Contradictions. By Frances M. Peard. 2 vols. (Bentley and Son.)
—Miss Peard does not trouble herself to provide much incident for the entertainment of her readers. Of course, there are mis- understandings, and there is a rescue, an heroic affair upon a railway bridge. It must be owned that, with this element wanting, six hundred and fifty pages of talking and love-making grow a little wearisome. Yet there is merit in the story, if story it is to be called. The two sisters, Dorothy and Gina, are an attractive pair of fresh, right-thinking, vigorous English girls ; and Olivia, with her more conventional and worldly aims, which do not, however, wholly occupy her heart, forms an effective contrast. Life in Venice, too, is de- scribed with some skill, and there are descriptions of scenery and of the effects of light and colour in the canals and lagoons which are well and forcibly written. Miss Peard once ventures into a domain which is evidently strange to her. Before she mentions cricket again, she should get coached by some schoolboy of her acquaintance (it is the only thing a schoolboy is pretty sure to know). He would not allow her to talk of a man being "caught at slip from a skyer." A skyer at slip is not, perhaps, an absolute impossibility, but it is not far off.
Previous page
