21 NOVEMBER 1891, Page 10

Wild Bryonie. By Jennie Chappell. (S. W. Partridge.)—The moral of

this story might perhaps be expressed by the text, " Rejoice evermore." Annette Erroll is a person whose religion has the gloomiest of aspects. That everything pleasant is wrong, is her principle for determining the character of actions. Hence the gaiety of the spirited and handsome young woman who gives a title to the story does not approve itself to her. Her more cheerful brother Raymond admires both gaiety and beauty. Diffi- culties arise. Bryonie has to find another home—she and her mother have been boarding with the Errolls—and makes a very unhappy choice. After various trials, the greatest being a most extraordinary and improbable misunderstanding, which leads her to suppose her lover to be dead, things turn out right. This is not very well contrived, but the story has no little merit.