Where Honour Leads. By Marian Francis. (Hutchinson and Co. 6a.)—Where
Honour Leads is a very clever and pleasant picture of domestic life in the days of George II. Barbara Kerslake is the eldest daughter of a stately and highly respect- able Canon of York, "on whom heaven had bestowed a family of daughters, but no son." The Kerslakes are staunch Hanoveriens, and great sticklers for all the orthodoxies of the Protestant faith and the rights and dignities of a well-connected family and a good position in the Established Church. Their manners, correct and " important," their limited sympathies and outlook, are rendered with a touch so true and humorone, and yet so entirely remote from the spirit of caricature, that one suspects Mrs. Francis of having learned the times by means of family records interpreted by inherited instinct. The heroine is an exceedingly clever compound of contradictory qualities. Some- thing vital and primitive in her, a fierce pride of maidenhood and a scorn of the emptiness of conventions, warm affections and sensitive honour, are at war with the social ambitions an,i pru- deuces of her stock. She is involved in compromising intrigue by the indiscretions of her cousin, Jack Firebrace, a restless Jacobite and " Papist," who has won the heart of Barbara's little sister Monica, and for wh• se sake Barbara at last doss heroic and touching things, not at all to be expected of the Canon's daughter. The story is intricate, and has many phases. Its finest scene is the crucial one at Place Northam, when the c razy dame of the house forces Berbera to choose or refuse at a moments notice a husband and a fortune, and Barbara, prompted by pride, renounces with her lips while her heart accepts. The least good passages belong to the period of Barbara's first marriage, when she is a great lady in London and not happy. The Canon is admii ably done, and the descriptions of family christenings and weddings are delightful.
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