Pious Frauds. By Albany de Fonblanque. (Richard Bentley and Son.)—If
the author had excluded all the mystery, which is not mysterious, from the plot of Pious Frauds, ho might have made that novel more readable, as well as more rational, than it is. He has a certain thin and sharp kind of ability, which would carry him toter' ably well through a story of flirtation of the diamond-cut-diamond order, and scenes of an unrefined kind of " life ;" but when he attempts the solemnly-sensational he is simply foolish, and when ho soars to grandeur be dips oddly into vulgarity. The story has nothing to do, that we can find out, with its title ; there is certainly no piety in it, and no fraud either, for the relinquishment of his own rights and concealment of his own identity by " Gipsy Cowper," although improbable and absurd, is not fraudulent. Mr. de Fon- blanque is not more fortunate in his selection of a name for the chief actor in his story. " Bellmonte " is an impossible combination of syllables ; the result is neither English, French, nor Italian.
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