SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1874.

LITERATURE

Autobiography and other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert (formerly Ann Taylor). Edited by Josiah Gilbert. 2 vols. (H. S. King & Co.) THERE is a strange disproportion in the matter of biographies. The Memoir of Cosmo Innes, for example, which has just been published, is compressed into less than ninety pages, and Cosmo Innes was an historian of some note, and an archæologist of the first order. Mrs. Gilbert's Autobiography and memoirs extend over some six hundred and sixty pages, and Mrs. Gilbert's literary achievements reach no further than a few popular poems for children and a few didactic essays. But then Mrs. Gilbert, she is better known as Ann Taylor, -had the advantage of belonging to a very united and a very literary family, the younger generation of which seem to esteem it a pious duty to commemorate the past glories of the mothers, aunts, and uncles, whom they succeed. Thus they too have a share in the old triumphs, and partake of the incense of a once flattering gale. "The Family Pen," as they fondly call it, is never taken up with such alacrity as when it is to describe the way in which their predecessors were wont to wield it. No incident is too minute for the biographer, nor any, therefore, too unimportant for his readers. What would be trivial in any other family record grows great in the fond regard of son or nephew, and is treated as of permanent and intrinsic value. And so having had one book,-a pleasant one in its way, but quite enough,-about Jane and Isaac Taylor, we are now treated to these two volumes of their sister's life. Seriously, one's own life is too short for these extended biographical studies.

If it were not, however, that the story, such story as there is at least,-of the Taylors of Ongar is perfectly well known already, these volumes might be read with a certain interest. It is rare to find an entire family devoted to literature as they were, and gaining a considerable reputation in more than one direction. It is curious and instructive to see the inner life of an excellent, but somewhat narrow, Dissenting household seventy years ago. It is impossible not to respect such unaffectedly good people, and not to be amused at the innocent simplicity of their revelations.

On the other hand, the world into which these volumes take us is a very small and contracted world. When Mrs. Gilbert in the Autobiography (which forms two-thirds of the first volume, and which was designed in the first instance for her children) describes the society at Lavenham, she leads us into the little Independent chapel, and introduces us, pew by pew, to the great unknown who filled it. We are presented to Mr. Stribbling, the blacksmith, and his family; to Mr. Meeking, the baker, who used to give the Miss Taylors hot toast in his kitchen; to Mr. Watkinson, the wool-comber, who was extremely rich, and had twelve children and a bowling green; to the "free-spirited" Mr. Lungley, who was a shopkeeper of repute; to Mr. Buck, the linendraper, in whose parlour were some curious

specimens of darning; to Mrs. Sherrar, who kept two maid-servants and a man; and to several other equally valuable members of the congregation. Mrs. Gilbert herself was, we may confidently affirm, as attentive to the minister as she was observant of his people. She understands the habits of the pews, but she has caught to perfection the manners of the pulpit. She lets no opportunity escape her of pointing a moral or improving an occasion. She speaks of some old maids, and we have a homily of a page long on the way in which we heartlessly add "to the sorrows of that solitary condition." She tells us of an early love of day dreaming and "castle-building" which she had when a child, and we have another page warning us against such "ruinous pre-occupation of mind." She loses sight of some old friends, and she reminds her children that they are "born probationers," and that they have never to lose sight of one another, even if some are more fortunate or richer than the rest. Her minister gets assistance from her father, and we are reminded, again at length, that the "integrity of friendship" often requires a certain reserve and delicacy. These, and other valuable little sermonettes of the same sort, give an edifying flavour to the Autobiography.

Less edifying, perhaps, but quite as characteristic, is the uneasy feeling, half fear and half contempt, with which Mrs. Gilbert regards any religious opinions which do not square exactly with her own. Now it is a Unitarian family, whose errors she deplores. Now it is an outbreak of Antinomianism, that she deprecates. Now it is the sad worldliness of the Church of England, that excites her pity. Indeed, she seems to think that a certain moral depravity must needs attach to a theology unshaped in her own peculiar Evangelical mould; and the story she tells of the Stapletons is painful in a sense other than Mrs. Gilbert's. Still, all this is not exactly bigotry, for Mrs. Gilbert even wrote verses protesting against any penal enactments in cases of infidelity. It is simply ignorance and narrowness; but it is, to say the least, singularly unattractive.

