The Heritage of Langdale. By Mrs. Alexander. 3 vols. (Bentley.)—
We must confess to having felt a slight sinking of the spirits when we read the first sentence of this novel,—" A dull November afternoon was lowering over the wild open country and unsheltered coast-line of a southern shire, nearly a hundred and sixty years ago." How few magicians of the pen are powerful enough to transport us over a cen- tury and a half ! And having read the story, and read it, we will say at once, with a great deal of pleasure, wo yet feel that Mrs. Alexander's powers, which readers of The Wooing O't know to be of no common kind, might have been employed to more purpose. The personages in The Heritage of Langdale are brilliantly and skilfully drawn, but they are quite conventional. The great Countess, a beauty somewhat past her prime, passionate and unscrupulous ; .fohn Langdale, hiding his villainies beneath a Puritanic exterior ; Harold, his roué son ; Don Juan di Monteiro, ex-buccaneer, but a gallant and loyal gentleman withal ; Maud, the pale, persecuted beauty, who has yet on occa- sion a spirit that can hold its own,—all these, with the accustomed company of dames de compagnie, old soldiers, hired bravoes, and so forth, are figures which we seem to know quite well. But the author, it must be
allowed, manages them very well. She constructs her story with uncom- mon skill, and carries her readers on with an interest that never flags through a series of plots and counterplot', abductions, rescues, and the like. In short, we have here a genuine romance, and a very good one of its kind. In the last scene, where Mand's gratitude developes into love, there is genuine pathos, a touch of nature which is worth more, to our mind, than all the brilliancy and cleverness of what has gone before.
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