back to Vincent's bewildered mind. They derful Sunday. Salem had never been so formed a measure and cadence in their con- full before. Every individual of the chapstant repetition, haunting him like some el-folks was there who could by any means spiritual suggestion as he looked over, with come out, and many other curious inhabisenses confused and dizzy, his little stock of tants full of natural wonder, to see how a sermons to make preparation for the duty man looked, and what he would preach which he could not escape. At last he tossed about, whose sister was accused of murder. them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and The wondering congregation thrilled like poured forth his heart. Saving souls! what one soul under that touch of passion. Faces did it mean? He was not writing a ser- grew pale, long sobs of emotion burst here mon. Out of the depths of his troubled and there from the half-terrified, excited heart poured all the chaos of thought and audience who seemed to see around them, wonder, which leapt into fiery life under that instead of the every-day familiar world—a quickening touch of personal misery and throng of those souls whom the preacher unrest. He forgot the bounds of orthodox disrobed of everything but passion and conspeculation—all bounds save those of that sciousness and immortality. Just before the drear mortal curtain of death, on the other conclusion, when he came to a sudden side of which that great question is solved: pause all at once and made a movement He set forth the dark secrets of life with forward, as if to lay hold of something he exaggerated touches of his own passion and saw, the effect was almost greater than the anguish. He painted out of his own aching deacons could approve of in chapel. One fancy a soul innocent, yet stained with the woman screamed aloud, another fainted, heaviest of mortal crimes: he turned his some people started to their feet-all waited wild light aside and poured it upon another, with suspended breath for the next words, foul to the core, yet unassailable by man. electrified by the real life which palpitated Saving souls! which was the criminal? there before them, where life so seldom apwhich was the innocent? A wild chaos of pears, in the decorous pulpit. When he sin and sorrow, of dreadful human compli- went on again the people were almost too cations, misconceptions, of all incomprehen- much excited to perceive the plain meaning sible, intolerable thoughts, surged round of his words, if any plain meaning had ever and round him as he wrote. Were the been in that passionate outcry of a wounded words folly that haunted him with such and bewildered soul. When the services echoes? Could he, and such as he, unwit-were over, many of them watched the preting of half the mysteries of life, do any- cipitate rush which the young preacher thing to that prodigious work? Could words help it ?—vain syllables of exhortation or appeal? God knows. The end of it all was a confused recognition of the One half known, half identified, who, if any hope were to be had, held that hope in his hands. The preacher, who had but dim acquaintance with that name, paused in the half idiocy of his awakened genius, to wonder, like a child, if perhaps his simple mother knew a little more of that far-off wondrous figure-recognized it wildly by the confused lights as the only hope in earth or heaven-and so rose up, trembling with excitement and exhaustion, to find that he had spent the entire night in this sudden inspiration, and that the wintry dawn, cold and piercing to the heart, was stealing over the opposite roofs, and another day had begun. That was the sermon which startled half the population of Carlingford on that won

made through the crowd into his vestry. He could not wait the dispersion of the flock, as was the usual custom. It was with a buzz of excitement that the congregation did disperse slowly, in groups, asking each other had such a sermon ever been preached before in Carlingford. Some shook their heads, audibly expressing their alarm lest Mr. Vincent should go too far, and unsettle his mind; some pitied and commented on his looks-women these. He sent them all away in a flutter of excitement, which obliterated all other objects of talk for the moment, even his sister, and left himself in a gloomy splendor of eloquence and uncertainty, the only object of possible comment until the fumes of his wild oration should have died away.

"I said we'd tide it over," said Tozer, in a triumphant whisper to his wife. "That's what he can do when he's well kep' up to it,

and put on his mettle. The man as says he
ever heard anything as was finer, or had
more mind in it," added the worthy butter-
man to his fellow-deacons, "has had more
opportunities nor me; and though I say
it,
I've heard the best preachers in our con-
nection. That's philosophical, that is
there aint a man in the church as I ever
heard of as could match that, and not a
many as comes out o' 'Omerton. We're

not a-going to quarrel with a pastor as can
preach a sermon like that, not because he's
had a misfortune in his family. Come into
the vestry, Pigeon, and say a kind word
as you're sorry, and we'll stand by him. He
wants to be kep' up, that's what he wants.
Mind like that always does. It aint equal
Come along
to doing for itself, like most.
with me, and say what's kind, and cheer
him up, as has exerted hisself and done his
best."

"It was rousing up," said Pigeon, with a little reluctance; 66 even the misses didn't go again that; but where he's weak is in the application, I don't mind just shaking

hands

"If we was all to go, he might take it kind," suggested Brown, the dairyman, who had little to say, and not much confidence in his own opinion; and pride and kindness combined won the day. The deacons who were in attendance went in, in a body, to shake hands with the pastor, and express their sympathy, and congratulate him on his sermon, the latter particular being an established point of deacon's duty in every well-regulated and harmonious community. They went in rather pleased with themselves, and full of the gratification they were about to confer. But the open door of the vestry revealed an empty room, with the preacher's black gown lying tossed upon the floor, as if it had been thrown down recklessly in his sudden exit. The little congratulating procession came to a halt, and stared in each other's faces. Their futile good intentions flashed into exasperation. They had come to bestow their favor upon him, to make him happy, and behold he had fled in contemptuous haste, without waiting for their approval; even Tozer felt the shock of the failure. So far as the oligarchs of Salem were concerned, the sermon might never have been preached, and the pastor sunk deeper than ever into the bad opinion of Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Brown.

