to scepticism or indifference. must be admitted that Scottish conviction takes singularly unpleasing shapes. No wonder that the truthful irreverence of Burns's "Holy Fair" excited a storm of indignation which has scarcely yet subsided. It touched the Calvinist in the most sensitive places-perhaps it awakened uneasy searchings of conscience; it outraged his principles and his cherished prejudices. For the thorough-paced Calvinist goes back for choice from the prayers of Gethsemane to the thunders of Sinai; he would rather listen to the curses from Ebal than to the blessings from Gerizim. Celtic or Lowland, what he revels in above all is an "awaking" preacher, who deals boisterously in the terrors of the Mosaic dispensation with predestination and condemnation carried to extremes. Yet sect after sect has split away from the main body, on the ground that the most advanced of the evangelists were Erastians and timeserving Gallios. The inevitable tendency of such teaching, in theory, is to make each father of a household a Brutus or a Judge Jeffreys, to shut the door against the son who has heretical opinions on free will, and to make the mother cast off the child whom she has caught kissing in the gloaming. But, as Artemus Ward remarked when paying attentions to a fair southern in the heat of the struggle between North and South, there is always considerable human nature in a man; and Scotland with its fond family life is the favorite seat of the strongest domestic affection. The stern sense of principle or duty will be swayed by the deep-seated, passionate love which seeks excuses for its own human tenderness. There these new novelists have rare opportunities of which the best have made admirable use, in scenes that are pathetically true to nature. Yet it be overdone, and ecclesiastical plots reared on the shattered foundations of the Jewish temple may have too much of gravity for the ordinary reader. But there is another and a brighter side to these novels. Not a few of them, and notably Mr. Barrie's books, are exquisitely humorous. When Sydney Smith assumed that only a surgical operation could get a joke into a Scotchman, he did the nation serious injustice, though there was something of truth in the saying. As to the Scot being destitute of humor we are content to call the author of the Waverley Novels, Christopher North, and Dean Ramsay as witnesses for the refutation. But, on the other hand, we must own that, with Mr. Barrie and others, the charm of the best drollery is in its being absolutely unconscious. The honest villagers commit themselves in the most delightful way, without an idea that they are making themselves ridiculous. In manse or in cot, on a solemn sacramental occasion, or in some gathering of the elect in a parlor of the village public, they are never, for example, more charmingly inconsistent than when the element of conviviality comes in. All creeds hold firmly in practice to the tenet that man does not live by bread alone; that the whiskey is a necessity of existence and the climate. The preaching in the new minister and the victory at the curling pond are celebrated alike by libations of toddy. All classes are ready to imitate the examples of their betters in the measure of their means. So the whiskey is a perennial source of sensation in the Scottish novel, which the artist does not neglect. In England the loaded ale stupefies the muddled drinker. In Scotland the swift flow of the fiery alcohol stirs the sluggish blood, gives life to longsmouldering resentment, and, leads to the hasty blow which makes a murderer of some devout elder. Then we have the anguish of the despairing The monotony of the cottage tragedy or the humble melodrama may wife and the suffering of the deserted children; the broken-hearted daughter of the disgraced man taking back her plighted troth; the gaol; the trial; the evidence to character and the death sentence, to be followed by the gallows or the reprieve. Or over-indulgence, which may perhaps be extenuated on the score of the weather, leads to smothering in the snowdrift, to a miscarriage in the mist, or to being swept off the unsteady legs in the familiar ford when the stream has come down in sudden spate. So the Scottish) novelist can command every variety of dramatic situation in which the foibles of his countrymen may be used to advantage. Nor need we add a word as to the scenery from which he frames the setting of his pictures. There can be none of the pale uniformity of fens and flat farms and trim hedgerows. The mountains are mirrored in the lonely Highland loch; the surge of the cold North Sea is breaking on the red sandstone cliffs of Forfarshire; or you are among the trackless morasses and caverned glens of Galloway, where Sir Robert Redgauntlet hunted Whigs before the Revolution reduced him to hunting foxes. Even the comparatively tame inland parish has a character of its own, with its barn-like kirks, its "purpose-like" steadings, sheltered by the groups of wind-blown ashes and the thickets of lush bourtree bushes, which come in the more effectively for the scarcity of timber. The advent of Mr. Barrie may be compared to one of the "Revivals" which stir souls from time to time alike in Highlands and Lowlands. He struck down to a deeper vein than any of nis predecessors in "Auld Licht Idylls." The Auld Lichts were a section of godly professors who seceded from a secession. They prided themselves on the purity of their gospel faith, on the consistency of their walk and conversation, and above all on the stringency of their ceremonial observ ances. That they could keep a minister for themselves in the paltry townlet of Thrums was the crowning proof of their zeal and earnestness. They wrought, they pinched, they saved for the stipend; but when they had got the man, he was their common property. His was a very peculiar position. He had reverence and his high privileges, as an anointed doge of Venice, but like the doge he had his Secret Council of ten or more, who kept him up to the mark and were faithful in reproving and correcting. He was their spiritual master, but their paid pensioner, to whom at any time they might give