-- in even larger degree than the art of the logician. It is true that there is little resemblance between the life of the author and the characters in these two volumes who most nearly represent his own opinions and sentiments, and yet it is easy to find reflected in their pages the precocious boy, precocious in both moral and mental development, the young student of the University of Glasgow who found inspiration in the eloquence of Chalmers, the poet whose genius could not be confined to the drudgery of a lawyer's office, the young essayist who at the age of twenty had already entered upon what became the occupation of his life, and, above all, the thinker to whom the simple exercise of his divine faculty brought a joy akin to that which the artist finds in his art, and is its own exceeding great reward. It is not possible, in a brief notice like this, to rehearse the details of the personal history of either of these rarely gifted natures. The principal attraction in each is to be found in the development of character mainly from within, and but slightly influenced by surrounding circumstances, lending interest to rather than deriving it from any changing incidents of time or of locality. It was impossible for the author of this volume to presuppose any wide or intimate acquaintance with the writings of Mr. Smith. The copious extracts from both "Thorndale" and "Gravenhurst" have, however, an interest of their own, an interest which no more recent discussion of their perennial theme has in any degree weakened or obscured. Without them no adequate introduction could have been had to William Smith the Thinker, nor any right understanding of an affection amounting almost to adoration, which he inspired in his wife, and which characterized her devotion to his memory. Still farther and considerable extracts from his earlier and especially from his dramatic writings disclose to us the possession of poetic gifts of high and rare quality, and reveal to us in some measure the secret of that loving companionship with Nature into which he was drawn in the years of his lonely meditations, and that profound insight which enabled him to penetrate so deeply the significance of much both in nature, in man, and in human society which easily escapes any mere intellectual acumen or sagacity. But while the life of the Thinker has been passing into full manhood, and his opinions and sentiments into that maturity whose expression remains henceforth consistent with itself, another life sufficiently like his own for mutual understanding and sympathy, and sufficiently diverse for mutual completeness and sup port, has been passing through its own experiences of joy and sorrow, of discipline and of development. Lucy Caroline Cumming, who, between the writing of "Thorndale" and "Gravenhurst," became the wife of William Smith, was born near Denbigh, in Wales, in a home which bore the name of Dolhyfryd, "Happy Valley," where the father, a physician, after a few years' practice of his profession at Chester had, with his wife, finally settled. Here she grew into womanhood, a sister and a brother completing the family of which she was the youngest. In chapter xiv., felicitously entitled " Approaching Unseen," we are introduced to the rare woman whose own qualities of mind and of heart win our admiration from her entrance into the history, and the intensity of whose devoted love during the happy years of their married life and the greater intensity of whose adoring sorrow during the years of her bereavement give their dramatic interest to all the chapters which follow. A few paragraphs from this chapter place vividly before us the charming personality whose highest ambition was to lose itself, with all its gifts, in the being of him who so soon absorbed all her life. 6 -- "The mother, a bright, energetic, delightful woman,' loved in later years to talk of her Lucy's childhood. The young nature began early to show its quality, swift, vivid, and ardent. At eighteen months the child could repeat a great number of hymns, and at two years she could read in any ordinary book. Before she was ten, she read and delighted in a class of books of which Molière's plays, in the original, is mentioned as a specimen. When she was about ten, her taste ran to theological reading, and she used to discuss these topics with a friend of her own age, being herself a staunch Calvinist. "But this sort of precocity does not indicate the highest gifts with which the child had been dowered, as if by good spirits, at her birth. One might fancy that the mixture in her veins of Scotch and Welsh blood had given her all the intensity and tenacity of the one, the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, — together with the ardor and spontaneity of the more southern temperament. Above all she was rich in capacity to give and to inspire love, a trait involving for herself possibilities almost unbounded of joy and pain, of hope and fear; while for others it bore throughout her life an unmixed fruitage of blessing." "She grew up into most attractive maidenhood, a young Diana in her spirit and her charms. From the age of sixteen she was the object of one devoted attachment after another. But the heart was not lightly to be won in its stronghold. The romances which followed beautiful, brilliant, each other did not touch her with their flame, not though she was sometimes sought with so true a passion that two men who failed to win her vowed to be faithful to her memory all their lives, and never married. More than once she acknowledged an attachment, and even a charm, in which there seemed the promise of a mutual happiness, but always the tie snapped instead of strengthening; something proved to be wanting that her fastidious taste, her exacting nature, required, and as she afterward said, 'In those days I never met my master.'" "When she was about in her thirty-sixth year, a sharp change came to the family life. The father was equally generous and unbusinesslike, and the mother too had a large and liberal disposition, without much appreciation of the value of money; the household went on in a free and open-handed way and thus it happened that Dr. Cumming's affairs at last became very much involved. Lucy had hitherto hardly known how things stood, but now she was called into council. When she learned the state of the case, her mind was soon made up. Everything must be sold that could be sold; her own portion must be given up; nothing could be kept back so long as a single bill remained unpaid. And so it was done. The lovely home was given up to strangers; most of its pretty and refined adornments, the wife's diamonds, the old books and pictures, were sold. Then, in 1854, they moved to Edinburgh, and there, on an extremely small income, Lucy set to work to make a home amongst strangers. The art of economy