In the mean time Vincent had rushed from his pulpit, thrown on his coat, and rushed out again into the cold midday, tingling in

THIRD SERIES.

LIVING AGE. 929

every limb with the desperate effort of selfrestraint, which alone had enabled him to preserve the gravity of the pulpit, and conclude the services with due steadiness and propriety. When he made that sudden pause, it was not for naught. Effective though it was, it was no trick of oratory which caught the breath at his lips, and transfixed him for the moment. There, among the crowded pews of Salem, deep in the further end of the Chapel, half lost in the throng of listeners, suddenly, all at once, had flashed upon him a face-a face, unchanged from its old expression, intent as if no deluge had descended, no earthquake fallen; listening, as of old, with gleaming keen eyes and close-shut emphatic mouth. The whole building reeled in Vincent's eyes, as he caught sight of that thin head, dark refinement and intelligence from the comand silent, gleaming out in all its expressive mon faces round. How he kept still and went on was to himself a kind of miracle. Had she moved or left the place, he could not have restrained himself. But she did not move. He watched her, even while he prayed, with a profanity of which he was with her frightful composure finding the conscious to the heart. He watched her hymn, standing up with the rest to sing. When she disappeared, he rushed from the pulpit-rushed out-pursued her. She was not to be seen anywhere when he got outside, and the first stream of the throng of however, included none of the leading peodispersing worshippers, which fortunately, ple of Salem, beheld with amazed-eyes the minister who darted through them, and took his hurried way to Back Grove Street. Could she have gone there? He debated the question vainly with himself as he hastened on the familiar road. The door was the crowded pavement. He flew up the open as of old, the children playing upon staircase, which creaked under his hasty foot, and knocked again at the well-known door, instinctively pausing before it, though he had meant to burst in and satisfy himself. Such a violence was unnecessary—as if the world had stood still, Mrs. Hilyard opened the door and stood before him, with her little kerchief on her head, her fingers still marked with blue. "Mr. Vincent," said this incomprehensible woman, admitting him without a moment's hesitation, pointing him to a chair as of old, and regarding him with the old steady look of half-amused observation, "you have never come to see me on a Sunday before. It is the best day for do. Sit down, take breath; I have leisure, conversation for people who have work to and there is time now for everything we can have to say."

From The Saturday Review.
ST. CLEMENT'S EVE.*

high order. The lasting popularity of Philip Van Artevelde is as much owing to its pure and vigorous style as to the fusion of historical interest and creative ingenuity in the construction of the plot.

During a long interval, mainly occupied by official labors, Mr. Taylor has produced two or three dramas which have not become generally popular. Although his composition is always manly, scholar-like, and thoughtful, his invention seems to require the stimulus of a history which is in itself picturesque and exciting. It was useless to seek inspiration in the hopelessly dull annals of England before the Conquest. Mr. Kemble's learned and unreadable work on Anglo-Saxon history, with its average of one proper name in fifty pages, represents the romantic capabilities of England in its embryo condition. Grave historians report that the national language and laws were formed by some mysterious process during the obscure period of indigenous dulness; but life and movement, as far as the careless and ordinary reader can discern, came in with the Normans, and experience at least teaches that Adelgithas, Ediths, and Ethelreds, are not attractive personages in fiction. On the whole, perhaps, French feuds, conspiracies, and murders are more exciting even than legitimate English history. Although Michelet asserts that in the mediæval drama, the gentle and pious kings of France played the part of "Le Bon Dieu" to the devil as performed by their fierce Norman and Plantag

