The idea of the book we find to be briefly
and plainly this. A young Englishman of
rank and fortune inherits from his ancestors
the one serious defect of a very bad temper
By dint of excellent moral and religious
principles, he not only learns to control this
bad temper (which would be natural enough),
but succeeds in so completely rooting it out
of his nature (which no man ever did),
that he ultimately dies a sacrifice to his own
devotion at the bedside of his bitterest
enemy. Philip Morville has systematically
misjudged, injured, and insulted Sir Guy
Morville. Philip falls ill of a fever in Italy.
Sir Guy, in Italy also on his marriage tour
with his young wife, hears of it, goes
forgivingly to his kinsman's bedside, nurses
him tenderly through his fever, catches the
infection, and dies at the fair beginning of
his happier and better life.

This is the story of the Pusey-Novel which
is the Wonderful Lamp not to be found in
France, or it would (we suppose) have lighted
Monsieur Guizot to better things than
Spanish marriage diplomacy, the one idea of
governing men by corruption, and the
abdication and flight of the late Mr. Smith. The
characters by whose aid the story is worked
out, are simply impossible. They have no
types in nature, they never did have types in
nature, and they never will have types in
nature—unless, indeed, it be when the Right
Honourable Doctor Dulcamara, M.P., is
again prescribing for a whole English army,
and Monsieur Guizot is again administering
state affairs in France. Imagine the hero of
Redclyffe, young Sir Guy, going about the
world in this present year of grace, to the
admiration of Doctor Dulcamara and Monsieur
Guizot, with the "lion roused in him,"
his "hazel eye gleaming like an eagle's," and
a whole zoological-garden-full of symptoms
constantly making him uncomfortable, on the
subject of King Charles the First!

From that time Guy seemed to have no trouble in
reining in his temper in arguing with Charles, except
once, when the lion was fairly roused by something
that sounded like a sneer about King Charles
the First.

His whole face changed, his hazel eye gleamed
with light like an eagle's, and he started up,
exclaiming, "You did not mean that!"

"Ask Strafford," answered Charles, coolly,
startled, but satisfied to have found the vulnerable
point.

"Ungenerous, unmanly!" said Guy, his voice
low, but quivering with indignation. "Ungenerous
to reproach him with what he so bitterly repented.
Could not his penitence, could not his own blood—"
But as he spoke, the gleam of wrath faded, the
flush deepened on his cheek, and he left the room.

In about ten minutes Guy came back: "I am
sorry I was hasty just now," said he.

"I did not know you had such personal feelings
about King Charles."

"If you would do me a kindness," proceeded
Guy, "you would just say you did not mean it. I
know you do not, but if you would only say so!"

"I am glad you have the wit to see I have too
much taste to be a roundhead."

"Thank you," said Guy; "I hope I shall know
your jest from your earnest another time. Only, if
you would oblige me, you would never jest again
about King Charles."

His brow darkened into a stern, grave expression,
&c. &c. &c.

Throughout the book, up to the scene of
his last illness, Sir Guy is the same lifeless
personification of the Pusey-stricken writer's
fancies on religion and morals, literature
and art. He is struck speechless with
reverence when a rhapsodical description
of one of Raphael's Madonnas is read
to him. He occupies three summers in
studying the Morte d'Arthur (not Mr.
Tennyson's poem, but the old romance); and, in
spite of this romantic taste, when he gets to
Italy he will not read the magnificent
descriptions of scenery in Childe Harold,
because Lord Byron was a profligate man. He
goes out, one Sunday afternoon, to take a
walk with his bride in northern Italy; and,
sitting down under a tree, at Lady Morville's
request, he performs an amateur Service by
then and there chanting the afternoon's
psalms with her. Even his death-scene
(tenderly and delicately written in some
places), is marred and made absurd, either by
the writer's want of experience of human
nature, or utter incapability of abstraction
from one narrow circle of ideas.

As to dialogue,—thus it runs through
hundreds upon hundreds of pages, and thus it
makes up the book (that can't be made
in France), in combination with a most
ludicrous disparagement of all those base
writers of fiction who are not inspired by
Pusey and his late blessed Majesty King
Charles the First.

"What a delicious day!" next exclaimed Guy,
following Philip's example by throwing off hat and
neck-tie.

"A spontaneous tribute to the beauty of the day,"
said Charles.

"Really it is so ultra-splendid as to deserve
notice!" said Philip, throwing himself completely
back, and looking up.

"One cannot help revelling in that deep blue,"
said Laura.

"To-morrow'll be the happiest time of all the
glad new year," hummed Guy.

"Ah, you will teach us all now," said Laura,
"after your grand singing-lessons."

"Do you know what is in store for you, Guy?"
said Amy. "0, hav'n't you heard of Lady Kilcoran's
ball?"

"You are to go, Guy," said Charlotte. "I am
glad I am not. I hate dancing."

"And I know as much about it as Bustle," said
Guy, catching the dog by his fore-paws, and causing
him to perform an uncouth dance.

"Never mind, they will soon teach you," said
Mrs. Edmonstone.

"Must I really go?"