touching incidents with a subdued intensity of feeling which avoids the faintest suspicion of sentimentality. Two of the best stories, "Tite-Poulette" and "Madame Delphine," turn on the iniquitous law which forbade quadroons to marry Creoles. For pathos, few scenes in American literature can compare with those in which Madame Delphine denies her child, or confesses her splendid falsehood to Père Jerome. Her superhuman, maternal sacrifice is finely conceived and nobly executed. far to make greatness in fiction. These gifts belong to Bret Harte. So long as he retains them he cannot sink to mediocrity. As Bret Harte depicts the rough life of the diggers, so Miss Murfree paints that of Tennessee mountaineers. But George Eliot, rather than the Californian Dickens, is her model. She uses a larger canvas and a broader point than any of her contemporaries. Animate and inanimate life is painted on a grander scale. Developing in detail her principal actors, or sketching in firm outline her minor char Howells, in his photographs of sophisticated society, contends against the te-acters, she fills her pictures with life, and dium which is bred of conventionality or familiarity with the subject. Cable, Bret Harte, and Miss Murfree possess the charm of novelty. In other respects Cable differs from the two last-named writers. He is the painter of the bygone civilization of a grey-haired corner of the States. In the hands of Bret Harte or Miss Murfree fiction makes another departure. The first represents the rough camp life and embryo cities of California; the second the rude, uncouth, pastoral inhabitants of the Tennessee mountains. Bret Harte needs no introduction to English readers. A Californian Dickens, he is a Dickens with a difference. His rare talent for compressing within a few lines the whole history of a heart; his strong, rapid, telling strokes in which no touch or word is superfluous; his deep pathos, intensified by repression and choked with a curse, present points of contrast rather than of similarity with the manner of his English master. What Dickens did for London roughs, he has done for Californian diggers. He idealizes their characters, and forces us to acknowledge our common humanity with them by making the crisis of their fate turn upon the noble traits which redeem their natures from total degradation. The device is at first singularly effective. But when it becomes a literary fashion, its inherent untruthfulness destroys the impression. In such characters vicious propensities preponderate over nobler instincts, and really determine the crises of their fate. Effective artifices degenerate by repetition into transparent tricks. Flashes of the power that was revealed in "The Luck of Roaring Camp "light up all his writings; but the gleam grows less continuous, more intermittent. Breadth of sympathy, artistic reticence alike in pathos, tragedy or comedy, intuition into character, sense of the picturesque, instinct for selection, are qualities which go throws figures and incidents into strong relief against impressive backgrounds of wild mountain scenery. Some obstacles must be overcome before her writings can be fully appreciated. The dialect in which her actors converse is singularly uncouth; one at least of her plots- "Where the Battle was Fought" is needlessly complicated; her descriptive power is sometimes abused; her style, here and there, needs simplification. Those who conquer these initial difficulties are richly rewarded for the effort. The dialect, harsh though it is, is easily mastered. The plots of the "Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain," "In the Clouds," or "The Despot of Broomsedge Cove," are simple; few strokes are wasted; almost all conduce to the final catastrophe. Miss Murfree's descriptions, though occasionally labored, are oftener admirable in their vivid wordpainting. The style, as has been said, occasionally needs simplification; yet, taken as a whole, it is terse, vigorous, pointed, and teeming with crisp, racy phrases. Miss Murfree began her literary career with the collection of short stories called "In the Tennessee Mountains." Her novelettes deserve high praise. But in this field she competes with formidable rivals. She has won her distinctive position in American fiction by more sustained efforts. The first of her longer stories is "Where the Battle was Fought." It is an impressive book for its promise as well as its performance. As a picture of the devastation which the Civil War left behind it, it is unique in its effectiveness. The grim plain, in winter grey and ghastly with tufts of pallid crab-grass, bared of trees, yet studded with unstubbed shivered boles, laden with vague earthworks which melt into the low-lying wintry clouds, forms the background