17 JUNE 1871, Page 22

New Grooves. By Annie Thomas (Mrs. Pander Cudlip). (Charlton Tucker.)—This

is one of the little tales in which Mrs. Cudlip exhibits her didactic mood, for she has a mood, if we do not misjudge her novelsa, in which she is not didactic, at least in the ordinary sense of that word. The purpose in New Grooves is one that may be useful enough, but in scarcely suited to art, namely, the thesis that it is reasonable that women should be employed in midwifery. At all events we are learning by these " new grooves" to run beyond the old-established end of the novel. Once it was sufficient to see the hero and heroine happily married, though sometimes the author, especially if the author were a lady, would give us a vision of boys like their manly father and girls that were beautiful images of their mother. Critics sometimes objected that the real interest of life began rather than ended with marriage ; and lo ! the suggestion is fruitful. We shall be at all events kept in suspense till we learn 'who is to attend the heroine in her first confine- ment. Mrs. Cudlip, we need hardly say, writes cleverly and well ; but she cannot make much of this subject.