24 MAY 1890, Page 23

A Life's Retribution. By Angus Macdonald. (Remington and Co.)—We fear

her "first printed attempt at novel-writing" on the part of the author of A Life's Retribution, must be set down

among those works of fiction which had better not be written. It is impossible that this story of a vulgar young man and a more vulgar young woman, of fabricated letters, senseless mystifications and still more senseless revelations, related with candid ignorance of the distinctions of society and the manners of people in the world, can amuse anybody ; for it has no humour, and the persons who play parts in it are puppets.