When the Autobiography ends, Mrs. Gilbert's son takes up the pen (that "family pen" must by this time be used to the stump) and tells us all the rest. There is but one misfortune-there is really nothing to tell, He says himself that with Ann Taylor's marriage was closed that part of her life "which was devoted to art and literature." Then followed fifty years, in which, as wife and widow of an excellent Independent minister, she lived in a happy and peaceful obscurity. The book reminds us, partly by way of contrast, of Mrs. Hare's Memoirs. Both memoirs are certainly Memorials of a Quiet Life,' and both tell us of good and religious and lettered women. But Mrs. Hare was surrounded by distinguished and learned friends, and we gain some valuable side-lights into important theological questions. Mrs. Gilbert seldom met a person that the outside world ever heard of before, and her friends rather repel than attract our sympathies. With Mrs. Hare everything is graceful and refined, if somewhat too ecclesiastical in its bearing. With Mrs. Gilbert there is a simplicity that borders on rudeness, and an earnestness that is as severe as it is respectable. There is a difference between a Church unduly darkened with its painted glass and a Conventicle stuffy from its dusty baize-lined pews.

Mr. Gilbert has done what he could with the material he had, but the material was not worth having, and the various changes of residence from Rotherham to Hull, or from Hull to Nottingham, have no possible interest beyond the limits of the family. It is really curious that Mrs. Gilbert should have known so few of the literary people of her day. Mrs. Barbauld she once saw. Montgomery became a friend in Yorkshire. And once she was introduced,-and this will be also a first introduction to a majority of our readers,—“to a literary nucleus of a different but interesting description, consisting of Daniel Parken, then editor of the Eclectic Review; Theophilus Williams, who succeeded him; and Ignatius Montgomery, a relative of the poet."

We have many extracts given us from Mrs. Gilbert's letters. They are extremely domestic and eminently pious, with an occasional innocent shrewdness about them, which is, perhaps, their best quality. On the whole, however, we think we might have been spared a few minor details; as, for instance,-"On the 23rd, four important domestic occurrences took place in our family, exclusive of the interest which has long attached to that day, [her sister's birthday]. We lighted our first fire in the parlour, added a pretty puss to our estab lishment, dear little Jleft off his caps, and for the first time took six or eight steps alone, for which feat you cannot think how heartily I admired, praised, and kissed him." No one can say that the author of 'My Mother' did not know her duties!

The leading facts of the Autobiography may be summed up in a very few words. Her father was an engraver, who afterwards became an Independent minister. Their first home, after leaving London, was at Lavenham, and then at Colchester. The children were quaint, intelligent little creatures, who helped their father with his engraving, and then began to write poems for pocket-books. One of the brothers, Isaac Taylor, became afterwards well known as the author of 'The Natural History of Enthusiasm.' Another brother, Jefferys, wrote some children's books, which are not entirely forgotten. But the great success of the family were the Original Poems,' Nursery Rhymes,' and 'Hymns for Infant Minds,' written by the two sisters, Jane and Ann. The little books were widely read and sufficiently appreciated, and brought But we must now say a word about Mrs. some money and a pleasant fame to the Gilbert's literary position. Her son is naturwriters. This literary interest lasted some ten ally anxious to reclaim for her the credit of years, and then Ann Taylor married Mr. certain poems, which have been attributed to Gilbert, who proposed to her without ever her sister; but if Jane Taylor wrote those, having seen her; and here, in 1813, the Auto- which dealt chiefly with nature and natural biography finishes. Ongar, the place with objects, we suspect that she was, after all, the which the Taylor family is identified, was better poetess of the two. Still the two are so Ann Taylor's home for only the last year-and-associated that it is scarcely worth while to a-half of her unmarried life. decide between them, and we prefer taking

the poems as a whole. It is difficult now to do justice to their real merit, apart from the factitious importance which circumstances gave them. There was then scarcely anything of the kind, except, indeed, Dr. Watts's hymns, and the verses of the Taylors were at once almost without a rival in the heads and hearts of many thousand children. There was simplicity of thought and of expression; there were occasional picturesque touches, and an easy flow of rhyme; and the writers showed some power of telling a story, and some knowledge of children's wants and tastes. The generation for which these poems were written passed away, but, grateful for pleasant memories, the parents taught them to their own little ones, and a second set prattled about 'My Mother,' or the cow dining_off the cowslips, or the twinkling star. But we suspect that with the race of children of to-day only a few of these ditties hold their own. No separate collection of children's verses may be as good and full; but numbers of separate poems have been published which show a more graceful fancy and more refinement of tone than many of the "Original Poems." Mr. Gilbert does his best to vindicate these poems from Sara Coleridge's criticism; but, all said and done, there are some weak mothers who do not care to teach the moralities by sad examples and awful warnings. This, of course, may be matter of regret. It may, no doubt, be highly proper that a small fisherboy should be himself caught by a horrible meat-hook in the larder. It is only the doctrine of compensation that the little lords should be all wicked and the little poor boys good. The fear of a man-trap is the true protection against apple-stealing schoolboys. That naughty truant, Hal, will make other lads punctual when they hear that for his sins he was torn to pieces by a mill-wheel. The glutton becomes horridly ill; the boy with smart clothes is blackened by a chimneysweep; the girl who gives a false alarm is dreadfully burnt; and so on with the rest. In what a world of swift and certain retribution do our children live!

