CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
The Clever Miss Jancy. By Margaret Haycraft. (Hutchinson and Co.)—This is a clever story, dealing with an important pro- blem of the time in a light and airy style, but it is spoiled at the commencement by a note of farcicality. The cultivated daughter of a squire who, in virtue of that fact, must have inherited a tradition of manners, could not by any possibility have had the vulgarity to sign herself, on refusing an offer of marriage, as " Author of A Treatise on the Differential Calculus,' Common- Sense Geometry," Recreations with Euclid,' &c." But when the author has, so to speak, blown off the steam of her smartness, and settles down to her task of showing how Orabel Jancy gets rid of the priggishness she has superadded to her culture, and develops into a lovable daughter, sister, and (in the distance) wife, she is perfectly successful. The relations between Orabel and her patient but quietly masterful lover, Kingdon, are very skilfully manipulated.
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