THE "CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE”—“DR. BREEN'S PRACTICE." 399 unexplored a commendable variation to the jaded reader of modern novels. Mr. Howell's consular experiences, partially reproduced in his Venetian Life, are idealised in the Foregone Conclusion, a subtle and almost oppressively sad repetition of the recurring theme of aspiration mocked by reality. Don Ippolito's inventions, and his hopeless passion, take the place of the mad painter's Madonna. But amid much lively conversation, incident and caricature (as the portrait of Mrs. Vervain), the image of the forlorn sceptical monk and broken-down visionary alone keeps a place in our affection. Ferris is energetic and kindly, with a caustic tongue and good sense; but if his remarks at the tomb of his old rival mean, as he says, no harm, they exhibit little heart. His wife is softer, but equally practical. The shadows of the palace and the prison, on either side of the Bridge of Sighs, seem to darken the book. In Dr. Breen's Practice, on the other hand, we have the fresh breezes of New England. It is a pleasant tale of the adventures of a female doctor, happily free from the hardness of most American heroines, who, honestly struggling in her profession, is disgusted by the apathy of her own sex; and, in the end, is emancipated from her toils in a manner, frequent, as would appear, in those latitudes; for, in common with other girls in recent romances, after rejecting her lover, she ends by proposing to him, and is accepted. The story abounds in startling situations-as the dangers in the boat, etc.-in satirical or trenchant, though not always consistent, remarks, e.g.— "It's tremendous to think what men could accomplish for their sex, if they only hung together as women do." "Duty! I'm sick of duty! Let the other women who are trying to do something for themselves take care of themselves as men would. I don't owe them more than a man would owe other men, and I won't be hoodwinked into thinking I do." "There is such a thing as having too much conscience, and of being stupified by it, so that you can'treally see what is right." "Optimistic fatalism is the real religion of our orientalising West." "Mullridge's grandfather passed his declin ing days in robust inebriety, and lived to cast a dying vote for General Jackson." The sharpest antagonism of the book is against the Antihomœopathic intolerance of the medical craft. On woman's rights it gives an uncertain sound. Mr. Howells is, like Mr. James, essentially a realist, with an excessive love, almost a craze, for analysis; but he has achieved his greatest success where he has ventured to tread on the edge of the two worlds of common life and mystery. The Undiscovered Country is not merely his masterpiece: it is altogether deeper than his other work. The physical facts of Mesmerism have received more attention in America than in England; and the more supernatural claims of Clairvoyance obtain wider acceptance, even among men of knowledge and culture, not because Americans are more credulous than Englishmen, but because abnormal psychical phenomena are more frequent in their atmosphere, and, in graver matters, they are less restrained by fashion. Nowhere has the master-motive of so-called "Spiritualism" been so boldly set forth as in this strange tale. The leading character, more dupe than quack, imagines that he has found in its "manifestations" the one solid proof of a future state of existence; clings to this-as thousands of his countrymen at this moment really do-as the sole voucher of an immortality made inestimable by bereavement; and conceives himself entrusted with a mission to convert and comfort the world, otherwise lapsing into materialism. Dr. Boynton, from his first appearance, at the séance of the callous juggler, Mrs. Le Roy, to his heartrending failure, is consistently pathetic, but too readily acquiesces in the final disenchantment. This romance, which beats with such power at the iron gates of the unseen world, is excellent in scenery as in portraiture. The whole episode of the Shakers is well sus 1 I write in ignorance of A Modern Instance, which has just appeared. "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY." 401 tained. The refuge of the forlorn itinerants with that quaint community reminds us of Una's dwelling with the "simple savage folk." Ford is a shrewdly-drawn picture of a cynic, endowed with some intellectual brilliancy and depth of feeling there is a touch of conventionality (redeemed by the half-humorous difficulties with the Shakers) in his marriage with Egeria. She is one of the fragile creatures whom we are charmed to find, still, of possible growth in the New England of Bostonia Victrix. But she is as like Priscilla as her father is unlike Westervelt. The successors of Nathaniel Hawthorne are, consciously or unconsciously, living in his shade. In passing from the one to the other, we "wander down into a lower world," and find ourselves repeating, "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." We return from the pupils to the master, as from the schools of Raphael to himself, or from Ben Jonson to Shakespeare. CHAPTER XII. AMERICAN HUMORISTS-CONCLUSION. IT has been said that man is the only animal that laughs or weeps; for he alone is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. Human life is presented under two phases: the serious, in which the mind contemplates events in a regular order; and the ludicrous, where this order is broken and the mind is subjected to a pleasant start. The former phase receives its literary adornment or interpretation from Fancy and Imagination: the latter from Wit and Humour. The two pairs are similarly related, and in both cases the dividing line between them is imperfectly ascertained. "Wit," says Isaac Barrow, in a passage, much of which may be applied to humour, "is a thing so versatile and multiform that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear notice thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in allusion to a known story or saying, sometimes in forging an apposite tale. . . . It is lodged in a sly question or a smart answer, in a tart irony or hyperbole, in a plausable reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense, in a counterfeit speech or mimic gesture." The distinction between the terms is partially indicated by their etymologies: the one pointing to intellectual insight and rapidity, the other to a constitutional peculiarity, based on a state of feeling . WIT AND HUMOUR. 403 rather than knowing; yet we have the apparently contradictory phrase, "dry humour," indicating the difficulty in marking their boundaries. Speaking roughly, we may say that Wit consists in striking together two words or notions, like flint and steel; while Humour lies mainly in sympathy with some quaint feature or the illustration of some incongruity of life. The former results in a spark or flash, the latter in a glow of light and heat. The former prevails in satire, in the mock epic of Voltaire, and in such plays as those of our Restoration dramatists: the latter in the higher comedy of Shakespeare or Molière. The lowest form of Wit is the pun. On a somewhat higher level we have the surprise, e.g.— "Beneath this stone my wife doth lie; She's now at rest-and so am I ;" or, to take a more savage example, Swift's account of the infamous minister of the ruling Yahoo, closing with the matter-of-fact assurance, "He generally remains in office till a worse can be found." so-called, is of this type. A full half of American humour, Yet more subtle is the retort, or the epigram, of which Pope is the English master, e.g.— "Now, night descending, the proud scene was o'er; where some thought is required to appreciate the point; as constantly in Heine, e.g." The three great enemies of Napoleon have all ended miserably: Castlereagh cut his throat, Louis XVIII. rotted upon his throne, and Professor Saalfield is still a Professor at Göttingen." Wit in Shakespeare almost always runs along with Fancy, as in Mercutio; or with Humour, as in all that relates to Falstaff. Humour is a word of many meanings. It begins on the low level of any laughter-provoking absurdity, and rises, as in the Fool in Lear, to a tragic height. To children and uneducated persons everything strange seems incongruous; and as most things |