From Blackwood's Magazine.
RÉCIT D'UNE SŒUR.*

passions and emotions with a force and grace which are rare in fiction, is a praise it well deserves. We do not wonder at the general tribute Mrs. Augustus Craven's charming record received in France, †

whether as shown in the number of editions the Récit' has run through, or in the high the French Academy, or in being lately national compliment of being couronné by classed by Mgr. Dupanloup among the more notable works of Frenchwomen which prove the value and importance of woman's services in the cause of religion and virtue, But its success among readers for whom it was more especially designed is not our reason for calling attention to it. The inexcited, among ourselves is the motive for terest it is likely to excite, and indeed has offering some comments; and this because the approval inspired in congenial minds by an attractive picture of religious enthusiasm isons, and in a sort of discontent with our is so apt to result in unfavourable comparand religious life. It may seem a dull thing sober homebred insular example of a pious for example, for a woman to be so temperate in her devotion as to live out the full

WE are not much surprised that there have been readers of A Sister's Story' who took it for a religious novel. Not only has it the familiar aspect of fiction in binding, type, and the inexorable three volumes; not only was it first advertised in a list of new novels, but the work may well read like one in its more exciting parts to persons who keep their discrimination for other things than the books they read; for they probably have found nothing in its pages that in the least answers to their experience of life. They know no people of such ardent, vehement, and excitable emotions as characterise, not one, but every body in the book, nor any such heroine as Alexandrine, nor such a pair of lovers as she and Albert together present, nor any pretty girls who play with the idea of death like Eugenie, nor any individual, not to say group of persons, gifted with the desire and the power to record with a flowing eloquent pen every event and feeling with minutest detail and passionate earnestness immediately after it has been felt or happened. All these things, on the contrary, are acknowledged characteristics of fiction. And, moreover, the tone of high life, the recurrence of great names, the familiarity with courts, the beauty and fine manners of everybody concerned, the cosmopolitan finish, the familiarity with every European language possessed by the whole dramatis erate sacrifice of her own life- for so her personæ, are all points as perfectly in harfriends assume that her spiritual father, mony with their experience of novels as they are opposed to their personal knowl-whose life she conceived more important to the Church, might thereby recover from the edge and acquaintance of mankind; while Alexandrine's record and journal, and her illness he then laboured under, and be spared mode of telling her love-story, are as famil- to the cause of religion as embodied in iar to the novel-reader as they are unique mystic asceticism. in real life. We think even that the translator must have been willing to throw this faux air of invention over the English rendering of the work, or she would not have turned Récit d'une Sour' into A Sister's Story.' “Narrative" would surely have better represented the original title.

That the book is as interesting as a novel, that some passages delineate the tenderer

*Récit d'une Sour. Souvenirs de Famille.' cueillis par Madame Augustus Craven, née La

ronnays.

term of her natural life, doing her duty and saying her prayers amid the comforts of an ordinary home, after reading of Alexandrine, who, having tasted all the joys and distinctions of beauty, petted and idolised by a refined and luxurious society, succeeds in killing herself at forty by mere exposure and privations; and further, makes a delib

All the personages of this story are from temperament as well as nobler qualities singularly adapted to represent religion both in its spirit and its observances emphatically and gracefully. The La Ferronnays family, of which Mrs. Craven is a member,

are throughout marked by an almost morbid sensitiveness. This sensibility was ev

The first edition of a hundred copies, intended for private circulation, created so great a sensation Re-that its publication was almost forced upon Mrs. Fer-Craven, and in a very few months it had run through seventeen editions. - Dublin Review,' July 1868.

