suicide; who goes quietly home to his wife, and, at the very moment when she owns herself won over to him, coldly reveals his knowledge of her guilty secret, chloroforms her, lets the gas on again after extinguishing it, and locks her chamber door by a burglar's contrivance that turns the key from the outside,—this unpleasant yet powerful novel is imbued with the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, while its art is the art of Balzac and of Mérimée, resembling the latter especially in the cleverness of its epigrams, and in the cold, impassive, cynical manner in which the most startling incidents are related. Not all the readers of this story will like it, but of those who begin it few will be able to lay it down until the last page is reached.
Mr. Baring-Gould's reputation is an anomalous one. He has written a thoughtful, brilliant, but erratic study of "The Origin and Development of Religious Belief," which few people have ever heard of; a series of iconoclastic "Lives of the Saints," which few people have ever seen; an excellent survey of "Germany, Past and Present," which few people have ever read. These constitute his real and genuine titles to lasting fame. But he has also published a little volume of no great intrinsic value on "The Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," which has made his name a household word almost wherever the English language is spoken. Of recent years he has turned his attention to fiction, with the result of becoming a popular novelist. His novels are all well written, are hearty and wholesome in tone, and embody a philosophical thought or a salutary moral lesson. But they are rather the product of invention (or perhaps construction would be the better word) than of imagination. The bricks are put together with careful, minute, and accurate workmanship, but the traces of the scaffolding have not been entirely effaced. These traces are evident enough in his latest and in some respects his best novel, "Red Spider" (D. Appleton & Co.). Indeed, in his preface the author confesses that he has taken a little German story which he once read, has altered and twisted it to suit his purpose, and has strung on it sundry pictures of what was beginning to fade half a century ago in his native county of Devon. The odd customs, the quaint sayings, and the weird superstitions which the author has collated add a certain scientific value to the story; the two brothers-in-law are drawn with a keen eye for picturesque eccentricities in human nature; Honor Luxmore is a striking and noble figure, and the whole story has a vigor and vivacity in the telling which never suffer the reader's interest to lag for a moment. "Red Spider" somehow reminds you of George Sand's country stories: it needs only the abandon of genius to rival them. But
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
The little less, and what miles away!
"The Story of a New York House," by H. C. Bunner (Charles Seribner's Sons), is a little masterpiece of its kind. A series of dissolving views illustrating the fortunes of three generations of a Knickerbocker family, which built the house originally as a suburban residence, and, alter financial reverses, witnessed its degradation to a squalid tenement-house in the most crowded and noisome part of the city, it is full of a gentle and pathetic grace, with snatches of humor and poetry won from the' manners and customs of the olden time, the whole limned with so deft, adroit, and delicate a touch that yon scarcely realize the underlying strength until you feel its command over the fountains of tears and of Laughter.
