25 JUNE 1870, Page 18

Not While She Lives. By Mrs. Alexander Fraser. 2 vols.

(Tinsley.) —This is one of the books from which we cannot conceive deriving either pleasure or profit. An English courtesan of a very coarse and vulgar type, whose proceedings Mrs. Fraser describes with unfeminine—or must we say feminine—boldness, entangles the hero in a marriage, and prevents him from winning the girl whom he loves " while she lives ;" a French courtesan of a more refined and polished sort opportunely hinders a match by which the said hero would have lost his love altogether. There is the plot, not attractive in itself, not made so by the telling. The English is sprinkled with French phrases more thickly, we think, than we have ever seen before. We have taken the trouble to count more than forty in one chapter; and there are four or five Latin and Italian words to be added to the number. We will return good for the evil which we have suffered in reading these volumes, by telling Mrs. Fraser that the motto which she prints on her title-page

thus,— "Omnia vinclt amor, Et nos cedamus amori,"

is an hexameter line, or rather would be one if she had not transposed et and nos.