24 JULY 1886, Page 27

The Heir of the Ages. By James Payn. 3 vols.

(Smith and Elder.)—Mr. Payn contrives to keep up the quality of the great amount of literary work which he produces with a quite surprising success. There is not much of a plot, it is true, in The Heir of the Ages, but then, so felicitous an idea as that of "Lost Sir Massing- bard" cannot be expected often to recur ; but it is as readable as any of its predecessors. It is the story of the fortunes of a young woman of genius, who adds to an tanisatamot beauty a stall more uncommon power of writing. It must be allowed that there is a touch of extravagance, we might almost say of farce, in the story of the literary triumphs of Miss Elizabeth Dart. Bat this is a subject on which Mr. Payn has been pleased already to poke fun at the public, as when, with a perfectly grave face, he advised fathers searching the whole nature of things for occupations for their eons, to bring them np to the profession of letters. Elizabeth Dart takes the world by storm ; Mr. Payn even gives ns a specimen of the pro- ductions by Which she did it. But we are not supposed to take this seriously, anymore than we are the extraordinary occurrence by which Mr. Payn justifies the title which he has been pleased to give to his book, and at the same time provides the money by which the good people are to be rewarded and made happy. The charm of the story lies in the telling of it, and no one is disposed to complain, though it is constructed on the lines of the romance rather than of the novel. The heroine is a very real woman, and falls in love with an unworthy, man in a most natural way just as women of genius often do. In this part of the story, indeed, Mr. Payn shows much shrewd observation of character. Nothing could be more natural than the way in which the " major," with his superficial graces of demeanour, which look so much like kindness of heart, but really have nothing to do with it, takes in this clever girl who knows nothing of the world, and takes conventional courtesies as worth what they seem to be. All through the book there is a delicate play of harbour. In short, The Heir of the Ages is as pleasant and attractive a story as one can expect to come across.