3o8 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



laughed fierce and short, and stepped 

 lightly aside and smote him clean and 

 true under the chin, a little to one side. 



" The gentleman's fists flew wide, he 

 twisted upon his heels, pitched over 

 upon his face, and lay still. 



" Smiling still, Barnabas looked down 

 upon him, then grew grave. 



" ' Indeed," said he, ' indeed it was a 

 great pit\' to spoil such a wonderful 

 coat.' 



" So, he turned away, and coming to 

 where she, who was the unwitting cause 

 of all this, yet lay, stopped all at once, 

 for it seemed to him that her posture 

 was altered ; her habit had become more 



decorous, and yet the lashes, so dark in 

 contrast to her hair, those shadowy 

 lashes yet curled upon her cheek. There- 

 fore, very presently, Barnabas stooped, 

 and raising her in his arms bore her 

 away through the wood towards the dim 

 recesses where, hidden in the green 

 shadows, his friend the brook went sing- 

 ing upon its way. 



" And in a while the gentleman stirred 

 and sat up, and beholding his torn coat, 

 swore vociferously, and chancing upon 

 his purse, pocketed it, and so went upon 

 his way, and by contrast with the glory 

 of the morning his frown seemed the 

 blacker." 



CEASE FIRING. 



Cease Firing. By Miss Mary Johnston. 

 (Constable, 3/6.) 



Among the many American novelists, 

 from Winston Churchill downwards, 

 who have used the North and South 

 War as a background for fiction, none' 

 is better informed or more familiar with 

 the great area of country involved, than 

 Mary Johnston. She comes back to her 

 theme again and again without repeat- 

 ing herself, and achieves this feat not 

 so much by the introduction of new 

 characters as by the wealth and variety 

 of her knowledge. Yet we must con- 

 fess that the present novel, " Cease Fir- 

 ing," does not arouse our enthusiasm. 

 The writing is consistently good, and, 

 indeed, reaches a level of distinction. 

 The characterisation is adequate, if 

 somewhat stereotyped. The mastery of 

 facts displayed is quite amazing. But 

 in spite of such wonderful qualifications 

 the book as a whole cannot be described 

 as a masterpiece. 



The explanation of this partial 

 failure is that the book is a conglom- 

 erate. It IS not intended as a historical 

 treatise, yet at times the matter could 

 be best dealt with from a purely his- 

 torical point of view. It is intended, 

 partly at least, to be a story of human 

 endeavour, but the long intervals that 

 divide one stage of the individual 

 drama from the next stage distract the 

 mind from contemplation of the human 

 story. Again, the whole manner of the 

 book is a strange blending of romantic- 

 ism and realism. The first two critic- 



isms are obvious, the third necessitates 

 elaboration. We may find a figure ny 

 adducing a great contrast. At the first 

 extreme we may cite Thomas Hardy's 

 " Dynasts." Here the point of view is 

 completely detached. For the most 

 part we look down upon the movements 

 of men and armies from a serene 

 height ; we see the great scheme 

 diminished by distance, if occasionalh' 

 we drop so near the earth that small 

 thin voices reach us from the little 

 figures below, voices which remind us 

 that down there in the midst of struggle 

 each individual is his f)\vn centre, and 

 that his vision is limited by the circum- 

 ference of his own little horizon. W^e 

 see the drama as a whole and the actors 

 in relation to it. 



At the other end of the scale we may 

 cite any realistic novel, the only essen- 

 tial being that we not onl\' move upon 

 the surface of the earth, but we are also 

 confined to seeing the world through the 

 eyes of certain individuals. Here the 

 great drama is never seen as a whole. 

 When we touch it, it is so near to us 

 that we cannot realise its shape, any 

 more than we can realise the shape of 

 Ireland by walking through the streets 

 of Dublin. Mary Johnston's methods 

 falls between these extremes. We 

 neither see the war as a whole nor from 

 the point of view of that individual, 

 Edward Cary. in whom we are chiefl)' 

 interested 



Each picture, taken separately, is ad- 

 mirabh- drawn, but there is no con- 



