A Friend at Court. By Alex. C. Ewald. 3 vols.
(Tinsley Brothers.) —We cannot say much for this volume, considered as a tale. Most of as are inclined to believe that it is IL good thing to have "a friend at Court," and all that we read here tends to confirm this belief. There would have been a certain originality in maintaining that it is, on the contrary, a very bad thing, that it ruins a man's independence and self- reliance, &c., in exhibiting the favourite of fortune condemned for life to some mean competence, while the unfrionded one rises to the highest dignities of the State. However, it is not so here; our hero saves the life of the only daughter of some groat political personage, and his fortune is made, not, however—for so much of moral Mr. Ewald is careful to insert—without the help of much diligence and shrewdness on his own part. But the book is sufficiently readable and amusing. Mr. Ewald has seen, we imagine, a good deal of the world, and can describe with force. Life in a German university town, the interior of a Government Office, and a Saturday-night market at the East End, are among the pictures which are given, with the air of one who knows what he is writing about. The hero is not a particularly interesting personage, but he mixes with a number of people who do contrive somehow to interest us. One of the most amusing of them is the eminent litterateur whose favourite thesis is that the English people has a Greek, not a Teutonic origin.
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