Demetrius.  By the Hon. Stephen Coleridge. (Kegan Paul.)

NEW NOVELS

(Saturday Review, August 20, 1887.)

Teutonic fiction, as a rule, is somewhat heavy and very sentimental; but Werner’s Her Son, excellently translated by Miss Tyrrell, is really a capital story and would make a capital play.  Old Count Steinruck has two grandsons, Raoul and Michael.  The latter is brought up like a peasant’s child, cruelly treated by his grandfather and by the peasant to whose care he is confided, his mother, the Countess Louis Steinruck, having married an adventurer and a gambler.  He is the rough hero of the tale, the Saint Michael of that war with evil which is life; while Raoul, spoiled by his grandfather and his French mother, betrays his country and tarnishes his name.  At every step in the narrative these two young men come into collision.  There is a war of character, a clash of personalities.  Michael is proud, stern and noble.  Raoul is weak, charming and evil.  Michael has the world against him and conquers.  Raoul has the world on his side and loses.  The whole story is full of movement and life, and the psychology of the characters is displayed by action not by analysis, by deeds not by description.  Though there are three long volumes, we do not tire of the tale.  It has truth, passion and power, and there are no better things than these in fiction.

The interest of Mr. Sale Lloyd’s Scamp depends on one of those misunderstandings which is the stock-in-trade of second-rate novelists.  Captain Egerton falls in love with Miss Adela Thorndyke, who is a sort of feeble echo of some of Miss Broughton’s heroines, but will not marry her because he has seen her talking with a young man who lives in the neighbourhood and is one of his oldest friends.  We are sorry to say that Miss Thorndyke remains quite faithful to Captain Egerton, and goes so far as to refuse for his sake the rector of the parish, a local baronet, and a real live lord.  There are endless pages of five o’clock tea-prattle and a good many tedious characters.  Such novels as Scamp are possibly more easy to write than they are to read.

James Hepburn belongs to a very different class of book.  It is not a mere chaos of conversation, but a strong story of real life, and it cannot fail to give Miss Veitch a prominent position among modern novelists.  James Hepburn is the Free Church minister of Mossgiel, and presides over a congregation of pleasant sinners and serious hypocrites.  Two people interest him, Lady Ellinor Farquharson and a handsome young vagabond called Robert Blackwood.  Through his efforts to save Lady Ellinor from shame and ruin he is accused of being her lover; through his intimacy with Robert Blackwood he is suspected of having murdered a young girl in his household.  A meeting of the elders and office-bearers of the church is held to consider the question of the minister’s resignation, at which, to the amazement of every one, Robert Blackwood comes forth and confesses to the crime of which Hepburn is accused.  The whole story is exceedingly powerful, and there is no extravagant use of the Scotch dialect, which is a great advantage to the reader.