With Cupid's Eyes. By Florence Marryat (Mrs. Francis Loan). 3
vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—Mrs. Franck Lean has done again what she has succeeded in doing more than once before, that is, heti written a novel which tempts any lover of wholesome literature to use some- what immoderate language. Her hero, or, at least, her principal character, is a selfish profligate. His ways of thinking and talking and his habits are described with minuteness, doubtkes with fidelity. But what is the good of reproducing them ? Have we not enough of them, as it is ? What is the profit of even the most faithful tran- script of the conversation of a smoking-room about the small-hours ? And if it happens, as it may happen in this perverse world, that a woman of conduct and sense and ability falls in love with such a man, and drags herself down into misery by linking her fate with his, is this a subject for literature ? Is there any pleasure or profit, any beauty of art or fitness of moral, in the miserable story of his neglect, his infidelities ? Mrs. Lean tells a poor tale in a style without distinction or grace ; nor will the tardy effort to give something of a higher purpose to her book, when she makes the selfish rend change into a devoted philanthropist, propitiate a justly offended reader.
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