate forgetfulness that she had other things to do than to vivisect. Her main claim, however, to be read is unquestionably in her gallery of originals, or (as it has been, with the dispassionate. ness of a critic who does not want to make his goose too much of a swan, called) her museum of abnormalities. They may or may not have places assigned to them rather too prominent for the general harmony of the picture. They may or may not be exaggerated. There may or may not be a certain likeness to the fiendish conduct of the ancestor of the author's friend, Lord Cassillis, in the manner in which she carefully oils them, and as carefully disposes them on the gridiron for roasting. But they are excellent company. The three aunts, Lady MaclaughNotwithstanding this drawback, not- lan, Mrs. MacShake, Dr. Redgill, and in withstanding her admitted inability to a minor degree the Bath précieuses in manage pathos (which in her hands be- " Marriage," Lord Rossville, Miss Pratt, comes mere sensibilité of an obviously Adam Ramsay, and above all "Mrs. Maunreal kind), and lastly, notwithstanding jor" in "The Inheritance," Molly Macauher occasional didactic passages which lay, Mr. McDow, and the Ribleys, in are simply a bore, Miss Ferrier is an ad-" Destiny," are persons with whom the mirable novelist, especially for those who reader is delighted to meet, sorry to part, can enjoy unsparing social satire and and (if he have any affection for good a masterly faculty of caricature. She writes, as far as mere writing goes, well, and not unfrequently exceedingly well. It is obvious, not so much from her quotations, for they are dubious evidence, but from the general tone of her work that she was thoroughly well read. There are comparatively few Scotticisms in her, and she has a knack of dry sarcasm which continues the best traditions of the eighteenth century in its freedom from mere novels) certain to meet again. When it is added that though she does not often indulge it, Miss Ferrier possesses a remarkable talent for description, it will be seen that she has no mean claims. Indeed, of the four requisites of the novelist, plot, character, description, and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. The lapse of an entire half-century and a complete change of manners have put her books to the hardest test they are ever likely to have to endure, and they come through it triumphantly. GEORGE SAINTSBURY. From Fraser's Magazine. HOW GILBERT SHERARD FARED IN THE CHAPTER I. THE FLOOD AND GILBERT SHERARD. that dry in the sea of mud. There was something aggravating in the unfeeling enjoyment of half-a-dozen white ducks, which, looking cleaner and brisker even than usual, were swimming merrily over the drowned land in all directions, the only living things which did not suffer, and who were comfortably insensible to the sufferings of others. The afternoon was beginning to close in; there had been a lull in the rain, but now the drizzle seemed to increase. "Them horses mun come out to-night," IT had rained all day and all night, and said their young master, Gilbert Sherard, on the day before and the day before looking dolefully up at the sky; "there's a steady, heavy downpour, with more rain in yon clouds, and no telling scarcely any intermission. It was the cul- how high flood will rise afore marnin'. mination of nearly a month of wet weath- Where's Esau?" He holloaed again and er of the worst kind-dull, persevering, again, but no Esau was to be seen, and no continuous-and the waters were 66 out answer came to his repeated calls. "An all over the country; such a flood had old rascal! he's stopped at the Lone scarcely been known in the neighborhood. Tree and been overtaken, I'll be bound, A slow-moving river, hemmed in with low and we in such straits, wi' scarce a moshills on either hand, was fed by persistent sel o' coal left i' the house," he muttered. supplies from the high gathering grounds Maybe father couldna get through the of the rain above, while the egress from ford wi' watter risin' this fashion," said the district was stopped by the weir of a the carter's boy, a bright, open-faced, mill below, which dammed back the water pleasant-looking lad about twelve years on the unlucky dwellers along its course. old, but small of his age. "He'll be here It was a perpetually recurring grievance, d'rectly, surely," he added, anxiously conbut as hopeless in the eyes of the neigh-tradicting himself, as he watched the bit borhood as the weather itself. It had of lonely road which was in sight over been so always and always would be. the low rise, but his tone was not a hope. ful one. Long lines of level bright water had taken the place of the plain of dark-green meadows, it covered the roads, the ditches, the lower part of the hedges, smoothing over the rough places and all the smaller variations of the ground into one flat, white surface, reflecting the dull, leaden sky and the dull, drifting clouds, which hung heavily or were driven by the wind, as the only change for the last month. A solitary old farmhouse, backed by a group of tall elms, stood not far from what in ordinary times was the river, but which now looked like a large lake. The deep, purple shadows of the red brick, the roofs hipped at the