A Splendid Fortune. A novel. By the Author of The
Gentle Life. S vols. (Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.)—This is a very good speci- men of the ordinary novel of the circulating libraries. The story is well put together and, if one can give people credit for very enormous ignorance of the world, even probable. Whether ladies so shrewd as Lady Amethyst and Miss Nightley could be induced to give 1001. for a marriage certificate under the idea that its destruction would destroy the evidence of the marriage may be well doubted. The most that it could do—and indeed all the author makes it do—is to put some diffi- culty in the way of finding the requisite proof. And it may be taken as indisputable that an existing entry in some parish register will cer- tainly be found, if the succession to "a splendid fortune" depends on it. The loss of such a document, even in the peculiar circumstances supposed by the author, is hardly of enough importance to account for all the distress and disturbance which he represents it as causing. It is, however, obviously no bad story, of which there is nothing worse to say than this, and the character-drawing is very much above the average. A Splendid Fortune is not a work of genius, but it supplies a popular demand with good workmanlike staff.
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