Marriage and Married Life. By Isha. 2 vols. (Remington.)— This
is described as "a novel for girls about to marry." It struck us, as we read it, that it might be turned to a very different use for girls not out of the school-room. If any governess finds her young charges trouble- some and in need of punishment, let her take one of " Iaba's "sentences, and give it to them as an exercise in analysis. Anything more distract- ing than these page-long periods, with sentences dependent on each other to the tenth generation, so to speak, we have never seen. This tided of style is so marked, that it gives an appearance of weakness to a book which contains, in reality, some power of thought. The love- stories of the three girls te whom we are introduced in the first chapter are managed with some skill, and these love-stories do not, as is usual, end with the marriage-day. It is the author's object to show that the greater interests of a woman's life begin rather than end with this. The three have very different experiences ; that of Eleanor, who mar- ries a man without loving him, and is finally brought, after a sharp iliscipline of sorrow and suffering, to happier things, is the beat of the three. But really the cleverest thing in the book is Mrs. Martin's de- scription of how she escaped matrimony. The terse, forcible sentences of good colloquial English in which she tells her tale, are in striking contrast to the awkward " literary " style which "Isha " feels bound to adopt when she speaks in her own person.
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