Possibly an edition, containing the best of the various Taylor hymns and poems, and adapted to the adherents of a milder creed, might be usefully compiled. We should be sorry if a distaste for the more truculent verses were to deprive us of some that are really charming and appropriate.

Of Mrs. Gilbert's most celebrated poem, 'My Mother,'-a poem which, eight years ago, occasioned some interesting correspondence in our columns, we hardly know what to say. It has been so much admired, and by so many judges, good and bad, that an adverse opinion sounds like heresy. Still, we are disposed to think that early association has much to do with the admiration. Were we to read for the first time,

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother.

should we really call it tender and pathetic? or would it strike us as-shall we say just a shade silly, just a trifle babyish? Would a child worth anything cry over it, or laugh at it? But we shrink from insinuating any further heresy.

Tales in Political Economy.

66

By Millicent Garrett Fawcett. (Macmillan & Co.) MRS. FAWCETT describes the task which she has essayed in the present neat little volume as one of hiding the powder Political Economy in the raspberry jam of a story." The simile is not an inapt one if we accept the vulgar view of economic science, and it seems to grow on us in more directions than one, as we expand the idea in the pale light of early recollection. We remember, for instance, how hollow an artifice this same homely deception appeared to us after one or two experiences; how we indignantly repudiated it in the more mature days of childhood, and by what rapid stages we arrived at preferring our powder first and jam afterwards, separately administered, if at all. In a similar spirit we must acknowledge to having long learned to look upon what were once known as "stories with a purpose"; a species of educational appliances of past times, which, when at their worst, we can find no word short of "exasperating" fitly to qualify. We are far indeed from reckoning Mrs. Fawcett's book in this last category, and we have experienced very different feelings in its perusal. Never theless, it has painfully, however faintly, reminded us of those ill-omened volumes, and the allusion in the Preface was irresistible. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," and the generation that can now no longer call itself "rising" has some bitter memories on that head.

There are many reasons, however, why Political Economy should form an exception to the other beneficial things which used to be disingenuously administered to us in this wise, and, notwithstanding that Mrs. Fawcett has already taken the sting out of our sarcasm by candidly giving to her work its proper designation, we shall plead them. In the first place, it is necessarily concerned, no matter almost in what way we write of it, with the material every-day concerns, and even details of life, so that these could not in any case be excluded. In the second place, its vocabulary is very generally the vocabulary of ordinary conversation, even its technicalities being technical meanings attached to words in common use; and, in the third place, if argued out in the light of these technical meanings, without clear and ample explanation, it is likely to create false conceptions in the mind of the student, and to lead him into false deductions. Besides this, it is of all subjects of study of the present day, the most necessary for the masses and the least taught, the most quoted by everybody and the worst under If another reason were wanted, we stood. might find it in this certain fact, that it is ever in Political Economy the first few principles that are the most difficult to grasp, and that once these are firmly held the rest is easy. What further plea can be necessary, then, in favour of an attempt to smooth these first

difficulties over, if it can be supposed that any plea was ever necessary at all? It must in fairness, too, be confessed in favour of this last dose of science so administered, that the compounder has performed her part with tact and knowledge. The unskilful physician or his myrmidons, as we remember well, used to enclose the powder completely in the jam, a humiliating artifice, thereby not only laying

a trap for the senses, but insulting our judg ment beforehand in the act. Our present physician makes no such insolent pretence, but with the powder as a central figure, merely disposes her sweets about it in the manner of a graceful garnishment-the graceful garniture of an ingenious narrative.

