19 DECEMBER 1868, Page 21

A Month in the Midlands. By G. Bower. (Rotten.) —This

is a story pictorially told of fox-hunting and love, ending as orthodox stories should, with marriage at least imminent. Hunting sketches remind us inevitably of a pencil which bad an almost singular power over the humorous, the pathetic, and the beautiful. But a generation cannot expect to see more than one John Leech. Miss Bower does not give us, indeed does not aim at giving us much fun. Her sketches are generally serious. Her hunters know their business, and incur no more ridicule than that which must fall on a man who is within an ace of breaking his neck. She is, perhaps, less successful with the women than the men, and cer- tainly has not Leech's art of making an exquisite face with half-a-dozen strokes. But her drawing has much spirit. The figure of Dick, who loses his character among the ladies by going to sleep in the drawing- room, strikes us as particularly good.