vreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he has
since died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by the
publication at London of _Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill_, which proved to
be one of the most notable books of its season.

This novel remains the best example of the author's humour and power of
describing character that she has produced. It has none of the marks of
a first effort. Written when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodied
some of the best fruits of many years' keenly critical study of life, in
addition to the culture gained by travel and a wide course of reading.
Of plot there is little--there is still less in some of the later
novels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope for
unusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation.

In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar world
she merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded by
Nathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke of
them as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the
earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going
about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made
a show of.' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasma
reminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy
_parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet
tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, that
wonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man.
There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especially
when they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. The
delightful comradeship of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dry
New England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for his
sister and their pride in each other.

The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by their
secret contempt for the pretensions of the upper classes, is shown in
various similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ only
as their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the American
merchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle
Piper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a
religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can
repress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic
cold