From The Spectator.

TARA.*

erage Englishman understands. He can fol low that form of subtlety easily, because it is unrestrained, and, therefore, leads as directly to results as his own vigor of will and inde peudence in action. But the Hindoo brain, which is as subtle, but, caring nothing for any divine law, yet swerves incessantly to avoid laws of its own making; which will sweep through human blood to its end, but not through the blood of cows; which disregards every oath, but never a caste rule; which can sanction remorseless cruelty, yet is essentially gentle and patient, is too far beyond his grasp. If he ever studies it with interest, it is only when, as in that wonderful book of Mr. Grant Duff's, "The History of the Mahrattas," which is as fascinating, as Froissart and as little read as Knolles, the character is painted avowedly from without. It is too troublesome to get within,

THIS is a very remarkable book. It is a determined attempt to bring the interior Hindoo and Mussulman life of a great Mahratta province during the most exciting times home to the hearts and understandings of Englishmen, to interest them in people with whom they have nothing except human nature in common. The task has been frequently attempted, but always without success. Of the scores of Indian stories which have from time to time been given to the world, and now rot slowly on old bookstalls, scarcely one is now remembered in circulating libraries, and in most readers the mere sight of the Hindoo names arouses a sensation of disgust. Even Sir Walter Scott's attempt has only been preserved from oblivion by being bound up among his collected works, and of the thousands who have delighted in his Scotch and feudal stories Captain Taylor has faced the difficulty, and few indeed have ever accomplished the weary if he has not overcome it, he has produced a labor of reading "The Surgeon's Daughter.' very remarkable book, incomparably the best The difficulty, indeed, of telling an Asiatic specimen yet existing of a real native tale. story is almost insuperable. The narrator We doubt if ordinary readers will quite unfeels that he is relating things of which he derstand or sympathize with his heroinė, knows only the outside to readers who do not Tara, till the third volume, but that they know even that, and the temptation to stop will for the first time in their lives underand explain, to point out the significance of stand the circumstances amidst which Tara this incident, and the bearing of that custom, was placed, the exterual nature, if not the and the impossibility of this or that seemingly interior character of Indian society, we do not natural occurrence, is all but irresistible. doubt at all. The grand peculiarities of that There is no natural link between the imagi- society, its freedom from " objects" save to nations of the reader and author, and in the live from day to day in obedience to immutaeffort to supply it the story is usually smoth-ble customs, the crushing force with which ered under a mass of explanation, and the its faiths bear upon every action, the crashbook is necessarily dull. There are, indeed, ing collision which every day occurs between two instances in which this danger has been its two rival creeds, are brought out with real escaped, but they only prove the rule. The and most striking power. Captain Taylor, Western world delighted in the first transla- who has been in a native service and has govtion of the "Arabian Nights," and all Eng-erned a British province, knows the Mabratlish society once revelled in Mr. Hope's" Anastasius," but in the former case Galland had the benefit of that groundwork of biblical teaching acquired in childhood which, in after life, makes any picture of Arab manners always seem to excite the memory rather than the imagination; and in the latter there was a still more subtle link. Anastasius is but a Greek, with the heroic armor laid aside, and the Greek character is, perhaps, the only one utterly differing from his own which the av

tas as few Europeans have ever known them, and he has that genuine toleration for the Indoo, that sense of the singular powers latent within his character, which is only given to highly imaginative minds. Above all, he has realized the circumstances amidst which the Hindoo lives, that horrible pressure of tropical nature upon the heart and mind which, acting for generations upon a race originally excitable and nervous beyond European experience, has produced the Hindoo imagination-that morbid, or even discased brain, amidst which the grotesque and the lurid and the filthy and the sublime, all

doo women, devoted herself to Bhowanee, though without becoming one of the harlots the temple girls usually are. She is pursued by a Brahmin whom she detests, and it is round this pursuit that the incidents of the story are all hung. It opens with a violent shock to all English ideas—a wife pleading with her husband that he will take a second bride, who may bear him a son, while she who pleads has given him only a daughter, the heroine of the tale; and the incident is a fair example at once of the author's merit and his single failure. The reader understands thoroughly why the wife should proffer such a prayer, how the husband would receive it, and what, under happy circumstances, might be the condition of the polygamous