idently derived from both parents, whom But besides all these causes it was a time neither long intercourse with society, nor of vivid emotions. M. de Montalembert, even the hardening influence of politics and whose part in this history is one of its main an active part in public affairs, ever re- interests, in his eloquent life of Lacordaire, duced to the apathy of ordinary humanity. tells the youth of France that the present As an instance of this excitability, we read generation can form no idea of the strong of M. de la Ferronnays actually shedding and generous passions which, at the period tears because the young people whose love of his entrance into public life, mastered and marriage constitute the interest of the all hearts. Men who can recall an impasfirst part of this narrative began life with a sioned youth will always look back upon small and, he feared, inadequate income; the golden period as one of general illumiand Madame de la Ferronnays, in a beauti-nation, and the public interests which ful letter to her daughter after her husband's stirred their early enthusiasm as of surpassdeath, thus paints a lifelong dread - haunt- ing importance. Whatever the issue, a ing her forty years of the blow which had sense of loss and decadence will make them, at length fallen: "The idea took posses- too, exclaim, "Days happy and sorrowful sion of me as soon as I became his wife, days spent in labour and enthusiasm 'What if I were to lose him?' Every day-days such as are seen once in a lifetime! ” of my life this has been my constant thought. But the years which awoke this yearning in I have never for an hour felt secure, or his case- -1831 and the few that followlost sight of this fear. Nothing but hope we ourselves feel invested with a peculiar and trust in God could keep my mind prop- distinction. It was a period in both counerly balanced. I was only comforted by tries of revival, of religious enthusiasm, of prayer; on my knees I felt at peace, but vigorous thought, of public spirit, of mergnever for long together. When I saw him ing private interests in what was thought a well with my own eyes I was calm, but great cause. It was a time which in both sometimes, perhaps only in going from one countries produced writers who in their own room to another, the anguish returned. My line have not since met their match, and heart was always beating as if in terror of are not yet superseded; because the fire something." To this inherited susceptibil- which those eager ardent days fanned into ity was superadded, in the case of their life inspired a perpetual youth and burns three children, whose deaths make the trag- still. And there was in those days a pasedy of the story, the exciting influence of sion for greatness, which is in itself a minor that disease which shows us death in its inspiration. A leading representative mind most pathetic and most beautiful aspect, strikes like a sunbeam across the world and and seems to give a prevision of heaven to wakes a hundred dormant intellects into enits victims, in exchange for days cut short ergetic life which might have slept till now in the prime of life and hope. In some de- without this magic touch; all deriving tone, gree to the same temperament is due that colour, and direction from the first impulse. keen sense of enjoyment, that susceptibility In both France and England how many to all pleasurable influences, which casts able and influential female writers received such a glow over the early part of Mrs. their stimulus from the moving minds of Craven's narrative. The intensity of hap- this period-in childhood it may be, or piness all the young people are capable of early youth, but due to them alone! And feeling from the innocent pleasures of youth their influence, too, continues in its origimakes it read like a festival or long sum- nal force, and has not been rivalled or remer day's holiday, or an Arcadian picture placed. In our own country the field for after Watteau. It is some indemnification this efflorescence of feminine religious to the reader, as it is to the sorrowing chronicler of past happiness, that when the winter of trial and bereavement scatters for ever this warm hum of life, it was least enjoyed while it lasted. They all knew they were happy.

thought has been mainly fiction; in France it has taken the form of narrative, biography, or self-analysis. An imperious need for expression found indulgence in journals and reflections not immediately intended for the public eye, though written, in the

case of Eugenie de Guerin, Madame Swet- | as still celebrated, though her daughter had chine, and the heroines of the book before been some time in society. Alexandrine us, with a care and detail, and delight in the act of composition, which imply the necessity of sympathy from congenial minds. Whether with the distinct thought of a public before them or not, we class all ladies who use the pen as an influence as authoresses; alike those just mentioned, or Alexandrine de la Ferronnays, who analyses her own feelings with such delicate truth and accuracy in her letters and journals, or the authoress of the Heir of Redclyffe,' whose fancy pictures and characters in that story seem so curiously to anticipate in many cases the actual events and persons of Mrs. Craven's history.

