24 MARCH 1883, Page 25

Weighed and Wanting. By George Macdonald, LL.D. (S. Low.) —This

is probably the poorest and least pleasant story Dr. Macdonald has ever published. The Raymounts are a disagreeable family ; there is not a truly manly or womanly character in the whole book; and there are some disagreeable incidents, each as the horsewhipping adminis- tered by a father not only to his son, bat to that wretched weakling's wife. Dr. Macdonald must not allow the pions children he is so fond of to indulge in something very like blasphemy. Little Mark Raymount, who figures in Weighed and Wanting as the spokesman of the author's favourites, is simply repulsive, when he comes on the stage with his " Dear God" and Good-bye, God," and " How happy Jesus must have been when he went back to his papa," and "You know if God were to go to sleep, and forget his little Mark, then he would forget that he was God, and would not wake again." Dr. Macdonald should go through a course of the Calvinism of his native country, or of Carlylian "mysticism." Neither of these is irreverent, or teaches aught but reverence, in the presence of the Eternities and the Immensities.