of the story. The ghostly significance of the spot attunes the mind to the key in which the book is cast. The shadow of its presence, the charm of Marcia, the humor and sympathy with which the rustics are treated, carry the reader lightly through the commonplace love-making, the legal complications of an involved plot, and reconcile him to improbable occurrences and conventional villains. They even compensate for Captain Estwicke's exclamation in the first chapter of the book. As he gazes at Fort Despair he cries, "I feel its meaning! Every weed that stirs in the wind is voiced with a terrible suggestion." Fortunately he never again allows his emotion to betray him into such unpardonable expressions. The captain's secret is well kept; it is divulged at exactly the right moment, and there is singularly dramatic appropriateness in the agency which impels the principal conspirator to reveal his imposture. Yet the promise of "Where the Battle was Fought" is, on the whole, greater than the performance. Toole, the halfcrazy ferryman, Graffy Beale the fugitive, and the urchin Pickie Tait, are the real creations which indicate the peculiar bent of the author's genius. The figure of Marcia suggests that the same pen may draw other portraits as feminine and as charming. The effectiveness of the catastrophe augurs that other plots will be well sustained. The impressive picture of the battlefield promises that other back grounds will be at once effective and harmonious. And this promise Miss Murfree abundantly fulfils in her later novels. Her style grows simpler, yet nearly every sentence is charged with condensed meaning. In rustic life she has found her special sphere. From it she rarely wanders. Blacksmiths, police-constables, and herdsmen are her heroes; their wives and daughters are her heroines. Her intuitive knowledge of the rustic character and habits of thought is at once acute and sympathetic. The conviction grows till it becomes irresistible that the natives of Tennessee live, think, talk, and act in real life precisely as they do in Miss Murfree's novels. George Eliot is at once her rival and her model. Miss Murfree possesses the same power of keen incisive dialogue which suggests without effort the character of the speaker. Mrs. Strobe is a second Mrs. Poyser or Dolly Winthrop. Her shrewd, caustic remarks are worthy of her illustrious prototypes. If we once began to quote her sayings, we should not readily cease. Her children are admirable; each as distinct in its individuality as the older actors. Jacob, 'Gustus Tom, and Isbel, are universal children, and get racy of the soil. Bob is a twin brother of Eppy. Her Marcellys, Dorindas, and Aletheas are attractive types of rustic girlhood. The former is the one heroine who ever proposed to her lover and only became more charming and maidenly by so doing. Alethea is a second Dinah Morris, but more winning and more earthly. Both women were better than their creeds. But Alethea is not a preacher, and, though Dinah's affection for Hetty withstood her sister's fall, she never could have loved the graceless, fascinating scamp, "Mink by name and Mink by nature." Nor is Miss Murfree's power confined to the creation of heroines. Her heroes are equally attractive in their way. Teck Jepson, for instance, is a relative of Balfour of Burleigh. He has his biblical phraseology, his spiritual pride, his conviction that he is a chosen vessel. But superadded to these he has a tenderness to childhood and to weakness in which the stern Covenanter was lamentably deficient. In their plots Miss Murfree's stories are well sustained to the last. In this respect "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain " is, perhaps, the best. Both in "In the Clouds " and "The Despot of Broomsedge Cove " there is a protraction of the penultimate scenes which postpones the catastrophe at the expense of the interest. Finally, the descriptions are, as they were in "Where the Battle was Fought," integral portions of the novels. In places her facile pen may still run away with her. But the noteworthy point is that her people are the people of the district she describes. Story and landscape go together. The description serves a literary purpose; it expresses the fitting sentiment; it develops the appropriate passion. The scenery is essential to the comprehension of the gloom of the religion, the sternness of the life, the uncouthness of the dialect, the harshness of the character. It is only in the graceful forms of girlhood or in the innocence of childhood that the tenderer affections of humanity are preserved and transmitted. A hasty glance at so extensive a field as American fiction is inevitably liable to two defects at least. Much is omitted that ought to have been said. No reference, for