The Ring of Gyges. By Charles Wentworth Lisle. (Bentley and
Son.)—This is a romance, and, on the whole, a fair specimen of that kind of writing. Francis Neville finds the ring of Gygee, which had the wonderful property, as Horodotus tells us, of making the wearer invisible or visible at pleasure, according as it was worn. This gift has its advantages and disadvantages, the latter in the end very much preponderating. The idea of the curse which it would be to any man to have mesas of knowing that other men have not is cleverly worked oat. Francis Neville sees too much. He protects himself, indeed, against fraud ; he makes himself a personage by his mysterions power of learning political secrete ; but he loses his faith in friends. A perfectly frank and single-minded man might not have boon injured by the power, but the imperfect nature of the hero fails under the test. This is the central idea of the romance,—an idea well worth working oat. The performance is scarcely what we could have wished, but the story is certainly above the average.
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