end, and variegated with yellow lichen, the little dormer gables on the sides, looked warm and comfortable in ordinary times, but now, "up to its knees in watter, 'twere soppy and soaken and sodden to no end," as old Esau the carter observed, with the usual alliterative ring of the country dialect. A row of draggled fowls were sitting disconsolately on the top rail of a submerged fence, the low-lying farmyard was almost under water, and a couple of cows stood drenched on the only place left Gilbert did not answer, but splashing ankle-deep across the yard he opened a stable door with some difficulty, for it stood several inches in the water, took down a couple of halters, and led out the two remaining raw-boned, gaunt-looking, grey cart-houses, one after the other. "Come here, thou little chap," said he; and taking the boy by the legs he lifted him up high enough to enable him to scramble on to the neck of one of the great ungainly beasts. "See, thee mun tramp off wi' em to Farmer Booth's up at Ashtree Hill. He telled me he'd tak' horses in to-night if we was druv hard wi' the watter. A pretty fellow thee feyther is for to leave his work to a little chap like thee, and him knowing how all is exact, and gone sin' nine o'clock this marnin', and how we should be put to it to send off the nags and fettle the beasts and a'!" The boy disappeared in the thick, foggy air, riding one of his charges and leading the other, looking like a fly on an ele phant; but the despised agricultural laborer is shrewd enough to do his own work well, he has an instinct for horses from his earliest years, and can be trusted | ingly cool in her replies to his invectives. to guide and care for them at an age when he looks hardly able to do more than see to himself. The big beasts plashed noisily through the flood, flinging the water round their rough heels as though they rather enjoyed it, and Gilbert stood for a moment looking after them and their boy rider, and then turned into the rick-yard, where his brother was cutting locks of hay out of the drenched rick, to carry to some wretched cows who were starving on a higher bit of ground, now an island in the lake, which had once been the meadow by the river. "If it's to go on like this, what air we to do? and a' that nice hay as we should ha' sold just cuttin' up to keep them beasts alive as canna get their own livin' off the land under watter! It's just ruin starin' us i' th' face," said George, when, having suppered up" the cows, the two brothers walked drearily into the old farmhouse kitchen. The floor was scarcely now above the level of the flood, and so muddy with the wet which was oozing in, that a coal from the low fire on the hearth hissed, when it fell out on the uneven brick pavement, as if into a pool. Gilbert thrust his hands deep into his pockets in silence, but he groaned inwardly as he stood looking at the dull grate. There was more dependent for him than for his brother on the success of the farm. They had both embarked all their small capital in it after the death of their father, knowing but little about farming, and Gilbert had hoped to bring home a wife as soon as their fortunes permitted it. But now in that pocket lay a letter he had just received from the father of his lady-love, a thriving tradesman, somewhat close-fisted, belonging to a little town some twenty miles distant, which was to break off the engagement. "It did not seem likely," Mr. Clowes wrote, "that Mr. Gilbert would be able to win through such a season; he was in debt already, and Mr. Clowes did not choose that his Rosy, brought up as she had been to all sorts of comfort, should risk such ways; besides, the Low Lees was a dairy farm, and she'd always said as how she wouldn't marry into butter, petticklar after what Mr. Gilbert had said to her, Tuesday was a sennit." Gilbert had had a sharp quarrel with Rosy the last time they had met; he had been very angry at her open flirtation with a linendraper rival, "in a very genteel way as was perpetually thrown in his teeth by her relations, and she had been exceed The consciousness of the state of his affairs had made him sharper perhaps than he quite knew, and not a little touchy as to any sign of a desire to throw him overboard. "Sam's my cousin only twice removed!" said Rosy at last, angrily, "and I'll talk to him as long as ever I've a mind to. And if you're for to come down on me like that there, afore you're my master, pretty times there'd be when you is! So we'd best have done wi' it now while there's time, Mr. Gilbert; that's what I seem to think!" He had replied angrily, and they had parted with no softening on either side. Old Clowes's letter was only what he felt he might have expected, but it was none the less bitter for that. "Rosy's got her way in it," thought he: "them girls is all alike - very pretty in the sunshine, and as sweet as honey when all's on the smooth; but they can't stand storm nor wintry weather. 