instance, has been made to the newer school of "humorists which is represented by Stockton; nothing is said of the recent reaction against unromantic realism which has resulted in the revival of blood-curdling horror. To faults of ne be and is was a wellknown character among the English resi dents and garrison. Not that the notoriety was altogether conducive to his fair fame; but D had a singular way of worming himself into the good graces of a particular set, and passed for a gentleman of affable manners, much wit, and especially a certain bold diablerie that stuck at nothing, and gave him a kind of popularity among the more daring spirits 1, omission must be added faults of commis-ities, his stay in the Kaiser's service was brosion. In a limited space it is impossible not of long duration, and when I joined ndas to balance criticism, or to avoid dogmatiz- my regiment in the island principality ding on questions of taste. America has sacred to San Publio, Das yet produced only one great writer of romance, and no great novelist. Yet she may be legitimately proud of her living writers of fiction. She has no Walter Scott, no Thackeray, no George Eliot. Neither, it may be added, has England. In short stories American writers are our masters. They are deficient, as we have endeavored to show, in creative power, passion, depth, richness of imagination. 2nd Whether these high qualities will be in society. How well I can call up his padded to the mental and physical equip-appearance! Dark brilliant eyes and ment of the north through admixture with her German or southern blood remains to be seen. But of one thing we feel assured. It is not by the New England school of impersonal realists that the great Ameri can novel can ever be written. From Blackwood's Magazine. IT is many years since the following Tremarkable incident in my life took place. For the ordinary commonplace details of every-day experience my memory is gen. erally held to be indifferent, but the circumstances in this case were such that they have indelibly fixed themselves in my recollection, as though they had occurred yesterday. At the time I allude to I was a very raw young ensign, scarcely done with the goose-step. My regiment was quartered in the Barracks, situated in a suburb of the capital of that well-known island fortress which stands warden over the blue waters of the Mediterranean highway, within sight of Sicilian Etna, and almost of northern Africa. black hair; a tall, lithe figure, with a very peculiar but really bewitching smile on occasions when it suited him to please; and a beautifully shaped contour of head and profile. He was known to be of good family, and as he had been in the service, my regiment had made him an honorary member of our mess; and I rather think another corps in garrison had given him the same entrée into theirs. At all events, he was on pretty good terms with some of our fellows, though our colonel and one or two of the older officers certainly did not encourage him much, as his example was not considered beneficial to the juniors. D- was a wonderful billiard-player. I never saw any one to beat him at "losing hazards" or the "spot stroke." As to pool, our "lives were as nothing in his hands; and at all card games in particular, both the skill and the luck of the man were extraordinary. Night after night I have seen him at play, and his winnings must have almost sufficed to maintain him. As to other traits in his character, I am sorry to say I never heard of one single good or generous sentiment that could be traced to him. D's talk at the mess-table or in the ante-room was of the most cynical flavor it was ever my lot to hear; and though "de mortuis nil nisi bonum" is an excellent and decent moral to abide by, truth compels me to add that Ralph D- was a young fellow with some very sinister tales of D's influan odd history. What brought him to ence over the other sex had got about at Malta none of us ever exactly knew. He the time I speak of. What has now come was understood to have been in one to be dignified with the name of hypnotism of "John Company's" regiments, but was unknown as such in those days, but I whether horse or foot I cannot remember. believe D- possessed some conspicHis own account was that he had left the uous powers in this direction, and I am Indian service (for some unexplained rea- afraid was not always over-scrupulous in son), and having found his way to Vienna, his use of them. Even at this distance of got himself into a regiment of Austrian time his portrait stands out clear to my cavalry, as not a few ex-British officers mind's eye, with a kind of Rembrandt-like managed at that time to do. But, for rea- sheen upon it, by reason of the mysterious sons best known to himself and the