Macalpine ; or, On Scottish Ground. 3 vols.—This is a
tedious story, which it is not very easy to follow, partly perhaps on account of the unusual English in which it is written. What is the meaning, for instance, of the following ?—" He had paid silent devotion, a strong ex- perience in his volatility." One has to think for a moment before perceiv- ing that it is intended to mean, what the words certainly will not bear, that his devotion was a strong feeling in a character hitherto volatile, and Macalpine is not of tho sort of stuff that one cares to spend a moment of deliberation over a sentence in every other page. The hero is the eon of &ruined Highland chief; he falls in love with one young lady, and makes love to another, after having, indeed, had much love made to him by her. Both of these young women turn out to be other than they seem ; and the consequence of the transformation of one of them is the cause of the return of the hero—who, meanwhile, has married the other—to the possession of his ancestral estate. He has gone through the experience, which is certainly far more common in novels than in real life, of being tried for a murder which ho has not committed, which was, indeed, no murder at all. Throughout the tale there has been going on a good deal of rioting and other violence. Everybody, bad or good, comes at last by his rights ; and the reader who may have reached the end can con- gratulate himself that he has found nothing in the story to do him any harm, and that if he has probably wasted his time, he has certainly strengthened with exercise his faculty of patience.
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