A French Heiress in Her Own Chviteau. By the Author
of "One Only." (Sampson Low and Co.)—It is a happy combination for a novelist when she can bring into contact, or it may be opposition, the French and the English systems of marriage-making. The writer of the volume before us seems to have had in view the object of showing the advantages of both. Two English cousins come over to visit their French relatives at the Chdteau des Sapinieres. How one of them prospers in his love-making and one of them fails, how excellently the love-match turns out, and how admirably suited for the weaker natures is the judicious arrangement made by the wisdom of parents, is capi- tally told in this story. Only it is evident that great and heroic excellence and, we may add, exceptional good-fortune are wanted to overcome the difficulties opposed by French guardians to marriages of affection. It is not every one who can save the lives of the heroine and of the heroine's mother and the heroine's dog, who can rescue an English garrison from the hands of infuriated savages, can have his bravery brought to the notice of a moribund uncle who has an estate to dispose of, and then can find the opportunity of establishing the tottering credit of the gentleman whom he desires to have as a father-in-law. These are tremendous conditions of success, and the average English young gentleman who may despair of realising them had better conduct his love-making after the fashion and in the country of his forefathers. Not the less is this a very pretty story.
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