author- | shadow in the background which was to To make my narrative clearer, I will begin by presenting to the reader the chief character in it. loom up and cover it with the blackness of darkness. I ought perhaps to add, for the better understanding of what is to follow, that for little while before the dé nouement came, some ominous whisperings got afloat among us about D, and the methods whereby so much silver and gold was perpetually being transferred at whist and écarté from other people's pockets to his own. For in my long experience of those holding her gracious Majesty's commission, notwithstanding a black sheep here and there, it is not to be denied that scrupulous honor and fair dealing have ever been in the forefront of their traditions. I now come to the memorable day of the occurrence of the strange incident, to one phase of which I and others most of them gone now- were eye-witnesses. There may be many who scan these pages who have trod the narrow streets, quaintly built and gaily colored, of Valetta, and can repicture their arabesque-Italian character, the old-world environment, the massive and rather formal friezes and entablatures of the basilicas and other buildings. The funereal-looking faldetta of the women; the men pouring in to market from the neighboring casals, clad in blue homespun and long, purse-shaped caps; the combined odors of oranges, garlic, oil, and roasting coffee emanating from the shop doors; the long bastioned lines of fortifications, with wide, deep fosses; the red-coated sentries at the port archways; the splendid auberges of the old knights, what an odd jumble of impressions they all convey! * like no other music I ever heard, or probably shall ever hear again,* while one by one, at intervals, the great burning candles on the sable-draped altar are being solemnly extinguished! My thoughts will wander back to these impressions, so vivid are they still. Well, the eve of Good Friday arrived. I had gone over to see a friend on the Verdala side of the Grand Harbor, and on my return after dark, what a night it was still, calm, cloudless, a star-specked vault overhead. The air was deliciously soft; and as I sat in the stern of the gondola-shaped galley while the dark figure of the boatman monotonously and silently plied his long sweeps, great grey ramparts frowned on every side, and lights twinkled, flashing back in wavering duplicates from the faintly rippling water. I was soon alongside the low jetty on the Valetta side, and, ascending the great flight of steep stone steps, presently found myself in the Strada Reale. Here it was no easy matter threading one's way, for the procession of the "Stazione," representing the main incidents of the "Passion," was passing up the street. At all times this pageant, which some no doubt would revile as su perstitious and papistical, has seemed to me full of solemnity, notwithstanding that the symbolic figures used are often somewhat tawdry, and savoring too much of stage properties. In the intense silence maintained by the multitude of spectators, as each scenic group passes by; in the deep reverence exhibited, as the wail of the dirge-like music swells louder and louder, heralding the approach of the The season was Holy Week towards grand central tableau, the crucifixion; in the end of April, 18-. Music has always the sacred form upraised on a colossal been a passion with me; and every after- cross, towering high above you, flanked noon preceding Good Friday in that par- by the two malefactors on lesser crosses; ticular week, when I could get off duty in the sudden baring of all heads, as the from the dust and glare of the white shrouded platform-bearers with masked parade-ground and the monotonous bawl- faces go by, laboring under their self-iming of the drill-sergeant, it was my wont posed burden,-in all this one feels the to steal away to the Duomo of San Gio- great cardinal truth borne in upon one, vanni. And who that has ever sat in that despite all the concomitant flummery and stately cathedral church, surrounded by gewgaws and evanescent emotion of the its splendor of inlaid marble and under scene. the magnificent frescoes of Matteo Preti,* and in the dimly lighted atmosphere, odorous with incense, listened to the entrancing strains of the office of the "Tenebræ," could ever forget it? Such exquisite pathos in the solos, inexpressibly mournful yet sweet, and then the moaning harmonies of the antiphonal choruses Another of the treasures of this church is the celebrated picture by Caravaggio, "The Decapitation of the Baptist." Such as it was on this particular Holy Thursday night, there were after-reasons why this strange and weird Passion-procession, as it crept by, stamped itself deep into my memory. And those waxen effi gies of the