Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine > Volume 5

Our Female Novelists. 13
which cannot compreliend the far deeper and more enduring
love with whicli she is sought, a love which, unlike that of
Kinraid, outlives the crash of failure and the death of hope.
It is a great triumph in the author's craft to represent with
such power the fall from such a moral height as Philip
Hepburn's, and, while never attempting to palliate the base¬
ness of his sin, to retain our interest in him, and our pity
for the bitterness of his punishment. Very striking, too, and
very true to nature, is the gradual opening of Sylvia's eyes
to the worth of the heart she has Hung away; and in the
beautiful character of Hester Rose we have an example of
that love which seeketh not her own, to which alone is
granted full and satisfying peace.
When the CornMll Magazine began its career, ISIrs. Gaskell
became one of its regular contributors. One would like to
know who were the originals, if any such there were, in that
sweet picture of country life in the short story of Cousin
Phillis. The farmer - minister and his daughter, whose
relaxation from the homely toil of the plough and the dairy
is sought for in the society of Virgil and Dante, are a rare
and quaint pair. The story is a very old and simple one—
of how a maiden's heart was won and cast away as a worth¬
less toy by him who might have worn it, and of liow, when
personal joy and hope have been swept away, the strong,
brave, unselfish natux'e can arise from their grave to face life
once more and its duties. Mrs. Gaskell is evidently of the
opinion expressed, we think, by the heroine of North and
South, that ' the blighted beings of fiction would be much
the better of something to do ;' and many a healer of souls
or bodies in real life would do well to commend the
following bit of homely good sense and truth to the attention
of some such sufierers :—
' Now, Phillis, we ha' done a' we can for yon, and th' doctors ha.s
done a' they can for you, and I think the Lord has done a' He can for
you, and more than you deserve, too, if you don't do something for
yourself. If I were you, I'd rise up and snuff the moon sooner than
break your father's and your mother's hearts wi' watching and wait¬
ing till it pleases you to fight your own way back to cheerfulness.
There,—I never favoured long preachings, and I've said my say.'
There are many charming touches in this pretty tale. The
railway which figures incidentally in it, must, we fear, have
long since swept away the quaint old farm, and certainly
must have substituted quite another race of people for its
patriarchal family, of which the ox and the ass are as much
a part as human creatures, and where the old dog Rover, in