Sophy Laurie. By W. C. Hazlett. 8 vols. (Maxwell.)—This can-
not be called a successful novel. There are some signs of force in the writing, and one or two of the characters are well conceived, but exaggeration and grotesqueness are the prevailing features, the dialogue is unpleasing, and the plot improbable. The story has chiefly to do with the fortunes of three people—Sophia Laurie, the daughter of a somewhat muddle-headed yeoman, who is too proud of his ancestry to tell his chickens, and her two lovers, the inmates of a neighbouring rectory. One of these is a young clergyman, who assists the rector in the care of his pupils, and the other, his pupil, heir to a title. The former, through the growth of his professional ambition, which is rather well described, throws the lady over, in the hopes of marrying the sister of his pupil, and she falls a victim in an objectionable scene to the latter. Her wrongs are redressed eventually, but we never care much about her, and the denouement is a strange breach of poetical justioe, for which we refer our readers to the story. We are introduced into two queer interiors of noble houses, in one of which a peer and his daughter and a groom seem to live on the most confidential terms, and in the other, the home of the pupil seducer, we have quite a menagerie of curious creatures. Indeed our author is fond of eccentric people, and we think he is scarcely justified in requiring us, in the limited circle to which he introduces us, to believe in the existence of a pig-faced lady (the rector's wife), who hurls her crutch at her husband at dinner-time ; an innkeeper who wears a blouse and Hessian boots, dispenses with trousers, and "always springs forward in a menacing attitude with hand uplifted to strike" when a customer enters ; and a baroness, who addressee her husband with "William, Lord Avonbank, you look tired," and altogether ignores the revolutions of the clock. We ought to add, in conclusion, that the book seems scarcely intended for feminine peru.sal.
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