Darby and Joan. By "Rita." 3 vols. (J. and R.
Maxwell.)—The only character in this novel which gave us any pleasure in the reading is one which is not essential to the construction,—the blind girl, who receives the pet name of "Derby." As for the story itself, cleverly written as it is, it produced not a little weariness, with something not very far removed from disgust. The rivalry between an uncle and a nephew ; the preference given to the former, because he can relieve the necessities of the heroine's father; the struggle in the wife's mind between the duty which she owes to her husband and the feeling which she still cherishes for her lover ; the complications which follow, or seem likely to follow, these divided motives,—these are materials out of which "Rita" makes her story,—a story not worth the trouble which has been spent upon it. "Darby," throughout the book, is, as we have said, a redeeming feature, as are also the young brothers of whom we are allowed to see something in the first volume. —A Life's Mistake, by Mrs. H. Lovett-Cameron, 2 vols. (Ward and Downey), is constructed on somewhat similar lines. Here also there is an indigent father, a daughter who has to choose between the middle-aged creditor whom she does not love, and the attractive but penniless young sailor whom she does, and, of course, after-marriage complications. Happily, however, as we find prefaced in some old dramas., "all the characters are good." The young lover, too, is
gifted with a happy elasticity of heart, and takes up a new love with admirable promptitude. The wife gets into trouble without much necessity. That common deus ex machind of perplexed novelle", a railway accident, is called in ; as there is no guilt to punish, but only misapprehension to remove, it inflicts not death, but injury, and a "life's mistake" is found to have been nothing of the kind.
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