The picture of the rather tall, awkward, strongly built girl of fifteen, hanging behind her anxious-eyed, sad-voiced mother, who pushes her into notice with "I've brought my daughter, ma'am, as you sent word you'd take on trial. 'Tis her first place, and her'll be awk'ard like at first. Hold up your head, Elizabeth," is drawn with that graphic fidelity which gives interest to the most commonplace things in life. The awkward girl proves to be a rough diamond, capable of much polish, and by the kindly teaching of Hilary Leaf she is turned into an admirable, praiseworthy woman. One has to resist the temptation to say more about Hilary Leaf, an energetic, intelligent girl who, when she cannot make a living for herself and her sister by school-keeping, tries, and succeeds, by shop-keeping. The description of the struggles of these two poor ladies to pay their way, and keep up a respectable appearance, comes sympathetically from the pen of a woman whose heart was ever open to similar distresses in real life. To her praise be it remembered that to any tale of true suffering Dinah Mulock never closed her ears or her hand.
Her next two novels, "Christian's Mistake" and "A Noble Life," in our opinion, fall far short of any of her previous efforts. Yet they were both received with much popular favour, particularly the former, which called forth warm praise from reviewers.
For us not one of the characters has a spark of vitality. Christian is not even the shadow of a young girl made of flesh and blood. Her forbearance and self-abnegation are maddening. Her husband, the "Master of St. Bede's,'" twenty-five years her senior and a widower, is nothing but a lay figure, meant to represent a good man, but utterly devoid of intellect and, one would think, of feeling, since he permits his young bride, possessed of all the seraphic virtues, to be snubbed and brow-beaten by two vulgar shrewish sisters-in-law. There is no interest of plot or depicting of character, and the children are as unreal and offensive as their grown up relations. In "A Noble Life," also, there is nothing which stirs our sympathies. Even the personal deformities of the unfortunate little earl fail to touch us, and, when grown up and invested with every meritorious attribute, he is more like the "example" of a moral tale than a being of human nature.