Emily Foinder. By F. Devonshire. (Tinsley.)—A story of the worst
sensational kind, in which a father sends his daughter to a mad-house by forged certificates for no better motive than dislike to a possible lover, wills are stolen, false accusations made of murder, a real murder
is copied from the reports of the Midler trial, and the whole padded with sentences like this :—" Frothy and vapid controversialists may prate at random about the unsociability of silence, for they see in it the death-blow of their own inflated common-places. They know not the hidden depths of feeling, the unexplored recesses of thought which it conceals, nor can they realize the secret commune with the world of spirits, with Nature and its God, to which it is subservient, and of which it is the prime originator." The book is all incidents, and scarcely one among them has the slightest probability, while the more sensational are described in this style:—" Always fearfully repulsive in the expression of his countenance, he now looked absolutely fiendish. His dark, gloomy features, lighted up with a flush of triumph, gleamed
pale and spectral as the feeble rays of the glimmering lamp fell upon
them, and the massive proportions of his muscular figure loomed forth from the darkness rigid in outline and gigantic in their dimensions. In his right hand he held a life-preserver ; short and ponderous, when wielded by such an arm it could fell an ox, for it was loaded deftly and balanced with admirable nicety."
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