Hunt, "(Melrose, "7/5 net.)
This novel by the Rev. Jasper Benjamin Hunt, one of two written in the last years of a comparative: ly young life, contains some fine situations, and might, with a sterner regard to the demands of art, have been made a great one. A tender young git], Miriam Fash with no knowledge of the world, shielded by stern parents, who cherish her as their one priceless pearl—the father of sterling rugged character, the mother with an amusing faculty for quoting Seripture most incongruously—is home from mid-week "meeting" in the Black Country Grimville, In her room, where alone her artistic me Atinets are allowed any sort of expression—in its own ridiculous way a very pretty room—gazing at the evening gloom without, and seized by unutterable fear within, she utters a low wail. The twilight com: ines the terrors of the day and those of the night, and she prays for a miracle, Can it come? There seems to be only one way out of the consequences of an hour of madness at Barmouth during the summer meeting of the narrow little community. Then follows a discussion with her parents concerning the suit of Joseph Remnant, a snub-nosed, hea end, who yet is ally eat meeting. Miriam, the astonishment of her parents not obedient, and again secking her room, falls with a thud to the floor. She is put to bed, and at that moment, while the mother is attending to the unconscious girl, a motor-car is heard along the road, and the man of the world, the handsome inter lo" per at the Barmouth meetings, makes application for the hand of Miriam, He explains that he is a soldier, ordered to sail for duty in two days' time. He has the desire—though quite ignorant of Miriam's condition—to marry the beautiful girl with whom he has fallen passionately in love. 'The father: more tragically ignorant—spurns him from the gate. "Dear as she to me, the light, the hope of my declining' years, I would rather see her stretched a corpse upon the bed where she is lying sick in yonder house than joined in marriage to uch an one as you." The betrayer's following letter to Miriam offering marriage is also intercepted, and her miracle comes to her. She sees it in the chance of marrying Joseph within a week, before he, the confidential servant of his firm, sets out on foreign business What would a master do with such a situation? We know what Hardy did with a similar one: his bishop was avenged. Is it conceivable that Miriam, who made herself beloved wherever she went, by all sorts of different natures, who as ministering angel in Grimville was untouched by any filth or obscenity, and was looked upon_as a saint of God, should make joyful expiation in subjecting herself to attend upon every want of the: gluttonous, coarse, oily, hypocritical scoundrel of a Joseph? That she should even be ready to give up her wonder child Gabriel? That may be so; but when the brute exercises his brutality not only upon her but upon Gabriel, there seems a certain inevitableness that the angel of light should herself exterminate the brute. Whether the Bells of Heaven ring out upon that, or upon another solution of Miriam's problem, we shall leave readers to discover for themselves. But there is one thing they must' not do: they must not read the last chapter of this absorbing novel first.—"Daily Telegraph."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.