In
early life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness of
being a wife and a mother; but later she became content that her
affection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse in
the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,'
seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, she
rather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the best
public work. 'It is quite striking,' she says in one of her letters, 'to
observe how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed of
late years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, have
quite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb all
their powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them by
God, and want no more.' The whole passage is extremely interesting, and
the phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one of
Charles Lamb.

* * * * *

Ismay's Children is by the clever authoress of that wonderful little
story Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, a story which delighted the
realists by its truth, fascinated Mr. Ruskin by its beauty, and remains
to the present day the most perfect picture of street-arab life in all
English prose fiction. The scene of the novel is laid in the south of
Ireland, and the plot is extremely dramatic and ingenious. Godfrey
Mauleverer, a reckless young Irishman, runs away with Ismay D'Arcy, a
pretty, penniless governess, and is privately married to her in Scotland.
Some time after the birth of her third child, Ismay died, and her
husband, who had never made his marriage public, nor taken any pains to
establish the legitimacy of his children, is drowned while yachting off
the coast of France. The care of Ismay's children then devolves on an
old aunt, Miss Juliet D'Arcy, who brings them back to Ireland to claim
their inheritance for them. But a sudden stroke of paralysis deprives
her of her memory, and she forgets the name of the little Scotch village
in which Ismay's informal marriage took place. So Tighe O'Malley holds
Barrettstown, and Ismay's children live in an old mill close to the great
park of which they are the rightful heirs. The boy, who is called
Godfrey after his father, is a fascinating study, with his swarthy
foreign beauty, his fierce moods of love and hate, his passionate pride,
and his passionate tenderness. The account of his midnight ride to warn
his enemy of an impending attack of Moonlighters is most powerful and
spirited; and it is pleasant to meet in modern fiction a character that
has all the fine inconsistencies of life, and is neither too fantastic an
exception to be true, nor too ordinary a type to be common. Excellent
also, in its direct simplicity of rendering, is the picture of Miss
Juliet D'Arcy; and the scene in which, at the moment of her death, the
old woman's memory returns to her is quite admirable, both in conception
and in treatment. To me, however, the chief interest of the book lies in
the little lifelike sketches of Irish character with which it abounds.