summary warning to quit. That was doubtless an aggravation of the snares which beset him; for though he might lay down the law in the pulpit authoritatively, he dare not decline an invitation to tea. Moreover, he lived and moved under pious and observant eyes, and if he jumped a bush in his garden-which one minister did—in exuberance of boyish spirits, or if he broke out in an unseemly laugh on the Sabbath, sooner rather than later, he was sure to hear of it. But if grave elders drove him on the curb, the victim of the oligarchy had his revenge on the females of the flock, who, indeed, were encouraged to worship him by husbands and fathers. It was the prerogative of the father of the household to go behind the veil in the vestry and venture on blunt criticism or paternal remonstrance. For within certain well-understood limits, the right of private judgment was freely exercised, and book-learning-as to which the clergy gave small cause of complaint-was regarded as suspiciously unorthodox, if not positively sacrilegious. The mothers in Israel had their say, as we may be sure, and there were Deborahs who would often take the lead when Barak was inclined to hang back. We regard the "Auld Licht Idylls" as having paved the way for Mr. Bar rie's subsequent books. If it has passed through many editions, it is because, after being attracted and deeply interested in some work, we naturally turn back with curiosity to the preface we had neglected. It is extremely clever, and admirably descriptive, especially where the author has already impressed us. The old schoolmaster of Glen Quharity makes us "weel acquent" with the weavers of Kirriemuir and the rustics of the glen. But, after all, it is the mere setting and framework of "The Window," through which he has flashed a series of innermost photographs by a searching process of the Roentgen rays. The advance from one book to the other is marvellous, although, indeed, it is rather the swift progress of inevitable evolution. The genius is evident, in the germ as in the bloom, but we can see that the untried author gained confidence as he felt his feet and tested his strength. In "The Window" there is the Shakespearian subtlety of humor, which, as it seeks its subjects in eternal types of humanity, is bound to survive. The Scotch is perhaps unnecessarily broad: possibly there is too much of it for purposes of effective art, although the extraordinary popularity of the book in the South appears to dispose of that criticism as captious. All the greater is the tribute to the analytical genius which has triumphed over obstacles of its own creating. But to the Scotchman born, and especially to the northeastern Scot, the realism is strangely striking and impressive. It is a story we should be sorry to read were we inclined to home-sickness, on the sun-baked plains of Australia or the waterless Karoo of South Africa. We should yearn to exchange the cloudless skies for the dripping heavens and driving mists of Glen Quharity. To the peasant-born emigrant the Dutch-like painting of cottage interiors would come with an powering rush of fond associations; over and the homely talk and ejaculations, with the local names for the familiar domestic objects, would bring a 1 breath of the pungent peat-reek or a flavor of the sun-smoked haddocks. The crippled Jess who sits in her window is eminently natural. Though ever ready for the flitting to a better world where she will soar on wings instead of hirpling on a staff, she is far from superior to mortal vanities. That she should make an idol of her only boy is a weakness for which the recording angel will make generous allowance; but none save the loving husband could surmise that she had set her heart so ardently on a cloak with beads. Moreover Jess, although her heart is set generally upon higher things, is a past mistress in gossip; and, as we remarked, Thrums is a town where the minister, like everybody else, lives under a microscope. The practice of gossip has trained Jess and her daughter Leeby to habits of the most ingenious deduction. There may sometimes be a false start, for science is no infallible safeguard against error; but the reasoning is characterized by Scottish reserve. There is no hasty jumping at conclusions; however erroneous they may prove, they have always been plausibly argued. There is no better example of that than the chapter in which it is a question who is to fill the pulpit of the absent minister. Leeby, always the most attentive of daughters, is never more dutiful than when she obeys her mother's behests and goes scouting for indications. And though Jess is somewhat apt to hurry off on a false scent, she is a candid and even cautious inquirer; for at a check she is always ready to try back. To show her methods we should quote the chapter, but we give a couple of sentences taken at random. Leeby has gone up to the watch-tower of the attic to take another look at the manse. "Weel, I assure ye, it'll no be Mr. Skin ner, for no only is the spare bedroom vent no gaen, but the blind's drawn down fra tap to fut, so they've no even airin' the room. Na, it canna be him, and what's mair, it'll be naebody 'at's to bide a' nicht at the manse." It may "I would'na say that; na, na. only be a student; an' Marget Dundas micht na think it necessary to put in a fire for him." Leeby, as a skilled detective, might have given points to any of Gaboriau's experts-to Lecocq or Père Tabouret. The minister has married a fine Edinburgh lady, and brought her to the renovated manse. The bride kindly patronizes the shy girl, who dares scarcely lift her eyes or stir hand or foot. Leeby comes home to brighten the chair-ridden invalid with an exact inventory of all the furniture and critical remarks on the ingenious shifts which have been patching carpets and turning old gasbrackets into gasaliers. And it would be a mistake to fancy that the Lichts of Thrums did not punctiliously attend to their manners or regard social distinctions. When guests were entertained, it was always etiquette to let them chap at a door which generally stood open. Of course they professed they had no appetite before setting to work in all