24 JULY 1875, Page 23

Dolores. By Mrs. Forester. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—Mrs. Forester

has tried a bold experiment. Her heroine is one of whom she would not have us think any harm, but this same heroine loves, or says that she loves, three men in succession, and three is a number that was permitted to gain her. But whatever the young lady's moral or fellow, though he has not the same delicacy of taste, nor the same finish intellectual worth, she must be allowed to have no little charm about which is conspicuous, at least in Longfellow's poems of the best period. her. Mrs. Forester, indeed, draws her female characters with much skill. Milly, the fair widow, whom Sir Guy so passionately admires, is an especially excellent sketch. She is just the type of the women who fascinate men's hearts without being able to hold them. Marcelline, too, the faithful little French bonne, whose faithfulness is not beyond the fascination of his work takes him away from his duties of charity, how reach of temptation from a few gold coins, is a pleasing little sketch. he steels his heart against the miseries of a time of pestilence, when all The men are less real, the young Viscount excepted, and he is one of the outside characters whom it does not take much art to draw. Dolores is quite a readable novel,—perhaps something more than readable. them. On the whole, if the rather foolish Dolores may be considered a prize, and very foolish women have been, are, and probably over will be so considered, one is glad that the honest young fellow whom we leave in the midst of his domestic felicity in the last chapter