Of the narratives themselves we do not propose to say much, as we should prefer that our readers would peruse them for themselves. The scene of the first is laid in a district with the geography of which Mr. Disraeli exhibited a remarkable familiarity about the time of the last General Election, "to the west of the Island of Sumatra," therefore just on the other side from the far-famed Straits of Malacca. We do not know if it is in compliment to that eminent politician that the inhabitants of this region are represented as of the strictest Conservative tendencies, but such is undoubtedly the case. A Capt. Adam, who visits the island with a view of "educating" them, is altogether unsuccessful, and it is with regret we learn that they are left to their fate. The action of the other three tales which go to make up the volume takes place in a different locality. Some shipwrecked sailors are thrown upon an island, Isle Pleasant, which, being situated in the Pacific Ocean, may or may not form one of the recently annexed Fiji group. The hardships which they endure and endeavour to provide against, and the truths which they come to learn in their efforts to better their condition, afford many excellent illustrations of the elementary propositions of Political Economy. The idea is a good one, and it is quite wonderful what a mass of economic teaching the author manages compress into a small space. Indeed, the illustrations of sound doctrine seem to come almost too fast upon one another, for we have scarcely time to realize our progress in one direction before we find ourselves engaged in tearing out the very vitals of another and more intricate truth. The true doctrines of International Trade, Currency, and the ratio between Production and Popu lation, are set before us and illustrated in a masterly manner, though we do not remember to have met with any discussion of the subject of Rent, for which the occasion would seem to have been especially appropriate. Another matter upon which we are just a little bit dissatisfied concerns this very question of population, which, up to a certain point, the author treats so ably. An island, strictly limited in space, tenanted by a rapidly increasing community, should have afforded splendid scope for an authoritative solution of the great Malthusian problem; but having led us up to the verge of it, Mrs. Fawcett suddenly deserts us there, and sails away in H.M.S. Leo to achieve new conquests on, perhaps, some less disputable ground. The disappointment which we experience at this unlooked-for desertion is unaffectedly sincere. We have one more objection to make and we have done, and, oddly enough, it is a technical

one.

hazard to seek to convict Mrs. Fawcett of It may seem an enterprise of no little tripping in a definition of Value, and we do

so with the utmost diffidence. What else are we to make, however, of the following sentence:-"Value in political economy is not determined by usefulness, although if a thing were utterly useless it would have no

and successfully, and is brought home from Gettysburg to die. Before his arrival his bride has sheltered secretly her brother, also wounded, who has fought on the Southern side. In so doing she has encountered suspicion, jealousy, and mistrust. Her husband, on his return, approves of her action; the two soldiers meet and shake hands, then die, and are buried in the same grave. A portion of this story recalls the 'Wife's Secret' of Mr. Lovell. The treatment is tender in the opening portion, and the heroine is pleasingly depicted. When the sterner scenes are reached, the author is less at his ease, and the concluding portion of the book is manqué. We fail to share the author's admiration for his hero. A clergyman who abandons his unending combat against the Enemy of Souls to fight those whom he considers the foes of his country, can have no strong sense of the value of his mission, and no high estimate of the worth of a gospel of peace.

In 'On the North Wind, Thistledown,' Mrs. Willoughby tells some stories which are both moving in incident and touching in treatment. The one fault we find with her is that she has not told them in prose, or, at any rate, that she has felt bound to divide her prose into lengths and denominate it poetry. Any reader would surely acquit of poetic form or poetic pretence such sentences as the following, which are written without Mrs. Willoughby's measurements:-"He had talents that in some would make a fame, but he was indolent; witty and pleasant too in conversation, and much sought after in society. He farm'd a little land on the east coast of Scotland more for pastime, as he said, than for the good it brought him." Mrs. Willoughby has some narrative power; her ballads are not without spirit, and a description of a fight between a boy and a stag in 'Euphemia' shows genuine force.

"The Explorers' has vigour and character, and gives animated pictures of Australian life and adventure. Breeziness of style and sincerity of workmanship will, with a certain number of readers, compound for the absence of gifts more distinctly poetical.

A Ramble Round the World, 1871. By M. le Baron de Hübner. Translated by Lady Herbert. 2 vols. (Macmillan & Co.) Ir is not every one who in a journey round the world, extending over only eight months, could find materials with which to make a book of any worth on the countries through which he travelled. The gift of acute observation on men and things is rare, and in its absence the temptation to launch into subjects upon which his information can only be acquired at second or third hand, and which must, therefore, be of doubtful value, is a strong one to the traveller. No doubt the safest plan for the writer of a book of hasty travels is to chronicle only that which comes within his immediate ken, and more especially is this the case when he takes upon himself to give the world his impressions of such little-known countries as China and Japan. To attempt to reproduce the substance of the generally accepted beliefs on the people and customs of these lands would be to stereotype blunders and perpetuate absurdities without

end.

