CURRENT LITERATURE.
Plain John Orpington. By the author of Lady Flavia. (Bentley.)— Very much better than Lady Flavia; almost, if such a thing could be, a natural sensation novel. It is a story of a murder, as simple, and there- fore as interesting, as if it were told in a police-court. The principal figure is no tigress, with yellow hair, and green eyes, and enchanting grace, but a heavy-browed, coarse-handed country surgeon, with a last for wealth and a hard nature. He kills a rich patient who, he knows, has left him a great legacy, is seen in the act by his betrothed, and of
course is at last hunted down. One takes something of the interest in him and his household one might take in Rush, and the incidents are
very easily told in very good English. But for the hints of a previous murder and the introduction of a mad sister, only to lead to the, true theatric catastrophe, Plain John Orpington would be as good as any other skilfully rewritten chapter out of the Newgate Calendar.
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