Wordsworth and among the Westmorland hills which Mrs. Ward describes
so sympathetically, with fitting dignity and truth of style, has
accompanied the author throughout; no less plain, perhaps more
pleasing to some readers, is the quiet humour which never fails her,
and tests, while it relieves, the sincerity of her more serious
thinking:--

"At last Mrs. Darcy fluttered off, only, however, to come hurrying
back with little, short, [61] scudding steps, to implore them all to
come to tea with her as soon as possible in the garden that was her
special hobby, and in her last new summer-house.

"'I build two or three every summer,' she said; 'now there are
twenty-one! Roger laughs at me,' and there was a momentary
bitterness in the little eerie face; 'but how can one live without
hobbies? That's one--then I've two more. My album--oh, you will all
write in my album, won't you? When I was young--when I was Maid of
Honour'--and she drew herself up slightly--'everybody had albums.
Even the dear Queen herself! I remember how she made M. Guizot write
in it; something quite stupid, after all. Those hobbies--the garden
and the album--are quite harmless, aren't they? They hurt nobody, do
they?' Her voice dropped a little, with a pathetic expostulating
intonation in it, as of one accustomed to be rebuked."

Mrs. Ward's women, as we have said, are more organic, sympathetic,
and really creative, than her men, and make their vitality evident by
becoming, quite naturally, the centres of very [62] life-like and
dramatic groups of people, family or social; while her men are the
very genii of isolation and division. It is depressing to see so
really noble a character as Catherine soured, as we feel, and