seem to struggle and shift and change, to act ious excitement which sometimes fall on Hinand re-act and combine, without ever touching its groundwork, viz., the profound belief that life is an illusion, that men and their acts and their responsibilities are all shadows moulded at will by some irresistible, and yet capricious Fate, which also may be itself equally an illusion. There is picture after picture of India, the land where production and destruction seem in open visible warfare, where on one side of a road vegetation is so luxuriant that it will, in a year, eat the very foundations of the bridges; while on the other may stretch a plain as dreary as one of Numidia, plain and vegetation being alike seemingly boundless. The objects and incidents and the customs which harmonize so well with this nature; the vast temples which load the land, only overshadowed by yet vaster household. But he is not made to feel ruins; the gorgeous yet bloody ceremonials; the internal action of the first wife's mindthe mad worship of Ehowanee; the feats of that struggle between jealousy and duty hereditary robber chiefs; the bloodthirsty which must in such cases occur, or to see the teaching of the Mussulman priests; the more thoughts which ultimately compel her to a bloodthirsty acts of Hindoo patriots, all have proposal which is, to English ears, almost for the author's mind an interest which he revolting. That was beyond Captain Taysucceeds in exciting within that of his reader lor's power, as it is beyond the power of any also. There is an account in the first volume being save one who has gone through it all, of an intrigue against the King of Beeja poor and who can bear like an English novelist to and its defeat which, in its long-drawn evolu- dissect his own dead feelings. It is only when tions and final catastrophe, reads like a chap-a IIindoo himself succeeds in writing a readter from the " Arabian Nights," and will re-able novel that this pleasure, the revelation call to the reader the days when as he read he of a heart guided by laws Europeans knew almost saw, under all the disguise necessary to the tale, the stately presence of the "good Haroun al Raschid," that solitary caliph who has contrived to obtain a solid habitation in Western thought. The plot of the book is simple enough. Tara, a virgin widow of sixteen, has in one of those fits of wild, relig

nothing of, will be afforded us. Till then we can recommend Tara, child widow and devotee, associate of dancing girls, voluntary suttee and convert of the Mohammedan faith, to all who care to wake their imaginations by scenes not laid in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia.

The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges. By of the American war did not immediately return George J. Goschen, M.P., Second edition; revised by the Author. Effingham Wilson.

to England, as was prophesied in the Times. The American market was well stocked with gold, the English ill stocked, and, as a speculation, the gold could not have been sent to America at a profit. Mr. Goschen shows that indebtedness entirely overrides the causes of a speculative flow of gold, and he explains with the greatest clearness the changes which followed the depreciation of the currency, though he himself is obviously puzzled with the great fall in the price of gold which followed the battle of Gettysburg.-Spectator, 21 Nov.

MR. FOSTER ON DECISION OF CHARACTER.

From The Spectator. MR. FOSTER ON DECISION OF CHARACTER.*

611

| quality as much beyond the control of the will as the length of the fingers, or the color of the hair. It is impossible, though there are strong facts on the other side, that apart from miraculous influence, the conglomerate result of powers, circumstances, inheritances, and physical tendencies, which we call char acter, is as permanent as the shade of the skin, the size of the eye, or the height after twenty-one. No man by taking thought can make himself credulous, any more than by taking thought he can add a cubit to his stature. But there is a debatable ground, in which the essential character or permanent tendency of every man is so mixed up with his habits as to be absolutely inseparable

It is not, perhaps, difficult to understand why these Essays have passed through thirty editions. They are not, as a whole, very remarkable for originailty of thought, though their author was himself a decidedly original man. They do not charm by their style, for the sentences, always a little involved, are beginning to seem more than a little antiquated. Yet, they are read and admired by men not given to sermons and satiated with essays; and we believe the cause to be this: Such readers read first the "essay on decision of character," and arrive, from that essay alone, at the conclusion that John Foster was a nat-therefrom; and on this John Foster seized. ural thinker only short of the very first grade. His mind was not that of a genius, not possessed of that rare combination of powers which we call intuition; but it had a grasp over data, a faculty of assimilating little bits of observation into a consistent whole very rarely found among men of his somewhat prejudiced school. The reader feels, as he wades, for it is wading,-that the author was a man who had never received a thought in his life, who had dived into human nature for himself, who understood and did not hate its feebleness, and who, as he understood the real difficulty, so also could suggest a working cure. Most teachers of his class are accustomed, when assailed upon any moral or semi-moral question, to ascribe the difficulty either to mental deficiency or to want of will, or to a positive distaste for the sound moral view. Foster assumes, on the contrary, that a man may have difficulties in striving to do what is right, without being either a scoun--there is no such pressure, and it is, in this drel or a hopelessly feeble fellow. Instead of denouncing, as most preachers do, he takes a hint from the secular physician, shows by acute diagnosis that he understands the patient's complaint, and then tells him how to seek a possible cure. The result is that he is probably the one strictly didactic teacher whose precepts were ever obeyed, one of the few who ever succeeded in really changing the character of a reader.

