George Eliot. Say rather disintegrations with the very substance of the moon herself. Where the very substance of the luminary is decaying, what hope is there for the permanence of your moonlight?

Myself. The analogy is imperfect; but to pursue it, the lunar elements remain indestructible, and after transformation may cohere again into some splendid identity.

George Eliot. Moonlight is sunlight reflected on a material mirror: thought, consciousness, life itself, are conditions dependent upon the physical medium, and on the brightness of the external development. Cogito, ergo sum should be transposed and altered. Sum materies, ergo cogito.

Lewes. And yet, after all, there are psychic phenomena which seem to evade the material definition.

George Eliot. Not one. And science has established clearly that while functional disturbance may be evanescent, structural destruction is absolute and irremediable. An organism once destroyed is incapable of resurrection. Myself. Then life is merely mechanism after all?

George Eliot. Undoubtedly. It is very pitiful, but absolutely true."

These two people are dead, and cannot defend themselves against the reckless writer whom they admitted into their company. But every authentic record describes her as essentially modest in her personal conversation-neither hectoring nor lecturing: and this is both. No doubt gentlemen of the literary profession are sometimes sadly put to it to find material. It is better for them, though perhaps not quite so safe, to attack the living than to caricature the dead.

We turn from this literary balderdash with pleasure to the pretty old-fashioned narrative in which a surviving sister of Miss Agnes Strickland tells the story-not a

was a

very eventful one-of the lives of the two feminine historians, the biographers of the Queens, whọ evidently the objects of her tender are the glory of her family, and devotion. The Miss Stricklands— for though the name of Agnes only appeared on the books, it was well known that Elizabeth Strickland shared the work and the responsibility-belonged to a period in which people still looked with some wonder on a female writer, and "the fair authoress familiar locution. We do not regret those days; but they have and there is a scent as of potalready an old-fashioned flavour, pourri and fresh lavender in the story of the country ladies, with their pretty dresses and manners, sweeping into dusty Record offices and muniment-rooms, pursuing, in their round of pleasant visits, a collection of old letters, a royal will, into all manner of private repositories-the unknown wealth of family closets and chests: then returning to their own old house with all its associations, into the midst of the cheerful family, to work up the carefully gathered material into those pleasant volumes, with all the attractions of a novel and much of the solidity of history, which were the first of their kind, and have given a beginning to so many studies and series since. The picture of the sisters in their childhood is a very pretty and attractive one. When they were very young, a stray volume of Shakespeare fell accidentally into their hands, upon which, "Agnes declared that she would never read any other book in her leisure hours;" and they both learned by heart the fine declamations of Julius Cæsar, to the great

Edinburgh and London:

surprise of their father, whose desire it was to make them mathematicians, but who was wise enough on hearing his little daughters, in. all the glow of enthusiasm, pour forth the speeches of Antony and Brutus, to give them free access to Shakespeare, considering, says the biographer with much good sense and truth, that "their infant innocence would prevent them from receiving injury" from things they had no chance of understanding. It would be better for the literary taste of our children if parents would be as wise nowadays, and let them go to the fountain-head at once, which even Lamb's stories do something to impair. This study produced the following amusing scene:

"Agnes, who had never seen a play in her life, resolved, with the aid of her four younger sisters, to act some scenes from Shakespeare, and selected the second part of Henry VI. for their début. As they all had good memories, she did not find much difficulty in drilling her youthful company. Agnes, who, like her warlike ancestors, was a stout Lancastrian, could not induce Elizabeth to join her, for she was a staunch Yorkist, and they sometimes fell out while discussing these ancient politics. This new amusement lasted a whole winter, till Agnes, struck with the poetical beauty of Clarence's dream, resolved, with the assistance of her next sister, to perform the murder scene in Richard III., she herself taking the part of the doomed prince, while Sarah was to play the part of a good listener in Brackenbury, and

also to take that of the first nameless villain. The scene came off very well till the entrance of the murderers, whose arch blooming juvenile faces did not accord with their evil intentions towards the hapless prisoner. A mistimed fit of risibility on their part overcame the gravity of the death-doomed Clarence, and the scene ended not in a tragedy but a comedy."

theatricals to an end. The lively Agnes, however, did not limit her activity to theatricals. She made up her mind to write a poem, always so tempting and so easy a task to a child of literary tastes. The subject was a very remote one, a historical narrative, of which "the mighty Baron Bigod, who had defied the warlike first Edward to his face, was to be the hero: ".

'She employed her leisure hours for cal composition, keeping her literary some weeks in this premature poetilabours a secret even from her sister Elizabeth, till the first canto was completed, when she brought her poem to her father with all the pride of a young author, her eager looks and sparkling eyes seeming to demand his admiration. To the infinite surprise and mortification of the author of twelve years, her poem, instead of pleasing her father, found in him a very severe critic. He pronounced it to be deficient in originality and merit, and advised her to give up versemaking till she was better acquainted stowed no praise to the luckless poem, with fine English poetry. He bebut gave it a complete cutting up. felt for her beloved parent alone The affection and veneration Agnes checked her tears. She promised to obey him; ... and he rewarded her Milton, Gray, and Collins into her docility by putting the works of hands, the perusal of which inclined her to consign her immature attempt

to the flames."

