No Alternative. By Annie Thomas (Mrs. Ponder Cudlip). 2 vols.
(Chapman and Hall.)—Mrs. Ponder Cudlip always succeeds in giving to one, at least, of her characters a certain vividness and novelty which
impress, if they do not attract, the imagination of her readers. o Alternative is not one of her best, and certainly not one of her most
agreeable productions, but it rises very distinctly above the level of the medium fictions which crowd our shelvea. Harty Devenish, in her
strength and in her weakness, is easily to be trecognised as genuine
i her.
.
or worked out with noticeable skill, but only one seems to us distinctly unworthy of the literary standard to which the author of "Dennis Donne "has generally contrived to keep up. Mrs. Grayling, the doctor's wife, of Dillsborough, is a caricature of the most common-place kind.
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