was wholly new to her. The narrow rooms were made to look graceful and home-like with a few furnishings that had been saved from the wreck. She had been in the habit of making occasional translations from the French and German, for her own amusement; now she turned this faculty to account and earned a little money by it. She met with the kindest of helpers in Mr. Thomas Constable, who found work for her among the publishers. She sometimes wrote tales for Chambers' Journal,' but she had no complacency or pride in original work; it was only, she said, 'to turn an honest penny' that she ever did it. She did not care enough for her stories and verses to keep a copy of them, nor did she even keep copies of her translations, though this work she enjoyed. Debit and Credit' (Freytag's Soll und Haben) was one of her translations, and the rendering of Victor Hugo's poems into English was a delight to her. In Edinburgh new friends soon became devoted to her, including some for whom she had a very warm affection and admiration through life." "A life so faithful and so full as this, - shall we expect to find at its heart a contentment with its lot? Or is there something not given to it, some deep want which being bravely borne prepares for a gift held in reserve by Heaven? At a later time, the woman gives us a glimpse into her deepest life in these years, she is writing of a time in 1856, when with her mother, improved but not yet restored, she had gone for a while to Keswick in the Lake country. I remember so well one day VOL. XIV. NO. 79. 3 that summer; alone, under the dark shadow of a yew tree on the hillside, whence one saw beneath one the rocks and the river of sweet Bor rowdale, I remember so distinctly a mental struggle. I never had any other than one ideal of happiness, love intensely felt and returned. Do those who really care for love care for anything else? I never did. But I believed that for me that one ideal was not intended. My life had had its vicissitudes of feeling and imagination. I thought that the future had no great joy for me, only duties. I desired, I prayed, to be satisfied without personal happiness." From the chapter entitled "Meeting" we extract the following : 6 "The lodging-place that we all occupied was kept by a mother and two daughters, who had had a reverse of fortune, and to whom this way of life was new. We were their first tenants. One of the daughters especially was well educated and interesting. To her I gave a copy of Grillparzer's Sappho,' which I had recently translated. I knew she would value it a little for my sake, but it never occurred to me that she would take it to the recluse in the drawing-room. She did so, however. Piles of manuscript on his desk had convinced her that he was an author,' and it amused her to show him the little production of one of the other lodgers! Perhaps he may have thought that she did this at my request, perhaps his kindliness disposed him to help by a hint or two some humble literary aspirant for always he was kind; at all events, the very next day he sent down a message proposing to call, and on the 21st of August there came a knock at our sitting-room door; the rapid entrance of a slight figure, some spell of simplicity and candor in voice and manner that at once gave a sense of freedom; and the give-and-take of easy talk - beginning with comments on the translation in his hand — had already ranged far and wide before he rose, and, lightly bowing, left the room.1 I thought him absolutely unlike any one I had ever met; singularly pleasant in all he said; even more singularly encouraging and gracious in his way of listening. He pointed out a passage in the translated play that had particularly taken his fancy: "Like to the little noiseless garden snail, At once the home and dweller in the home; And ne'er its hold relaxing - but in death.' "1 One little observation of his clung to my memory, and returns to it very often in my present loneliness - is it too trivial to record? Discussing the building instinct in insect and bird, and their variety of dwellings, he said, The primary condition of the home is that there should be two.'" 6 I have transcribed these lines, because, in after days, he was much given playfully to designate himself 'The Snail.' At the close of this first call I well remember that my mother, who had been reclining the while in an adjoining room, exclaimed: What could you find to talk about so long, my dear? one might have thought you had known each other for years!' That was it! To certain natures William Smith, from the first moment of meeting, could never seem a stranger! The call was soon repeated, and afterwards he came three times in the evening, as then my mother was able to see him. She was at once impressed with his charm: 'How could you call him plain, my dear? he has one of the most delightful countenances I have ever seen!' The dear mother! herself a sufferer and grievously depressed for two years past, it was not frequent at that time to hear her express delight; but she was delighted with him! He afterwards told me that just then he was 'positively starving for conversation.' Hence, perhaps, his effervescence and abandon." The nearer approach of these two natures, so profoundly sympathetic and yet so different in temperament, carried them through several years of alternating sunlight and shadow, according as the courage of the one or the despondency of the other became the predominating influence. The self-abnegation of the thinker, easily accomplishing the surrender of its own life to seclusion and solitude, shrank from the contemplation of like surrender in another when it seemed immolation for his sake, and it was only when at last the glad conviction could no longer be resisted that happiness for both was at stake, and that sacrifice for her, too, would be its own delight that his soul, hungry for affection, gave to the love he so long had cherished its right of utter ance. Then followed ten years of such unbroken happiness as is seldom given to a biographer to chronicle or to mortals to enjoy. Its materials, so far as external circumstances were concerned, were of the simplest kind. For pleasure in its ordinary acceptation there was small provision, for luxury none. It is true that two long summers were spent in sight of the Alps; true that the favorite haunts amid the English lakes and on the English shore became the temporary homes of their nomadic life, but these surroundings were only the outward dress, they never gave its deepest character to their inner life. There was one luxury, indeed, which they could never deny themselves, for whose sake no sacrifice could be accounted too great, and that was the luxury of friendship. Hospitality is the crowning virtue of English social life; but no lavish indulgence of it in palace or mansion more beau |