year or two before her death in 1865 _Sylvia's Lovers_ was warmly
welcomed by some: and the unfinished _Wives and Daughters_, which was
actually interrupted by that death, has been considered her maturest
work. Her famous and much controverted _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ does
not belong to us, except in so far as it knits the two novelists
together.

From hints dropped already, it may be seen that the present writer does
not find Mrs. Gaskell his easiest subject. There is much in her work
which, in Hobbes's phrase, is both "an effect of power and a cause of
pleasure": but there appears to some to be in her a pervading want of
actual success--of _réussite_--absolute and unquestionable. The sketches
of _Cranford_ are very agreeable and very admirable performances in the
manner first definitely thrown out by Addison, and turned to consummate
perfection in the way of the regular novel (which be it remembered
_Cranford_ is not) by Miss Austen. But the mere mention of the last
name kills them. The author of _Emma_ would have treated Miss Matty and
the rest much less lovingly, but she would have made them persons. Mrs.
Gaskell has left them mere types of amiable country-townishness in
respectable if not very lively times. Excessive respectability cannot be
charged against _Mary Barton_ and _Ruth_, but here the "problem"--the
"purpose"--interposes its evil influence: and we have got to take a side
with men or with masters, with selfish tempters of one class and deluded
maidens of another. _North and South_ is perhaps on the whole the best
place in which to study Mrs. Gaskell's art: for _Wives and Daughters_ is
unfinished and the books just named are tentatives. It begins by laying
a not inconsiderable hold on the reader: and, as it is worked out at
great length, the author has every opportunity of strengthening and
improving that hold. It is certain that, in some cases, she does not do
this: and the reason is the same--the failure to project and keep in