The hall at Reydon must have been a charming habitation in those days, when Agnes was a strict

a

of delightful little girls, and only find them again in maturity, carrying on the extensive work which was to occupy their life. We remember that it used to be the idea of the time that Elizabeth Strickland was the underground worker, hunting up authorities and verifying references, and Agnes, the eloquent writer, who turned the whole into so pretty a web of mingled fact and fancy. We can remember even to have heard speculations among the unrespectful youth of the period, as to which poke-bonnet in the old readingroom of the British Museum covered the diligent brain of Elizabeth, whose absolute self-sacrifice for her sister was the theme of a persistent tradition. As usually happens in such cases, it was not true-Elizabeth being on the whole the more vigorous writer of the two, but retaining, notwithstanding all the changed ideas of the time about female authorship, a determined disinclination to the sight of her own name in print. It is very probable that she was a more original and marked character than her sister, by all the indications that peep through the veil of seclusion and silence, in which it seems to have been her pleasure to wrap herself. The absence of information in such a case is suggestive. But Agnes was not born to blush unseen. She went everywhere and saw everybody, and made friends wherever she turned, and her records of her visits, her pretty toilets, and the dainty little feminine occupations with which she filled up the crevices of her life, are always lively and readable. It is difficult to describe a number of countryhouse visits with originality. She was still interested in her "elegant ball toilet" and all her decorations after she had reached the mature age of seventy, and

recounts how she had been pressed to dance, but declared that her dancing days were over, at that respectable age. Throughout all, indeed, the accomplished authoress retains the essentially feminine, as understood in those pretty old days when Jane Austen shrank from having her performances known, and would not for the world appear as a literary lady. Miss Strickland was so far moved by the spirit of the nineteenth century that she accepted and liked this position; but she was a woman and a lady, not without the becoming affectations of an "elegant female," through all. We remember a serio-comic account of an interview with her publishers, in which accounts or balance-sheets were not to her taste. Having tried in vain to get them arranged to please her, she took refuge in one of these pretty devices of delicacy supposed then to be distinctive of the woman who never could understand business-the woman whom all men were supposed to approve. She covered her forehead with her lady-like hands-"Oh, my poor head!" she cried. How could even the obdurate heart of a publisher resist such an appeal?

Apart from Agnes herself, there are various glimpses of interesting persons in this book. The following is a very painful one; but it is an unusually vivid momentary look into a singularly successful, almost great, but neither honoured nor happy life. It is from the account of a visit to Brougham Castle.

"His own home was not the place to see the great jurisconsult to advantage. He was labouring for the good of countless generations to come, at his very advanced age, and was austere and even morose in the domestic circle. All his affections seemed con

centrated in his brother's youngest son, a sweet little boy named Reginald, to whom he wrote when absent every day, and of whose liking for Agnes he was apparently jealous-his passionate love for this child presenting the only pleasing feature in his domestic character. To Lady Brougham he never spoke, and the situation of this poor lady in her own house appeared to Agnes very pitiable; for though she was not capable of guiding it, a kind word from her distinguished husband would have been dearly appreciated by her. 'Ah,' she said, with a deep sigh, he was not always cross, but was very fascinating.' Lord Brougham seemed worn out and irritable when he appeared at dinner. His intense studies and hard work probably caused his morose manners. Although he was the benefactor of his own family, no female member of it seemed to love him but his neglected wife."

Nothing could well be sadder than this glimpse of the lonely self-consuming life sinking morosely among the clouds.

The reader will not, we think, much care for Mrs Papendiek's account of the Court of George III. and Queen Charlotte-a frank and simple servants'-hall history of the exalted gods and goddesses which kings and queens appear to their lackeys. There is little interest in its monotonous records, except, indeed, when the excellent person who writes comes across some of the musical celebrities of the time, being herself a musician, and apt in her house at Kew or Windsor to receive now and then stray notabilities of this kind, German or otherwise, who were always hanging on about the dull but tuneful Court. Mrs Papendiek was herself more than half-German, and learn

ed in the art of song. But nobody who has read Miss Burney's record of her servitude need seek the dimmer reflection in these pages with any hope of further insight. The tragedy of that simple, formal, innocent, unhappy Court is deep enough to bear a more powerful touch; but that is not to be found

here.

It is difficult in literature, as in anything else, to forget at this moment the existence of that troublesome aud restless companion to whom fate and propinquity, and that close kindred of mixed races which Ireland tries to ignore, has bound us. We have laid aside for another time a very interesting and valuable little book, 'Industrial Ireland'; but here are the two handsome volumes, just published, by Mr O'Neill Daunt, one of the survivors of O'Connell's band of moral-force repealers, to which we must direct the reader's attention.2 Here surely is an opportunity of studying the Union and its consequences through the eyes of an Irish Nationalist and repealer. But alas for our disappointment! Little does Mr Daunt's book deserve its title. We expect a connected and proportioned account of the events of the century. We find Mr Daunt's views of the Union, a very lengthy account of some of the incidents in O'Connell's career, obsolete scandals against Orangemen, elaborate refutations of forgotten newspaper paragraphs, a dissertation on the evils of the late Irish Church, and very little beside. The history of the book explains its composition. New and comprehensive as its

2 Eighty-Five Years of Irish

O'Neill Daunt. 2 vols. crown 8vo.