Wanted, a Father. By Francis Savage. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)
—Here is a plot strangely made up of a number of curious threads and so made up as to puzzle a reader who has not time to spend on disentangling it. There is a will with each a provision as even the perversity of testators has not often matched, a domestic complica- tion of the most embarrassing kind, a Jesuit intrigue, and other entanglements too numerous to mention. This is a mistake. A reader likes to be kept in suspense, he even likes to be puzzled ; but then, he must know distinctly what has happened, and what are the issues for which he is to look out. Obscurity is a fatal fault, and Wanted, a Esther, is certainly obscure. Yet it has merits. The scenes in Borneo are particularly vigorous and picturesque, though our praise must be given with the reserve that we have no experience of our own by which to check the writer.
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