agony in the garden, the cruel scourging, the staggering under the weight * The score of this "Tenebræ" music was said, if I remember aright, to be the work of an ancient master, and was never allowed to get into the hands of the public. DE of the ponderous tree, and last of all, the mind that this most be either one of the dominoed incogniti who had been following in the Passion procession, or else one somehow of the Capuchins from a neighboring monastery; but a friar would hardly stroll in to listen to a military band, and then stand stock-still alone under the windows of the officers' mess. With the momentary passing thought came the sound of pretty The echo of the sentry's sharp challenge, loud talking, and occasionally a laugh, "Halt! who comes there?" and, "Pass, from the lit-up ante-room opposite, where friend-all's well," had hardly died down it was plain some of our fellows must be, when I found myself at the door of my probably engaged at whist, loo, or some quarters, which faced the officers' mess other card game. Why I cannot tell, but block. By this time the Paschal moon, along with a feeling of indefinable repulall but full, was high in the sky, and cast sion towards him, an impulse seized me a great shadow from the tall buildings to watch the muffled stranger closely, and facing the range of barracks across the at the same time an awakening consciousparade. Though on this night super-ness that I had better walk straight over fluous, a feeble oil-lamp flickered here and ask the man what he wanted there at and there, for gas was a luxury not then that time of night. As my gaze fastened indulged in, and the department which itself on the motionless figure, whose was charged with these things loved dark-head seemed in the bright moonlight to ness better than light, because it cost less. be bent a little to one side in an intent, I should here explain that Thursdays listening attitude, I became conscious of were the "guest" nights of my regiment a kind of chill and numbness creeping at that time, and on this evening the regi- through my limbs, with that horrible mental band had as usual been playing on sense of inability to move forward one the open space just outside, fronting the occasionally experiences in dreams when mess-room windows. It must have been something dreadful is going to happen past eleven o'clock when I reached bar- which one wants to avert. Yes, whoever racks; and although most of the outsiders the man was, most assuredly he must be who were allowed in to hear the music on watching and waiting and listening for such occasions were gone, I noticed two something or somebody in the mess-room, or three still waiting about. One in par- with that strained intentness yet absolute ticular, a remarkably tall man in a long, quiescence of posture! But why this dark cloak, and with some sort of hood vehement and altogether unaccountable over his head like a monk's cowl, was foreboding of impending evil borne in standing under one of the mess windows upon me? with his back to me. I sauntered into my room, lit a cigar, and came out again, to muse in the quiet moonlight over the "Tenebræ " and the "Stazione." By this time the loiterers were all gone except the tall, cloaked man, who appeared to have never moved or changed his position since I saw him first. The open windows of the mess-room were still aglow, and through the boughs of a row of lank, stunted trees along the enclosure wall one could see the distant twinkling lights of the town. Something in the appearance of this solitary shrouded figure attracted and fixed my attention. To be so attired in a warm, balmy night like this, in a semitropical climate, seemed peculiar. And I had already been struck with his phenomenal stature, contrasted with those who had been standing beside him. Who could the man be, and what on earth was he waiting there for? It crossed my One These bethinkings, however, were all the work of a few seconds, when, with eyes still riveted on the mysterious watcher, I heard several voices within the room calling out in excited tones as though some altercation were going on. voice above all the others came with a kind of strident sharpness through the open window, in which it was easy to recognize D's hard and distinct accents. I seem to hear the words rasping out now as I write. "I tell you I dealt myself the ace of spades;" then another voice, young N's, "I'll take my oath you didn't," and then a terrible imprecation from D, which I will not repeat, invoking the Prince of Darkness to the ruin of his soul and body if what he had stated was not the truth. As the last words struck on my ear the tall, cloaked figure made an instantaneous movement, leaped up with a light, swift spring to the window-sill he was standing |