19 OCTOBER 1872, Page 23

Love and Law, or, the Two L's. By A. Mactavish.

(London : Cassell, Patter, and Galpin.)—Mr. Mactavish might have secured the luck which attaches to odd numbers by adding a third L on the title-page, as the story turns—as it has been rather the fashion for stories to turn lately —on a secret trust to sell land from the lawful heir and give the pro- ceeds to charities. It is a one-volume novel, pleasant and very readable, if not over probable, of fear young lawyers, their loves and their goings- on, and is quite free from that bane of so many novels, descriptions of vice and vicious lives. The author is apparently an intelligent, sensible, Radical lawyer, decidedly not great in vivid sketches of individual character, and yet able to interest us in his creations and their joys and sorrows, and curiously different from the majority of authors in this, that the only life-like touches which arouse any real sympathy are given by him to the hero and heroine themselves—so generally mere lay figures—often the only lay figures in stories otherwise, perhaps, fairly peopled with real and natural men and women.