16 APRIL 1831, Page 19

NEW BOOKS.

FICTION At Home and Abroad ; or, Me- 3 Vols moirs of Emily tie Cardonnel .. • S. The King's Secret 3 Vols. F. Reynolds's Playwright's Adven- tures; a Dramatic Annual .. • • I Godwin's Caleb Williams (Stan- dard Novels, No. 2.). TRAVELS ....Switzerland, &c. By Derwent Conway. Vol. I. (Constable's

Miscellany, No. LEVI.) Denham's Travels and Discoveries 1 4 V0ls. ram. in Africa

MEMOIRS ....Bourri ennes Life of Bonaparte PERIODICALS Quarterly Journal of Education,'

No.II.

Westminster Review,No.XX VIII

NATURAL.' IDSTORY...1

Architecture of Birds Murray. Bull.

Longman and Co.

Colburn and Bentley. Constable and Co. Edith Murray.

Colburn and Bentley. C. Knight.

Reward.

Diffusion of Knowledge Society.

THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

At Home and Abroad is a novel, which, from the reputation ac- quired by the authoress from her Rome in the Nineteenth Cen- tury, and her novel called Continental Adventures, will probably attract attention. It was written eighteen or twenty years ago, and at the time suppressed, in consequence of the appearance of Miss EDGEWORTH'S Patronage. The authoress perceived some points of resemblance so close between her work and that of Miss EDGEWORTH, that she suppressed her own. This statement, one would think, might have been made before, and would have received the credence it is now entitled to. Rome in the Nineteenth Century was remarkable for clever sketches of scenery and real life. Continental Adventures had similar merit, in addition to several scenes of humour.

At Home and Abroad is neither a novel of manners, of history, of scenery, nor of character—it can boast of nothing but incident of the most ordinary description. The moving passion is of course love, and the lovers are perfection : they begin to court in almost the very first page of the book, and their history—in which not for one moment ceuld we feel the slightest interest—only ends with the last page. In short, we are greatly disappointed : the authoress has injured her reputation by publishing a work which has been written for other times, after the model of REGINA MARIA ROCHE, the authoress of the Children of the Abbey, and other cleverish works in their day, but totally below the spirit of this age.