No man, for example, born timorous could
possibly make himself brave; but a strong
faith in Providence, or a determined habit of
facing every danger, would so restrain this
timidity that, though still existing, it would
cease to produce results. No man can quite
rid himself of that purely physical impulse
which theologians call anger and men of the
world hot temper; but we see every day how
men, by continued self-restraint, by cultivat
ing the habit of fairness, and, above all, by
ridding the mind of self-seeking, the great
est cause of bad temper,-can acquire the so-
renity other men enjoy without an effort. In
these two instances, the excessive pressure
from without, the contempt with which North-
crn races regard cowardice, and the social ob
loquy produced by bad temper, compel the suf-
ferer to exert his will to overcome the habit of
his organization. In a third and equally fre-
quent case,-that of a man born vacillating,

instance, therefore, that teaching is most use-
ful. Of all the foibles except envy, indecision
is, perhaps, the most injurious, and the one
which it is hardest to correct. For it exists
most strongly in those natures which, from
their feminine elements-their affectionate-
ness, gentleness, and habit of sympathy, are
of all others most likely to be buttressed by
social love, and most likely to fall into the
ruinous habit of asking small advice.
It ex-
ists, too, unlike most deficiencies, almost in-
variably in a semi-completed form, as an im-
perfect foible, hardly perceptible even to its
victim himself. Complete indecision, extend-
ing to all cases and circumstances, operative
when there is but one course, and uncorrected

even by principle, is the rarest as it is one of as your capacity will allow you to do, compel the most painful of human weaknesses. It is that thought to bring you to some sort of half indecision, such as is thus described by conclusion, and then carry out the conclusion Foster, an indecision which has a root in the without consulting any human being. Clear conscience as well as the temperament, which thought, continuous thought, and eilenceis the curse of men's lives. "A man has, per- all exercised on the daily trifles of life— haps, advanced a considerable way towards these habits, which are none of them difficult, a decision, but then lingers at a small dis- will so harden the mind as in a very short tance from it, till necessity, with a stronger period to make it incapable of indecision. hand than conviction, impels him upon it. The moral good of the change it would require He cannot see the whole length of the ques- an article to illustrate; the social good has tion, and suspects the part beyond his sight never been better described than in this to be the most important, for the most essen- paragraph from the essay: "Another adtial point and stress of it may be there. He vantage of this character is, that it exempts fears that certain possible consequences, if from a great deal of interference and obstructhey should follow, would cause him to re- tive annoyance which an irresolute man may proach himself for his present determination. be almost sure to encounter. Weakness, in He wonders how this or the other person every form, tempts arrogance; and a man would have acted in the same circumstances; may be allowed to wish for character of a eagerly catches at anything like a respecta-kind with which stupidity and impertinence ble precedent; would be perfectly willing to may not make so free. When a firm, decisive forego the pride of setting an example, for the spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how safety of following one; and looks anxiously the space clears around a man, and leaves him round to know what each person may think room and freedom. The disposition to interon the subject; while the various and opposite rogate, dictate, or banter, preserves a reopinions to which he listens, perhaps, only spectful and politic distance, judging it not serve to confound his perception of the track unwise to keep the peace with a person of so of thought by which he had hoped to reach much energy. A conviction that he underhis conclusion. Even when that conclusion stands, and that he wills with extraordinary is obtained, there are not many minds that force, silences the conceit that intended to might not be brought a few degrees back into perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the dubious hesitation by a man of respected un- malice that was disposed to attack him. There is a feeling, as in respect to fate, that derstanding saying, in a confident tone, Your plan is injudicious; your selection is the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be unfortunate; the event will disappoint you.'" right, or that, at least, they will be accomPerhaps one-half of mankind have minds pre-plished." Most "improving" literature is cisely so constituted, and one-half at least of rubbish; but we doubt if any man ever read them are aware of the mischief within. It is this essay without feeling that he had swalto such men that John Foster addressed him-lowed a mental tonic, and it is because it self with advice which, as it is scattered heals that the medicine, despite its own bitthrough the whole essay, we are reluctantly terness and the nasty powder in which it is compelled to summarize. It is briefly this. conveyed, still sells so well among men who Upon all occasions of life which are not of the can tell physic from nostrums. last importance, think as steadily and clearly

From The Spectator.

