13 AUGUST 1881, Page 21

Young Ccelebs. By Percy Fitzgerald. (Tinsley Brothers.)—This purports to be

a continuous narrative, but is, in fact, rather a series of different stories strung together. The connecting link is the nar- rator, a young man who is the hero of almost all of them, and who relates them in the first person. He is represented as a sort of Paul Pry, who has the same unconquerable propensity for " put- ting his foot in it" as Moliere's Etourdi, and whose vocation in life it is to prop up the fortunes of his family by marrying an heiress. In the course of his search for a rich wife, numerous and amusing adventures befall him ; and though some of these are not quite original, and though there is not very much in the book, yet it is quite readable, and well adapted to pass an hour or so in pleasant idleness. One striking feature is the extreme facility with which the hero finds heiresses in all direc- tions. They replace one another in a rapid and constant succession, that calls to mind those rushes growing by the sea-shore at the foot of the Mount of Purgatory, of which Dante relates that as fast as one was plucked, another grew up in its stead :— "0 maraviglial che qual amble

L'umile plants, cots! sI rinacque Subitamente là uncle la misc."

Not, however, that we wish to imply that an heiress is an " umile pianta," by any manner of means.