Broad Street, Lyme. *F. DUNSTER * Has in Stock a large variety of NEW BOOKS SUITABLE FOR PRESENTS. BIBLES, PRAYERS, CHURCH SERVICES, HYMN BOOKS, IN NEW AND VERY CHOICE BINDINGS BIRTHDAY TEXT BOOKS. INSPECTION SOLICITED. A MONTHLY MISCELLANY, EDITED BY R. HANBURY MIERS. No. XI. MARCH, 1892. PAGE I. My Sister Cecilia. Chaps. XIX-XXII. By F. T. PALGRAVE. 225 II. The Island of Capri: its Manners and Customs. By Miss III. Early Days of the Oxford House. By the Rev. A. R. Sharpe. 254 IV. The Happy Village, or Endeared by Distance. V. Studies in Shakespeare. By the Rev. C. R. Pearson. By J. W. 261 263 266 273 VI. Newman and Modern Romanism. By ANTI-RITUALIST. VIII. An Evening Thought in Venice. By J. D. ERRINGTON- IX. The Worship of the Birds. By J. W. M. .. 277 279 PUBLISHED BY F. DUNSTER, BROAD STREET, LYME REGIS. 1892. Price One Shilling. All Rights Reserved. REMEMBERING however those anticipatory signs which had indeed forewarned us of her mother's illness, but, neglected in their warning, had permitted hope disappointed to add to our calamity, I determined that here at least I would not deceive myself; but if Cecilia were influenced in truth by any bewildering excess of grief, any mental illusion, I would at once confess the misfortune and confront it in all its fearfulness. As man is apt to think, I thought thus, and concluded I would gather up my strength, and preserve a patient calmness in my intercourse with this deeply valued sister: that I would watch her to my best ability, like a lover or a child. But the event, as is also apt to be man's portion, deceived me: and that not so much by any error, alas! in my judgment respecting Cecilia, as, (besides, perchance, a certain cowardice on my own part), by those thousand lesser circumstances which in actual life intervene between larger events, and surround them with an atmosphere so distortingly deceptive. Romantic and natural-startling and commonplace at once, this portion of our own lives reminded me often of the well-known phrase "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction." This is indeed a saying indignantly rejected at that age when we are with Sir Huon at Babylon, or Snowdrop in the forest, or Scheherazade within the palace walls of the Commander of the Faithful. We quote it when we know we are older, and believe that something besides age has been the result of advancing years! Yet the saying seems to me less than the truth at once, and more. More, because unless we take from avowed fiction its supernatural adjuncts, and think of it as confined to the distinct possibilities of human life, fiction does in truth present scenes to which, as mere feats of marvel, fact has no parallel: (that these strike us little now when in Wordsworth's charming phrase "far inland," from the habit that grows with our years of testing even romance by reality, is not here a point in question) :—and less, because the strange things of life are in certain ways stranger than the imaginations of the novelist, and almost transcending credible narrative. They are however more strange-not in the specific event itself—but in the slightness of the accidents which are its material cause, and the contrasting destiny and the long preparation of character by which the event is secretly rendered possible. And when this slightness leads to the catastrophe of a romance, -as in two of Scott's terrible tragedies, those tales which stand beside the masterpieces of Athenian drama, in their truth to human nature, in pathos, in grandeur, in the inexorable march of Fate towards foreseen and ruinous calamity,-the effect upon a sensitive reader is profound, if I may employ the phrase, in a kind of inverse ratio. Hence arises a further distinction: the crises and coups de théatre in real life are marked by a peculiar incoherency, and to those who act or suffer appear far less overwhelmingly important than their results prove them. In the long road of life the turning-points are quickly passed the wheels carry us by: we cannot dwell on them: not these, we recognize instinctively, but the scope and direction of our path are the circumstances of vital interest. Or we are conscious that our feelings have formalized themselves in facts; we endure facts somehow, and put up with what we know to be past, and must believe to be irrevocable. Life meanwhile continues, or renews its career, where the novelist concludes: a new Romeo marries some younger Capulet: Lucy recovers from her bridal madness: Othello overlives his jealousy, and Werther his love. In real existence this does not appear strange; for its incidents are few, and seem to be the inevitable fruit and consummation of character: but our characters are ever with us. We demand from poet or novelist a complete, an independent, a rounded |