"
There is surely something of "natural magic" in that! The wilder
capacity of the mountains is brought out especially in a weird story
of a haunted girl, an episode well illustrating the writer's more
imaginative psychological power; for, in spite of its quiet general
tenour, the book has its adroitly managed elements of sensation--
witness the ghost, in which the average human susceptibility to
supernatural terrors takes revenge on the sceptical Mr. Wendover, and
the love-scene with Madame de Netteville, which, like those other
exciting passages, really furthers the development of the proper
ethical interests of the book. The Oxford episodes strike us as
being not the author's strongest work, as being comparatively
conventional, coming, as they do, in a book whose predominant note is
reality. Yet her sympathetic command over, her power of evoking, the
genius of places, is clearly shown in the touches by which she brings
out the so well-known grey and green of college and garden--touches
which bring the real Oxford to the mind's eye better than any
elaborate description [65] --for the beauty of the place itself
resides also in delicate touches. The book passes indeed,
successively, through distinct, broadly conceived phases of scenery,
which, becoming veritable parts of its texture, take hold on the
reader, as if in an actual sojourn in the places described.
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