ord episodes strike us as being
not the author's strongest work, as being comparatively conventional,
coming, as they do, in a book whose predominant note is reality. Yet
her sympathetic command over, her power of evoking, the genius of
places, is clearly shown in the touches by which she brings out the so
well-known grey and green of college and garden--touches which bring
the real Oxford to the mind's eye better than any elaborate description
[65] --for the beauty of the place itself resides also in delicate
touches. The book passes indeed, successively, through distinct,
broadly conceived phases of scenery, which, becoming veritable parts of
its texture, take hold on the reader, as if in an actual sojourn in the
places described. Surrey--its genuine though almost suburban wildness,
with the vicarage and the wonderful abode, above all, the ancient
library of Mr. Wendover, all is admirably done, the landscape naturally
counting for a good deal in the development of the profoundly
meditative, country-loving souls of Mrs. Ward's favourite characters.

Well! Mrs. Ward has chosen to use all these varied gifts and
accomplishments for a certain purpose. Briefly, Robert Elsmere, a
priest of the Anglican Church, marries a very religious woman; there is
the perfection of "mutual love"; at length he has doubts about
"historic Christianity"; he gives up his orders; carries his learning,
his fine intellect, his goodness, nay, his saintliness, into a kind of
Unitarianism; the wife becomes more intolerant than ever; there is a
long and faithful effort on both sides, eventually successful, on the
part of these mentally [66] divided people, to hold together; ending
with the hero's death, the genuine piety and resignation of which is
the crowning touch in the author's able, learned, and thoroughly
sincere apology for Robert Elsmere's position.

For good or evil, the sort of doubts which troubled Robert Elsmere are
no novelty in literature, and we think the main issue of the "religious
question" is not precisely where Mrs. Ward supposes--that it has
advanced, in more senses than one, beyond the point raised by Renan's
Vie de Jesus. Of course, a man such as Robert Elsmere came to be ought
not to be a clergyman of the Anglican Church. The priest is still, and
will, we think, remain, one of the necessary types of humanity; and he
is untrue to his type, unless, with whatever inevitable doubts in this
doubting age, he feels, on the w