23 OCTOBER 1869, Page 23

Lord Austin's Bride. By Rowland M. Ford. (Freeman.)—The title suggests

to the reader what a few pages will convince him of, that this tale would be appropriately found not in the green-cloth cover of the ordinary novel, but in the more popular halfpenny journal, furnished with the striking woodcuts that there assist the imagination. We only doubt whether it would satisfy that public which, probably, as other publics, likes what it has to be good. But there are the stock characters and incidents ; there is the haughty duke, the profligate young noble, the injured maiden of low degree, the haughty young lady who intrigues to injure her and falls into her own pit; there is a bigamy, a poisoning, and, as if to compensate for these horrors, a coming-to-life again, with the dramatic scene of the second wife open- ing the coffin in which the first wife was supposed to have been buried, and finding it full of stones. If this sort of thing tempts our readers, they will know where to look for it.