reading and most patient care [56] in composition--composition
in that narrower sense which is concerned with the building of a good
sentence; as also in that wider sense, which ensures, in a work like
this, with so many joints, so many currents of interest, a final unity
of impression an the part of the reader, and easy transition by him
from one to the other. Well-used to works of fiction which tell all
they have to tell in one thin volume, we have read Mrs. Ward's three
volumes with unflagging readiness.

For, in truth, that quiet method of evolution, which she pursues
undismayed to the end, requires a certain lengthiness; and the reader's
reward will be in a secure sense that he has been in intercourse with
no mere flighty remnants, but with typical forms, of character, firmly
and fully conceived. We are persuaded that the author might have
written a novel which should have been all shrewd impressions of
society, or all humorous impressions of country life, or all quiet fun
and genial caricature. Actually she has chosen to combine something of
each of these with a very sincerely felt religious interest; and who
will deny that to trace the influence of religion upon human character
is one of the [57] legitimate functions of the novel? In truth, the
modern "novel of character" needs some such interest, to lift it
sufficiently above the humdrum of life; as men's horizons are enlarged
by religion, of whatever type it may be--and we may say at once that
the religious type which is dear to Mrs. Ward, though avowedly "broad,"
is not really the broadest. Having conceived her work thus, she has
brought a rare instinct for probability and nature to the difficult
task of combining this religious motive and all the learned thought it
involves, with a very genuine interest in many varieties of average
mundane life.

We should say that the author's special ethical gift lay in a
delicately intuitive sympathy, not, perhaps, with all phases of
character, but certainly with the very varied class of persons
represented in these volumes. It may be congruous with this, perhaps,
that her success should be more assured in dealing with the characters
of women than with those of men. The men who pass before us in her
pages, though real and tangible and effective enough, seem,
nevertheless, from time to time to reveal their joinings. They are
composite of many different men we seem to have [58] known, and fancy
we could detach aga