Brian Fits - Count. By the Rev. A. D. Crake. (Rivingtons.)— The
scenes of this medisival romance are laid in and about Wallingford Castle, about the middle of the twelfth century. Brian Fitz-Count is the type of a Norman baron in the darkest period of the dark ages, and he is a fearful and awful example of the tendency of despotic power to brutalise an already cruel race. We shudder at the dungeons of Wallingford, and catch our breath as we hear the lamentations and curses, the shrieks and cries, wrung from the victims, whose wrongs or whose wealth made them subjects for torture the revolting ingenuity and hideousness of which surpass belief. The ferocious Baron is drawn with a relentless pen, though his tardy repentance is made to soften to an undue extent, we think, a character which in sombre- ness of hue reminds us of Front de Bond. The writer of " Alfgar the Dane" has lost none of his descriptive power.
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