Fortunately for his readers, the author of the present work is one who has long been accustomed to look on men and manners from all points of view, and his official and social position gave him exceptionally good opportunities of associating with the politicians and celebrities of the countries on his route. He was a friend of General Sheridan; he was, of course, introduced to Brigham Young; and he was received by the Mikado of Japan, and by Prince Kung at Peking. He was the guest of ministers and consuls, and, as such, was able to gain much accurate and interesting information, and to penetrate into precincts from which less fortunate travellers are excluded. If we add that he writes in an easy and animated style, we shall have said enough to indicate that his book is pleasant reading. The route he took was from Queenstown to New York, and from thence by train to San Francisco. There he embarked on board one of the Pacific Mail Company's steamers for Japan, and so on to China, from which country he returned to Europe by the ordinary overland route.

Socially his impressions of the Americans were not altogether favourable. He gives them a full meed of praise for their energy, their industry, and their many other good qualities, but the anomalies arising out of a system of social equality were plainly distasteful to the Austrian Baron. His views on the Mormon question are those which are shared by most people who have visited the settlement; but the account of his visit to Brigham Young is interesting, and his description of the Prophet is eminently characteristic of the man.

The contrast between the Japanese and Chinese struck our author most forcibly. Among the former he found every one eager for change and reforms, and anxious to discard everything distinctive and national in favour of anything which was new and European. In China, on the contrary, there was on the part of the mandarins a marked determination to keep things as they are as long as possible. to keep things as they are as long as possible. Not that Chinamen are ignorant of the advantages of European science and civilization, but they argue that these benefits are not to be compared to the evils which would follow on the free admission of foreigners into the empire. The opium traffic and the slave trade have shown them that the advent of foreigners to the open ports has not been an unmixed good; and if such things are done in the green tree, what, they ask, would be done in the dry. The Japanese have as yet been free from these evil experiences, and they are formed in quite a different mould from that in which the Chinaman is cast. They have so long been taught to look beyond the limits of their islands for examples of excellence, that they have little or no dependence on themselves, or on the value of their institutions. Baron de Hübner laughs, and with reason, at the absurd desire shown by the upper classes to ape everything foreign, even to the extent of adding opera-hats and boots with elastic sides to their native attire. But the common people are like the country they inhabit, bright and joyous. Their unaffected good humour and cheerfulness are the favourite themes of every visitor to Japan. merry, careless, and easy-going; and were it not for the dark shadows which the twosworded men cast over the land, it would be

All

are

a country in which it would be a delight to live.

If Baron de Hübner had been determined to visit both Japan and China, his wisest course would have been to have taken the last first. After having ridden through the most lovely scenery of Japan, having mixed in social intercourse with some of the leading statesmen of the country, and having been received in audience by the Mikado, he suddenly finds himself sailing between the low, flat, mud-banks of the Peiho to Peking, where, instead of the jovial greeting he everywhere received in the land of the Rising Sun, he was met with distant courtesy and illdisguised suspicion. The change was evidently not to his taste, for he hurried away from Peking before Prince Kung could return the visit he paid him at the Tsung-li Yamun; and some idea of the dreariness of the scenery he left behind him may be formed by his expressions of unbounded delight at the very moderate beauty of Hongkong. In a single paragraph the author dismisses the remainder of his voyage to Europe, and we shall imitate his brevity. The sketch we have given of his book will serve to some extent to indicate the nature of its contents. In dealing with much that was new to him he shows a remarkably clear insight into the character of nations as well as of individuals, and into the motives which influence their conduct. Altogether his work is worth reading, and, strange to say, it has lost none of its attractiveness of style in passing through the hands of the translator.

MISS COBBE ON THE FUTURE OF MAN.

The
Hopes of the Human Race, Hereafter and

Here. By Frances Power Cobbe. (Williams
& Norgate.)

MISS COBBE has chosen a very big title for a not very big book. Innumerable volumes have been written in the past, and there are, doubtless, many more to come, on each of the two great subjects she has rolled into one. "The hopes of the human race" have always been sufficiently expansive. "Man's unhappiness," Carlyle says, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite." If every individual would require for his permanent satisfaction and saturation "God's infinite Universe altogether to himself," what must be the sum--if hopes are in any proportion to desires-that would satisfy the Race? But if we know that the "future" of the Race "here" has never yet corresponded to the hopes entertained of it in the past, why must we conclude that the future of the individuals composing the Race will "hereafter" realize the longings of each? Miss Cobbe infers that it will; for the "hereafter" she tries to illuminate is not that of the Race, but of the units of which it is made up. All she says on the subject is sufficiently old, the only claim to novelty of speculation being that set up regarding what is said of the future of the Race "here." So far, then, the title of the book is misleading as well as grandiose. It may be questioned if, strictly taken, we are entitled to speak of the "Future of the Human Race" "Hereafter," for our imaginations figure no condition of collective humanity after the present life; and we are, in our most speculative moods, forced to be