Ten Years. By Gertrude Young. (Chapman and Hall.)—Miss Austen, playfully
criticising the plot of a niece's first novel, declares she finds in it a compliment to herself as pretty as it is true, for she has little doubt that if matters were only inquired into, it would be found that most nieces are chosen on account of their likeness to some living or deceased aunt. The heroine of Ten Years is represented as not appreciating the force of this sort of compliment ; nor perhaps, under the same circumstances, would it have proved quite so satisfactory to Miss Austen. To have a young and lovely image of one's former self ready to realise the fond remembrances of one's lover, on his return after a ten years' absence in India, must be trying, and it is gratifying to find that the elder Mabel Dennison does not submit to be replaced by her niece with that eagerness after self-sacrifice which (in novels) characterises this class of victims to the " pangs of despised love." The whole interest of the tale lies in the delicate and truthful delineation of this one character, Ernest St. John being even more unreal than stern and highly intellectual heroes are apt to be ; bat Mabel is an attractive heroine, and the story of her faithful love and its ending is told with considerable taste and feeling.
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