By George E. Dartnell. 79 



hare and the wind, perhaps go far to save the situation. The sequel, 

 Bevis, suffers from its great length. It would be all the better if 

 at least half were pruned away — but then what a delightful half 

 would be left. We know few more interesting bits than the making 

 of the match-lock, the cruises about the reservoir, and the Robinson 

 Crusoe sort of life which the boj's lead in their cave on the island. 

 In spite of home being almost within sight all the time you feel 

 with the boys that you are really cast away somewhere among 

 savages, and you are as much bewildered as they by the nocturnal 

 visits of the supposed tiger. 



With The Story op My Heart we have little to do. It reveals 

 much of his own inner life and aspirations, and is written in his 

 poetical manner, but is too morbid and mystical to arrest our 

 sympathy, or to secure our convictions, much as Mr. Besant and 

 others may praise it. The book readily laid itself open to the charge 

 of atheistical tendencies, by its insisting upon " the existence of an 

 inexpressible entity infinitely higher than deity " ; and its strongly 

 worded craving for fulness of all sensuous pleasure also gave offence 

 to many. For us its chief value lies in those scattered passages that 

 record so vividly the thoughts and aspirations of his boyhood. 



Of the books that follow. The Dewy Morn has already been 

 alluded to. After London opens with a vivid picture of how a 

 country can fall back into wilderness and barbarism. Such story as 

 it possesses is fantastic and impossible, but for all that, when it 

 breaks off, half told, it leaves us with a strong wish that the rest 

 had been given us. One of the best scenes in the book is perhaps 

 that brief skirmish with the Gipsies, in which Felix demonstrates to 

 his Shepherd-allies the long-forgotten power of the yew-bow in a 

 practised hand. The perilous visit to that awful scene of desolation 

 and rottenness, guarded by deadly vapours, which was once the site 

 of London itself, is finely imagined. In the strongly-contrasted 

 pair, Felix and Oliver, we again recognise the author and his brother. 

 Red Deer does not in any way fall within the Wiltshire cycle, 

 but is a thoroughly delightful treatise, and as accurate as it is 

 charming and picturesque. That brief holiday in the West Country 

 gave us also more than one of Jefferies' best short papers. 



