19 MAY 1883, Page 24

My Heart and I. By Elinor Hume. (Bentley and Son.)—A

heroine who tells her own story seldom tells it well. She is generally self-conscious, telling us, for instance, that she is very selfish, while she really thinks herself self-sacrificing ; and that she is plain, while she evidently cherishes a secret belief in her own beauty. Nina, Miss Hume's heroine, is fall of these affectations. A more tire- some person, with her perpetual protestations, self-accusations, and self-justifications, we have seldom met with, even in fiction. The plot is not very clearly developed. At one time we think it is to be another repetition of " Bertha in the Lane ;" then the tables are turned, and the elder sister triumphs over the younger. One thing is plain, that a less interesting set of people than the characters of My Heart and I have seldom been brought together. This is the more to be regretted because Miss Hume has undoubtedly some literary power.