Pine and Palm. By Molinaro Conway. 2 vols. (Chatto and
Windus.)—Mr. Conway opens his story at Harvard, where Randolph Stirling, of Virginia, and Walter Wentworth are fellow-students in the law schools and intimate friends. But the great slavery question is becoming irrepressible ; it turns up in the College Debating Society, and involves the two friends in what might easily have been a fatal quarrel. This part of the story is very skilfully managed ; but its most interesting and striking scenes are where Walter Wentworth goes South, and makes practical acquaintance with Southern life on a Carolina plantation. Here the "patriarchal" relation of master and slave is seen at its best ; and though the subject has now only a historical interest, these chapters are well worth studying. And, indeed, apart from the slavery question, they have something to teach. The Negro, though he is now free, is still very much what he was. His religion, especially, is emotional, and those who would give him something better in this way than the sensational appeals of the camp-meeting, with all its dangers to morality, must reckon with this fact. The description of the way in which Wentworth set about teaching Mr. Leroy's Negroes by vivid presentations of great Christian truths is admirable. There are other matters of great interest in this story—the adventures of the German maiden among them—and the book is one which we can strongly recommend to our readers.
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