Lascare : a Tale. 3 vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—This story seems
to us to bear marks of composite workmanship. It is a story of the Cornish 'coast, of the loves and adventures by sea and land of the smuggling population of the little town of Penwitb. All that relates to the perils and daring escapades of the hero, Lascare, and his companions is told with uncommon spirit and real power. Directly, however, we set foot on dry land, and are invited to " congenialise " in the social life, such as it is, of the little town and neighbourhood, all our sympathy vanishes, the air is artificial and the tone constrained. There is, too, a marked difference in the phraseology of the two writers, if our con- jecture be correct. The one is hearty, racy, idiomatic ; the other is cramped, precise, and to use a favourite word of hers (we cannot be wrong in hers) inelegant. People "evince a preference," they "select a profession," they "reside" in " abodes," they approach "a vicinity," where the views are "extensive" and the "dwellings are superior," and they do these objectionable things over and over again. Then they are "reminiscent " and "reliable," and worse than all, one of them has a "sanclorum." We should not like to pronounce on these volumes so wholesale a condemnation as the writer passes en the conversations of her pair of lovers, that they are "uninteresting to the world and his- torically worthless." Some parts of them are very readable, and if a reader can put up with a good deal of fine English, verbose discussions of obsolete politics, and a pernicious habit of goody-goody talk, he will find also some shrewd descriptions of peasant and seafaring life, the company of a bold, brave smuggler and his friends, and a good deal of morality. But Mr. Black has spoiled us for Cornish heroines, and Edith Lascare is a poor substitute for Werma Rosowarne.
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