Three generations

CHAPTER IV
In the sixties and seventies the greatest women writers,
in the order of merit and morals after George Eliot
and Mrs. Gaskell, were Mrs. Oliphant and Miss Muloch
(who became Mrs. George Craik). Dinah Muloch and
Margaret Oliphant were thrown together when they
were young authors, and were for the time comrades.
Later, their circumstances differed as much as their
temperaments and mental calibre must always have
differed ; but there remained sufficient regard between
them to lead to the result that the best notice of Mrs.
Craik was contributed to Macmillati's Magazine by
Mrs. Oliphant after Mrs. Craik's death. It might have
proceeded from an elder sister writing of a younger
who had never gone far in the ways of the world,
who had continued romantic, enthusiastic, and confiding
as in the days of her youth. It was kindly, indulgent,
and affectionate, with no more than a tender, half
wistful smile for the perennial youthfulness which
Mrs. Oliphant herself had left far behind her.
Margaret Oliphant was decidedly the abler woman
of the two, with the stronger, wider horizon, but that
is not to say that Dinah Muloch had not a literary
woman's fine faculties and distinguishing qualities of
her own which she had sedulously cultivated. She
was mistress of "the well of English undefiled." Her
composition in its easy flow was perfect in relation to
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