Love's Crosses. By F. E. M. Notley. 3 vole. (Bentley.)—This
novel, like "Olive Varcoe "and others which have crime from the same pen, shows ability ; but the writer certainly over-rates her powers, if she thinks that they enable her to deal satisfactorily with the subjects which she chooses. The reader must be made to feel some genuine liking and interest for one, it may fairly be said, for more than one, of the characters of the story which he is asked to follow. Failing this, cleverness is at least half wasted. And in Love's Crosses there is really no one whom one can regard with liking, not to speak of admiration. The elder women gossip and scheme ; the younger seem helpless under the sway of mastering passion, or are afflicted with such innate, in- curable levity, that they are as certain to come to trouble as the sparks are to fly upwards. Nor are the men more attractive. Of the elders, one only makes acquaintance with a drunken major (unless we are to make an exception of the old fisherman, Dan). Among the younger, the hero has something of the Corsair air about him, and to men, at least, this is not attractive. Richard Lancross is a knave, Edgar Davenant forfeits our respect by failing just when his good-faith met with a genuine trial, and Luffincot is too silly as a subaltern to allow us to take him for granted when he appears in a cassock. There is, as we have said, ability in the novel. " Poppy's " confession is, in particular, a strikingly effective piece of narrative. Still, the result of the whole is not satisfactory. We do not want a foolish optimism or a colour all rose, but we must have something to like and to admire.
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