story. “A whole life-time of possibilities flashed through her mind in an instant, of which possibilities”—how wonderfully pretty and how wonderfully true to nature is this pathetic addition—“ the question of questions was, Could she leave her sister?” Far more intricate is the “coil,” as Juliet would have called it, in which Molly finds herself on concluding, from her bland step-mother’s veiled intimations, that Roger has proposed to Cynthia; when, instead of supplying to Mrs. Gibson the sympathy which that lady had thought due to her at so interesting a moment, she escapes to her room. This passage, on which every reader of the story is certain to linger, is a life-study — may I say a soul-study—as true as it is tender.

In mere justice to Mrs. Gaskell’s responsiveness to the claims of her art, I should not omit to note that, so far as I can judge, it is precisely on that side of literary workmanship in which her earlier studies had been relatively defective that “Wives and Daughters” shows a most unmistakable advance. The construction of this story, whose personages are, speaking relatively, so few and whose action is so simple, must on the whole be described as admirable. The sympathies and antipathies aroused in the reader throughout remain on the alert, and his hopes and fears are almost to the last kept in that condition of suspense which is best expressed by the commonplace phrase, that his interest in the story, as a story, is never allowed to flag. At the same time, every turn in the stage or turn in the development of the plot is carefully prepared—from Clare’s half-kindly, half-oblivious interest in her future step-daughter, in the opening chapter, to Roger’s generous protection of her in her lonely hour of suffering;—and so with the Squire’s fond hopes and delusions about his heir, and Mr. Preston’s devices, and Cynthia’s cornucopia of offers. As the action of the story progresses, we feel more than once as if the curtain of the “entr’acte” were about to drop on the central scene of the piece—the “scène à faire”, as it used to be called in French scientific dramaturgy, to which everything that precedes it in a manner leads up. But, after Molly’s meeting with Cynthia and Mr. Preston on the side of Croston Heath, a new phase in the story seems to begin; and Cynthia in the toils has only proved a prelude to Cynthia at bay. The solution which the narrative approaches, as its threads finally drop out of our grasp, is one which we know to be neither forced nor harsh; it is, moreover, a real solution which will leave those who bear a share in it wiser, perhaps even happier, men and women, but such as have the past as well as the future to reckon with.

It is unnecessary to add more. In the autumn of 1861, M. de Circourt, the husband of the accomplished and high-minded lady to whose attractions Mrs. Gaskell paid so sympathetic a tribute in one of her papers on “French Life”, had written to her in terms which might have been called flattering, had they not been so very near the mark:

“But you, my dear Madame, are you not to give more of your exquisite compositions to the world? They are as useful as a treatise on morals, as entertaining as a novel, and often more true than historical books.”

To this friendly challenge, which seems to have referred to some of Mrs. Gaskell’s shorter productions, but which would have been echoed by all whom her earlier works as a whole had delighted, cheered, and raised in both mind and spirit, the response was the publication of three works —“Sylvia’s Lovers,” “Cousin Phillis,” and “Wives and Daughters,”—which represent the height of their writer’s literary achievement. But in that which formed part of her innermost nature, and without which therefore neither her literary genius nor even her literary style could have been what they were, her latest and maturest works were of a piece with those that had preceded them, including the earliest of them all. When, accordingly, we reach the root of the matter, I see no reason and feel no desire for dividing her work into periods or drawing a hard and fast line between her earlier and her later “manner;” and, from this point of view, her last and greatest novel, “Wives and Daughters,” may be regarded as representative of the whole of her work as a writer. This book of contrasts—as I think it may not inappropriately be called—tells us, as everything that Mrs. Gaskell has written tells us, by what power such contrasts are effaced, the troubles which they help to create removed, and human wrongs set right. Love is enough.

A. W. Ward