20 MAY 1876, Page 21

Miraterborough. By Humphry Sandwith, C.B., D.C.L. 3 vols. (Chatto and

Windus.)—This novel is a deplorable mistake. Dr. Sand- with speaks with contempt of journals to which he gives the name of the St. Giles's Sewer and Wapping Chronicle, yet there are features in Minsterborough which remind us of them. It is there, and not in the work of an intelligent man who has seen the world, that we should ex- pest to find a Dean declaring that "gentlemen never learn chemistry" and a Nonconformist minister (both, be it understood, of the present century) saying that "he would gird up his loins" when he wanted to go across the street. There, too, we should be told that it is the fault of landlords that England does not feed its own population. It Is painful to find such nonsense written by a gentleman who has done good service to his country, and has been rightly heneured ior it. The plot of the novel is this:—A country doctor's son loves and is beloved by a nobleman's step-daughter. He declares his passion, and is contemptuously rejected by the father. Shortly afterwards, in a foolish escapade, he renders himself liable to the penalties of night-poaching. He is taken before the nobleman, committed, and handcuffed. Not having been duly instructed—to the everlasting shame of English grammar-schools—in the law, he is unwise enough to make his escape. However, a brilliant career abroad opens before him (the description of this is the only good thing in the book); the young lady is found to be the daughter of his closest friend, and a great heiress; the wicked nobleman is tried for poisoning his wife, and narrowly escapes with his life, and dies not long afterwards. This plot is one of the most common-place, sensational kind, and there is nothing in either the dialogue or the drawing of character to redeem it. Is not the farce a trifle too broad where, in the novel which Helen Lee sub- mits to the criticism of her young lover, the closing scene describes a wife, who has been separated from her sailor husband in the church porch, showing him " four sweet little children, which she had borne him daring his absence"? And might we ask Dr. Sandwith how his intelli- gent young medical witness meant to finish his answer, when he is asked whether there wore other irritant mineral poisons besides arsenic, and begins his answer, " Bichloride of mercury, sulphate of copper,. oxalic— "?