NEARLY thirty years have passed since Mr. Henry Taylor published a work which, in some respects, stands alone in modern English literature. Although the interest of the story is rather epic than dramatic, Philip Van Artevelde is the best historical play of the last two centuries, and the best historical romance since the days of Scott. The subject was selected with admirable judgment, and the story is told with a felicitous clearness which successfully conceals the skilful treatment of the narrative. Not one reader in a hundred is familiar with the Flemish history of the fourteenth century, and yet the drama from beginning to end requires neither commentary nor explanation. Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the age which he reproduces, the dramatist nevertheless keeps himself wholly free from the affectation of medieval simplicity. His characters, while they belong to their own time, are on the intellectual level of the present day, and, consequently, they act and speak like rational beings in the midst of feudal revolutions and wars. The difficulty and the merit of avoiding in historical fiction. an intrusive display of the author's consciousness is best illustrated by the tial failure of many considerable writers. Fouqué's impressive romances are uniformly disfigured by an ostentatious earnestness on the part of the narrator, which provokes incredulity, like the fraud of a conjuror when he pretends to be a medium or a magician.enet neighbors, the Valois Princes at least In Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo is were not remarkably distinguished by that above assuming the mask of a contemporary Christian simplicity which may have adorned chronicler, but he falls into the opposite er- the gentle Philip Augustus, and the unambiror of betraying his real character as a som- tious Philip the Fair. In St. Clement's Eve, bre moral satirist. Sir E. B. Lytton in his Mr. Taylor has sagaciously discerned the draearly English romance is too much of a pro-matic elements of one of the darkest periods fessor or antiquarian. Mr. Taylor, in Philip in the history of the ill-omened dynasty. Van Artevelde, keeps the machinery of comCharles VI., the gay and careless boy-king of position out of sight with an instinctive taste Philip Van Artevelde, has become in the preswhich would not have been unworthy of Sir ent story an object of pity and reverence to his Walter Scott. The same excellence has countrymen, under the infliction of insanity, been not less perfectly attained in Vitet's with lucid intervals which alone relieve by dramas on French history in the last days glimpses of hope the public anarchy and of the house of Valois; but the Barricades misery. It was on St. Clement's Eve that and the States of Blois are written in his brother, Louis, Duke of Orleans, was prose, while Mr. Taylor is not only a powerful murdered by John the Fearless, of Burwriter of fiction, but an original poet of a gundy. The subsequent assassination of # St. Clement's Eve. A Play. By Henry Tay-at the Bridge of Montereau, was a principal the criminal in the presence of the dauphin lor. Chapman and Hall,

par

tunities, by the aid of episodes and underplots, for illustrating characteristic peculiar ities which find no place in a sustained narrative of great events.

St. Clement's Eve is more dramatic in its form than Philip Van Artevelde, and it even

cause of the English conquest of France by historians have displayed a high order of Henry V., and of the long foreign and civil creative genius. Fiction also gives opporwar which reduced the country to the lowest pitch of wretchedness. The commencement of the cycle of crime and misfortune has furnished Mr. Taylor with the subject of a play which deserves to be placed on a level with Philip Van Artevelde. His long interruption of poetical activity has in no degree approaches to an observance of the unities weakened his powers of dramatic construction, and mature experience seems even to have enlarged his command of language, and to have refined still further a style which was always idiomatic, simple, and masculine.

of place and time. The story occupies only two or three days, and it is entirely transacted inside the walls of Paris. Even the murder, which is the catastrophe of the plot, is accounted for by relations and events which begin and end within the compass or Although it is, perhaps, more difficult to the drama. At the outset, Burgundy is supadapt history to the purposes of fiction than posed not to have formed any design on the to invent a story, the advantage of a subject life of Orleans, although the feud of the rinot altogether imaginary is as great as that val princes has, during the king's illness, rewhich a landscape gardener derives from nat-duced France to the lowest state of misery. ural wood and from an undulating surface. The anarchy of the kingdom is described Elaborate plantations, and little hills exca- with extraordinary force and eloquence by a vated from artificial lakes produce a com- religious enthusiast, Robert the Hermit, in paratively imperfect illusion. The motives an address to the Council, where Charles and incidents which suit the scheme of the himself is presiding during a lucid interval. poet are more readily taken for granted when The chivalrous Duke of Orleans, moved by it is undeniable that the hero and the assas- the hermit's appeal, proposes a reconciliasin at some time existed, and that the mur- tion, and the Duke of Burgundy accepts the der was actually committed. The manager offer. In the mean time, the mob, at the inwho formerly advertised the "real water" stigation of two rascally monks, is proceedwith which his nautical effects were pro- ing to burn Passac, the king's barber, on duced, understood the natural sources of the charge of having caused his master's dehuman interest. If he could further have rangement by his sorceries. The rescue of alleged that his lake or his cataract con- the victim by the Duke of Orleans prepares nected itself with the current of the Thames, the way for a subsequent plot of the villahe would have made the spectacle still more nous Bastard of Montargis, who is preparing, attractive. A portion of history, even when with the aid of the monks, to carry off the it has been taken to pieces and re-adjusted novice, Iolande de Saint Remy, from the into a tragedy or a novel, stands out in convent of the Celestines. In defeating the stronger relief than any fanciful composition. attempt of Montargis, Orleans incurs his enNothing can seem more unaccountably ca-mity, and at the same time, in violation of pricious than the alteration and inversion of his duty to his wife, he falls in love with Ioevents in Quentin Durward, and yet Scott has reproduced, with curious fidelity, the very spirit of Philip of Comines. His personages and their adventures might perhaps command attention if they had been fabulous princes and knights of Arcadia; but Louis XI., in the castle of Charles the Bold not only rouses the imagination, but renders a portion of history intelligible, however little the dates and circumstances may coincide with the researches of the conscientious antiquary. Poets are better portrait-painters than mere annalists, although some great

lande, who returns his affection until she discovers his name and rank. Subdued by her purity and by the devotional excitement of her language, the duke withdraws his suit, and only entreats her to cure his brother by the application of a relic which required the ministry of a sinless maiden. Montargis, after his discomfiture, prepares an ambush of armed men to murder his enemy, and he also suborns the monks to accuse Orleans of sorcery, threatening them with the duke's vengeance, which they might be supposed to have incurred in the matter of