wade, near Edinburgh, next of Glasgow, where her father carried on some business, and then of Liverpool, where he had an appointment in the customs. He appears to have been of a reserved disposition and singularly indifferent to his family. Her mother, on the other hand, was energetic, eager, and sarcastic, and her daughter recognised a strong resemblance in her to Mrs. Carlyle, when she came to know the latter in later years. After a while the family removed to Birkenhead. Both parents were devoted to the Scottish free church movement, which occurred when Mrs. Oliphant was fifteen, and the consequent discussions stimulated her faculties and tended to inspire her first; book, 'Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland' (1849). Later in life she regretted 'its foolish little polemics,' but it is a surprising work for an authoress of twenty-one. Notwithstanding the obstacle of the lowland dialect, it was highly successful Colburn, who, to the author's surprise, had promptly accepted it, giving her 150l. upon its attaining the third edition. 'Caleb Field,' her next novel (1851), attracted comparatively little notice, but 'Merkland,' published in the same year, was a great success, and continues to rank among her best novels. She came to London about this time to look after an unsatisfactory brother, and on 4 May 1852 married at Birkenhead her cousin, Francis Wilson Oliphant [q. v.], an artist, principally engaged in designing stained glass. They settled at Harrington Square, near the Hampstead Road, and Mrs. Oliphant began to be known in London literary society. Housekeeping expenses were for the time met by the alliance which she formed with Messrs. Blackwood; she was introduced to the firm by David Macbeth Moir [q. v.], and the connection continued unbroken all her life. Four novels from her pen successively appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine:' 'Katie Stewart' (1853), 'A Quiet Heart' (1854), 'Zaidee' (1856), and 'The Athelings' (1857). In the interim her parents had removed to London, where her mother died in September 1854; another brother had married and gone out to Canada (where his cousin Daniel Wilson had in 1853 been appointed professor of English literature at Toronto), an event destined to have momentous consequences for her; and a daughter and a son had been born to her. In January 1859 she was dismayed by the sudden failure of her husband's health. The case proved to be one of incurable consumption. It was necessary to break up the London establishment at a great sacrifice, and remove to Rome, where Oliphant died in October 1859. Three months later Mrs. Oliphant gave birth to a posthumous child a second son, who, with her elder son and her daughter, were through life to depend entirely on their mother's exertion. Mrs. Oliphant's circumstances at the time of her husband's death are thus summed up by herself: 'A thousand pounds of debt. Two hundred pounds insurance money. Some furniture warehoused. My faculties, such as they are.' They proved adequate to bring her 400l. for each novel, an amount soon greatly increased by the success of her series of four novels, entitled 'Chronicles of Carlingford,' three of which were published anonymously in 'Blackwood's Magazine' between 1862 and 1865. The earliest was 'Salem Chapel,' 1863, 2 vols.; and it was followed by 'The Rector and the Doctor's Family' (1863), 'The Perpetual Curate' (1864, new ed. 1865), and 'Miss Marjoribanks' (1866). The last of the series was published in 1876, and entitled 'Phoebe Junior: a last Chronicle of Carlingford.' These were frequently taken for the work of George Eliot, and although the more acute critics never fell into this error, the surface resemblance is very strong. The characters talk and behave very like George Eliot's, and with no less consistency and truth to nature, but the mind behind them is manifestly of less intellectual calibre. The authoress's versatility and quickness at taking a hint are evinced by her undoubtedly true assertion that, when writing 'Salem Chapel,' which was received as an oracle upon dissent, she knew nothing about chapels unconnected with the free church of Scotland. She must have studied George Eliot attentively, and probably Mrs. Gaskell also. Mr. Blackwood was so impressed by the success of 'Salem Chapel' that he voluntarily offered the authoress 1,500l. for 'The Perpetual Curate,' to the horror of his cashier. Another important work, in a different line, was Mrs. Oliphant's 'Life of Edward Irving' (2 vols. 1862, new ed. same year, 1864 and 1865), to write which she mingled with the Irvingites, who expected her to join them and were proportionately disappointed. Mrs. Oliphant was nevertheless too much of an Irvingite in the strictly personal sense to be entirely impartial; her account of Irving's courtships is defective; and it is amazing to find a biographer of him disclaiming both the obligation and the ability to express any opinion touching the phenomena of 'the tongues.' The great interest and freshness of the book arise in large measure from the employment of Irving's own words whenever possible.
Mrs. Oliphant, who, upon her return from Italy, had for a short time established her-
