The Widow Unmaskvd ; or, the Firebrand in the Family.
By Flora F. Wylde. 3 vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—Wo understand—not from ex- perience, for we have not been driven to criticise novels from ill-success in writing them—that it is the publishers who contrive the titles for novels. If this be so, was ever so unfortunate author so ill-treated as Miss Wylde has been 7 It would be almost impossible to begin a novel with so grotesque a name without prejudice. As for ourselves, it was only from the strongest sense of duty that we opened it at all. How dismal . in any case the prospect of such a story ! how painful, if there was cleverness about it, how unutterably wearisome if there were not ! Our first impression of the Widow Unmasked was that nothing could be more tedious. When we read of a family that, being modest and retiring in demeanour, they only visited those who called on them,' as if any other course were possible, and found on the next page a young soldier described by such a sentence as in him were centred virtues and noble sentiments of mind that invariably reflect such lustre on the military profession," we felt that it was not a queer title that could do such a book any harm. On the whole, however, the book got alittle better as it moved on. The first pages are probably Miss Wylde's first effort at writing her own language, and the practice given by a few hundred pages is not lost. We cannot indeed conscientiously recommend the story to our readers ; still we have an impression that the author might do better another time. But she must make many alterations in her manner of writing. We warn her that the public will not stand so very romantic an incident as the making a heroine elope with a sham Mar- quis, and finally marry the real one. Total change of character, too, must be eschewed. The detestable young woman to whom we are in- troduced on page 1 is quite unrecognisable in the angelic being to whom we bid farewell on page 900. There is nothing of which people, whether rightly or wrongly, are so incredulous.
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