with his dramatis personal, and to the romancer in awarding
them their situations and adventures. But this is scarcely fair. We might as justly complain of Miss Yonge that she is not Miss Austen. When all is said, Mr. Habberton has given us a very pleasant novelette, and the holiday-maker or invalid may be envied who has Country Luck in his hand, and is making acquaintance with our author's creations,— with Mr. Tramlay and his family in the city, or with the Haynses and their boys on the farm. Mr. Habberton describes with much vivacity the freshness of New England life,—different in so many ways from the life of even the most rural and unsophisticated districts of the old country. It is pleasant to be taken where the New World exists under free laws, and with a brighter spirit than can generally be found in our over-crowded, over-harried, and over-anxious old England. Sweet is True Love. By Katherine King. (Hurst and Blackett.)— The animal spirits which made "The Queen of the Regiment" so pleasant to read, and enlivened the exciting narrative of "Lost for Gold," are mach sulbdned in Miss King's latest novel ; but although it has not the mirthfulness and "go" of the former, or the closely woven plot and stirring scenes of the latter, Sweet is True Love is superior to either in some respects. Miss King has drawn no characters BO strongly as those of Mrs. Milward, Mr. Redfern, and Jan Petersen, three of the personages of this story, and no scene in any of her preceding novels is so striking as the catastrophe of Sweet is True Love. There have been many variations upon the theme of "Enoch Arden "—the situation is one which will always have the charm of the dranie in time for the imagination—bat the variation that we find in Sweet is True Love is striking and original ; indeed, as the story has no resemblance whatever to "Enoch Arden," except in the bare fact that a man is not dead whose wife, believing herself to be his widow, has married again, it is hardly fair to call it a variation on the Laureate's adaptation of a theme in reality as much common property as Robinson Crusoe's island, which was invaded by Enoch Arden in the first instance, and has recently been annexed by Mr. James Payn. There is much in the story, also, of Miss King's characteristic love of bold energy and effort in which there is the element of danger.
"Gilbert and Sullivan" Birthday-Book. Compiled by Alexander Watson. (Pickering and Chatto.)—The compiler does not think it necessary to apologise for publishing this volume. Our impression is that he has carried to a still further length of absurdity a practice already absurd enough. But it is possible that he may be able to excuse himself by some equally irrational precedent. Imagine asking a rational being to identify himself in some sort of fashion with stuff of this kind :— "You shall quickly be parsonified,
Conjugally matrimunified, By a doctor of divinitV Who lives in this vic"nity."
This is fanny enough, it may be, with its accessories ; but to separate it from its context, and make it a sort of appropriate label for the person who happens to have been born on the corresponding day, is really too silly.
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