Well-
used to works of fiction which tell all they have to tell in one thin
volume, we have read Mrs. Ward's three volumes with unflagging
readiness.
For, in truth, that quiet method of evolution, which she pursues
undismayed to the end, requires a certain lengthiness; and the
reader's reward will be in a secure sense that he has been in
intercourse with no mere flighty remnants, but with typical forms, of
character, firmly and fully conceived. We are persuaded that the
author might have written a novel which should have been all shrewd
impressions of society, or all humorous impressions of country life,
or all quiet fun and genial caricature. Actually she has chosen to
combine something of each of these with a very sincerely felt
religious interest; and who will deny that to trace the influence of
religion upon human character is one of the [57] legitimate functions
of the novel? In truth, the modern "novel of character" needs some
such interest, to lift it sufficiently above the humdrum of life; as
men's horizons are enlarged by religion, of whatever type it may be--
and we may say at once that the religious type which is dear to Mrs.
Ward, though avowedly "broad," is not really the broadest.
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