As the Shadows Fall. By J. E. Maddock. 3 vols.
(Samuel Tinsley.) —Mr. Maddock not unnaturally anticipates that it will be urged against him " that the plot of the story is improbable," and he pleads in defence, with singular naivete, " that the main incidents are strictly true," and " that gathering up a number of romantic facts," he has "woven them together." That is about equivalent to arguing that because both women and fish unquestionably exist, we may introduce a mermaid without going beyond the probable. A very pretty piece of lunacy may be constructed by "weaving together romantic facts," each of which is " strictly trae." The novel opens with a very awful descrip- tion indeed of " The Devil's Wash-hand Basin." Here is one of the striking passages in it. Fienschi, the lime-burner, is searching in the pool for a dead body :—" He hangs over the rocky ledge and looks into that awful water. Glaring red eyes meet his, then suddenly dis- appear. They look like fiends,—they are toads." But do toads live in the water? May it not be true that they were fiends ? The author does not often rise to this height, but he is always romantic. He cannot fairly be expected to go beyond making an heiress marry an under-gardener, and then turning the young man into a peer. Unhappily, we are past the age when these surprises affect us with delight.
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