My Connaught Cousins, by Harriett Jay (White), is not an
improve. ment upon " The Queen of Connaught," or even " The Priest's Bless- ing." Miss Jay seems to have made a mistake in writing not a single story, but a collection of tales connected by a very slender thread of narrative. Of these, the story of Rose Merton is the most powerful, and the most decidedly Irish. The character, however, of the offend- ing landlord, who, of course, comes to a violent end, seems to us to be unnecessarily repulsive. Rose Merton herself is well drawn, and the "Connaught cousins" are such pleasant girls, and their father is such a good Irish type, that one wishes Miss Jay had paid more attention to them, and less to Irish miseries and grievances. Stedman, who visits them, and into whose arms Oona, the dreamer and story-teller of the number, falls rather too readily at the end of the third volume, is a very conventional London barrister ; and Miss Jay's humour is rather farcical, and too redolent of whisky even for Ireland. The Connaught Cousins would have been all the better without a heavy-shotted "Prefatory Note," by Mr. Robert Buchanan, which savours too much of the art of the puliste litteraire.
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