virtues, he is deficient in Christian graces. One of those
rare women who combine the most exquisite sensuous beauty with the
beauty of holiness, she cannot consent to marry, unless souls are
joined, as well as hands. Meredith, in the course of the somewhat
rambling narrative, "experiences religion," and the heroine then
feels for him that affection which she did not feel even in those
moments when he recklessly risked his life to save hers. In regard to
characterization, Meredith, the hero, is throughout a mere name,
without personality; but the authoress has succeeded in transforming
Havilah from an abstract proposition into an individual existence.
Her Bedouin lover, the wild, fierce, passionate Arab boy, Abdoul,
with his vehement wrath and no less vehement love, passing from a
frustrated design to assassinate Meredith, whom he considered the
accepted lover of Havilah, to an abject prostration of his whole
being, corporeal and mental, at the feet of his mistress, saluting
them with "a devouring storm of kisses," is by far the most intense
and successful effort at characterization in the whole volume. The
conclusion of the story, which results in the acceptance by Meredith
of the conditions enforced by the celestial purity of the heroine,
will be far less satisfactory to the majority of readers than if
Havilah had been represented as possessed of sufficient spiritual
power to convert her passionate Arab lover into a being fit to be a
Christian husband. By all the accredited rules of the logic of
passion, Abdoul deserved her, rather than Meredith. Leaving, however,
all those considerations which relate to the management of the story
as connected with the impulses of the characters, great praise cannot
be denied to the authoress for her conception and development of the
character of Havilah. Virgin innocence has rarely been more happily
combined with intellectual culture, and the reader follows the course
of her thoughts--and so vital are her thoughts that they cause all
the real events of the story--with a tranquil delight in her
beautiful simplicity and intelligent affectionateness, compared with
which the pleasure derived from the ordinary stimulants of romance is
poor and tame. At least two-thirds of the volume are devoted to
descriptions of Eastern scenery, habits, customs, manners, and men,
and these are generally excellent. Altogether, the book will add to
the reputation of the authoress.

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