I read the "Story of Elizabeth" by Miss Thackeray. It came upon me with all the fresh and fair naturalness of a garden full of lilacs and blue sky, and I thought of Hardy, Blackmore, Murray, and Besant as of great warehouses where everything might be had, and even if the article required were not in stock it could be supplied in a few days at latest. These are exquisite little descriptions, full of air, colour, lightness, grace, the French life seen with such sweet English eyes, the sweet little descriptions all so gently evocative. "What a tranquil little kitchen it was, with a glimpse of the courtyard outside, and the cocks and hens, and the poplar trees waving in the sunshine, and the old woman sitting in her white cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the profound greyness of Hegelism, but merely the genial love and reverence of a beautiful-minded woman. Such charms as these necessitate certain defects, I should say limitations. Vital creation of character is not possible to Miss Thackeray, but I do not rail against beautiful water-colour indications of balconies, vases, gardens, fields, and harvesters because they have not the fervid glow and passionate force of Titian's Ariadne; Miss Thackeray cannot give us a Maggie Tulliver, and all the many profound modulations of that Beethoven-like countryside: the pine wood and the cripple; this aunt's linen presses, and that one's economies; the boy going forth to conquer the world, the girl remaining at home to conquer herself; the mighty river holding the fate of all, playing and dallying with it for a while, and bearing it on at last to final and magnificent extinction. That sense of the inevitable which the Greek dramatists had in perfection, which George Eliot had sufficiently, that rhythmical progression of events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the background of austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; it cannot be led up to by any chords no matter how ingenious, the passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of the mother.