10 APRIL 1897, Page 27

The Wooing of Fortune. By Henry Cresswell. (Hurst and Blaekett).—We

must own that the "second Mrs. Beaumont" and her father are not people whom we can realise. The monstrous greed of the woman, the deliberate blindness of the man, do not harmonise with any conception of human possibilities that we can make. We might go further and say that all the characters in The Wooing of Fortune, Virginie only exerptc.1, are suited to romance rather than to the fiction of society,—i.e., the novel. Still, this story is, like all that Mr. Cresswell writes, excellent reading.