The Shadow on the Hearth. By Mrs. Mackenzie Daniel. 3
vols. (Skeet.)—Parts of this novel are interesting, but the whole is marred by a wildness and extravagance for which we have to thank the chief male characters. Mrs. Daniel's women are long-suffering victims, and their fathers or husbands are always driving them to despair. When the tables are turned, as in the case of Uncle James and Aunt Maria, the woman is still the weaker vessel. Perhaps the fiend in female form who persecutes the hero by following him up mountains on a stormy night, and who desecrates the English formalities of visiting, is to some extent an exception, but then she is even more impossible than the hero. It is a pity that the very elements which are meant to give a spice to the whole composition should be those that make the whole composition faulty. flat we think that Mrs. Mackenzie Daniel would have created a more legitimate interest without her maniacal hero, and that her novels in general would be improved by a dash of sobriety.
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