Only Or.e Other : a Novel. 2 vols. By Frederick
Warren. (Remington and Co.)—We have found these two volumes very uninteresting, and very ordinary in all respects. It seems to us that the tale would not be worth the telling, even if it had the advantage of artistic treatment, which it certainly has not. Some of the incidents connected with the sea are perhaps the least uninteresting part of the book. The tone is good and unobjectionable ; bat that alone will hardly carry readers through two volumes. Within a a couple of pages is found writing of this order :—" All their little ties of mutual interest seemed to have been swept away or buried in a great dream of impalpable ecstasy ;" and, "Little sympathy wilt thou get from the prudish sophists, or the sordid critics among thy fellow-mortals ; by them thou wilt be styled a fool who had not the pluck to follow a game after undertaking it—a game, forsooth, that no sensible man would have undertaken. Little boots it to thee," chc. The most remarkable thing in the book is the length of many of the sentences ; one of twenty-three lines forms more than half of the last chapter, but is surpassed by another of twenty-aix, occupying nearly a page and a half, at the end of chap. xi., Vol. II. Less than Kin : a Novel. By J. E. Penton. 1 vol. (Ward and Downey.)—This, too, is a book of amazing length of sentence; in pp. 136-137 will be found one just filling a page, and a good-sized page too, consisting of twenty-five long lines, and thus easily bearing away the palm from the book just noticed. Similarly, three pages, 300.303, are almost entirely composed of four sentences, numbering respectively eighteen, twelve, thirteen, and twenty-three lines. We can heartily commend this book to any one who may be desirous of reading a thoroughly disagreeable and unpleasant, not to say un- wholesome, story. The author could hardly have been more successful if such a production had been his express object, unre- lieved as it is by the course of the narrative or any artistic contrasts. We should be sorry to mar the effect which we suppose is intended to be produced, by giving any indications of the contents.
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