Cyril Dansley. By "Miranda." (Elliot Stook.)—Cyril Daneley is one of
those wonderfully amiable, pions, athletic, and handsome youths who are to be heard of mostly in novels or stories written by ladies for the purpose of advancing what they believe to be truly religious sentiments, in paragraphs of considerable length, sometimes expanding to actual sermons, which more worldly readers who may have been induced to take op the book for amassment irreverently skip, that they may see at the end what becomes of the parson or the student, and whether he marries the Earl's daughter, or gives her up to somebody else. In the volume before us, a peculiar example is given of the unconscious' vanity which is frequently exhibited by the writers of stories of this sort, where they enter upon religious reproofs or exhortations supposed to be uttered by the hem or heroine, and to be so admirable and convincing as to awaken and reform some very hardened sinner or selfish indifferentist. In the present mule, it is a sermon which forms the chief part of a chapter entitled "The Awakening," and it is to be feared that the majority of its readers will be a little puzzled to find out what there is in it no original and striking as to produce the effect which is attributed to it. Notwith- standing this common oversight and the ordinary defects of most stories written with a religions purpose, and for the exaltation of a certain class of religious character, Cyril Daneley is well written, moderately interesting, and will doubtless find readers who will not acknowledge as faults the peculiarities here mentioned.
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