The Minister's Charge

With 'The Minister's Charge' Mr. Howells has reached the point where his books are less interesting individually than as parts of a series, and one has the satisfaction with these later works of being able to read them by the light of the author's own canons of criticism. These show that Mr. Howells cannot only preach a philosophy, but live up to it ; for the story of Lemuel Barker, so far as it is told, has the " respect for probability, the fidelity to conditions, human and social, which," he has told us, " can alone justify the reading and writing of novels." We say, "so far as it is told," for Lemuel, with characteristic reticence, has taken most of his story back with him to Willoughby's Pastures, and leaves us to make what we can of the little we know.