STORIES OF MONOMANIA.*

tions how many times they went up and came down-stairs on a certain interesting morning, when they got their breakfast, of what it consisted, and all such little minutiæ, which would be intolerable if they did not carry with them the air of absolute and indisputable reality-the minute faithfulness of actual narrative that makes one listen as to a verbal account of scenes personally witnessed by the narrator of which every detail is still fresh in his memory.

THIS is a remarkable book. Imaginative power is apt, in general, to misrepresent life in one almost invariable direction. Whether it deal with the play of character, or the force of passion, or the pathos of sentiment, it generally represents life as too interesting-more interesting than the truth; and if it fails to do this, it fails to be interesting itself, and becomes incapable of literary effect. Imaginative power must heighten the Yet there is more of distinct idea traced colors of life, and give a golden, or, at least, in these stories than De Foe ever admitted. a silver burnish to its monotony and its cares. The various characters, though described just In but one instance of firstrate imaginative in the way in which a very faithful but unpower that we remember has it hitherto been imaginative mind would seize them, are disotherwise. De Foe seemed to stamp his won- tinguished by definite peculiaritics, and cast derful pictures on copper, making them at in given types. Though there is no attempt once as dull and wretched as the wretchedest at all to color a picture, no attempt "to conand most arid life, and yet, from the extraor-ceive the character as a whole," yet a single dinary vigor and minuteness, the dingy fidel- face of it is generally left sharply stamped ity, the sordid earthiness of his workman- on the narrative, though only one face. Of ship, he carries away the attention of his course, this is essential to the very plan of readers with as much success as if they had delineating monomania, which is a more inthemselves been plunged into that world of tellectual design than De Foe would have leaden cares and gains and risks and crimes generally adoped. Take, for example, one of and dangers. He was the Vulcan of Eng- the most unpretending of all these stories, lish writers of fiction, who forged all his scarcely, indeed, a story at all,-"The works of art out of a base metal, yet forged them with a truly godlike skill and dexterity, and rises himself before the imagination as a limping smith begrimed with the smoke and dust of his own workshop, yet moulding that, the profound mortifications in early his drossy material in a furnace of unearthly heat.

Cynic.". When the tale is told, we do not feel that we know the man except on the one side on which his eccentricity has developed itself. Yet how thoroughly we understand

life which made the boy acutely sensible to the absurdities of young enthusiasm; the The present writer is, to a certain extent, discovery that the faithful dog on the stage of the school of De Foe. There is not a lit- was faithful only to a concealed sausage, not tle of the same power of presenting the din- to his master; the discovery that the lock of giness of life with a minute fidelity that riv- auburn hair, which, as he had hoped, was a ets our attention, without adding to it a voluntary keepsake from his lady love, had particle of imaginative lustre. He generally been really made up by her brother from the works, like De Foe, in copper, and frequently hairs left in her comb and hairbrush; the succeeds, like De Foc, in graving his notion shock of seeing the lovely Italian actress, who on it so deeply and indelibly that it is even was playing the part of Juliet, take off on her more striking than if it had had in it more beautiful lips an exact imprint of the burntof the transmuting touch of ordinary imag- cork mustache of her impassioned lover; the inative insight. Like De Foe, he almost al- overpowering impression produced by the ways succeeds in making you think he is clergyman's wish that his congregation could copying directly from actual experience, and have tails to wag to show their interest, or not really creating at all. He produces an want of interest in his discourses; all these, impression exactly in the same way as De and many more than these accidental mixFoe, by telling you anxiously about the arti- tures of the ridiculous with a certain percles of furniture in the apartments of his he-sonal excitement of feeling, engender naturoes, by the particularity with which he men- rally before our eyes that morbid disposition "Shirley Hall Asylum; or, the Memoirs of a to laugh at anything serious, which made

Monomaniac." London: W. Freeman.

the Cynic a partial monomaniac: