Little Miss Fairfax. By Kenner Deena. Three vols. (Nowby.)— We
confess to having skimmed through this novel with much pleasure, and are ready to recommend it to others for the same process. Parts of it are unmistakably good, but the author alternately surprises us both by risings and failings; so far at least that when be is at his best we wonder that he does not always write as well; when he falls again, we wonder at our late approval. Something in the characters of the two heroines seems to us the most worthy of praise ; the men are too conventional, and of a type which in itself is far from nature. As for the mechanism of the plot, there is a good deal to be said against it on the ground of staginess. The ending of the story leaves us more un- satisfied than we were at the "darkest hour" of the hero's misery. One or two of the incidents which ought to be the most clear, and on which the main strength of the story ought to rest, are blurred and weak. We cannot call Little Miss Fairfax a good novel even as novels go, but it is not bad as novels are.
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