An Unfortunate Arrangement. By John Hill. 2 vols. (Ward and
Downey.)—If an author determines to give his novel an autobiographical form, it would be as well not to make the autobiographer so thorough a scoundrel as Harold Stanton. Not even the very eccentric virtues of Alan McEwan, who halves his property in order to enable this scoundrel to marry, can reconcile us to this very odious person. Indeed, there is a trail of some- thing not quite nice over all Mr. Hill's characters. When the chivalrous Alan proposes to Ida, he does it over a bottle of "dry monopole," which the lady has secreted in the drawing-room, and which she declares they will "have plenty of time to finish before they [the gentlemen in the dining-room] come up." A less
worthy hero and heroine drink "a bottle of Berncasteler Doctor," " followed by a bottle of Mumm." This reminds us of the late Mr. Mortimer Collins, whose gentlemen drank as their great-grand- fathers drank, and whose ladies as no ladies, unless it be dipso- maniacs, ever did. But Mr. Hill does not often remind us of Mr.
Mortimer Collins. For all his cleverness, he would please us better if he did.
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