Then we
are bidden to leave the unpolished utterances of frank love and
jealousy and fear and anger in order that we may enjoy the peculiar
works of art which have come from America of late. In these
enthralling fictions all the characters are so exceedingly refined
that they can talk only by hints, and sometimes the hints are very
long. But the explanations of the reasons for giving the said hints
are still longer; and, when once the author starts off to tell why
Crespigny Conyers of Conyers Magna, England, stumbled against the
music-stool prepared for the reception of Selina Fogg, Bones Co.,
Mass., one never knows whether the fifth, the twelfth, or the fortieth
page of the explanation will bring him up. There is no doubt but that
these things are refined in their way. The British peer and the
beautiful American girl hint away freely through three volumes; and it
is understood that they either go through the practical ceremony of
getting married at the finish, or decline into the most
delicately-finished melancholy that resignation, or more properly,
renunciation can produce. Yet the atmosphere in which they dwell is
sickly to the sound soul.
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