Jenny Jennett; a Tate without a Murder. By A. Gallenga.
2 vole. (Chapman and Hall.)—We should have thought that the first novel by a man with Mr. Gallenga's varied experiences would, at any rate, have been rich in incident and narrative material ; but the most marked quality of Jenny fennett is a quite provoking thinness. All of story that there is might easily be compressed into a few pages without the loss of anything essential, and the great bulk of the book consists of padding, in the shape of sketches of society in Rome at the beginning of the present Pontificate. As padding, these Roman chapters are very good, as anything of this kind from Mr. Gallenga's pen was certain to be ; but they have no vital relation to the action of the tale, which is the very simple love.story of a young Englishman of family and an American girl of fortune, and are, therefore, inartistic excrescences. The villain of the book—for though the author can manage without a murder, be finds a villain indispensable—is a certain Monsignor Ignatius Minot, an ecclesiastical adventurer of a particularly repulsive type. We will not say that Minot is impossible,—indeed, we should not be surprised to learn that the author had a living original in his mind ; but whether possible or impossible, he is a blot upon the book. Perhaps the most amusing, and certainly the most audacious, passage in the book is a glowing celebration of Feminine beauty in general, and of the beauty of Miss Jenny Jennett in particular, which is put into the month of Pope Leo XIIL, and which is certainly calculated to astonish his Holiness, should Mr. Gallenga's novel penetrate the precincts of the Vatican. Jeremy Jennett is brightly written, though the vivacity, especially in the opening chapters, is occasionally rather forced ; and the author mast pardon us the incivility of the remark that his sub-title is a silly one.
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