2 APRIL 1887, Page 22

The Maid a' the MW. By Mrs. Compton Reads. 2

vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—This is a very disagreeable story, well intended, we do

not doubt, for vice is certainly made to appear odious ; bat scarcely, WO should think, salutary, for virtue in certainly very weak. A profli- gate man of the world, a carats who wants nothing but opportunity to be as bad, and a vicar who has as little heart as a man can well have and live, are, with the father and the rustic lover, the chief characters, after the heroine. There is, of coarse, a chorus of scandalous matrons and maids. The impression left by the whole is unpleasing in the extreme.