The Lady Superior. By Eliza F. Pollard. 3 vols. (Hurst
and Blackett.)—The plot of this story is of that melodramatic kind which scimehow found more favour in the oyes of a past generation than it does in ours. A child brought through a snowy winter night to the door of an unforgiving mother by a disowned and banished son, who dies on the doorstep, has naturally a'romantic origin ; and when we are introduced, in process of time, to a Lady Superior, scarcely concealing a passionate nature under the repose of a face still beautiful, it requires no great sagacity to guess that this origin has been discovered. The unerring fate that guides the footsteps of persons who have the good or the ill-fortune to be mixed up in a history of this kind takes "Brownie," as the heroine calla herself, with the family into which she has been adopted, from the Welsh village to the very neighbourhood of the Lady Superior's convent. There are plots of evil-minded persons which do not seem to threaten serious danger. The necessary love-making is disturbed by the necessary obstacles. The sensitive reader is alarmed by symptoms of delicate health in one of the young ladies, but is soon reassured by observing that the author has no cruel intentions. Finally, the wicked or unfortunate are disposed of without horror ; the good and even moderately well-intentioned are made happy. The story is not 'without interest, and is fairly well-written. Here and there is a scene which indicates some real power.
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