Two Lilies. By Julia Kavanagh. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)
—Normandy is, so to speak, Miss Julia Kavanagh's "native heath ;" she is nowhere else so much at home, and we have always reason to be glad when she returns from it. The "Two Lilies" are young ladies be- longing to an English colony living in a Norman town. It is the lot of the hero, and at least quite as much as he deserves, to love them both, and finally to make his choice between them. The two characters are described with much skill and grace. Every one will be disposed to think the hero right when he falls in love with Lily the first, and, in- deed, who could help it ? And yet, charming as she is, we are quite ready to forgive and even to approve, when he finds out that Lily the second is much the fairer and sweeter flower. It is difficult to make a change of front of this kind without loss of the reader's esteem, and Miss Kavanagh deserves high praise for her skill in conducting her hero successfully through it, and for making us justify his preference, at the same time keeping quite above the level of anything like contempt for that which he postpones. The hero's adventures consist of the checks and successes of an architect's life. While these keep us in Normandy, we are content to follow them, though we own to not clearly under- standing their course ; when they take us elsewhere they become, we must frankly say, distinctly tiresome. The whims and caprices of the young aschiteot's patrons make a quantity of very dreary reading. Had this been omitted, with a consequent curtailment of three volumes to two, The Two Lilies would have been a better story than it is, -- and it is, as it stands, one of no small merit.
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