Geoffrey Stirling. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 3 vols. (Chapman and
Hall.)—It is not often that we see so slender a stock of material spun out to the orthodox length which suits the circulating libraries — and, we should think, no one else in this world—as we see in the novel before us. In the first cbapter,•a country-town bank breaks, and towards the end of the third volume the wrong-doing comes home to the man who had committed it. All that there is of incident in the interval might have been compressed into a very small space indeed. Doubtless, Mrs. Adams rests her claim to attention on her studies of character. And with these, indeed, she takes much pains, but without, wellthink, producing a very distinct effect. In this, as in the attempt to describe the outward aspect of things, we seem to get a multiplicity of details, without any decided impression of the whole. There is a mannerism, too, about the style which is neither pleasing nor powerful. Here is a passage which is obviously after Dickens, and Dickens not at his best :—" Strangers visiting Stirling's Bank, doubtless to •deposit therein vast sums of money, had been known to wander round and round, under the impression that there was a proper and dignified front door somewhere, if they could only find it, and to consider themselves injured, and to look upon their• personal dignity as wounded, because, there being no other way in, they were constrained at last to content themselves with the mean- ness of the dark and narrow entry and the shabby door."
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