ABSTRACT
If the moral colouring of fiction be a faithful reflection of that which pervades the life of its time, we should say that this must be overshadowed in our day by some influence that brings into sharp relief whatever is perplexing, disappointing, and bitter. Perhaps the fact that the novels before us present for the most part a dark view oflife might to some minds suggest the opposite view: it is the young who love tragedy, it is those who know nothing ofactual, who delight to dwell on the description of imaginary, woe. Still the tone offiction does on the whole form an index to what we may call the spirits, as distinct from the spirit, ofa particular time, and so far as it goes we must allow that it bears witness to some influence depressing to ours. It is the chill, and not only the storm oflife which we feel here; love is disappointing, not only disappointed; life is arduous, sordid, full of anxiety; poverty is crushing, wealth is corrupting. And while the shadows of earth are more visible than they were, the light of heaven is less visible; this world, while it is more naked than it was, is not more beautiful, and the other world is faint and dim. . . . [A paragraph discussing Hurrish, A Study by the Hon. Emily Lawless follows.]
Demos is more ambitious, and more disappointing. It is less pathetic, though not wholly without pathos, and its characteristic is cleverness rather than power. Yet it has much of all that the ordinary novelreader demands-plot, dialogue, and to a great extent character; and the writer has one great artistic advantage for treating his subject-his sympathies and his opinions run in different channels. He knows and sympathizes with the working class, while his opinions, we should
say, are Conservative. The artist should always have his sober sense on one side, and his feelings on the other-that combination ofJacobite sympathies and eighteenth-century opinion which gives Scott his steadiness of hand and firmness of touch, being the typical instance of their union. But the opinion and feeling are not blended here in the same catholic union; the sympathy sometimes fails, the opinions are indistinct, and yet give too much colouring to parts of the story. Several of the subordinate figures are drawn vigorously; the vulgar young Radical strikes us as clever, and the Socialist's mother and sister are distinct and lifelike. But power fails where it is most needed. The chivalric figure-it is thus that we presume the heir whose fortune is delayed by a lost will is intended to impress the reader-is a mere flat wash; and the democrat, though more distinct, is fitfully drawn, and seems hardly the same at first and last. The most touching character is the sempstress, the first love of the Socialist hero, deserted on his accession to wealth, in whose room at last, when pursued by a howling mob, he seeks shelter and finds death; and the impression she leaves on the mind somewhat relieves the hard and dreary feeling with which one closes the book. Its lack is conviction. The plans of the Socialist are, we are made to feel, mere poisonous error; but his rival has no plans at all, and merely wishes to undo what he has done. If we are invited to contemplate a problem, we should feel there is a solution somewhere. Surely the moral of Demos does not need preaching. Are there not enough indolent and luxurious nouveaux riches who waste their money on no mistaken efforts to benefit their brethren?
