15 DECEMBER 1883, Page 22

Weary-holme : or, Seed-time and Harvest. By Emily S. Holt.

(J. F. Shaw and Co.)—This is described as "A Tale of the Restora- tion." The principal incident in this story is the career of Olivia, daughter of an Independent minister, who runs away to marry a fashionable young gentleman, and comes to great sorrow, and in the end to repentance. There is some pathos in this narrative, and, in- deed, the whole book has merit. Miss Holt thinks very meanly of the Church-of-England Clergy, in the days which some people think to have been her best. She apologises to her readers for the non- appearance of an Evangelical clergyman in her pages, by the state- ment that at the time of her story there were none such in England. " The best style of man is sketched in Dr. Middleton," and Dr. Middleton is one who "read prayers with pompons stiffness, and preached sermons which were intelligible to about six people in his congregation." " Religion was a highly respectable thing," to him, and no more. Did Miss Holt, Imply, ever hear of Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller and Isaac Barrow ?