[In the following excerpt, Stewart examines Ward's theological novels.]

There are few of [Mrs Ward's] books from which the religious interest is wholly absent, and there are at least five in which it may be said to predominate. Robert Elsmere is the best known, but in any such general survey we must not omit The History of David Grieve, Helbeck of Bannisdale, Eleanor, and The Case of Richard Meynell. The first point which calls for notice is one that all of these novels exhibit alike, and that constitutes a notable merit in the authoress when compared with many others who have imported speculations about faith into a work of fiction. We all know with tolerable exactness what Mrs Ward herself believed, or at least some things that she emphatically disbelieved. But her first concern was neither to proclaim what she thought true nor to repudiate what she thought...