Alexandrine's career furnishes an illustration. We observe first the period, only alluded to in this book, from her introduction into society to her father's death. From young girlhood to one-or-two-and-twenty she enjoyed the prestige and experienced the difficulties of a successful beauty. Montalembert alluded to this time when he talked of the

happiness and Christian union:" and, in vision of life into distinct eras, according to fact, all are singularly interesting and fresh the influences which rule it. Our organisain the impression they make. But it is Al- tion, mental and bodily, is open at certain exandrine who constitutes this group's cen- periods-perhaps at those periods only tral figure. She stands out the most dis- to vivid new impressions. At one time we tinctly, as embodying the ideal woman of receive with stringent force and eager acher day. As such she is historical, for ceptance ideas which at another would have ideals change, and the representative woman failed to make an entrance, because other of one age by no means fills the same office influences were predominant. The old in the next. In that day softness was not powers must be fading and passing away, only woman's greatest charm in men's eyes perhaps have already passed, leaving a -in the nature of things it can scarcely be void, a need of something new to awaken otherwise but the whole training of soci- the mind out of a stage of dull or dreamy ety tended to it, which it does not now. inactivity. Few influences last a life-they Softness of manner, representing a sway of die out of themselves. Then comes a time the affections over rigid reason, a voluntary of unconscious expectation. It is only on submission of the intellect to man's direc-looking back into our self-history, or watchtion and control, a content with 'a subordi- ing some other narrowly, that we see this nate place, together with full appreciation pause in a life-the new interest that of the privileges of that place and an in- stepped in and gave a fresh impulse to stinct how to make the most of them, a high thought. self-respect and a sense of power within the prescribed limits-all this we see in Alexandrine, whose beauty and grace (external qualities always indispensable to the utmost development of what is good and great in woman) and the circumstances of her position, alike placed in a picturesque prominence, making her an impersonation of what all then most reverenced and admired in“ dissipated and dangerous life" she had led woman. Of course there is a sweet hypoc- before she saw Albert; and of her "three risy (strength and will lurking underneath) hundred and seventy-nine admirers," one in that feminine "shyness, that fragile look, of whom at least awoke some temporary those childlike manners, that apparent help- response in her heart; a time of trial, of lessness," that in Albert's case won his which she escaped the dangers because it heart on the instant; but the hypocrisy is was also the era of parental influence. all unconscious, the strength only wakes She was devoted to father and mother, and with the occasion. "What I love so much the life she led was under their eye and by in her," he writes, "is that she is so naïve, a their wish. The father's death brought the little unreasonable, a little extravagant days of girlish gaiety to a close. sometimes, mais si délicieuse." Again- -year or two she lived in seclusion. She "She has every quality to excite this pas- was thus made ready for new and deeper sion grace, timidity, reserve, with one of impressions. It was then she first saw Althose ardent souls-passionées pour le bien bert de la Ferronnays, and became en-who love because they live. Her form tranced in his and his family's influence. is slight and delicate, everything about her This lasted during the four years of courtannouncing weakness and dependence, but ship and marriage, when love in its most a soul strong and conscious, which would beautiful and devoted form absorbed her brave death in the cause of virtue." It is being. The close of Albert's long illness in characters like this that we can follow ushered in a third epoch. While he lived, the course of influences. All persons are her mother's Protestantism and her own subject to the natural leanings of their posi- doubts prevailed to stave off "conversion;" tion, but masculine original minds grow bat when she realised that he was dying, out of them into independence, or hold by she cried, "Now I am a Catholic," as the the first impulse through life; while weak only means, as it seemed to her, of retainones are incapable of any one distinctive ing her hold upon her husband: and this influence which, being primarily a matter new influence- the stimulus of conversion of duty or choice, needs constancy and firm- dovetailing upon the former in the picturness of will. Where there is this combina-esque fashion which so charmed spectators tion of strength with habitual dependence, and narrators, lasted while there was any we can trace most clearly what, in some tear to be shed, any fresh act of commemodegree, is a universal experience- the di- ration to indulge in, any memory of lost

For a

:..