'No, thank you, sir,' says they; "them's not my bargains!' His dismal reverie was interrupted by his brother, who dropped into the settle in the great old chimney-corner with a grim laugh. "I tell 'ee what, the weather's enow to wash the very heart out of a man, that's what it is; we canna put ought intil the land wi' the ground so sodden, and it stands to reason we shanna get nought out o' it, and rent and taxes and livin' and a' to come with crops that ain't to be had, and that's a pretty look-out! I say, Molly, you'd best make haste. I be half clemmed, and wet up to th' knees all day like. Don't ye set it out there, girl!" he called to a slatternly maid, who began to serve up some exceedingly ill-cooked bacon and greens on the three-legged round table without a table-cloth, flanking it with a hard lump of cheese and harder bread. Gilbert stood looking at the unsavory mess with much distaste, while his hungry brother disposed of a large plateful. "If ye donna eat, ye canna work, man; so ye'd best set to," said George, at length, with his mouth full. "Haven't ye got a sup o' milk?" inquired Gilbert of the red-haired, heavyhanded Molly. "The milk's all gone sour, and the cows didn't give scarce none, and it's been all took up for the butter," replied Molly ungraciously. Any contradictory reasons did for "Mr. Gilbert " in her opinion. "Things wouldn't ha' been so wretched 1 7 B 1 if I'd got Rosy here," thought Gilbert to "Kittle's broke, and there's scarce no "I mun be off and look arter that ne'erdo-weel, or we shall lose the nag and cart and coal altogether," said Gilbert, starting up, after swallowing his tea. Maybe he's stuck at the ford, as the boy says. I canna be wetter nor I am, that's one comfort," he went on, laughing drearily, as he glanced at his muddy coat, his leg. gings soaked up to the thighs. Anything, however, was better than sitting still, brooding over his woes, and the helpless condition of the farm before the subtle enemy which was hemming them in on all sides, and gradually, as he said himself, choking them off the place." couple of Cromwell's troopers were traditionally said to have been drowned, and a man and horse had been lost in somewhat later days. Twenty years ago there was seldom a bridge to be found where a ford existed. Still no cart and no Esau were too be seen. "As lief go forwards as backwards," said Gilbert disconsolately, as he prepared to cross the long "stick bridge," now submerged at both ends, for ten or twenty yards, so that he had to wade into quite deep water before he could reach the treacherous, worm-eaten, slimy planks, supported by frail posts, which constituted the passage, and now shook in the rapid flow of the water. An empty, horseless wagon stood on the further edge, half in the river, which had been evidently abandoned till easier times by the owner, who had ridden away with the horses; otherwise Gilbert met scarcely any thing or body as he plashed on. At length he reached a small town, built, with strange perversity, chiefly at the bottom of the hill, close to the water, instead of on the higher, safer ground above. A stream was now running rapidly through the lower streets, and a small boat was punting from house to house. The coal-yard, and a "public," where the delinquent Esau was probably to be found, lay at the He reached the top of the little rise, further side of the town end, and Gilbert and strained his eyes out into the deepen-shouted to the boatman: “Gie us a cast; ing November mists, but there was noth- I want to get to the wharf." ing in sight along the half-submerged road. Far and wide as his eyes could reach, stretched the plain of water, like an inland sea, for miles. The reflections of the trees sunk "up to their knees " in the flood, fell long and black on the trembling surface of the waste of waters, broken here and there by little islands of dry land, once the upper part of the mead ows, where the melancholy-looking cows and sheep had taken refuge, or isolating a cottage from all communication with the outer world except by wading over ankledeep. It had ceased raining for the moment, but a few long, angry, red streaks in the horizon seemed only to make the greys and blacks look colder and bleaker in the landscape. He plodded on a couple of miles to a much dreaded ford, where the rush of the water was always dangerous when its depth concealed the landmarks of the road. Besides which, there was known to be a deep hole in the bed of the stream, a little below, where a "The stream do run most uncommon hard to-night," answered the man, bringing his rickety little craft as near as he could to the bank. As the boat passed on, Gilbert could look into the disconsolate dwellings where the oozy slime was swaying in and out of the doorways. "Folks has a took to the upper stories this week past, cooking and sleeping and a', and a precious tight fit for most on 'em too, with scarce a grate up-stairs in some o' th' houses," said the boatman, as he deposited his fare on an open green space, with houses set at all sorts of angles, near a brook which ran down the middle to join the river below, and, overflowing, seemed intent on doing as much mischief as its small powers admitted. "I'll first go up and see if Mrs. Seddon have a heerd anythink of the Clowes afore I go forward; maybe she may know summat," said Gilbert to himself, stopping before a very old, half-timbered house, on a green slope close to the river, standing alone among some shabby laurels and rather untidy sheds. He rapped at the door, which was opened by a very |