Married. By Mrs. T. C. Newby. 3 vols. (Newby.)—Mrs. Newby
tells us in her first volume how her heroine came to be married, and in her second and third how, being married, she behaved herself. The attempt to enter this great region of life, which most novelists wholly ignore, is always praiseworthy, and Mrs. Newby makes it with some success. The difficulty is to create an interest without having recourse to unedifying excitements. Mrs. Newby's heroine begins by solving the problem of keeping house on £200 a year, and does it with an easy which we regard with admiring envy. Fortunately for her, but unfor- tunately for readers who would gladly profit by her experience, a hand- some fortune come, to her before she has the opportunity of applying to her powers the trying test of half-a-dozen children. After this we are provided with a more romantic interest. She becomes jealous of her husband, and so brings a serpent into her economical Eden. The story is told simply, the characters talk the natural language of living people rather than of books, and though there is nothing that can be called a real plot, the story may be followed with interest. Allowing it to be a law of nature that a story of this kind must be padded out into three volumes, we have no serious fault to find with it.
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