seriousness. A pudding for supper was the proof of high gentility, and when a milk jug was seen abroad at an unseasonable hour, it was a sign that the neighbor was retook ceiving company. Jess never more trouble with the best company manners of herself and her spouse than when expecting the billsticker of Tilliedrum and his lady. To be sure, Mrs. Billsticker carried her gentility so far that she cut her husband dead when she met him abroad with his paste-pot and brushes. A less lucky sister looked up to her with pride, though she recognized that "Margaret was grand by me," as she had a bell and a bakehouse of her own; but yet the worm would turn at times, as when Tibbie was not bid to the laying out of the defunct billsticker. For the lower Scotch take a morbid pride and delight in the melancholy details of death and burial, witness the scenes in the "Antiquary" and the "Bride of Lammermoor." Even Tammas, the professed humorist of the town-whose conceptions of humor are quaint and most delightfully original-must have owned he was mistaken in denying that humor might be found in anything or everything had he read Mr. Barrie's book. For some of the best of the dry fun is associated with the last offices of the death-chamber, with the sextonbedral who howks the graves, and with the carpenter who makes the coffins. No one who had not been brought up in the society could have reproduced the picturesque vulgarity of the homely speech with such inimitable fidelity. There may be a world of meaning in an ejaculation, and the meaning varies widely with the enun Look at the eloquence of Tibbie Mealmaker's "Ou!" when it punctuates the end of a plaint with a whole constellation of significant full stops. Or at Jess's "Ay, I'm sure of that," which clenches an argument or emphasizes a point. to An exquisite tenderness of sympathy underlies the book, so that it is difficult to distinguish the pathos from the drollery. The struggling weavers of Thrums, fighting the world from day to day on poor earnings, and living hardly from hand mouth, have no leisure to indulge the finer sentiments. But the feelings are the more intense from the habit of repression. When hearts are breaking and the emotions are exceptionally overwrought, the habit of stolid endurance will give way, and God may be forgotten or blasphemed in some uncontrollable outbreak. Yet, as Tammas complained that the drawback to his humorous vein was that even he was sorely tempted to laugh aloud in church, so Mr. Barrie often provokes a smile when we are almost ready to weep. There is an undercurrent of solemn tragedy through the book, and the lights of the Window at the last are painfully extinguished. Jess's fond and jealous motherhood that even grudged a good wife to her darling; Leeby's sisterly devotion, the effusive demonstrations of which had scandalized her brother, and the fatherly pride of the self-contained Hendry, are all destined to lead up to a disastrous dénouement, with the moral that the unselfish may have to seek their recompense in the future life. Mr. Barrie is at his best when his foot is on the cobble-paving of Thrums and when confining himself to the actualities of his experience. In "When a Man's Single," linking Thrums to London, he follows the fortunes of a speculative young journalist. But the magic transformation of the sturdy Glen Quharity saw-miller taxes credulity too far. It reminds us of the extravagance of Lever's "Con Cregan," where the untaught Irish boy leaves the brogue in his bogs, acquires the polish of an accomplished man of the world, and, talking French like a Parisian and Spanish like a Castilian, holds his own with diplomatists, and weds with a blueblooded countess. Mr. Barrie, as we suspect, rather wishes such things might be than believes that they are. The raw Angusshire material cannot be spun so easily into glossy broadcloth and cut into the fashionable frock which will pass muster in any society. Rob Angus wins the heart of a refined and sensitive girl of birth and breeding. That is possible, for Titania was enamoured of Bottom. But the lady's brother, the English public schoolboy, would be the least likely of all persons to welcome the mésalliance, even though the man who had victoriously tossed the caber at Thrums could make play, like Samson, with ponderous field-gates. Mr. Barrie knows his own world well; when he goes beyond it he is groping for fancies in a Forfarshire mist. So it is that he spoiled his "Little Minister" by gratuitously introducing the fantastic. The fair gypsy who is we minister's Delilah or Circe is a creature simply inconceivable. Had her eccentricities been credible, the catas.trophe must have come off prematurely, and the novel been compressed into the shortest of stories, for the eyes of all the keen-sighted Auld Lichts were watching the minister's outgoings and incomings. As for Lord Rintoul, with his wild caprice and high-handed proceedings, he is a travestied survival of the feudal baron, crossed with an old Q. or a Marquis of Hertford. That he should have dreamed of marrying the feather-brained feu-follet is just as unlikely as that she should have settled down into the douce housewife of the manse. If we are provoked to a laugh in "The Little Minister," we are more inclined to laugh at the author than with him. Yet Mr. Barrie could not be himself were there not another side to the story. Few of his scenes are more impressive, or more true to the life, than that which depicts old Nanny's horror of the poor-house, when the gypsy comes to the rescue like a genius of the "Arabian Nights." Not a few of the brief stories in the book Mr. Crockett published under the title of "The Stickit Minister" might have been written by Mr. Barrie, as they were undoubtedly inspired by him. "The Stickit Minister" is an exquisitely touching tale of heroic and unceasing self-sacrifice. He is not the victim of an unkindly fate. He has shown no shortcoming in godly gifts: he does not break down in his examinations; he does not prove a dumb dog, or speak, like the prophet, with a stammering tongue, for he never gets as far as the pulpit. He sacrifices his cherished spiritual ambitions |